Marketing and Branding Research

The mobile phone industry is a very innovative segment within the ICT sector, and the smartphone is gradually becoming the standard configuration of mobile devices and currently represents the fastest growing market in the telecoms industry. Previous studies on brand equity tend to focus on telecommunications, banking, hospitality, banking, construction, fast-moving customer goods, etc., while ignoring the education sector. Therefore, the general objective of the study is to evaluate the brand equity of apple smartphones and customer behavior in Abuja. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design. The study used primary data through a questionnaire using 341 samples. Specifically, the objectives of the study were to establish the extent to which brand awareness, brand association, and brand loyalty affect customer behaviour among students of Veritas University. The resutls revealed that brand awareness, brand association, and brand loyalty positively and significantly affect customer behaviour among Veritas University students. It was concluded that when consumers are attached and loyal to a brand, they are likely to make repeat purchases. This only happens when the relationship between the brand and the user is very in-depth and has an emotional connection with the mobile brand. The study recommended that firms interested in extending customer behaviour to repurchase their product categories should pay special attention to brand loyalty, brand awareness, brand association linked to the functions of guarantee, social identification, and status.

In e-commerce industry while most of the transactions happen electronically, logistics activities are still required to ship products to end points. Firms that operate in e-commerce industry should consider logistics as a critical success factor if they want to be successful in operations. Studies show that customers choose strong brands in e-commerce to get better logistics service.  Main purpose of this research is to examine the consequences of logistics service quality on brand factors considering e-commerce industry. To this end, for brand factors including quality (PQ), brand loyalty (BL), and brand trust (BT), and logistics service quality (LSQ), a literature review is made. According to this literature review, a survey is prepared and sent to e-commerce website users via email and online survey software. The originality of this study lies on the investigation of how perceived logistics service quality affects perceived quality, brand trust, and brand loyalty from the e-commerce perspective for the first time. As an exploratory study that links logistics service quality with brand, the study investigates how logistics service quality characteristics, namely timelines, order condition, information quality, personal contact quality, ordering procedures, ordering release quantities, order accuracy, order quality, and order discrepancy handling affect brand factors as perceived quality, brand loyalty, and brand trust. To that end, the data collected based on responses from 193 online shopping website users. Based on the factor analysis results, 6 groups are identified for LSQ. The results indicated that logistics service quality has an impact on perceived quality and brand trust and it has no impact on brand loyalty. At the end, implications of these findings for managers and directions for future research are presented.

In todays highly competitive markets, keeping customers and retaining their loyalty is considered crucial in maintaining business. Companies and retailers also need to look for various marketing strategies in order to improve their customers’ loyalty. Having knowledge and skills about marketing is one of the capabilities which is required for success in the competition. In consumable markets, brands are the main points of differentiation between the competitive presentations, thus, they are crucial for the success of the companies. The purpose of this study was to analyze the impact of marketing mix elements on brand loyalty. The present study is applicable in terms of objective and descriptive survey in terms of data collection. To evaluate the model and hypotheses, data collection was carried out through surveying 384 mobile phone users. For data analysis and verification of the model, structural equation modeling approach (SEM) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were used and based on the results of the path analysis, the relationship between the variables in the model is investigated. Results indicated the positive impact of products elements, distribution channels, and promotional activities on brand loyalty. Also, the findings showed that indexes of satisfaction and trust which are considered as mediating variables between marketing mix and brand loyalty had positive and significant impact on brand loyalty in the mobile phone industry.