Final answer:
Brand equity represents consumers' perceptions and feelings about a product's performance, stemming from intangible factors like satisfaction guarantees, reputation, and advertising.
Step-by-step explanation:
The concept that represents consumers' perceptions and feelings about a product and its performance is known as brand equity. Brand equity involves intangible aspects that can differentiate a product in the competitive market. These intangibles might include a guarantee of satisfaction, reputation for high quality, customer services like free delivery, or financial offers such as offering a loan to purchase the product. In many cases, product differentiation and brand preferences are created in the minds of the consumers through their past habits and the influence of advertising. Consumers may have strong preferences for certain brands even though they might not identify a tangible difference in the product's performance, as is the case with common varieties of ketchup or mayonnaise, or even beer and cigarettes when taste-tested blindfolded.
Underpinning brand equity are the marketing efforts that shape the consumer's intangible preferences, playing a crucial role in product differentiation, and influencing economic choices and competition in the market.