Luxury Brand Equity Model Construction And Empirical Research

Chinese markets are gradually moving from the era of product competition into the era ofbrand competition. The value of the brand has raised widespread concern of enterprises andacademics. Since the introduction of brand equity in the field of marketing in1980s, it has beengot in deep research and application as a new marketing theory. It is an important issue formanagers that how to establish and operate the brand equity. Meanwhile, with China’s rapideconomic growth, the major luxury brands also seize the opportunity to enter the Chinese marketand have achieved a great success. Luxury brands have a long history, high quality, richpersonalized and artistic beauty, which bring consumers a strong sense of satisfaction andsymbolism. Luxury brands not only meet the functional needs of the consumer by the superiorquality, but also they can meet people’s spiritual needs.Building a complete model to measure the luxury brand equity are the main problems to besolved in today’s marketing industry and luxury industry, but few researches have been involved inthis field. Aaker ’s10-factor model of brand equity is important, there are many scholars buildtheir model based on Aaker ’s model. However, there are also some limitations that Aaker ’s modelis a parallel model, which cannot explain the logical sequence of the formation of brand equity.Aaker’s model also doesn’t analyze in depth of the weight of various indicators in brand equitymodel. Keller’s customer-based brand equity model gives the point of view to study brand equityfrom consumers’ knowledge and perception, but the research does not address the specific areas.This study aims to build a luxury brand equity model to explain the process of the formation ofbrand equity, and determine the weight of various indicators of brand equity.This study summarizes the influencing factors of brand equity from the researches ofdomestic and foreign scholars. Combined with the characteristics of luxury brands, this studypoints out a parallel luxury brand equity model with seven factors including brand awareness,brand reputation, brand culture, brand association, brand perception value, brand loyalty andbrand equity through the Delphi method. This model is applied empirically in two brands, Chaneland Armani. Principal component analysis is made on the parallel model to test and correct theoriginal seven factors, which are combined into five factors including brand awareness, brandreputation, brand culture, brand association value and brand equity. Multiple regression analysis ismade on the modified parallel model, and we find that the modified parallel model cannot wellexplain the brand equity as well. This study further builds a multi-level model of brand equity.Structural equation modeling is made to test and correct the multi-level model. A modifiedmulti-level brand equity model is established and we also further research the weight of variousfactors of brand equity.This study establishes the brand equity model to explain the process of formation, influencingfactors and weight of luxury brand equity. The results of this study broaden the research vision ofbrand equity and bring certain help for Chinese enterprises to create, measure and maintain itsown strong brand.