Abstract:
Culture plays an important role in brand management. Branding and customer loyalty varies from one culture to another. The current research is a contribution to the existing body of knowledge for the scientific community through empirically tested customers’ cultural values-based brand equity model in the higher education sector of Pakistan. The research has significance in generalization of brand equity theory to tertiary education in Pakistan. This work tests various factors influencing student loyalty vis-à-vis higher education in Islamabad (Pakistan). It investigates direct paths from individual cultural values to student loyalty and indirect paths from individual cultural values to student loyalty through brand (university) awareness, its image and perceived quality. Moreover, it probes all these relationships for gender-based comparison. Quantitative research methods have been applied in the present research. Data were collected through a survey from different government and private universities in Islamabad (Pakistan). Sample size has been 384. Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) technique was used in the study to test hypotheses. The results show that university awareness, its image and perceived quality positively impact student loyalty. The direct paths from individual cultural values viz. power distance, uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation and collectivism to student loyalty were found to be significant. Masculinity does not impact student loyalty. University awareness does not mediate between individual cultural values and student loyalty. University’s perceived quality mediates between individual cultural values and student loyalty except the indirect path through masculinity found insignificant. Moreover, female and male students differ among relationships from ix individual cultural values to student loyalty. Implications of the study illustrate that universities need to apply customer’s cultural values-based brand equity to have more loyal. The study is limited to universities in Islamabad (Pakistan). However, further research may be conducted in other countries in different cultural settings.
