Aaker Model

The Aaker Model, created by David A. Aaker, a marketing professor at the University of California-Berkeley and a management consultant at Prophet, is a marketing model which views brand equity as a combination of brand awareness, brand loyalty and brand associations, which add up to give the value provided by a product or service.

For Aaker, brand management starts with developing a brand identity, which is a unique set of brand associations representing what the brand stands for and offers to customers an aspiring brand image.

Aaker primarily sees brand identity as consisting of 8-12 elements which fall under four perspectives:

• Brand as Product - consists of product scope, product attributes, quality or value of the product, uses, users and country of origin.
• Brand as Organisation - consists of organizational attributes, local workings versus global activities.
• Brand as Person - consists of brand personality and consumer brand relationships.
• Brand as Symbol - consists of audio and visual imagery, metaphorical symbols and brand heritage.

The purpose of the Aaker Model is to help in creating a brand strategy consisting of different brand elements or patterns, so as to clarify, enrich and differentiate a brand from its competitors. An organization carefully employs several of these elements to communicate to the consumers what their brand stands for.