THE EFFECT OF BRAND EQUITY UPON CUSTOMERS’ SERVICE CHOICES: THE CASE OF BANK OF ABYSSINIA S.C IN ADDIS ABABA

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of brand equity upon customers’ service choices. A sample of 400 respondents in 18 Addis Ababa Area Bank of Abyssinia was drawn using a stratified sampling approach, and 362 completely filled questionnaires were used in performing final analysis using a 5-point Likert scale. Findings support that all six brand equity dimensions were influencing customers’ service choice of Bank of Abyssinia. Brand resonance is found to be the strongest relationship with customers service choice (β=0.38, p<0.05), brand feeling (β=0.172, p<0.05) and brand performance (β=0.081, p<0.05). However, brand awareness is found to be positive but insignificant relationship with customers service choice (β=0.057, p>0.05), brand judgment (β=0.052, p>0.05) and brand imagery (β=0.034, p>0.05) are also positive and insignificant relationship with customer service choice. From these, the Bank needs to prioritize its focus as per the given sequence. Correlation analysis result also shows, overall customers’ service choice is found to be significantly and positively correlated with brand imagery, followed by brand feeling, brand judgment, brand performance, brand awareness and brand resonance. The findings also indicates that the overall service quality of BoA is high (above the average) and because of this reason the bank customers are satisfied with the services provided by BoA and rated its service excellence as a very good. It can be conclude that Bank of Abyssinia has to exert maximum effort on attributes associated with brand awareness, brand performance, brand imagery, brand judgments, brand feeling, and brand resonance in order to bring higher influence upon customer services choice and enhance brand equity values. Future researchers can conduct using analytical method of research with large sample size that could come up with similar or different findings on the effect of brand equity upon customers’ service choices.