Impact of a Brand Equity on Consumer Purchase Decision in L'Oreal Skincare Products
IntroductionIn this present age, brand is the important tool to uplift the economy of any country. Buying behavior of people can be changed by the help of brand name and equity. Brand name helps the consumer to choose easily in their busy routine life because now people are more conscious about the brand name so companies should consider that to compete in highly competitive environment they have to make a well known brand name and image in consumer's mind to influence their choice (Shehzad, 2014) Brand awareness is an important tool that can influence the purchase decision because when the customer want to buy a product a brand image or brand name comes to his mind that shows that company or brand has more loyalty. Higher brand awareness tend to have more loyalty and market image (Chi, 2009) Companies use different factor to make an image in the mind of consumer that can be a name, symbol design or mixture of these three so that customer can identify specific brand or product. To be in competition brand equity is an important tool to get attention of people that may lead buying decision (Bansah, 2015).People give their attention toward brands when their level of income rise and in India income level of people is rising so their expectation of quality products rise and they prefer brands. A brand could be defined as seller's promise that he will provide a distinctive set of features to its customer's consistently when a brand provide quality products to its customers they will be loyal to brand and make repurchase decision (Joshi, 2013).Consumer choice decision can be facilitated by brand equity factors as there are so many brands in market that offer similar products with little differentiation so it could be difficult for consumer to make a choice but brand equity is tool that could influence the buying decision of consumer and this study helps to check the impact of brand equity on purchase decision (Gunawardane, 2015) In order to gain awareness and understanding of consumer purchasing decision companies invest heavy resources of finance and time and study the behavior of consumers toward a brand.it indicates that brand is a key assets for businesses through which they can influence the purchasing decision of its customers (Rindell, 2008).Consumer choice is influenced by awareness and loyalty of brand and companies tries to keep their brand in consideration of their customer by repetitive advertising and fulfilling the expectations of its customers. When customers has more knowledge about the perceived quality by a brand they will usually prefer that particular brand (Macdonald, 2000).Now a day customers has more information about number of brands in market and customers need a brand which they are already aware of. Brand image is very important when customers made purchase decision for the first time but also family and friends effect is another crucial factor that affect the purchase decision (Baba, 2014).Many researches has focused on different brand products but not only the product sector but service sector is also concerned about the brand awareness and brand loyalty in order to maintain good position in highly competitive environment. Customers are influenced by the quality service provided by the company or expectation meet by the brand in service sector (Hakkak, 2015).This study is focused to define the relationship between consumer and brands because over past two decades many researches has been conducted on various dimensions of brand equity and now brand equity is an important success factor for a company to differentiate its products and company from its competitor and also influence the customer's decision toward a brand (Farjam, 2015) In the competitive environment it is necessary for any company to retain its customers and it's difficult for the company to retain its customer because brand has to fulfill his customer's expectation to prove that the decision of the customer was right.