The model is also called the "Customer-Based Brand Equity" (CBBE) model and was developed by Kevin Lane Keller, who is a marketing professor at Darthmouth College. The model was published in his textbook "Strategic Brand Management".

The idea behind the model is simple: to build a strong brand, you need to shape what those customers think and feel about your brand. To do that, you need to create the right kind of experiences around your brand so that your customers have specific, positive thoughts, feelings, opinions and perceptions of your brand.

"Equity" can be translated as free value or equity and is therefore the value your brand has "in itself".

When you have strong "brand equity", your customers buy more from you, they recommend you to their friends, are more loyal and the risk of losing them to your competitors is smaller.

The model's four steps

The model consists of four steps:

1. Identity: Who are you?
2. Meaning: What are you
3. Reaction: How about you?
4. Relationships: What about you and me?

The four steps represent the four fundamental questions your customers (often unconsciously) ask about your brand.

Under each of these steps, you'll find six building blocks that must be present in order for you to develop a successful brand.

The six building blocks

Step 1: Visibility
Step 2: Performance and Imagery
Step 3: Judgment and feelings
Step 4: Resonance

Application of the model

Let's look at each step and find out how you can use the model to strengthen your brand.

Step 1: Brand identity: Who are you?

In this first step, it is about creating "brand visibility” – or knowledge of your brand. In other words, you must ensure that your brand stands out and that your customers recognize and are aware of it.

In order to build brand identity, you need to know who your customers are and what their needs are. You can do this by e.g. to identify your customer segments and develop customer personas.

You must then consider which decision-making processes your customers have when they buy your product. What can your brand do to make itself known at the various stages of the customer's decision-making process?

Step 2: Meaning: What are you?

The goal of this step is to identify what your brand means and what it stands for. To find out, you need to examine what Keller calls your product's "performance" and "imagery."

Performance defines how well your product solves your customer's needs. Here you must e.g. look at five categories:

• Primary characteristics and features
• Product reliability, durability and usability
• Your service's efficiency, enterprise level and level of empathy
• Style and design
• Price

Imagery identifies how well your product solves your customer's needs on a social and psychological level. The brand can either solve these needs directly through interaction with the product or indirectly with targeted marketing or "word of mouth" marketing.

The experiences your customers have with your brand are a direct result of how your product performs. Therefore, the product must meet, and preferably exceed, customer expectations if you want to build loyalty.

Step 3: Reaction: what do I think or feel about you?

According to Keller's model, your customers' reactions to your brand fall into two categories: "judgments" and "emotions".

Keller identifies four different categories within which the customer's assessments falling:

• Quality: Customers judge a product or brand on its actual and perceived value.
• Credibility: Customers judge the credibility of the brand based on three dimensions: Expertise, credibility and "likeability"
• Consideration: Customers assess how relevant your product is in relation to their needs.
• Superiority: Customers rate how superior your brand is compared to your competitors' brands.

As I said, customers also react in relation to how your brand makes them feel. Your brand can evoke emotions directly, but can also affect your customers indirectly, by affecting how they feel about themselves.

Keller mentions six positive brand emotions: warmth, fun, excitement, safety, social recognition and self-respect.

First consider the questions below in relation to each of the four "assessments" described above.

• What can you do to improve the actual and perceived quality of your product or brand?
• How can you strengthen your brand's credibility?
• How well does your marketing strategy communicate your brand's relevance to your customers' needs?
• How does your brand compare to your competitors' brands?

Next, consider which of the above six emotions your brand is focusing on now. What can you do to reinforce these?

Step 4: Resonance: How much attachment do I want to have with you?

This is the fourth and most difficult step in the model, but also the most attractive. Do you achieve resonance your customers feel a strong psychological attachment to your brand.

Keller identifies four resonance types:

1. Behavioral loyalty: Includes regular recurring purchases
2. Behavioral association: Your customers love your brand or product and see it as a special purchase.
3. Sense of community: Your customers feel they are part of a community, with the people associated with the brand, both in relation to other customers and representatives of the company.
4. Active engagement: Customers are actively engaged with your brand even when they are not buying or using it.

No. four on this list is the strongest example of brand loyalty. Here there are e.g. talk about Lego fans who develop new models for Lego. [link: https://ideas.lego.com/]