Exploring customer based brand equity: a study among the tourist hotels in the East coast of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Industries face with issues in managing brand equity and its significant is that it helps firms to enhance their cash flow and service differentiation to enjoy and obtain benefits out of competitive advantage. Thus, brand equity is treated as the most valuable intangible asset according to literatures. Brand creates the most powerful point of difference among service suppliers. Therefore, it is imperative to explore the dimensions of brand equity such as brand awareness, brand association, brand perceived quality and brand loyalty. There has been a boom in the tourism industry after the prolong war in the Eastern province of Sri Lanka. This helps hoteliers create innovative marketing strategies and enjoy competitive advantage in the industry. Hence, the objective of the research was to explore the customer based brand equity among the tourist hotels in the Eastern province of Sri Lanka. In order to explore the elements of customer based brand equity of the hotel industry, researcher obtained filled questionnaires from 115 respondents who enjoyed the services of hotels in the Eastern province. Multivariate analysis was carried out to explore the elements of the customer based brand equity. Findings suggest that all dimensions of the customer based brand equity significantly contribute to the brand equity of the tourist hotels in the Eastern province of Sri Lanka. Further, the extent to which the dimensions create the brand equity is also investigated in this research.