Effect of Brand Equity on Consumer Buying Behavior of Huawei Brand in Colombo Area

Abstract

Huawei is the second largest mobile vendor in Sri Lanka which is looking for a better brand equity in the marketplace. With the emergence of mobile vendors such as Samsung and Apple, the competition was arisen. Samsung is a global digital technology leader in Sri Lanka and building of Samsung mobile phones with new lines and providing competitive offers on mobile phone plans to local Customers. With the increase of the disposable income, it will lead to increase the competition in the smartphone industry. However, there is a growing bad image on Huawei due to the effect of the recent ban of Huawei by US in their market. It is likely to create a problem of increasing sales in the 2020 in the Sri Lankan market. This study therefore aimed at identifying the impact of brand equity on consumer buying behavior based on Huawei in Colombo area. It is therefore crucial to understand brand equity as it affects the purchasing decisions of the customers due to the past experience with the product usage, familiarity with brand and its characteristics. Pursuant to this, objectives of the present study were formulated and they were to identify the impact of selected brand equity dimensions and to identify the overall impact of brand equity on consumer buying behavior of Huawei in Colombo area. The study was based on the Brand equity model developed by Aeker(1991). Based on that, hypothesis were formed to find out whether there is a positive impact of brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty, perceived quality, and brand equity as a whole on consumer buying behavior. They were tested using multiple regression analysis. A sample of 380mobile users in Mattakkuliya and Jinthupitiya area in Sri Lanka were contacted using convenience sampling technique and a questionnaire was selfadministrated. Analysis of data revealed that there is a positive impact of brand awareness, brand association, brand loyalty, perceived quality and brand equity on consumer buying behavior. The present study can be further extended by including foreign countries with larger samples.