Antecedents of Brand Strength: Perceived Hedonic and Utilitarian Brand Benefits Ravindra Chitturi, Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. ABSTRACT What are the antecedents of brand strength? In order for the chief marketing officer of a firm to identify and eliminate the sources of brand weakness and further improve the sources of brand strength, it is important to know the answer to this question. This paper studies the sources of brand strength along the two primary dimensions of customer benefits—hedonic and utilitarian. The results show that, 1) stronger brands are perceived by customers to offer greater hedonic benefits than utilitarian benefits; and, 2) weaker brands are perceived by customers to offer greater utilitarian benefits than hedonic benefits. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results and their implications for a firm’s brand management strategy. INTRODUCTION One of the primary tasks of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of a firm is to create a strong brand. It is well established that a strong brand leads to greater brand equity and greater financial value of the brand (Aaker 1996; Keller 2007). A stronger brand is a market-bsed asset that increases the level of cash flow and reduces the volatility of cash flow thereby improving the financial performance of the firm (Srivastava, Shervani, and Fahey 1998). In order to better manage a brand, the CMO needs to understand the antecedents of brand strength in terms of the customer benefits the brand offers. To facilitate the synergy between brand and product management, it is important to use a conceptual framework that is common with the product benefits framework. Chitturi, Raghunathan, and Mahajan (2007) in their recent work proposed and tested a framework for product benefits along the two primary dimensions—hedonic and utilitarian. However, this framework has not been tested for brands. We use this framework to study the antecedents of brand strength in terms of the perceived hedonic and utilitarian benefits offered by the brand. In this paper we ask the following research questions: 1) are there differences in the hedonic and utilitarian perceptions of stronger versus weaker brands? And, 2) are stronger brands perceived to be more utilitarian or more hedonic compared to weaker brands? The results show that, 1) stronger brands are perceived by customers to offer greater hedonic benefits than utilitarian benefits; and, 2) weaker brands are perceived by customers to offer greater utilitarian benefits than hedonic benefits. The paper addresses the main research question with the help of two studies involving automobile brands. The hypotheses are developed based on the recent work on the principle of precedence and the principle of hedonic dominance (Chitturi, Raghunathan, and Mahajan 2007). The Principle of Precedence is based on protestant work ethics (Weber 1998). It says that humans should work hard to make money and spend it frugally on necessities rather than luxuries (Berry 1994; Scitovsky 1976). The results from Kivetz and Simonson (2002) also show a correspondence between utilitarian benefits and necessities, and between hedonic benefits and luxuries. Chitturi, Raghunathan, and Mahajan (2007) demonstrate the effect of the principle of precedence on customer preference in the context of product attributes that offer different levels of hedonic and utilitarian benefits. However, the Principle of Hedonic Dominance states that consumers give greater importance to hedonic benefits over utilitarian benefits once the minimum utilitarian needs are satisfied (Chitturi, Raghunathan, and Mahajan 2007). The principle of hedonic dominance identifies the boundary condition for the principle of precedence and operates beyond that boundary (Chitturi, Raghunathan, and Mahajan 2007).