This paper examines how Google achieved cult brand status through deliberate brand equity management, superior website usability, and a commitment to core values. Drawing on three theoretical frameworks—the Resource-Based View (RBV), the network perspective, and the Relationship Marketing (RM) model—the paper evaluates which best explains Google's rise from popular search engine to globally recognized cult brand. The analysis finds that the RM model most fully accounts for Google's success, as it captures the reciprocal, trust-building relationships that underpin intense user loyalty. The paper also discusses how Google's transparency, innovation, and free product offerings contributed to transforming loyal users into brand advocates who define themselves by the Google brand.
The Google brand has achieved cult status globally and is today one of the most widely recognized websites on the Internet (comScore, 2007). The intent of this paper is to validate the attainment of Google as a cult brand, relying on several analytical frameworks and constructs to illustrate how Google has created a brand that has reached cult status. Google has been able to attain this level of brand identity by adhering to several best practices in the areas of website design, content generation and organization strategies, usability and navigation, and speed of downloads.
What contributes to Google attaining cult status is the company's ability to turn these best practices into lasting competitive differentiators. These factors were quantified in a survey by TARP, an international customer satisfaction and loyalty firm (M2 Presswire, 2002). Through attaining best practices in each of these critical areas, Google has been able to create very high levels of loyalty in both B2C and B2B markets, in addition to creating a strong catalyst for the development of advertising-based business models and the continued refinement of their search engine algorithms and linguistic modeling approaches to index the Internet.
In conjunction with these technological advancements — which have contributed to the brand's reputation for innovation — Google's brand equity has been managed exceptionally well, leading to a high level of trust among users from all customer segments. The transition from loyalty to trust has propelled the brand into cult status.
Google's approach to building brand equity has been accumulative, building first on a deliberate strategy of messaging and values consistency; second, working on preserving brand equity by staying transparent and focused on core values to users; and third, fine-tuning marketing programs to continually reinforce the key differentiating values of the brand. These three aspects of brand management align closely with established best practices (Keller, Heckler, & Houston, 1998).
The foundation of Google's branding strength is its ability to continually generate brand equity and manage it effectively to create strong levels of customer loyalty that lead to trust and enthusiasm for the brand. As brand equity is the cornerstone of Google's cult status, comparing specific theories of brand equity provides a useful framework for analyzing the brand's growth.
The first theoretical framework, the Resource-Based View (RBV), looks to define the economics of brand relationships with the customer. In the context of Google, the RBV's shortcoming of not providing valuation of a brand's partnerships — and also not defining a model of brand-building relationships (Fournier, 1998; Moore, 2003; Van Durme et al., 2003) — makes this first model insufficient for fully explaining the cult status of Google as a brand. What the RBV model does accomplish, however, is defining the economic value of having a search engine as robust and well managed from an innovation perspective as Google's.
"Network perspective and relationship marketing models explained"
"RM model identified as best explanation for cult status"
"Academic and industry sources cited in paper"
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