Prioritizing Brand Equity Methods from Customer's Perspective for Finance Industry

Brand equity assessment serves as an important measurement of strategic value for internal use as well as for a number of external stakeholders. While there are a number of methods and models available for brand equity assessment، it is still uncertain which approach is best. Yet، almost no research exists that has empirically prioritized the existing brand equity methods from the perspective of different stakeholders. In this paper a model is developed for prioritizing brand equity methodologies from the viewpoint of customers as a stakeholder of brand equity. The criteria of this process are the expectations of customers including quality، reputation، and benefit according to Jones brand equity stakeholder model. The priority of these criteria sets via a structured questionnaire filled by customers. Then the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) incorporates to prioritize brand equity methodologies versus these criteria. The empirical findings of this study indicate that the more a method evaluates the benefit، the more it is relevant for measuring brand equity. Among brand equity methods evaluated in this study، Keller’s customer-based brand equity model gained the highest weight regarding taking benefit into consideration and was selected as the best method to evaluate brands from the customers’ perspective in finance industry. This study set out to prioritize the brand valuation pool to help practitioners and academics in assessing the alternative techniques and selecting the most relevant one for customers.