Upscale Hotel Brand Equity, Brand Relationships, Customer Repurchase Behavior

Branding strategy, focusing on brand equity management and brand relationships cultivating, has become the competitive edge of upper class hotels. Customer-based brand equity emphasizes the important status of customers' perceptions of brand, because those who value highly of the brand would like to keep emotional relationship with the brand. The attractiveness of hotel brand to the customer comes from the positive recognition of the brand as well as the emotional bonds between brand and customers. The main value of the brand is its impact on customer repurchasing behavior. Under the framework of "brand equity - brand relationships -customer repurchasing behavior", the thesis supposes that brand equity could affect customer repurchasing behavior both directly and indirectly. It aims to explore the impact of hotel brand equity and brand relationship on customer repurchasing behavior, so as to broaden our vistas as related to hotel brand management. According to literature review and data analysis, the thesis holds that hotel brand equity includes brand popularity, brand reputation, image of product, image of user, image of maker, technical quality and functional quality. It comes to five conclusions as follows: Firstly, brand popularity, brand reputation, image of product, image of user, image of maker and functional quality could indirectly affect customer repurchasing behavior by the mediate of brand relationships;Secondly, among all hotel brand equity, only image of product and functional quality affect repurchasing behavior directly;Thirdly, brand relationships has direct impact on repurchasing behavior;Fourthly, image of product, functional quality and brand relationships show the greatest direct impact on repurchasing behavior among all;Fifthly, technical quality has no evident impact on repurchasing behavior. In the light of the differential impact of hotel brand equity and brand relationships on repurchasing behavior, they are divided into three categories, namely sensitive factors, transferring factors and basic factors. The thesis raises some corresponding suggestions of brand strategy for upper class hotels.