MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY ----oOo------- DIỆP THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO THE EFFECT SOME MARKETING MIX ELEMENTS ON BRAND AWARENESS AND BRANK IMAGE MAJOR: BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION MAJOR CODE: 60.05 MASTER THESIS INSTRUCTOR: DR. TRAN HA MINH QUAN Ho Chi Minh City – 2011 I ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis is dedicated to my family, friends, professors and classmates for their support and encouragement throughout my academic career. Recently, these people have touched my life in many different ways. First and foremost, I would like to give special thanks to Dr.
Tran Ha Minh Quan for being an excellent professor, advisor, thesis committee chair, and mentor. I appreciate all the insight and time he put into helping me with my thesis. I am also grateful to him for teaching me the basics, and advancing my knowledge and expertise. I’d like to thank Dang Huu Phuc, who helped me in the data analysis.
Many thanks my professors and classmates in MBA class, Batch 17 for their valuable and enthusiastic support for this research study. My special gratitude is extended to all instructors, staff and students at Faculty of Business Administration, University of Technology HoChiMinh City (HUTECH) for their support and the valuable knowledge during my study. Last but not least, the deepest and most sincere gratitude go to my beloved parents, my husband, my daughter and my closest friends for their boundless support, abundant love and encouragement throughout my period of study. I,therefore, dedicate this work as a gift to them all.
I ABSTRACT The marketing effort orientated to towards strengthening the brand means to increase the degree of knowledge of the brand name. In this paper we want to show the relationship between marketing effort and brand awareness and brand image. Starting out from a theoretical review, we set out a model of effects of the marketing effort -as the brand's antecedents- on brand awareness and brand image. In order to test the defined structural model and research hypotheses empirical research was conducted on the sample of undergraduate students of the Faculty of Business Administration in University of Techonology.
The structural model of the effects of marketing mix elements on brand equity is defined in line with the existing theoretical findings. Research hypotheses are defined according to the identified structural model. Research results indicate that the structural model has an acceptable level of fit to the empirical data. The estimated structural coefficients and indirect effect coefficients indicate the direction and intensity of effects of each analysed element of marketing mix on brand awareness and brand image.
Finally, implications of research results for the theory and practice of brand management are analysed and discussed. KEY WORDS: Brand Image, Brand Awareness, marketing effort, Measurement Model. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. II TABLE OF CONTENTS.III LIST OF FIGURES.V LIST OF TABLES.
VI 1 Chapter1 : Introduction.6 Research methodology and design.6 2 Chapter 2 : Literature review.4 Relationship between marketing effort and brand awareness and brand image.2 Operationalization of measures. 33 4 Chapter 4 : Research results.2 Descriptions of sample.2 Exploratory factor analysis.4 Testing the research model and the hypotheses.1 Testing correlations between all constructs.2 Testing research model.1 The relationship between marketing efforts and the brand awareness.2 The relationship between marketing efforts and the brand image.5 Testing the effect of brand awareness and brand image on the year in college: 49 4.6 Findings and conclusion.51 5 Chapter 5 : Conclusions and implications.2 Conclusions of the study.1 Summary of all hypotheses.2 Conclusions of the study.3 Implications of the study.4 Limitations and recommendations for further research.58 List of References.63 Appendix 2 - Descriptive Statistics of variables.67 5 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1-1 : Outline of chapter 1.1 Figure 1-2 : Structure of the study.6 Figure 2-1 : The structure of Chapter 2.7 Figure 2-2 : Dimensions of Brand Knowledge, Keller (1993).9 Figure 2-3 : Model of effects of marketing efforts on brand awareness and brand image. 21 Figure 3-1 : Outline of chapter 3.22 Figure 3-2 : Research process.24 Figure 4-1 : Outline of chapter 4.34 Figure 4-2 : Whether used motocycles.36 Figure 4-3 : Owning brand.36 Figure 4-4 : Relationships between perceived advertising spending, distribution intensity and the brand awareness. 42 Figure 4-5 : Results of model I.45 Figure 4-6 : Relationships between marketing efforts and brand image.46 Figure 4-7 : Results of model II.
48 Figure 4-8 : Adjusted the structural model of impact of marketing effort on brand awareness and brand image. 52 Figure 5-1 : Outline of chapter 5.53 6 LIST OF TABLES Table 3-1 : Measures of perceived advertising spending.26 Table 3-2 : Measures of distribution intensity.27 Table 3-3 : Measures of brand image. 27 Table 3-4 : Measures of price deals.28 Table 3-5 : Measures of brand image. 28 Table 3-6 : Measures of brand awareness.29 Table 3-7 : The final questionnaire.30 Table 4-1 : Sample characteristics.
35 Table 4-2 : Reliability of the measurement instrument.37 Table 4-3 : Rotated component matrix.40 Table 4-4 : EFA result for individual measurement scales.41 Table 4-5 : The correlations among the dimensions of brand equity.43 Table 4-6 : The results of linear regression analysis_Model I.44 Table 4-7 : Summary of hypotheses testing results (Model I).45 Table 4-8 : The results of linear regression analysis_Model II.46 Table 4-9 : Summary of hypotheses testing results (Model II).48 Table 4-10 : Multiple Comparisons.50 Table 5-1 : Summary of hypotheses.1 Introduction This chapter portrays general introduction for the current study with which research background, research motives, research objectives, and research procedures are provided as the rationale for this study. An introduction to the methodology to be used and the scope of the study is also addressed in this chapter. At the end of the chapter, the structure of this study is provided. The Outline of this chapter is shown in figure 1.1 Figure 1-1 : Outline of chapter 1 1.2 Research Background Kathman (2002) described the importance of brand building based on today’s market situation.
The author said that as the use of new media (e., internet), the rate of transformation in marketplace, and the speed of globalization increase, the role of branding becomes more important than any other season. Kathman added that market fragmentation, product diversity, and short-life-cycle brands also show the importance of building brand equity in the present market situation. The author 2 concluded that brand building is the only way to thrive their business in today’s market situation. The author also added that, in these days, we have many products and brands and the market is segmented so much that make it difficult for the audience to recognize or recall the brand.
Studies on branding issue receive the great attention in marketing area in other countries. The growing interest is reflected in the proliferating conferences, articles, and press attention on branding, as well as the companies’ huge investments on this area. Brands are powerful strategic weapons which, if handled correctly and managed sensibly, can provide their owners with considerable rewards in terms of market share growth and corporate profitability (Aaker, 1996). Branding has always been crucial for anyone who wants to sell something to gain credibility (Keller, 2003).
Yet, the concept of a brand which represents the specifics of a product or a company, like a name which describes the character of the person it belongs to, is a new one in Vietnam. Most Vietnamese firms are small or medium sized and have not dealt with problems related to the branding issue. The media had not highlighted it until several Vietnamese brands were recently appropriated overseas (VnExpress, 2002; VET, 2003). The severe shortage of commodities in the late 1980s and early 1990s consolidated manufacturer’s lack of awareness about branding, particularly bearing in mind the low per capita income of Vietnamese people.
But the mushrooming of new producers and service suppliers and the arrival of foreign competitors has caused things to change drastically. An abundance of goods and services of higher quality, advanced technologies, and shorter product life spans have forced local businesses to think seriously about building brands which can give them long term and sustainable development (VET, 2003). Right now, building brands is a very important issue in developing country as Vietnam, and it can be considered to be a useful topic for conceptual development and managerial relevance. In several studies, brand awareness and image are considered the most important 3 components of brand equity (Keller, 1993).
However, only a few studies delved into how these components are correlated with products or services.3 Research Motives To date, there have been a number of studies that have attempted to examine how consumers think about, respond to, and classify brands within their minds. Branding literature has provided theoretical perspectives to help marketers understand the construct of brand. Brand equity has become a hot topic for chief executives, accountants and academics as it is tipped to join other critical measures of long-term business performance. At the same time, the 'knowledge economy' is becoming an accepted framework for management thinking, planning and organisation.
It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that the designated marketing function in so many companies has done so little to advance the management of one of their most value-adding activities - brand knowledge. Indeed, it is nearly 40 years since Theodore Levitt pointed out the unique perspective of marketing: "The difference between marketing and selling is more than semantic. Selling focuses on the needs of the seller, marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller's need to convert the product into cash, marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering, and finally consuming it.” During those four decades, marketing departments have grown as substantially as their budgets, huge quantities of data swamp the brand teams and yet the evidence suggests they have not strengthened their grip on 'knowing and understanding' their users better.
Over the same period the reputation of the marketing function has declined in many companies.4 Problem statement Based on the importance of brand awareness and brand image to the company’s surviving, we manage to investigate to what extent the students know about the brand of motocyces (brand awareness) and what kinds perception of the brand of motocycles as reflected by the brand association held in target customers’ memory (brand image).5 Research Ojective The aim of this paper is to find out the effect of the marketing effort, measured by means of the perceptions of the consumers, on two dimensions of brand equity: brand awareness and brand image. This paper is included within a major investigation that seeks to develop and to contrast a model which allows the measurement of the brand equity through: the influence of the marketing effort of the companies (measured by means of actions of prices, product, distribution and communication) on dimensions of brand equity -brand awareness and brand image. The marketing effort, translated partially to (1) perceived advertising spending, (2) distribution intensity, (3) store image and (4) Price deals , is considered as (a) antecedent in the formation of the level of knowledge of the brand name (Rossiter & Percy, 1987; Aaker, 1991) and (b) determinant of the associations linked to its image (Alba & Hutchinson, 1987; Yoo, Donthu & Lee, 2000). From the theoretical review on brand value we construct a theoretical model of causal relationships between the marketing efforts and the dimensions of brand equity_ brand awareness and brand image.
This is defined as a set of assets and liabilities linked to the brand, which adds or subtracts value to or from a product in its relationships with customers (Aaker, 1991). To contrast the model, the linear regression model is applied. 5 Following, Yoo et al. (2000), we analyse how each of the components of brand equity is affected previously by the perception of the market about the marketing effort the company develops concerning brands.