University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus

Consumer perception towards automotive brand slogans : Measuring brand awareness, brand personality and consumer perceived value through brand slogans in Malaysia

Imagine, a day in our lives without a �brand�. Each and every segment of our daily lives from food to transport, household to corporate workplaces, residential areas to automotives, articulates around brands. We as consumers, aim for brands that have the most likeable associations with ourselves and the people of our social circle. This is where the view of Tybout, Calkins and Kotler (2005) regarding brand as a set of associations linked to a name, mark, and symbol associated with a product or service becomes true. An example of brand association can be by imagining how people relate a name of a clothing brand (e.g. Chanel) or a car (e.g. Mercedes Benz) to a symbol of status. In the modernistic view of marketing, brand association has replaced the primary factor of price for purchasing decision as well as brand loyalty.

Having the established certain perspective of how brands revolve around us as consumers, and the importance of brands to us, a focus should be given towards the concerned attribute of brand which would be the primary investigative entity of this dissertation; brand expression/ brand message/ brand tagline/ brand slogan. Brand slogans are exploited as a marketing tool to facilitate message diffusion among the consumer market, as well as a powerful tool for targeted segment�s brand positioning (Cheng et al, 2006).

In our every day lives, we come across hundreds of brands with several brand taglines targeting at different level of positioning towards the consumer mind, however have we ever critically analyzed these brand messages? Are they just complimentary to a powerful brand? Do they enable the company to communicate with the consumer? Is it a viable form of marketing communications? All these questions lead to our discussion of what do these brand messages mean to a consumer and how consumers perceive them.

In this research, the previewed agenda�s will be incorporated from the perspective of the automobile industry in Malaysia. The brand messages of various automobile manufacturers present in Malaysia will be scrutinized and will be conjured as the primary instrument for the research.