Evaluating and comparing brand equity of Iranian and South Korean home appliance brands in the view of Tehran bazaar retailers

Abstract

Home appliance market is, inter alia, a market where the brand equity is highly important. Today, brands of South Korean corporations such as Samsung and LG have penetrated the market broadly and have caused threats for goods produced by Iranian brands. Therefore, we evaluate the differences and compare the Iranian and Korean home appliance brand equities in present study. To achieve to evaluate the differences and compare the Iranian and Korean home appliance brand equities, 5 minor hypotheses were devised based on research conceptual model in the format of research major hypothesis in which Wilcoxon statistical test was used to support or refuse such hypotheses. The investigations were continued by selecting three Iranian brands which had the highest market share in three goods of refrigerators, TV sets and washing machines. By using Likert's seven-item scale, a questionnaire was devised to collect data and its validity and reliability were confirmed by elites' approval and 0.95 chronbach alpha. Research statistical population consisted of all home appliance retailers in Tehran 22 boroughs (about 900 shops). 206 shops were selected as the sample by using Cluster sampling method. Research hypotheses were tested in terms of product types and overall home appliances. In all tests excluding difference hypothesis on tendency to pay overprice for Iranian and Korean brands in washing machines, all hypotheses were supported by 95% confidence level. Then, the brand equities were ranked by Freedman's test for all three goods and finally, the analytical diagram to show the impacts of each research model elements on expressing the difference between Iranian and Korean special brands was drawn.