Brand Synthesis: The Multidimensionality of Brand Knowledge

The increased priority placed on branding by marketers in recent years offers an opportunity for consumer researchers to provide valuable insights and guidance. In particular, in highly competitive marketplaces, marketers often must link their brands to other entities, for example, people, places, things, or other brands, as a means to improve their brand equity. Understanding this leveraging process requires understanding consumer brand knowledge and how it changes from such associations. In this essay, I identify some promising and productive current research on this topic, and I suggest some important issues for future research. I conclude that adopting broader, more holistic perspectives that synthesize the multidimensionality of brand knowledge is critical to advance branding theory and practice, both in general and with brand leveraging in particular. Copyright 2003 by the University of Chicago.