Relationship of Brand Management with Customer Loyalty: A Cultural Perspective in the Higher Education Sector of Islamabad Pakistan

Abstract

Culture plays a vital role in brand management, and branding and customer loyalty vary from one culture to another. The purpose of the current research is to find the influence of cultural values on customer loyalty and its antecedents. The current research adds to the existing body of knowledge by empirically testing a brand equity model based on customers‘ cultural values in the higher education sector of Pakistan. This research is significant in that it connects brand equity theory and cultural theory to the higher education sector in Pakistan. Specifically, the current thesis empirically tested various factors that influence student loyalty in the higher education sector of Islamabad, Pakistan. The present research investigates direct paths from individual cultural values to student loyalty as well as indirect paths from individual cultural values to student loyalty through brand (university) awareness, university image, and university perceived quality. Moreover, this work investigates all these relationships to produce a gender-based comparison. The research philosophy of positivism and quantitative research methods were applied in the present research. Primary data were collected through a questionnaire-based survey that was administered cross sectional in different government and private universities in Islamabad, Pakistan, and filled out by 384 participants. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) conducted through factor loadings/outer loadings for uni-dimensionality of measurement model generating a true model. Factor loading was applied to Partial Least Square-Structural Equation ix Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the study‘s factors/hypotheses. The results show that university awareness, university image, and university perceived quality positively impact student loyalty. The direct paths from individual cultural values, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation, and collectivism to student loyalty were significant. Meanwhile, masculinity does not impact student loyalty, and university awareness does not mediate the relationship between individual cultural values and student loyalty. University perceived quality mediates between individual cultural values and student loyalty except for the indirect path through masculinity. Moreover, female and male students differ in terms of the relationships between individual cultural values and student loyalty. This study illustrates that universities need to consider students‘ cultural values in their brand equity models if they are to increase the loyalty of students.