How consumers’ use of brand vs attribute information evolves over time

Purpose – Prior research has identified that brands have a differential impact on consumer evaluations across various brand benefits. This paper investigates whether these effects are stable over time, or evolve in a consistent way. Design/methodology/approach – Consumer evaluations of brand benefits into overall brand and detailed attribute-specific sources through a standard confirmatory factor analysis approach have been decomposed. Two unique datasets have been analyzed; the first contains cross-sectional data from Kodak across four different consumer goods categories, and the other is a longitudinal dataset from the USA and Canada in the surface-cleaning category, covering seven brands over five years (2007-2011). Findings – A systematic evolution in brand effects has been demonstrated: a general trend is that over time and with experience, consumers rely more heavily on overall brand information to develop their evaluations. However, early in a brand’s life, or later when circumstances compel consum...