Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Award of the Degree of Master of Business Administration - Corporate Management (MBA-CM) of Mzumbe University
2013
Strong brand equity has become a very important factor that influences consumer’s perceptions of a brand. Success in brand management arises from understanding and managing brand equity correctly to produce strong attributes that will influence consumers when making their choices.
This thesis focuses on the importance of these dimensions (brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand image and perceived quality) of customer-based brand equity on consumer’s perceptions of a brand. This is based on the assumption that all these dimensions of customer based-brand equity will have an influence on consumer’s perceptions of a brand. However, this thesis aims to find out which among these three dimensions (brand image, brand loyalty, and perceived quality) appear to have the least brand equity in both food industries and to find out if customer based-brand equity differs between the two food industries with respect to each attribute of brand awareness, brand image, perceived quality and brand loyalty. Brand awareness was treated separately from other dimensions because of the difference in scale.
A structured questionnaire was constructed to provide answers to the research question. In this study, one hundred questionnaires were distributed, but only sixty four useable questionnaires were realized. The study surveyed four dimensions of consumer’s based brand equity namely brand awareness, brand image, perceived quality, and brand loyalty. Among the three dimensions, brand loyalty appears to have the least brand equity rating by consumers than the other dimensions. Although, the four dimensions appear to have an influence on consumer perceptions of the brand.