Mind Share in
Advertising
One of the main objectives of advertising
and promotion is to establish what is called mind share, or share of
mind. Mind share is the amount of attention required by something and
the time spent thinking about something. It can also refer to the development
of consumer awareness about a specific product or brand in hopes that
they will buy the product or brand.
When people think of examples of a type or category of product, they
think of a limited list (referred to as an evoked set). Any product
included in an evoked set has mind share. For example, if one is considering
purchasing a college education, one has several thousand colleges to
choose from.
However one's evoked set,
those that are actually considered, will probably be limited to about
ten. Of these ten, the colleges that one is most familiar with will
have the greatest proportion of one's mind share. Marketers try to maximize
their product's share. Mind share can be established to a greater or
lesser degree depending on market segment.
A similar concept is top
of mind. The more easily one remembers a brand, the closer it is to
the top of one's mind. This implies that one has not forgotten or buried
the information.
A brand may achieve dominant mind share when it is associated with a
whole category of products, but has not necessarily become a generic
term for these products. For example, Kleenex may sometimes be used
to describe any facial tissue product, but retains it status as a proprietary
trademark. In Asia, Tupperware is often used to describe any sort of
food container.
Other examples include
Hoover, which has long been synonymous with vacuum cleaners; Dyson,
which subsequently achieved similar status with a more sophisticated
model of vacuum cleaner; and the internet search engine provided by
Google, from which the term "googling" was derived to describe the act
of "online searching".
A trademark with dominant
mind share may also be known as a genericized trademark. However, where
the mark becomes the generic term for a product, it no longer has mind
share because consumers do not associate it with a specific business.
Classic examples include aspirin, escalator and mimeograph.
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