Novel Sales
Collateral 2 License Fee
III. Conceptual Model
Regarding to the research background and the search among selected research topics, the main indexes for brand equity evaluation were selected. These criteria included trust, loyalty, quality and advertising. In the following, the sources of these four criteria were introduced. In 1996, Aaker introduced five factors affecting brand that were brand awareness, precepted quality, brand associations, brand loyalty and other brand assets. In 2000, Yoo Considered the factors of price, store image, distribution, advertising costs, price transactions, perceived quality, brand loyalty and awareness of brand to examine brand equity. In 2003, Keller introduced a brand equity evaluation model. This four-level model introduces various stages of interaction with customers from the deep and extensive awareness of the brand, brand associations, positive feedback and loyalty. In general, among the models used to measure brand value, we can identify various factors such as brand awareness, brand image, perceptual quality, brand satisfaction, brand associations, brand trust, customer loyalty to brand, perceived value by customer, etc. The innovation in proposed model in this study was combining some of these factors with each other and designing a new questionnaire based on them and based on customer's view.
The assumptions of this research included the following: (1) Customer trust in the brand has a positive and significant effect on its value. (2) Customer loyalty to brand has a positive and significant effect on brand equity. (3) Brand quality has a positive and significant effect on its value. (4) Brand advertisements have a positive and significant effect on its value. Figure 1 represents the conceptual model of this research.
23 Nørskov, S., Chrysochou, P., & Milenkova, M. (2015), The impact of product innovation attributes on brand equity, The Journal of Consumer Marketing, 32(4), pp.245-254.
24 Romero, J., & Yagüe, M. J. (2015), Relating brand equity and customer equity, International Journal of Market Research, 57(4), pp.631–651.
25 Hahn, I. S., Scherer, F. L., Basso, K., & dos Santos, M. B. (2016), Consumer trust in and emotional response to advertisements on social media and their influence on brand evaluation, Brazilian Business Review, 13(4), pp.49-71.
26 Mark Russell (2016),"The valuation of pharmaceutical intangibles", Journal of Intellectual Capital, Vol. 17 Issue 3, pp.484-506.
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Figure 1
Concept of designed model
Source: Author’s Concepts based on brand equity evaluation IV. Case Study and Statistical Tests
Along with its social development during the 1960s, Iran experienced a small-scale industrial revolution, leading to an increase in GDP, greater number of factories and enhanced production rate in certain industries. Extensive government support increased as the industrial sector went through a broad range of plans and projects offered over this period. Given the fast-growing changes, Industrial Development and Renovation Organization (IDRO) of Iran were established on July 1965, so as to carry out two key tasks of creating new industrial enterprises and renovating old enterprises. By the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1978, IDRO had launched roughly 136 companies operating in industrial, manufacturing and engineering areas. For several years since then, IDRO has been engaged in a wide variety of industrial activities so as to fight against economic colonialism. Throughout nearly half a century of involvement in implementation of major industrial projects, IDRO has taken huge steps toward expansion of Iranian industries, marking numerous crucial turning-points in the history of the Iranian industrial development. IDRO was selected as case study of this research. A questionnaire with 13 questions related to the 4 introduced factors for evaluating brand equity was designed and distributed among 30 experts of IDRO in order to assessing its validity and reliability.
In order to assessing the validity of the designed questionnaire, expert employees of IDRO were asked to submit their written comments to the questions raised. The purpose of the validity assessment is to measure the relevance of the questions designed with the subject matter of the questionnaire designer (the measurement of brand equity from the employee's point of view). The reliability of the questionnaire is that, if we share the same questions among the same people multiple times, how likely is the answers of individuals to each question the same. In order to assess the reliability of the questionnaire, experts were asked to give questions from 1 to 5 points. Score 5 means the most importance and relevance of the question raised below the recommended index for evaluating the brand equity of an organization from its employees' point of view and score 1 means the least importance and relevance for the question posed by the research topic. After obtaining points, they entered the SPSS software to apply the Cronbach’s alpha test. The result of the Cronbach’s alpha test is given in Table 1.
Brand Equity from Customers’
Perspective
Brand Trust
Brand advertisements
Customers’
Loyalty Brand quality
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Table 1: Cronbach’s alpha test Results
Cronbach's Alpha N of Items
.886 13
As shown in Table 1, the result of the Cronbach’s alpha test was 0.88. According to the Cronbach’s alpha test standard, if the result of this test is more than 0.7, then the reliability of the questionnaire is acceptable. Therefore, the reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed by this test.
Next, the scores given by each of the experts to each of the questions were entered into SPSS software and the One-way T-Student's statistical test was taken.
This test by SPSS software was used to calculate and compare the mean scores of different scores below each main index and compare it with the average score that could be given to each question (in this study, this score was 3). The results of this test are presented in Table 2.
Table 2: One-way T-student test results
Main Indexes Test Value = 3
t df Sig.
(2-tailed)
Mean Difference
95% Confidence Interval of the Difference
Lower Upper
Trust 16.827 29 .000 1.3367 1.174 1.499
Loyalty 5.631 29 .000 .7300 .465 .995
Quality 10.363 29 .000 1.2833 1.030 1.537
Advertiseme
nt 8.848 29 .000 1.0833 .833 1.334
According to the result of T-test, if the output of this test is greater than 0 (t column in table 3), it indicates the confirmation of that index and its positive and significant relationship with the subject of the research and therefore confirms the research hypothesis. But if the t-test output is negative, then the index is not directly or significantly related to the measured factor. If, as a result of the t-test, for an index be 0, then the index is neutral to the evaluated agent and has no effect on it. According to Table 2, it is seen that the t-value for all indexes is higher than 0, indicating that there is a positive and direct effect of all the indicators considered on the brand equity;
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this means that all the research assumptions’ correctness was proven.