Retail brand equity: moderating role of retail price deals on retail brand association and retail brand equity relationship

Abstract

The online retail industry is a unique setup with high market potential and the low entry barriers where most of the retailers sell the same products under different price points. Though the price of the products is same for all the retailers, they use discounts, offers, price cuts, refunds and other methods to acquire and retain customers. Under these conditions, this research is emphasised on demonstrating the sources of retailer equity and intended to test the moderating effect of price deals on retailer association and retailer brand equity relationship. This paper contributed to the existing retail brand equity frameworks by adding 'price deal' as a new dimension and explored the necessity of the e-tail quality dimension instead of perceived quality dimension in traditional brand equity frameworks. The results from this study will help online retailers and researchers to recognise the importance of the retailer equity dimensions and their criticality in creating a long-term relationship.