Valor das marcas (brand equity) para o consumidor: desenvolvimento e validação de um instrumento de mensuração no setor automotivo

Abstract

The importance of brands have been more and more referred to, as result of the increase o competitiveness and of the need of organizations to show the differences and to aggregate value to their products and services. On the other hand, the concept of Brand Equity for the consumer has been strongly quoted in the existing literature by distinguished authors in this field (AAKER, 2000; KAPFERER, 2004), but there are only few empiric studies that try to measure it, verifying its impact on the consumer’s purchasing intent. Through two surveys with about 760 questionnaires that were preceded by a qualitative exploratory phase the study was aimed in validating a scale of Brand Equity for the automotive sector. The scale that was created revealed to have good psychometric proprieties. Next, during the search for a nomological validity, it was possible to observe the impact of the brand equity in the customer’s purchasing intent. This paper also suggests the development of the BEI (Brand Equity Index), capable of comparing several different brands and evaluating their attractiveness. The high correlation between the BEI, the purchasing intention and the actual automobile sales volume, corroborates to point out their capacity as a predictor of market transactions. The results also contribute to the marketing managers, since they show significant managing implications of the brand equity, enabling them to identify the dimensions which are considered relevant in the client’s choice of an automobile’s brand.  The proposed methodology can be applied in other sectors of the economy, amplifying therefore the contribution of this paper.