Effect of Brand Equity on Consumer Buying Behavior of Huawei Brand in Colombo Area

G J H Chithrasekara,T K Karandakatiya

doi:10.4038/wjm.v10i1.7479

Abstract

Huawei is the second largest mobile vendor in Sri Lanka which is looking for a better brand equity in the marketplace. With the emergence of mobile vendors such as Samsung and Apple, the competition was arisen. Samsung is a global digital technology leader in Sri Lanka and building of Samsung mobile phones with new lines and providing competitive offers on mobile phone plans to local Customers. With the increase of the disposable income, it will lead to increase the competition in the smartphone industry. However, there is a growing bad image on Huawei due to the effect of the recent ban of Huawei by US in their market. It is likely to create a problem of increasing sales in the 2020 in the Sri Lankan market. This study therefore aimed at identifying the impact of brand equity on consumer buying behavior based on Huawei in Colombo area. It is therefore crucial to understand brand equity as it affects the purchasing decisions of the customers due to the past experience with the product usage, familiarity with brand and its characteristics. Pursuant to this, objectives of the present study were formulated and they were to identify the impact of selected brand equity dimensions and to identify the overall impact of brand equity on consumer buying behavior of Huawei in Colombo area. The study was based on the Brand equity model developed by Aeker(1991). Based on that, hypothesis were formed to find out whether there is a positive impact of brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand equity as a whole on consumer buying behavior. They were tested using multiple regression analysis. A sample of 380mobile users in Mattakkuliya and Jinthupitiya area in Sri Lanka were contacted using convenience sampling technique and a questionnaire was self-administrated. Analysis of data revealed that there is a positive impact of brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty, perceived quality and brand equity on consumer buying behavior. The present study can be further extended by including foreign countries with larger samples.

Highlights

In the telecommunication industry, mobile industry is the fastest growing market (Cecere, et al, 2014)
Internal consistency for the brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty and perceived quality scores was a score that was calculated as the sum of all the questions for a respondent
The correlation among brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty and perceived quality had a satisfactory level in all the questions none of the questions were eliminated

Summary

Introduction

Mobile industry is the fastest growing market (Cecere, et al, 2014). With the emergence of mobile vendors such as Samsung and Apple, the competition was arisen. Samsung is the large mobile vendor of Sri Lanka and started its operation in 2004. Their objective was to become more competitive in the market through innovative Samsung products with new lines, to provide Samsung products with better brand presence, better product portfolio, which are having different mobile plans, broader networks of channels and networks. As there is a growing trend for mobile services and mobile vendors it has a positive impact on Sri Lankan government sector. Service sector plays a major role in GDP of Sri Lanka.According to the findings there was a subscriber base of 17.2 million for every 100 people with 100.79 people who had both wireless connections (Central Bank: 2010).

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Discussion

Conclusion