Abstract:
The concept of branding is very important in current complex business world. Building brand equity, or strong brands, is considered to be one of the key drivers of business's success. More and more firm and organization have come to the realization that one of their most valuable assets is the brand names associated with their product or services. (Keller, 2003). Brand elements play an important role for building brand equity in brand management.
If an organization changes their brand elements, nobody can say whether both users and non-users accept or disclaim it. Therefore, there is a risk about consumers' perception regarding changing brand elements. On the other hand, changing brand or brand elements is a highly expensive task. If an organization changes their brand, it must be communicated well through advertising to their customers (Chiranjeev Kohli & Lance Leuthesser, 2006). Then only marketers can achieve main purpose of changing brand elements and can build significant brand equity and loyalty (Aurandet al, 2005; Fournier 1998). The test of the building brand ability of elements it what consumers would think or feel about the product if they only knew about its brand name, associated logo and other characteristics. Accordingly, the way of building Brand Equity as parallel to Brand Element changes can be identified. In current Sri Lankan context, most of the local and international companies are changing their brand and its elements. It directly affects their brand equity. High brand equity is considered to be a competitive advantage since: it implies that firms can charge a premium; there is an increase in customer demand; extending a brand becomes easier; communication campaigns are more effective; there is better trade leverage; margins can be greater; and the company becomes less vulnerable to competition (Campbell, 2002; Keller, 2003). Therefore, the brand equity is very much important for the success of the organization. Accordingly, this study focused on identifying the effect of the changing brand elements for building strong brand equity at the exiting market; evaluate the successfulness of changing brand elements and consumers' perception of the new brand, and studying whether marketers can attract new customers via changing brand elements.
