La Trobe University: Applying the Customer-Based Brand Equity Model

This article discusses how La Trobe University has applied the Customer-Based Brand Equity Model to build a strong brand identity, meaning, response, and relationships with its target audience of students. The university has established itself as a responsible brand in the market with a good brand salience and has positioned itself as a place for quality education. The article also highlights the positive response and relationships that La Trobe has developed with its customers.

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Section 4: Brand Equity
Student’s name
Name of the Institute

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Section 4: Brand Equity
The CBBE (Customer Based Brand Equity) model was given by Kavin Lane Keller. The
concept behind the Brand Equity Model is simple: in order to build a strong brand, organizations
must shape how customers think and feel about the product (Keller, 2016). It is critical that
organizations should build the right type of experiences around the brand, so that customers have
specific, positive thoughts, feelings, beliefs, opinions, and perceptions about it. The
diagrammatic representation of the model can be shown as:
This model focuses on four key steps as shown in the above pyramid. The application of
these four steps for La Trobe university can be discussed as:
i. Identity: La Trobe university is a known brand name in Australia. People understands
the brand and La Trobe has a good identify in problem. It would be correct to say that La
Trobe does not have an identification problem and it has been able to establish good
brand salience in the country. This is the first step for any organization or marketer. In
this step, marketers have the objective of brand awareness (Keller, 2016). It can be said
that La Trobe brand shows high salience as the organization does focuses on brand

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awareness. La Trobe university uses both offline and online channels of brand awareness.
The objective of the university is to create top of the mind awareness for its courses. With
brand identity, La Trobe university has positioned itself as a responsible brand in the
market. The students have realized that La Trobe university provides quality education.
The brand has definitely succeeded in this dimension; however, there is a need of further
improvement and this can happen with top of the mind awareness and use of social media
channels for advertisement (Datta, Ailawadi & Van Heerde, 2017).
ii. Meaning: With time, La Trobe university has been able to establish itself as a
meaningful brand. This step is linked with the meaning of the brand. Like Apple Inc.
means innovation or Space X means disruption. The two building blocks in this step are:
"performance" and "imagery" (Keller, 2016). La Trobe university has established itself as
a place for quality education. It is evident in performance and imagery. The university
produces some of the best professionals in Australia. The students of La Trobe university
excels in professional courses. The university campus of La Trobe is also established
beautifully that adds meaning to the brand (Vomberg, Homburg & Bornemann, 2015).
One of the things that stand apart for La Trobe is its continuous endeavour to add
meaning to its brand. The university has number of courses across genres. The students
with different backgrounds like political, social, engineering has option to choose a
course. Therefore, La Trobe provides meaning to its target audience in an effective and
efficient manner. The brand has definitely succeeded in this dimension; as people can
relate to La Trobe in a positive manner (Zablocki, Schlegelmilch & Schant, 2017).
iii. Response: The brand of La Trobe is a responsive brand. The response dimension means
the judgements and the feelings of the customers towards the brand (Keller, 2016). The

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key customers of La Trobe are students and students have good feelings towards the
brand. The judgments about the La Trobe university is based on quality of education,
credibility of services, consideration of students and superiority from other universities in
the country. So far, response has been positive for La Trobe university. It is not easy to
get the admission in the university. Overall customers have positive response towards La
Trobe university as it is considered as one of the best places to study in Australia. It is
expected that La Trobe would continue to improve its response in future. Moreover, there
has been a rise in the number of students enrolled in La Trobe university. It means that
the brand is getting good response from its customers. The brand has definitely succeeded
in this dimension and it can get better responses from customers in future.
iv. Relationships: This dimension links with the relationship of customers with the brand.
This dimension defines the customer loyalty. Brand "resonance" sits at the top of the
brand equity pyramid because it's the most difficult – and the most desirable – level to
reach (Keller, 2016). It can be said that La Trobe has been able to establish positive
relationship with its customers. The existing students of the universities are the advocates
of the brand as they help to take the brand forward. The CBBE model further breaks
down the relationships into four categories. These are behavioural loyalty, attitudinal
attachment, sense of community and active engagement. The customers of La Trobe
university are behavioural attached to university as they would do multiple courses with
the university. The customers or the students also show attitudinal attachment as they
love the university (Tasci, 2018). The students can be divided for sense of community
and active engagement. In general, for any brand, active engagement is the most
important thing. There are some students who are actively engage with Ta Trobe

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university; however, this cannot be generalised for all the students in the university. The
brand has definitely succeeded in this dimension.
The application of CBBE model suggests that La Trobe has emerged as a responsible brand
in market. The key target audience for university is students and the brand has been able to create
a positive reputation. It has also developed positive relationships with its target audience and it is
expected that the university would continue to grow.

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References
Datta, H., Ailawadi, K.L. and Van Heerde, H.J., 2017. How Well Does Consumer-Based Brand
Equity Align with Sales-Based Brand Equity and Marketing-Mix Response?. Journal of
Marketing, 81(3), pp.1-20.
Keller, K.L., 2016. Reflections on customer-based brand equity: perspectives, progress, and
priorities. AMS review, 6(1-2), pp.1-16.
Tasci, A.D., 2018. Testing the cross-brand and cross-market validity of a consumer-based brand
equity (CBBE) model for destination brands. Tourism Management, 65, pp.143-159.
Vomberg, A., Homburg, C. and Bornemann, T., 2015. Talented people and strong brands: The
contribution of human capital and brand equity to firm value. Strategic Management
Journal, 36(13), pp.2122-2131.
Zablocki, A., Schlegelmilch, B. and Schant, E., 2017, May. Customer-Based Brand Equity in the
Digital Age: Development of a Theoretical Framework: An Abstract. In Academy of Marketing
Science Annual Conference (pp. 741-742). Springer, Cham.