Measuring Customer Based Brand Equity: Empirical Evidence from the Tourism Industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Branding literature emerged during the 1940s, and academic researches related to destination branding is a relatively new marketing concept for the tourism industry, it remains a lack of theory in particular that addresses the measurement of the effectiveness of destination branding over time. This study is to examine the practicality and applications of a customer-based brand equity model in the Tourism Industry in Sri Lanka. In this study based on Keller's constructs of the pyramid of brand equity, including brand salience, brand performance, brand imagery, brand judgments, brand feelings, and brand resonance, are investigated and their relations with brand equity .  The present study used a sample size of 385 those who have visited Sri Lanka as a tourist and simple random sampling techniques were used to select the individuals from the population.  The data were collected by administering questionnaire. The research hypotheses were tested through Structural Equation Modeling and the final model was confirmed. The findings of the study revealed that only the relationships between brand imagery and brand equity were not significant, and all other relationships were significant. Also, fit indices obtained for the conceptual model refer to the high validity of the model in explaining the relations among variables towards tourism industry.