1. Brand awareness is the knowledge system in consumer’s mind.

Brand awareness is the first and prerequisite dimension of the entire brand knowledge system is consumer’s mind. It is the first thing that came across into your consumer’s mind. It reflects the consumer’s ability to identify the brand under different set of conditions. It consists of both brand recognition and brand recall.
Brand recognition is the consumer’s ability to confirm prior exposure to the brand. Brand recall is the consumer’s ability to retrieve the brand when given the category of the product. Your first goal to create brand awareness is to educate consumer on their knowledge are about what is your brand and its products.

2. Brand awareness is crucial in making the buying decision.

Before a consumer make a buying decision, it’s important that consumers can recall the brand in the context of a given product category. By creating brand awareness, it increases the probability that the brand will be in the considerations set by the consumers. It refers to how quickly a consumer can retrieve brand elements stored in his/her memory (which we called as awareness).

The attitude activation is sometimes “spontaneous” (it occurs automatic upon the observation of an object) or sometimes “controlled” (it needed active attention of the individual to recall previously stored evaluation). It was proved that only brands with high level of awareness can be relevant when purchasing. For instance, I have not tried “Burger King” which means the brand has not created awareness in my mind yet. So whenever I feel like eating burger, I would immediately recall “McDonald” as the brand that is on the top of my mind.

3. Brand awareness can influence customer’s perceived risk assessment & confidence level

One of the main functions of brand awareness from the consumer’s perspective is minimization of perceived purchasing risk. Studies have proved that consumers consider buying a brand that they have never heard of as being very risk (nearly 60 %). Most of the consumers would prefer buying from brands they have heard about and familiar with.

Risk is often perceived as to be painful and it may produce anxiety to the consumers. So by establishing brand awareness prior to the consumers, it helps cultivate a trust-based relationship.

4. Brand awareness helps you to “fence off” from your competitions.

By building awareness, it helps you to protect your market share. Your customers will automatically think about you first when they think of the category of your product.

For instance, when I think about burger, the first thing that came across to my mind is “McDonald”. When I think about fried chicken, the first thing that came across is “Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC)”. So not these brand does not have to compete against each other to get me to their restaurant. That’s because I have already identified them with different product category.

Companies must understand the importance of brand awareness in their consumer’s mind and integrate marketing act accordingly to educate the consumers more about your brand.

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