Consumer recall of brand associations for fabricated brands

Brand associations, or the information that consumers store in memory about a brand and can recall during purchase situations, are seen as an important brand asset. Marketers spend vast amounts of money building brand associations with consumers, and building associations in a variety of situations, and for a variety of usages for the brand. The research reported in this paper investigates the role of brand associations in relation to the high salience, low salience and fabricated brands for consumers. There has been previous research on counterfeit brands and unknown online brands. Brand associations have been tested across product categories and have been shown to benefit from leveraging partner brand equity. However, there is a paucity of research on brand associations for fabricated brands. A fabricated brand is a brand that has been made up. It is a brand that does not currently exist in the market place, and it is a brand for which consumers should have no brand knowledge. This research highlighted the need to understand the role that associations play in retrieval of information from consumer memory, and the manner in which advertising is designed to elicit brand associations.