So lets talk about brand image first; What is brand image?
According to http://www.allaboutbranding.com/index.lasso, Brand Image is
A unique set of associations within the minds of target customers which represent what the brand currently stands for and implies the current promise to customers. (Note that brand image is what is currently in the minds of consumers, whereas brand identity is aspirational).
So a brand image is what consumer thinks about the brand.
And what are the Marketer's action: Marketer's actions are basically any changes in the 4Ps of Marketing mix which he uses to portray a certain image of brand. But the image what a marketer tries to portray and what consumer already has can be 2 very different things.
For eg. take Pricing. A brand which has established itself in the mind of consumers as a premium brand when comes with a low price alternative, for increasing the penetration, then it starts losing its current customers too.
Also a brand which was distributed in exclusive outlets when starts selling in every outlet, it reduces the exclusivity which tarnishes its image of a high quality product.
The perfect example for the above 2 should be Levi's. when Levi's came out with the idea of distributing its jeans through retail stores like K- Mart at affordable prices, it started losing its existing customers. Also its current retail partners threatened it of dropping the brand all together. That is when Levi's had to come with Signature its low cost brand which was then distributed through K-Mart and other such outlets.
So, we can see that how marketer's action can affect a brand's image adversely. But are there any other factors which have any impact on Brand image.
The answer to the question is, YES. these factors are related to consumer himself and thus come under a separate stream called as Consumer Behavior. These factors include consumer's motivation, perception, attitude, learning behavior etc.
The example for this may be Benetton. When the company came up with ads showing people of different races and colors together to project the image of United colors, it turned out to be a blunder. The ads were heavily criticized so that the company had to go back to its earlier strategy.
Hence, we can see that marketer's action do have an impact on Brand image, and the image that marketer wants to project and the actual image can be quite different from each other. Hence it becomes duty of a marketer to think from every angle before taking any step.
