The Impact of Brand Loyalty and Perceived Quality on Brand Equity: A Study on Selected Brands of Smartphone Handsets

Abstract

The study primarily intends to measure the impact of brand loyalty and perceived quality on the brand equity. The study specifically intended to measure such impact in the context of smartphone industry focusing on three brands: iPhone, Samsung, and Oppo. These three brands were considered because of their popularity in the context of Bangladesh. The sampling technique was non-probabilistic in nature and judgmental in its application. A total of 80 respondents participated in the survey: 48 were male and 32 were female. All the constructs considered in the study, brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand equity showed an acceptable level of reliability, which was measured by using Cronbach Alpha. The values of Cronbach Alpha of each of these constructs were 0.934, 0.928, and 0.970 respectively. As expected, brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand equity are found to be all positively correlated to one another at the 99% level of significance. It was also found that customer loyalty, perceived quality, and brand equity vary across the brands and such variations were found to be statistically significant at 99% level of confidence. In examining the impact of brand loyalty and perceived quality on brand equity, a multiple regression was conducted considering brand loyalty and perceived quality as independent variables and brand equity as the dependent variable. The relationship among the aforesaid constructs was found to be statistically significant at 99 percent level of confidence. The variations in brand equity can be explained by the variations in both brand loyalty and perceived quality by 79.3%. However brand loyalty was found to contribute more to the variations in the brand equity as it was indicated by higher beta value. However, future researchers can explore such impact of brand loyalty and perceived quality on brand equity across the industries and geographical regions.