1. UKM Learning and Research Repository
2. PHD Thesis / Tesis PHD
3. Graduate School of Business / Pusat Pengajian Siswazah Perniagaan

Title:	The effects of identification, engagement, perceived innovativeness and co-creation towards brand equity of Bumiputera SME retailers and supporting agency
Authors:	Ahmad Sabri Kassim (ZP01355)
Supervisor:	Nor Asiah Omar, Assoc. Prof. Dr.
Keywords:	Retailers Consumers Branding (Marketing)
Issue Date:	6-Apr-2017
Description:	Retail service branding strategy has become an important phenomenon in building brand equity in service sector particularly among Bumiputera SMEs in Malaysia. The relationship between customers and retailers are more complicated nowadays due to the sophisticated trends of current service retail landscape and high consumer’ expectation. Hence, retail branding strategy and approach are becoming more important to improve the brand equity of SMEs involved. To address the issue, this research put an effort to investigate SME retailers’ brand equity as opposed to product brand equity which most of previous literatures looked into. As such, the objective of this research is to expand the understanding of customer-company identification, customer engagement, customer value co-creation behaviour and perceived retailer innovativeness toward brand equity of retailers and consequently toward brand equity of supporting agency. Brand equity of supporting agency is included in this study due to the symbiotic and synergetic relationship between Bumiputera SME retailers and supporting agency such as MARA. Therefore, this research intended to study the influence of SMEs’ brand equity towards brand equity of MARA as an entrepreneurial development organization (EDO) which is one of the uniqueness of this study. The reciprocal, co-creation and jointly created value are the cutting edge strategies for SMEs business competitiveness and considered as an under research area. Adopting the positivist research paradigm, this study employed questionnaires as its main instrument. A total of 723 useable responses from adult consumers (above 18 years old) who are patronizing SME retailers operating in MARA Business Complexes in six locations including Kuala Lumpur and Selangor (Central Region), Johor Bahru (Southern Region), Kangar (Northern Region) and Kota Bharu (East Coast Region). The proposed hypotheses were tested using Structural Equation Modelling of Partial Least Squares (PLS-SEM) analysis, which associates the relationship of customer-company identification (CCID), customer engagement (CE), perceived retailer innovativeness (PRI) and customer value co-creation behaviour (CVCB) with brand equity of retailers (BE) and brand equity of supporting agency (BESA). This study also proposed seven mediating hypotheses with CVCB and CE as potential mediating variables. The findings suggest that there are positive relationships between CE, PRI and CVCB with BE, whereas the relationship between CCID and BE is not significance. While, there are positive relationships between CCID, CE, PRI and CVCB with BESA. Out of seven mediating hypotheses, six are partially supported while the other one is fully supported. From theoretical perspective, the integration of Social Exchange Theory, Social Identity Theory, S-D Logic, Signalling Theory of Brand Equity and The Wheel of Retailing Theory offered significant contribution in understanding the effect of BE on BESA and all of the proposed hypotheses. From the practical perspective, the findings suggest that to enhance retailers’ brand equity, SME should engage, co-create and continuously innovate the environment of the retail settings. Interestingly, this study also provides empirical evidences about the reciprocal brand relationship between SME retailers and MARA as a supporting agency. We can conclude that the government efforts in building up the SMEs ecosystem through various supporting agencies are greatly needed in order for Malaysian SMEs to stay competitive within the global market.,Ph.D.
Pages:	314
Call Number:	HF5415.1255.A375 2017 tesis
Publisher:	UKM, Bangi
Appears in Collections:	Graduate School of Business / Pusat Pengajian Siswazah Perniagaan

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