Building Hisense brand equity through selected marketing programmes- A Thesis

Building Hisense brand equity through selected marketing programmes- A study on the relationship among brand equity, marketing mix elements and consumer respons - Thesis Example er to test the defined structural research framework and research hypotheses empirical research was conducted on the sample of Hisense consumers in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and the multiple regression statistical method with the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 11.0) are used to analyze the data. The concept of brand equity has received significant attention from both scientists and marketing practice, which resulted in a large number of articles and books on the subject (e.g. Aaker, 1991 and 1996; Aaker and Keller, 1990; Farquhar1990; Aaker and Biel, 1993; Keller, 1993; Agarwal and Rao, 1996; Yoo et al., 2000; Morgan, 2000; Rio, et al., 2001; Datta, 2003, Moore et al., 2002; Keller, 2003). The importance of brand equity consists of numerous benefits for companies that own brands. One of the benefits provided by high brand equity is the possibility of brand extension to other product categories. Generally, brand extension is defined as the use of an existing brand name for entry into a new product category (Aaker and Keller, 1990). When compared to new brand names, brand extensions have lower advertising costs and higher sales (Smith and Park, 1992). Successful brand extensions contribute to higher brand equity of the original brand (Dacin and Smith, 1994; Keller and Aaker, 1992); However, unsuccessful extensions may reduce the brand equity of the parent brand (Aaker, 1993; Loken and John, 1993). Aaker and Keller (1990) developed a model for consumer evaluation of brand extensions and a number of authors worked on generalization of this model (Barrett et al., 1999; Bottomley and Doyle, 1996; Sunde and Brodie, 1993). In addition, brand equity increases (1) willingness of consumers to pay premium prices, (2) possibility of brand licensing, (3) efficiency of marketing communication, (4) willingness of stores to collaborate and provide support, (5) elasticity of consumers to price reductions, and (6) inelasticity