NATIONAL ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY BUSINESS SCHOOL FACTORS AFFECTING THE BRAND EQUITY OF HAI HA CONFECTIONERY JOINT STOCK COMPANY Bachelor of Business Administration in English (E-BBA) Thesis Student : Vu Thi Hoang Ha Class : E-BBA 8B Supervisor : PhD. Dao Thi Thanh Lam Hanoi, 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Dao Thi Thanh Lam, who has directly guided and encouraged me from the beginning to the final level of this study. Thanks to that, I was able to complete my graduation thesis and gained a lot of valuable knowledge and skills.
Secondly, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all the lecturers and professors for giving me great inspiration, which made me realize the interesting nature and the imperative of business administration and me, as well as other students of the National Economics University, are extremely grateful for those lessons. In addition, I am grately indebted to the School of Business of National Economics University as well as the E-BBA Program for providing me with the best learning environment, where I not only have the knowledge and experience to broaden my horizens, but also have many opportunities to participate in extracurricular activities that improve my life skills. Besides, I would like to send my greetings to my beloved E-BBA friends, who have accompanied me for nearly 4 years, always encourage and support me academically and spiritually. Finally, I am grateful to my loving parents for supporting me and creating favorable conditions for me during my time at National Economics University and now being here, to complete this thesis.
Without them, I would not be able to go this far and become who I am today. Author, Vu Thi Hoang Ha i TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.i TABLE OF CONTENTS.v LIST OF TABLES.vi LIST OF FIGURES.vii EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.5 CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF FACTORS AFFECTING THE BRAND EQUITY OF HAI HA CONFECTIONERY JOINT STOCK COMPANY.1 OVERVIEW OF BRAND AND BRAND EQUITY.1 Definition of brand.2 Function of brand.3 Role of brand.2 MEASURING FACTORS AFFECTING THE BRAND EQUITY OF HAI HA CONFECTIONERY JOINT STOCK COMPANY.3 PROPOSED RESEARCH MODEL.4 DIMENSIONS AND CONSTRUCTS TO MEASURE BRAND EQUITY OF HAI HA.20 CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.1 The secondary data.2 The primary data.26 CHAPTER 4 FACTORS AFFECTING THE BRAND EQUITY OF HAI HA CONFECTIONERY JOINT STOCK COMPANY.1 OVERVIEW OF HAI HA CONFECTIONERY JOINT STOCK COMPANY.1 Development history of the company.2 The organizational structure of the company.3 Vision – mission and the core values of the company.4 Operating areas of the company.5 Strengths and weaknesses of the company.3 RELIABILITY TESTING AND EXPLANATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS.1 Descriptive analysis for all factors.2 Reliability testing on examined dimensions.3 Explanatory Factor Analysis.4 ANALYSIS ON FACTORS AFFECTING THE BRAND EQUITY OF HAI HA CONFECTIONERY JOINT STOCK COMPANY.2 Results of Regression Analysis of influence off independent variables on customer satisfaction.3 Summary of findings.4 Analyze the effects of qualitative definitions in assessment of brand equity.5 DISCUSS THE RESULTS.55 CHAPTER 5 SOLUTIONS FOR ENHANCING BRAND EQUITY OF HAI HA CONFECTIONERY JOINT STOCK COMPANY.1 DEVELOPMENT ORIENTATION OF HAI HA CONFECTIONERY JOINT STOCK COMPANY.1 The main objectives of the Company.2 Medium-term and long-term development strategy.3 Objectives for the Company's environment, society and community.2 SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HAI HA CONFECTIONERY JOINT STOCK COMPANY TO ENHANCE BRAND EQUITY.1 Establishing a marketing department.2 Refurbishing the company's production headquarters, developing the chain of product displaying shops.3 Promote advertising activities to spread the brand equity for HAIHACO.4 Invest in designing and innovating packaging.62 APPENDIX 1 IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW QUESTIONS.64 APPENDIX 2 SURVEY QUESTIONS.68 iv ABBREVIATIONS HAIHACO Hai Ha Confectionery Joint Stock Company BE Brand Equity BA Brand Awareness AA Brand Associations PQ Perceived Quality BL Brand Loyalty VND Vietnamese Dong v LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Factors affecting the brand equity in previous researches.16 Table 2 Factors affecting the brand equity in previous researches.25 Table 4 Business situation of Hai Ha Company over a period of 3 years.31 Table 5 Sample distributions by gender.34 Table 6 Sample distributions by gender.35 Table 7 Sample distributions by gender.36 Table 8 Descriptive analysis for all factors.37 Table 9 Reliability Testing statistics.39 Table 10 Cronbach’s Alpha of Brand Awareness variable.40 Table 11 Cronbach’s Alpha of Brand Associations variable.41 Table 12 Cronbach’s Alpha of Perceived Quality variable.42 Table 13 Cronbach’s Alpha of Brand Loyalty variable.43 Table 14 Cronbach’s Alpha of Brand Equity variable.44 Table 15 KMO and Bartlett's Test after EFA.45 Table 16 Rotated Component Matrix.45 Table 17 Total Varience Explained.46 Table 18 Pearson correlation coefficients.47 Table 19 Model Summary.48 Table 21 Regression coefficient.49 Table 22 Summary of hypothesis testing result.50 Table 23 Test the difference in the assessment of brand equity in gender.52 Table 24 Test the difference in the assessment of brand equity among.53 Table 25 Test the difference in the assessment of brand equity among income levels.54 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 Brand equity model of Aaker.12 Figure 2 Brand equity model of Keller.13 Figure 3 Brand equity model of Eda Atilgan, Safak Aksoy and Serkan Akinci.14 Figure 4 Brand equity model of Vietnam’s consumer goods market.15 Figure 5 Brand equity model of beverage industry.16 Figure 6 Model of factors affecting the brand equity of Hai Ha Confectionery Joint Stock Company.18 Figure 7 Research process.22 Figure 8 Sample distributions by gender.34 Figure 9 Sample distributions age group.35 Figure 10 Sample distributions by income levels.36 vii EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Today, globalization and integration are becoming the fundamental and indispensable trend that dominate the economic situation of each country. Globalization is opening up opportunities and challenges to every country, especially developing countries like Vietnam. In order to build a brand that can stand up to such fierce competition, Vietnamese businesses must have a long-term strategy of building, developing, promoting and protecting brands from now on.
However, branding is still a relatively new problem to most Vietnamese businesses, many of them only focus on producing products without exploiting, even wasting their inherent assets, that is the brand. Established in 1960, Hai Ha Confectionery Joint Stock Company (HAIHACO) is one of the leading confectionery manufacturers in Vietnam with more than 1,300 employees and total revenue reached 100,8 billion VND at the end of year 2018. Besides, the company has set clear development goals and orientations. One of those goals is to promote branding activities and enhance products’ brand to maintain the position of business in the confectionery market.
Consequently, this research aims to identify factors affecting the brand equity of HAIHACO through 4 aspects: brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality and brand loyalty. By measuring the aforementioned variables, the study will help company devise a long-term strategy to build and develop the brand - this is an effective tool to enhance the competitiveness of Hai Ha Confectionery Joint Stock Company. The author collected secondary data via internet and primary data through some in-depth interviews and survey questionnaire. The study applied linear regression which is analyzed by SPSS 20 software based on 4 independent variables and from that will find out their influence on the brand equity of Hai Ha Confectionery Joint Stock Company.
For this purpose, responses were collected from customers directly at the counter of Hai Ha with sample size of 128 individuals, in which survey questions created by the author are the input to analyze the factors affecting the brand equity of Hai Ha Confectionery Joint Stock Company. The results revealed that brand awareness is the most influential factor affecting brand equity, followed by perceived quality, brand associations and brand loyalty, respectively. However, it does not mean that the company just need to focusing on improving the elements of brand associations and brand loyalty, 1 besides, promoting and maintaining well brand awareness and perceived quality for customers to have a good impression of the brand. Finally, the author has proposed some solutions to develop and enhance the brand equity of Hai Ha Confectionery Joint Stock Company such as establishing a marketing department, renewing the production headquarters and the displaying shops of the company, promoting advertising activities to promote the value of HAIHACO brand, improve the packaging.1 RESEARCH RATIONALE In recent years, along with the development of the economy and the increase in the population size, confectionery is one of the highest and most stable growth rates industries in Vietnam.
Currently, there are many confectionery companies in the Vietnamese market, which makes the confectionery market become more exciting. Products as well as the packaging and design are becoming more diverse with nationwide supply range. Vietnamese brands have affirmed their value in both domestic and export markets thanks to good quality such as: Kinh Do, Trang An, Bibica, Hai Ha Kotobuki,. Besides, there are also more adhesion from the confectionery production companies of China, France and Indonesia with a variety of products.
The speed of development and development prospects in the future make the confectionery market more competitive. Domestic confectionery brands are now facing fierce competition pressure, not only among domestic enterprises but also foreign enterprises. However, domestic businesses are increasingly affirming their position in the market with a variety of products, good quality and consistent with the taste of Vietnamese consumers. In parallel with the development, consumers are increasingly sharp and fastidious, requiring products that are not only good in quality but also need to maintain and attract customers.
Facing many choices, the consumers’ trend currently is not only leaning toward price and quality but also the value of that brand. As a result, businesses must develop effective branding strategies so that customers can have knowledge of products and businesses can convince them of the benefits they can gain compared to other brands. In the context of competition, the brand is an extremely important factor determining the success or failure of manufacturers and businesses. Hankinson and Cowking (1996) stated that building a strong brand is one of the ways companies can develop and maintain strengths with competitors and thereby maintain and increase sales and market share.
With limited resources, having to choose how to build a brand can have a positive impact on the customers' buying intentions, furthermore, the customers’ choice becomes a difficult problem for confectionery enterprises. Besides, confectionery industry is a highly competitive industry with the pressure of integration process that makes the company sometimes focus on 3 dealing to survive rather than implementing strategies for long-term development. On the other hand, confectionery is not an essential human need, so the consumption of confectionery products is highly dependent on the people's income. In addition, consumers are increasingly concerned with health, afraid to use sugary products.
Therefore, confectionery products of Hai Ha want to penetrate into the market will be under great pressure in moderation to ensure good quality and diversify types, models and flavors to suit the tastes of each customer’s object. However, Hai Ha Confectionery Joint Stock Company currently has capital mainly from commercial loans. This has reduced the initiative in implementing the company's marketing strategy. In addition, the absence of an independent Marketing Department that still has to operate depending on the Market Planning Department which has greatly influenced the brand development, new products, market demand survey,.
of Hai Ha confectionery joint stock company. Consequently, researching the factors affecting the brand equity of Hai Ha confectioner is really necessary and meaningful for building business strategy, developing brand and supporting the market planning department, also the marketing department of the company in particular and managers in the confectionery industry in general. That is the reason why the author chose the research topic "Factors affecting the brand equity of Hai Ha Confectionery Joint Stock Company" to help businesses understand more about the role of these factors and measure the impact of them on brand equity.2 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES The main objective of this thesis is determining the factors affecting the brand equity of Hai Ha Confectionery Joint Stock Company in order to propose solutions for building and promoting brands more effectively.