An Empirical Study on the effect of Brand Equity of Mobile Phones on Customer Satisfaction

In a competitive and brand conscious market like India, building brand equity of mobile phones is a challenging task. The companies need to assess the prior experiences and future aspirations of consumers to possess these brands. In this context, present study examines the relationship between brand equity dimensions, overall brand equity and customer satisfaction. Data was collected from 245 university students in New Delhi and adjoining cities of India through self-administered questionnaires using convenience sampling technique. Out of these, 205 were used for the purpose of study, which provided a response rate of 83.5 percent. Multiple regressions confirmed a significant relationship between the dimensions of brand equity and overall brand equity; and also between overall brand equity and customer satisfaction. Marketing managers often have limited resources in terms of money, time, and manpower to implement branding strategies, so these findings can help them to prioritize and allocate resources across important dimensions.


Introduction
The concept of brand equity was first introduced in marketing literature in the 1980's.Later it became an important concept from both academicians and practitioners (Aaker, 1991;Kapferer, 1998;Keller, 1998;Huang & Sarigollu, 2014).The formation of brand equity is dependent on the perception of consumers towards a brand, which might depend on various factors.One such factor that can be considered is brand.For a brand to have value it must be valued by consumers.Then, the power of a brand lies in what customers have learned, felt, seen, and heard about the brand as a result of their experiences over time (Keller, 2003).One way of measuring to what extent consumers identify with the brand is through brand equity.One of the most well-known scholars on brand equity is David A. Aaker.Building strong brands has become a marketing priority for many organizations today because it yields a number of advantages.Almost all conceptualizations of brand equity agree today that the phenomena involve the value added to a product by consumers' associations and perceptions of a particular brand name (Winters, 1991;Chaudhuri, 1995).Brand equity cannot be fully understood without carefully examining its sources, that is, the contributing factors to the formation of brand equity in the consumers' mind.The most commonly listed constructs leading to brand equity are brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association, and brand loyalty.
In recent years, Indian mobile handset markets have been facing a challenging marketing environment in the form of more demanding consumers, intensified competition and fast-growth markets.With the increasingly fierce competition and growing brands in the Indian mobile handset market, all the operators lay a lot of emphases on the brand establishment, devoting substantive resources to build and customer satisfaction.As a result, a number of brands have been formed and many customers begin to show notable preference to these brands.This study address the issue with the focus on National Capital Region in mobile industry, and to measure the brand equity of mobile industry.
India, which has the world's second-highest number of mobile phone accounts after China, is the third-biggest market by number of smartphones sold.According to the latest report from Market Monitor (2014) for Q3 2014 (July-September), Indian smartphone market saw a significant annual growth of 64 percent in Q3 2014 in comparison to the year-over-year growth of 84 percent in Q2 2014.Smartphone market grew 25.3 percent in Q2 2014, establishing a new single quarter record of 301.3 million shipments.Vendors shipped a total of 327.6 million units during Q3 2014, resulting in 25.2 percent growth when compared to the 261.7 million units shipped in Q3 2013 (IDC Asia/Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, 2014).The big global brand faces competition from the local and Chinese brands as they are building the capability to cover broad consumer segment to compete at larger level.Therefore, brand equity plays a strategic role in helping mobile handset brand managers gain competitive advantage and make wise management decisions.The conclusion of this study leads to a deeper understanding of a mobile phone brand equity concept and the measurement of the effect of dimensionsof brand equity on overall brand equity, and also the consequence of overall brand equity which ultimately leads to customer satisfaction.

Brand Equity
From the early years of its development, various researchers have proposed definitions and models to measure the same.The term brand equity is debated in different ways for different purposes (Keller, 2002).Farquhar (1989) was among the first to start the publications on the subject and also to initiate the discussion on brand equity wherein he defined brand equity as the "added value" that a brand endows a product with.A fair amount of conceptual work has been done on this (Aaker, 1991(Aaker, , 1996(Aaker, , 2000;;Srivastava & Shocker, 1991;Kapferer, 2004;Keller, 1993Keller, , 1998)).However, brand equity content and meaning have been debated in number of ways (Vazquez et al., 2002;Keller, 2003) but so far no common viewpoint has emerged (Vazquez et al., 2002;Keller, 2003;Washburn, 2002).Operationalization studies, especially Aaker's model, were initiated by (Yoo et al., 2000).Almost all conceptualizations of brand equity agree today that the phenomena involve the value added to a product by consumers' associations and perceptions of a particular brand name (Winters, 1991;Chaudhuri, 1995).Aaker (1991) defines it "as a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firm's customers".Keller (1993), defines brand equity as "the differential effect of brand knowledge (consisting of awareness and image) on consumer response to the marketing of the brand".Rust et al. (2004) consider brand equity to be "the customer's subjective and intangible assessment of the brand, above and beyond its objectively-perceived value".Yoo et al. (2000) define it as "the difference in consumer choice between the focal branded product and an unbranded product given the same level of product features".
From these definitions, brand equity can be said as the value incrementality due to brand name.Although the classic definition of brand equity refers to the added value of the brand endowed by its name, recent writings about brand equity have expanded its definition to include a broad set of attributes that drive customer choice (Yoo et al., 2000;Rust et al., 2001).In a general sense, brand equity is defined in terms of the marketing effects uniquely attributable to the brand.That is, brand equity relates to the fact that different outcomes result from the marketing of a product or service because of its brand element, as compared to outcomes if that same product or service did not have brand identification.
According to Lassar, Mittal and Arun (1995), the existing extent literature has evaluated the brand equity from two different point of view; financial perspective and customer perspective.Financial perspective is usually referred to the company's brand value.Simon and Sullivan (1993) emphasized macro and micro approaches as an estimation technique extracting the value of brand equity from the value of the firm's other assets.While, the customer perspective appraises brand equity based on the customers' perceived brand value from the anchor of marketing decision making (Kim, Kim, & An, 2003).

Customer Satisfaction
Oliver (1997) defined satisfaction as "the summary psychological state resulting when the emotion surrounding disconfirmed expectations is coupled with prior feelings about the consumer experience".Consumer satisfaction is essential for the success of long-term business, and one of the most frequently researched topics in marketing (Pappu & Quester, 2006).This is also important in terms of firm's economic performance.Customer satisfaction also influence consumer purchase intentions (Cronin & Taylor, 1992) creating repeat purchase behavior (LaBarbera & Mazursky, 1983).Marketers consider improved customer satisfaction as being a principal strategy for gaining loyalty, improving willingness to pay, and enhancing the lifetime value of the customer to the firm (Hogan et al., 2002;Keller & Lehmann, 2006).It is widely accepted that satisfied consumers are less price conscious and are loyal to the firm longer than dissatisfied customers (Dimitriades, 2006).Customer satisfaction states the feeling level of someone after compare the performance that he perceived with his expectations (Kotler, 2000).While customer satisfaction is a critical component of brand equity, companies often underdeliver when it comes to service.Improving service element can be costly; often it requires the substantial reorganization of a business.However, companies spend significant amount of their budget on achieving the customer satisfaction (Homburg & Giering, 2001).And when high levels of service delivery have been achieved, loyalty can be maintained, thus retaining the customers.

Figure 1. Model of study
Based on Aaker's well-known conceptual model, brand loyalty, perceived quality, brand association and brand awareness are the four dimensions of brand equity.Over here customer satisfaction had been taken as the consequence of the overall brand equity.The conceptual model is shown in figure 1.

Brand Loyalty and Brand Equity
Loyalty is an important concept in marketing strategy.Solomon (1992) showed that loyalty-based buying decisions might turn into a habit and this may result from current brand equity.The loyal customers would have benefit for an organization in the reducing costs and implementing its works (Rundle & Bennet, 2001).Moreover, loyalty can get a chance to company to react against threats such as competition because as consumers become loyal to a brand they become less sensitive to a price increase because of the product's ability to satisfy their needs.Travis (2000) claims brand loyalty is "the ultimate objective and meaning of brand equity", adding that "brand loyalty is brand equity".Assael (1998), Oliver (1999), and Deighton et al. (1994) defined brand loyalty where consumers have deep commitment to re-buy and satisfy their past experiences in use of the same brand and incur repurchase behavior.
Brand loyalty has been considered as the core dimension of brand equity by Aaker (1991) mainly because of the value of a brand to an organization depends on the loyalty of the customers which in turn can generate profit.Keller (2003) referred to it as the relationship between customer and a brand, and the relatedness of customer with the brand.Aaker (1991) defined brand loyalty as symbolizes a constructive mind set toward brand that leading to constant purchasing of the brand over time., which is well researched (Yoo et al., 2000;Chaudhuri, 2001;Atilgan et al., 2005;Pappu & Quester, 2006;Gil, Andres, & Salinas, 2007;Yasin et al., 2007;Tong & Hawley, 2009;Kumar et al., 2013).According to Yoo (2000), brand loyalty has the power to impact on customer decision to purchase the same product or brand and decline to shift to competitors' brands.Thus, the following hypothesis is formulated: H1: Brand loyalty has a significant direct effect on brand equity.

Perceived Quality and Brand Equity
Aaker (1991) defined Quality as "consumer's perception of the overall quality or superiority of a product or service with respect to its intended purpose, relative to alternatives".Quality from a consumer's perspective is referred to as 'perceived quality'.Quality, in the customer's context, is not technical but perceptions about the products, tangible and intangible, that the consumer observes.This creates customer satisfaction and value by consistently and profitably meeting customer's needs and preferences for quality, and influences its purchase decision (Ha, Janda, & Muthaly, 2010).Perceived quality is viewed as a dimension of brand equity and is positively related to the brand equity (Aaker, 1991;Kamakura & Russell, 1993;Feldwick, 1996;Motameni & Shahrokhi, 1998;Yoo et al., 2000).It is difficult for customers to make a rational judgment of the quality.Boulding et al. (1993) argued that quality is directly influenced by perceptions.Zeithaml (1988) asserts that perceived quality can act as a key influencing factor in determining consumer's choices.It is therefore important to understand the relevant quality attributes are with regard to brand equity.Thus, the following hypothesis is formulated: H2: Perceived quality has a significant direct effect on brand equity.

Brand Awareness and Brand Equity
Brands vary in the amount of power and value they have in the market place.At one extreme are brands that are not known by most users.While on the other, there are brands for which buyers have a fairly high degree of brand awareness.Aaker (1996) defines brand awareness as the durability of a brand that is embedded in the customer memory.Therefore, brand awareness will be created by ongoing visibility, enhancing familiarity and powerful associations with related offerings and buying experiences (Keller, 1998).Yoo et al. (2000), Pappu andQuester (2006), Tongand Hawley (2009) empirically validated brand awareness as one of the dimensions of brand equity.The depth and breadth of brand's awareness determine brand equity (Keller, 1993).Moreover, brand awareness is linked as strength of the brand in the minds of consumers, which provide firm's with a value that can be used in future to attract and promote products or services (Kim & Kim, 2005).Researchers have found brand awareness as key dimension (Yoo et al., 2000;Marinova et al., 2011;Pappu & Quester, 2006;Motameni & Shahrokhi, 1998;Kumar, Dash, & Purwar, 2013).Thus, the following hypothesis is formulated: H3: Brand awareness has a significant direct effect on brand equity.

Brand Association and Brand Equity
Associations represent the basis for purchase decision and for brand loyalty (Aaker, 1991).Aaker (1996) conceptualized brand awareness as an antecedent of brand associations.That is where a consumer must first be aware of the brand in order to develop a set of associations (Washburn & Plank, 2002).Brand association refers to "anything linked to a brand" and is considered as a dimension of brand equity (Aaker, 1991) and is found to provide differential advantage to a brand (Rio, Vazquez, & Iglesias, 2001).According to Keller (1998), brand association can be created via the association with attitudes, attributes and benefits respectively.Aaker (1991) proposed brand association as a dimension of brand equity, which is tested by researchers (Yoo et al., 2000;Ye & van Raaij, 2004;Tong & Hawley, 2009;Kumar et al., 2013).Bridges et al. (2000) argued that strong, positive associations help to strengthen brand and the equity that is carried into a leverage situation if affected by the types association made with the brand.
In addition, Yoo et al. (2000) and Atilgan et al. (2005) have stated that strong brand association leads to higher brand loyalty.High brand equity implies that consumers have strong positive associations with respect to the brand.Thus, the following hypothesis is formulated: H4: Brand association has a significant direct effect on brand equity.

Research Design
Descriptive research design was adopted in this study to conclude the inferences derived from the hypothesis testing.

Scale Development
The scale comprised five dimensions.The dimensions were derived from the empirical study of Yoo et al. (2000) which tested the Aaker's (1991) conceptual brand equity model.The items were brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association, and brand loyalty.The reason is that their scale development studies have brought both the academics and practitioners closer to a universally accepted measure of brand equity and the structural model of brand equity creation process has important implications for marketing managers (Washburn and Plank, 2002).A five-point Likert scale was used, ranging from "1= strongly disagree" to "5= strongly agree".

Sample and Data Collection
The target population of this study was the population living in New Delhi and adjoining cities of India.Mall-intercept survey was employed to collect data on consumer perceptions.245 potential respondents were used as a sampling size and in order to choose the potential respondents in this survey, convenience sampling technique has been adopted.Out of 245 questionnaires that have been distributed in the actual survey; 205 questionnaires were gathered.40 questionnaires were unfinished because the respondents were not willing to cooperate.The rest of the questionnaires ( 245) have been used (83 percent) for data analysis using SPSS software (version 21).

Demographic Profile Analysis
The demographic statistics is provided in table 1. Respondents of this survey consist of 55 percent male and 45 percent female, which mean there were more of male participants.Out of total respondents between the age of 26-35 years old group has the highest respondents (52.2 percent) that is followed by the age group of 18-25 years old (42.9 percent), 36-45 (3.9 percent) and finally the age group of 46 years old and above had the lowest participant amongst all the age groups participated in this survey.The respondents' highest education levels were majority in Master's Degree (73.2 percent), following by Bachelor's Degree (15.1 percent) and Doctorate (10.7 percent).Majority of the respondents are working in a private sector company (47.3percent).

Reliability Test
Reliability test can be used as a measure that signals the consistency and stability of the instruments used in the survey when repeated measurements are made.A well known approach to measure reliability is to use the Cronbach's alpha.A reliability test was done and Cronbach's α for the factors were found to be 0.810, 0.802, 0.814, 0.843, 0.919 and 0.878, respectively.The values are acceptable as they were found to be greater than the recommended value of 0.70 (Nunnally, 1988).The summary is provided in table 2.

Exploratory Factor Analysis
Table 3 shows the outcome of factor analysis which was done separately for each of the dimensions.This includes four dimensions of brand equity (brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association, brand loyalty), overall brand equity, and customer satisfaction.The value of Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin (KMO) was 0.887 which was above the recommended value (0.8) which means that the sample size is big enough to conduct factor analysis.
The statistical test for Bartlett test of sphericity was significant.

Regression Analysis
For the purpose of testing five hypotheses (H1, H2, H3, H4 and H5), regression analysis was used in this research.Table 4 provides regression analysis results, which reveal a significant relationship between brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association, and brand loyalty with brand equity.Also a significant relationship was found between brand equity and customer satisfaction.The relationship is significant (p < 0.05), which supports all hypotheses H1-H5.The beta coefficients (β) are in the hypothesized direction, and are used to assess the contribution of dimensions of brand equity to the overall brand equity.

Conclusion
To build brand equity is very important for a branded product category.The mobile handset brands in India are facing the same problem because of the highly competitive and brand-conscious market.The research was aimed to examine the applicability of Aaker's conceptual framework of brand equity for mobile phone brands in Indian market.The study confirms that the dimensions of brand equity have positive impact on the overall brand equity, which does parallel the findings of Yasin et al. (2007).Out of all the dimensions, brand loyalty was found to have the most dominant effect on brand equity.It had the strongest impact, which indicated the essentiality of development of brand loyalty to build brand equity for mobile brands.This was further confirmed with the data analysis (β=0.690) followed by brand awareness (β=0.677).Researchers have highlighted the fact that if customers are satisfied, the tendency of positive word of mouth and loyalty is increased (Omar & Sawmong, 2007;Amin & Isa, 2008;Cerri, 2012;Jayasankaraprasad & Kumar, 2012;Amin et al., 2013).
Two implications can be derived from the findings.The first is that marketing managers should concentrate their efforts primarily on brand loyalty which, which has high importance in the construct of brand equity and will contribute positively to the firm's brand equity.In the highly competitive mobile handset industry, they should work to retain consumer loyalty and gain repeated business.Brand loyalty has several important strategic benefits to the firms, such as gaining high market share and new customers, supporting brand extensions, reducing marketing costs, and strengthening brand to the competitive threats.
The second implication is that marketing managers should consider the inter correlations among all four dimensions of brand equity.Brand loyalty can be increased when the customer is aware of the brand's good image and better quality, which in turn will increase overall brand equity.Further empirical studies supporting the positive relationship between consumer satisfaction and brand loyalty can be found in Anderson, Fornell, and Lehmann (1994), Hallowell (1996), Kandampully and Suhartanto (2000), as well as Lin and Wang (2006).

Limitations
The research study to measure brand equity of mobile handset brands is limited to National Capital Region only, so there is a scope to study consumer's attitude and behaviors of other regional markets of India to avoid the significant regional gaps in.Cavana et al. (2001) have stated that cross-sectional data that is only able to reveal the net effect of predictor variable towards a particular criterion variable at a specific point of time.Furthermore, the restriction of using convenience sampling techniques has indicated that the outcomes of this research cannot be generalized.

Table 2 .
Reliability test results

Table 3 .
Exploratory factor analysis