Abstract:

The objective of this article is to contribute to throw some more light on the following questions: 1. Are consumers able to discriminate among different brands of a product (in this particular case, beer) when the brands are not identified?; 2 . What is the influence of brand identification on the consumers evaluation of a brand?; 3. Why and how do brand images develop among consumers? In the following, first some selected relevant earlier studies will be briefly reviewed. Next, the results of a new experiment are presented. Finally, the results of the experiment are interpreted in the light of a conceptualisation of consumer decision processes.