BUSN20016 Research in Business: Brand Impact on Consumer Behavior

This research proposal aims to explore the impact of branding on consumer behavior, focusing on key constructs such as brand image, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and brand equity. It addresses the problem of increasing competition in business and the critical role of branding in cr...Read More

Assignment-2
Student Name : Karthik reddy chilukuri
Student Number : 12029956
Subject : Research in Business
Subject Number : BUSN20016
Due Date : 6 June 2018
Campus : Sydney.

Introduction
The aim of this research is to explore the impact of brand on consumer behavior. For this, a
proposal has been prepared highlighting the methods that would be used for conducting the
research. The problem statement has been explored in the current section to identify the key
objectives of the research and a literature study would be conducted and presented in the next
section to identify the constructs that can be used for analyzing the impacts of brand on the
consumer behavior.
Problem Statement
With more and more businesses coming into being, there is high competition in any field of
business in the modern world. In this situation, branding plays a critical role in creating
awareness which gives an edge to a brand over competition as the customer is able to recognize
the product. Moreover, stronger brands not just create awareness and recognition but also bring
loyalty in their customers so that customers have preferences for them. The loyalty of a customer
towards a brand can have a significant influence on the buyer’s behavior. However, building a
loyal customer base requires creation of a strong image in a market. This can be built by shaping
experiences of customers in such a way that they start to value the brand and its services. For
organizations planning to create a brand or making their brand stronger, it is very important to
understand how brands create impact on consumer behavior as the insights can help them plan
their branding strategies to support their business objectives by getting them customer loyalty.
This study would make an attempt to understand how brands can create impact on the consumers
today.
Aims and objectives of research

The aim of this research is to understand the impact of branding on the consumer behavior. To
achieve this aim, following questions are needed to be answered in the research:
 How closely are brands and the consumer behavior related?
 What are various strategies which can be used by the organizations to make brand
popular among people
 How brand image helps in increasing the brand loyalty
 What is the relationship of brand image and customer satisfaction?
Based on these research questions, following research objectives can be formulated:
 Understanding relationship between branding and consumer behavior
 Explore branding strategies used by popular organizations
 Understanding loyalty and the impact of brand on loyalty
 Understanding the impact of brand image on customer satisfaction
Literature review
For understanding brand, a number of constructs may be studied here as they can explain a
brand. These include brand image, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and brand equity. For
understand the consumer side, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and brand equity would be
the important constructs to study. In this section, the past literature on the subject is explored to
understand these constructions and the connection between them so that the objective of
exploring the impact of brand on consumer behavior can be studied.
A concept of brand has been explained by the American Marketing Association that defines a
brand as a construct including name, symbol, term, design or any combination of these that is

used for identifying services or goods of a seller or a group of sellers so that they are
differentiated from their competition. The brand image makes the common perception that
affects the purchases by consumers and create an influence towards the brand with a stronger
image as compared to competition. Thus, branding can be understood by studying the concept of
brand image and related constructs (Myllärniemi, 2015).
Brand Image
Brand Image is defined by Kotler as "the set of beliefs, ideas, and impression that a person holds
regarding an object" and Keller as "a set of perceptions about a brand as reflected by brand associations
in consumer's memory". Brand image is the perception that is formed in a consumers mind while
making a purchase of a product or a service about the associated brand. If the purchase of a
customer is satisfactory, there is a higher probability of shaping a good brand image in the
consumer mind. Customer satisfaction also influences the loyalty of the customer towards the
brand. A strong correlation exists between the brand image and the intention of a buyer towards
the development of loyalty. Customer satisfaction can also be seen as the benchmark for the
measurement of customer loyalty as a satisfied customer is more likely to display loyalty towards
a brand. Establishment of the brand image is one of the most important function of marketing.
People do not make purchases just for the product and associated attributes they have but also for
some psychological benefits such as the feeling high self-esteem. Product performance also
shapes the brand image. Consumers have both cultural and social values attached to a brand.
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is one of the key factors that determine the loyalty for a brand in a
customer. It is influenced by the expectations and experiences of the customers with the services

received from the brand. Expectations are defined before a purchase is made while experience is
formed after the purchase is made by a customer. Customers get satisfied when the level of
performance experienced is higher than the expectations and it is called the positive
disconfirmation. Negative disconfirmation happens when the expectations are higher than the
experience. When a match happens between expectation and experience the a neutral satisfaction
is achieved. This disconfirmation of the expectation determines the level of satisfaction or
dissatisfaction in a customer. Higher is the quality of service experiences, higher is the level of
satisfaction, and this results in the higher loyalty of the customer. Customer satisfaction is a key
to success of a brand and can give an organization a competitive edge. When high satisfaction is
achieved for a long term in a customer, the life time value of the brand for the customer is
higher. Quality of a product or service, value of the brand, and the satisfaction from purchase
together influence the consumer behavior. The brand value and the customer satisfaction can
shape the purchase intension of a customer. A satisfied customer can save the efforts of the
company put into attracting new customers by bringing positive word of mouth working for
them.
Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty can be classified into attitudinal, behavioral, and composite approaches as per the
branding literature. Behavioral loyalty refers to the frequency of the repeat purchase by a
customer. Attitudinal loyalty refers to stated preferences and purchase intensions. The composite
approach to defining loyalty combines the two approaches and defines brand loyalty as a biased
response of a customer such as a purchase that is expressed over a time by a decision-making
unit with respect to a brand (Upamannyu & Bhakar, 2014).

To gain loyalty of customers, marketers have to work on building trust in the customers. Trust is
gained by providing superior value and high quality services to customers. A benefit of getting
loyalty in a customer is that a loyal customer is less sensitive to price variations. Brand loyalty is
created with building of trust and a positive brand impact. Trust is important as it can lead to a
repurchase and thus, help in retaining a customer. Expectations and experiences directly affect
the brand loyalty as well as indirectly through creating a direct impact on the trust in customers
(Ghafoor, et al., 2012).
Brand Equity
Brand image and the attitude of the customer towards a brand together form the brand equity. A
good brand image can enhance the loyalty in customers bring thus, bring in more revenues
thereby increasing the brand equity. Brand equity can be measured by evaluating a brand on
different parameters such as the premium price that is charged, the increase which is seen in the
volume of sales, prices of the shares of the brand, and more. Brand awareness, associations, and
brand loyalty are the key factors that shape band equity positively. Brand loyalty is one such
significant construction that can affect the equity of a brand and build a positive one which is
beneficial to a brand it would benefit the associated organization in several ways including
increase in revenues and the share value of the company.
Ecommerce
With the advent of ecommerce, consumers and sellers are brought closer and the customers can
have direct connect with a brand such that they can also communicate with the brand through
feedback systems. A variety of benefits that ecommerce brings to consumers such as low price
guarantees, purchase convenience, direct connection with brands, and a large number of variety

available have boosted the count of consumers who make online purchases today. For the brands,
ecommerce presents a great opportunity to analyses the behavior of consumers to understand
them so that a more personalized experience can be generated while planning marketing
strategies. Personalized interactions like order confirmation and delivery schedule information
can happen over emails, ecommerce notifications, personal messages, calls or chats with service
representatives. However, with ecommerce also comes stiff competition that is not just faced
locally but globally in the internet space and thus, strong branding plays even more crucial role
in the online space. While brick and mortar models would still sell only with greater availability
of goods than competition, the online space resolves the problem of availability for the consumer
who can find any product from any online seller. Thus, the brands that want to sell more to
consumers have to rely more on their marketing and branding efforts if the attention of the
costumer has to be gained in between the large number of consumers. Companies that have
stronger brands have build strong trust levels in consumers which brings them again and again to
the ecommerce websites of the trusted brands. Further, satisfied online consumers become brand
ambassadors and spread the word of mount online. Taking about the brand in public through the
digital media gives the consumer opportunity to reach to a large number of other consumers
which is much more beneficial for the brand than in the case of the physical model in which only
a few people could be talked to by the consumers as a measure of WOM marketing (Penttinen &
Turunen, 2017).
Amazon is one of the largest ecommerce organizations that was formed in 1994 by Jeff Bezos
who began as an online book retailer but over the years, company spread its operations into a
large number of goods. The company had a operating income of over $4 billion as per the latest
2017 figures. It runs a variety of stores as its subsidiaries including Audible, Whole food market,

Amazon, Zappos, and more. However, this study would be focused on the flagship product or
portal of the company and that is Amazon.com which would be explored to understand how
consumers form brand image and how their online behavior is affected by the branding
constructs that have bee identified in the literature of the current research. As Amazon makes one
of the huge retailers, it would give researcher an opportunity to reach out to a large number of
consumers and thus, have a wider representative sample for understanding consumer behavior in
the modern information driven era of ecommerce.
Literature Gap
The past literature on the subject revealed that studies have been conducted on the concept of
branding by a large number of researchers and these included exploration of constructs like
brand image, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. However, there were very few studies that
were found to be exploring the concept of brand equity and loyalty as related. Also, the
researches mostly focused on a single product or series provided by a direct company which
tested a niche set of consumers. For a wider understanding of consumers in the age of
ecommerce, a larger population needs to be studied. These gaps would be filled in the current
research by exploring the key four constructs including customer satisfaction, brand image,
brand loyalty, and brand equity for the ecommerce consumers taking the case of Amazon as the
platform for the consumers.

Research methodology
In this section, the research methodology that would be used for conducting the research for
exploring identified constructs and testing them using statistical procedures to achieve the aim of
the research is explained.
Research Design
This research aims to explore the impact of brand on consumer behavior. As found in the
literature that the brand is defined in the consumers mind by a number of factors including brand
image, brand attribute, and brand equity out of which brand images makes the most measureable
component of the constructs, this research would make use brand image as a the component of
branding for measurement. Similarly, the consumer behavior is found to be shaped by a number
of different factors including customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. As brand image is
formed at the time of a purchase and the customer satisfaction is outcome of this purchase, the
study would explore the impact of brand image on customer satisfaction (Holden, 2001).
Customer satisfaction in the long run gets loyalty in a customer and thus, the is affected
significantly. Thus, the customer satisfaction can influence brand loyalty in the customer. To be
able to explore the complete impact of brand image not just at the time of purchase but also the
behavior throughout a consumer journey, the impact of customer satisfaction on brand loyalty
can be explored which would give an understanding of the indirect connection between brand
image and brand loyalty. Thus, the research would also explore the impact of customer
satisfaction on brand loyalty. Thus, the research would test the two basic assumptions discovered
in the research that include impact of brand image on brand loyalty, impact of customer
satisfaction on brand which would give a comprehensive view (GRAY, 2016). Thus, this
research would have two hypothesis to test and these would include:

H1: Brand image has a significant impact on the brand loyalty
H2: Customer satisfaction has a significant impact on the brand loyalty
Sampling
Ecommerce makes one of the most attractive business model and a huge number of consumers
are making purchases online through many popular ecommerce websites such as Amazon,
Tesco, and more. In this research, the case of Amazon as the online ecommerce brand would be
used as it has a very strong presence in the online space and has a very strong brand in the
consumers mind. Lessons from Amazon can help researcher explore how each branding measure
taken by Amazon has affected the consumer behavior in the online space. Thus, in order to
collect the data from ecommerce consumers, a random sample of 100 consumers who have made
at least one purchase from the Amazon store would be taken (CRESWELL, 2000).
Data Collection
The data would be collected using a questionnaire that would be distributed to the respondents
through an online survey. This survey would be distributed to 100 Amazon customers who have
made at least one purchase online. The respondents would be emailed the survey which would be
put online on Survey Monkey platform. If they are not responding to the email, the researcher
would personally contact them and take the responses over the call. The data collected would be
in objective format and would thus, be coded into SPSS for the testing of hypothesis (Kothari,
2004).
Data Analysis

The collected data would be tested using statistical tests on the SPSS software where the data
would be coded and entered. Following hypothesis would be tested in the research:
H1: Brand image has a significant impact on the brand loyalty
H2: Customer satisfaction has a significant impact on the brand loyalty
For the testing of the hypothesis, a number statistical constructs would be used including
descriptive statistics to understand demographics and Pearson correlation and multiple regression
analyses to understand the impact of brand image on loyalty, customer satisfaction on loyalty
and loyalty on brand equity. The correlation test would reveal if there is any relationship between
the variables tested while R square value obtained from the regression test would reveal the level
of variation that is caused in brand loyalty or brand equity due to the brand image, customer
satisfaction or brand loyalty (Kothari, 2004).
Ethical Considerations
As the research is making use of the primary data and involving respondents in the survey, the
researcher would be taking care of some codes of ethics associated with primary researches
including maintenance of confidentiality, respecting privacy of respondents, and taking informed
consent from them (Kaiser, 2009). For this, the researcher would ensure to not collect any
personal identity information from the respondents but only the details necessary for
understanding the demographics. To maintain confidentiality, the research would ensure to not
share any data obtain from any of the respondents outside of the research and once the whole
research is completed, the data collected would be deleted by the researcher. The researcher
would take the written consent from the respondents before they could participate in the survey.
For this, the researcher would explain the purpose of research and would seek permission from

respondents at the beginning of the questionnaire such that every respondent answering the
questionnaire online knows the purpose of the research and is comfortable sharing the
information (Halej, 2017).
Data Validation
Data that is obtained from the research must be authentic. If the research questionnaire has the
bias, this would not be possible and thus, the researcher would first test the questionnaire on the
peers to identify if there is any bias which could be reflected by the skewed responses. In case of
any bias or logical mistake found in the questionnaire, the same would be corrected before
sending the questionnaire to actual respondents. Data validation is a triangulation strategy that
involve assurance of the fact that the sample collected is the true representative of the population
chosen for a research. Removal of the bias from the questionnaire would to an extent ensure that
the data is proper and obtain the responses authentically (Halej, 2017).
Research Limitations
This research uses only 100 as a the sample size which is very small for an ecommerce platform
that actually has a huge customer base and thus, the results may not be generalized to a large
audience which is the limitation of this research. Another limitation is that the research only tests
already made assumptions and does not make any attempt to create a new construct or theory to
explain the impact of the brand on the consumer behavior. There are limited constructs that are
used for the measurement of the impact of brand on consumer behavior that are based on the
insights obtained from past researches only.
Conclusions

The research has aim to understand the impact of brand on the consumer behavior. For
understanding consumer behavior, band loyalty and brand equity are chosen as the key
constructs. For measuring brand value, brand image and customer satisfaction are chosen as
construct after studying the existing literature on the subject. The research would form three
hypothesis that would be testing the relationships between these constructs for the case of
Amazon ecommerce buyers and the data obtained would be tested using descriptive statistics,
correlation, and regression testing methods. The tests would reveal if there exists a significant
relationship between the identified construction and if it does, to what extent customer
satisfaction, brand image, and customer loyalty can have an impact on the customer loyalty.
Research Plan
The research would be conducted in 3 months time and the milestones of the research project are
presented in the table below:
Research Task Milestone
Proposal Preparation and submission 1st May 2018
Approval 5th May 2018
Refining project objectives and writing
introduction
15th May 2018
Literature review exploration 5th June 2018
Defining methodology 10th June 2018
Questionnaire design 15th June 2018
Data Collection 25th July 2018
Data Analyses 15th August 2018
Developing discussions 20th August 2018

Writing report 25th August 2018
Report formatting, proofreading and editing 28th August 2018
Finalization and submission of report 30th August 2018
References
CRESWELL, J. W., 2000. RESEARCH DESIGN: Qualitative, Quantitative, and mixed methods approaches,
s.l.: Semantics Scholar.
Ghafoor, M. M., Iqbal, H. K., Tariq, U. & Murtaza, F., 2012. Impact of Customer Satisfaction and Brand
Image on Brand Loyalty. Progress inBusiness Innovation & Technology Management , Volume 002, pp.
69-77.
GRAY, D. E., 2016. DOING RESEARCH in the REAL WORLD, s.l.: Sage Publications.
Halej, J., 2017. Ethics in primary research, s.l.: ECU.
Holden, M. T., 2001. Choosing the Appropriate Methodology: Understanding Research Philosophy, s.l.:
Waterford Institute of Technology.

Kaiser, K., 2009. Protecting Respondent Confidentiality in Qualitative Research. Qual Health Res, pp.
1632-1641.
Kothari, C. R., 2004. Research Methodology Methods and techniques. 3rd ed. New Delhi: New Age
International Publishers.
Myllärniemi, V., 2015. Literature review as a research method, s.l.: Aalto University.
Penttinen, H. & Turunen, T., 2017. E-COMMERCE AND ITS ROLE IN STRENGTHENING A BRAND, s.l.:
Savonia.
Upamannyu, N. K. & Bhakar, S., 2014. Effect of Customer Satisfaction on Brand Image & Loyalty
Intention: A Study of Cosmetic Product. International Journal of Research in Business and Technology ,
4(1), pp. 296-307.