The Impact Of Service Quality And Consumer Decision Factors On Brand Equity

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between service quality, consumer decision factors and brand equity in hotel industry.  The population of this research is 17 brand name “Five star” and “Four star” hotels in Thailand.  There is a survey on service quality, consumer decision factors and brand equity responded to by guests of the hotels.  The samples for the study were 370 guests of the hotels.  Paired samples t-statistics test method was used to test the differences and similarities of the mean response between service quality expectations and customers’ perceived service quality.  The research used descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and ANOVA to test the hypotheses.  The results indicate that there was no significant difference between the expectation and perception of service quality of Thai hotels on all five dimensions.  The results also indicate that there is no relationship between service quality and brand equity.  However, the results indicate that there is a relationship between quality perception and consumer decision factors.  Furthermore, a relationship was found between quality perception and brand equity in the hotels.  In addition, the research found there is a relationship between consumer decision factors and brand equity. Moreover, the research found there is a relationship between service quality, consumer decision factor and brand equity.  The contribution is derived from the works of Keller (1993) and the study of Aaker (1991), Aaker & Biel (1993), Howard (1994) and Berry (2000).