Perceptions
ofattributes
!
!
!
!
!Price
Location
Service
Range
Etc.Values
represented
!
!
!
!
!Trustworthy
Campaigning
Adventurous
Ecological
Etc.Perceived
clientele
!
!
!
!
!Fashionable
Intelligent
Sophisticated
Mostly young
Etc.Retail imageProduct
Image
differencesDepartment
Image
differencesBranch
Image
differencesCentre
Image
differencesInternational
Image
differences786 The Marketing Book
identifying new ways of satisfying customers.
In the words of Jeremy Mitchell (1978):
When the complaints stop coming... it will
mean the business is dying. The consumers will
have made the ultimate protest. They will have
gone elsewhere.Image and brand equity
The accumulation of customer perceptions
relating to an organization comprise that seem-
ingly nebulous commodity: image. Having
been convinced of the strong relationship
between good image and good financial per-
formance, retailers and researchers have inves-
ted extensively in the techniques to measure,
compare and track images.
The study of images has been given further
impetus through the development of the con-
cept of brand equity (Aaker, 1991). This forges a
clear link between the psychological domain of
perceptions and images, and the financial
domain of assets and equity. Image is taken out
of the nebulous role of ‘soft data’ and moved
centre stage as a key measure of company
performance, where it matters most, in the
mind of the consumer. This shift is also reflec-
ted in the concept of the balanced scorecard,
which recognizes the importance of customer
perceptions when evaluating company or unit
performance (Kaplan and Norton, 1996).
Early work on image monitoring tended to
dwell upon the more tangible attributes, such
as perceptions of locations, prices, etc.
Although these attributes are of no less impor-
tance today, the battle for effective differ-
entiation has extended the concept of image
towards the values that the ‘retail brand’
represents for consumers. For example, shop-
ping in a discount store such as Aldi reinforces
for some the need to be seen by friends and
family as thrifty, or the need to beat the
marketing embellishments of the superstores. If
the growth of discounters in Europe were
ascribed simply to economic motives, limited
insight would be yielded into the best ways of
harnessing, or of combating, the format.
The intricacy and multidimensionality of
retail images is summarized in Figure 30.3.
Retail image comprises a bundle of perceptions
of attribute strengths/weaknesses, plus beliefs
about the inner and outer directed values to
which the retailer contributes. The importance
of measuring perceptions of clienteles has also
been recognized: a major reason why stores areFigure 30.3 Dimensions of retail image