A conceptual framework for understanding Customer-based brand equity and price premium in grocery categories

Purpose: Seeks to, on empirical basis, develop a framework for understanding what really drives price premium and customer-based brand equity for consumer packaged groceries. Design/methodology/approach: Reviews empirical studies made within the area of brand equity and adjacent studies of consumer packaged groceries. Compares and analyses the results from an explorative and qualitative field study, including Swedish grocery consumer, with previous research on brand equity and food quality. Findings: A conceptual framework brand equity should ad considerably more to the understanding of cometition and price premium in the grocery sector than only quality. Brand equity in the grocery sector highlights the role of uniqueness, together with the four traditionally basic dimensions of brand equity is proposed. Relevant brand associations (origin, health, environment/animal friendliness, organisational associations and social image), and quality attributes (taste, odour, consistency/texture, appearance, function, packaging and ingredients) specific to groceries are identified and proposed for future measurement scales and model validating research. Practical implications: This paper conceptually establishes uniqueness as a central dimension of brand equity, and the need for an over all perspective in order to assure an external balance between customer and brand as well as an internal balance between the five dimensions of brand equity. Originality/value: Despite the fact that several of our most famous brand can be found within retail, the literature on customer-based brand equity is not yet rich enough to provide a sound conceptual foundation to understand, evaluate, measure or manage brand equity in grocery categories. This paper presents the first conceptual brand equity framework for groceries.