SCALE DEVELOPMENT AND MODELLING OF CUSTOMER-BASED HOSPITAL BRAND EQUITY

Abstract

The ‘synchronic and diachronic’ studies accomplished in the wider and complex domain of brand equity (BE) measurement divulge the fact that the phenomena of BE has been of keen interest to the researchers not only from academia but also from industry and consultancy. A close examination of those researches elucidates the fact that the phenomenon of BE, which is largely viewed as the source of long term value of a brand name, predominantly depends on the customers’ cognitive and perceptual apparatuses. This fact has, implicitly or explicitly, brought a remarkable change in the customers’ status, ultimately displacing customers from an inactive to a proactive position. This change has also helped researchers visualize a shift in the basic tenets of BE measurement, i.e., from aggregate financial measures to individual non-financial measures of BE. This change in the basic firmament of BE has entrenched deeply upon the methods of branding, which in turn has inversely acted upon the strategies of BE management. Consequently, the above mentioned changes has brought a paradigm shift in the entire rubric of BE measurement. Keller (1993) by locating and placing customers in the locus of the complex system of BE measurement conceptualized the customer-based brand equity (CBBE) model for capturing the sources and outcomes of brand knowledge. From Keller’s standpoint, a CBBE model, directly or indirectly, captures the customers’ cognitive, affective and behavioural outcomes (e.g. attitude, preference, choice intentions or actual choice) resulting from the “differential effect” of brand marketing on customers’ brand knowledge. The literature suggests that the customer brand knowledge serves as the sole universal panacea for understanding the relativism involved in the phenomena of “being to becoming” that a brand experiences. Therefore, among different measures of BE, those that have used an a priori psychological framework and relate to the direct and/or indirect sources or outcomes of customer brand knowledge have dominated the entire terra firma of CBBE measurement. In light of some of the most influential studies on BE measurement, the literature review reveals that although the extant model of CBBE are successful in predicting the ‘differential effect of customer brand knowledge’ well, yet they still suffer from several conceptual and managerial issues. A close examination of those issues suggests that the current models of CBBE were created on a goods-centric logic and were validated on the basis of developed market experience. Moreover, critics argue that these models over emphasize on the brand image and brand loyalty constructs. The excessive theorization and hegemony of brand ii image and brand loyalty in the current models of CBBE has with all possibilities concealed the viability of applying relationship theory in brand marketing, which could have possibly been one of the most remarkable extensions of brand personality research. The advent of technological advances have made it practically possible for interpersonal relationships between a brand and a customer to form through dyadic consumer-brand interactions, which are presumably an important intermediary for linking brand equity and customer equity through the germane cognitive perspective. Further, it may be also contended that the models that are largely based upon the economic realities of the developed countries and their goods market experience may not hold equally good for the emerging global service economy as the apposite germination of transnational issues may obfuscate the fundamental premise of those models. Thus, based on the candid deliberations and intellectually rich disseminations on those viable issues, the present research aims at addressing them with the help of three underlying objectives of this research. The first objective deals with the development of an instrument for measuring customer-based hospital brand equity (HBE). The second objective aims at applying the recommended scale for the development of HBE model, by examining the relationships between brand knowledge, overall brand equity (OBE) and behavioural brand equity (BHE) constructs. The third and the final objective aim at examining variations in the HBE model based on levels of customer brand knowledge. Accomplished on the basis of standard procedures applied for the scale development and modelling in other similar studies, the results obtained from this research provide several theoretical and managerial contributions for CBBE measurement, linking BE sources with behavioural BE outcomes, predicting brand performance of service brands, and managing BE in emerging markets. The in-depth analysis of the impact of levels of brand knowledge in the present study provides practical guidelines for implementation of the HBE model in predicting future brand potential, and in other strategic brand marketing decisions.