Mind share
One of the main objectives of
advertising and
promotion is to establish what is called
mind share (or
share of mind). 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 you are considering purchasing a college education, you have several thousand colleges to choose from. However your evoked set, those that you will consider, will probably be limited to about ten. Of these ten, the colleges that you are most familiar with will have the greatest proportion of your 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 you remember a brand, the closer it is to your top of mind. This implies that you have 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.
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 "on line 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 (see
genericized trademark for more).
*
advertising*
promotion*
marketing*
genericized trademark-
In popular lexicon, a group of people who operate with a great deal of
synergy can be thought of as having a
mind share. This is the ideal state of a group.
