THE EFFECT OF BRAND EQUITY ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: A CASE STUDY OF DASHEN BREWERIES S.C

Abstract

Customer satisfaction is important to long term business success to protect/gain market shares, organizations need to overtake competitors by offering high quality product or service to ensure satisfaction of customers. Through satisfying customers, organizations could improve profitability by expanding their business and gaining a higher market share as well as repeat and referral business. There is a strong and positive relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty. A satisfied customer is six times more likely to repurchase a product and share his experience with five or six other people. The general objective of the study was to examine the effect of brand equity on customer satisfaction: a case study of Dashen breweries S.C. In order to get a comprehensive data 340 customers are included in the study. The study used both primary and secondary data that were collected through a semi-structured questionnaire. Out of the 390 questionnaires that were distributed 340 questionnaires were filled and returned successfully. This represents a response rate of 87.1 percent. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The study found that brand association, brand loyalty has positive and strong effect on customer satisfaction. Brand awareness and perceived quality have low significant effect. Based on these findings, the study recommends that Dashen is advised to work on customer brand awareness since it have a big impact on the customer satisfaction by making the brand easily and quickly recalled by the customer, to give good attention on improving the customers brand association of Dashen by improving the aspect of the brand image when compared to other competing brands, by making their logo easily to recall.