Study On Consumers' Attitude Towards Volvo's Customer-Based Brand Equity After Geely's Acquisition

This paper focuses on the case of Chinese Geely's acquisition of Swedish Volvo, it is a typical study about low-equity brand acquiring high-equity brand. The purpose is to explore the change of consumers' attitude towards Volvo's customer-based brand equity(CBBE) after Geely's acquisition. This study makes use of Keller's(1993) theory on customer-based brand equity and Evans'(1997, 2003) attitude components in consumer behaviour, to identify the influence on consumers' attitude and to measure the change of Volvo's CBBE from both Chinese and European consumers' perception.The quantitative approach is adopted in this research by designing an online questionnaire with two sections for the measurement of consumers' attitude and Volvo's CBBE before and after the acquisition. In addition, descriptive research is also used, with the aim of identifying and describing the change of consumers' attitude towards Volvo's CBBE after being acquired by Geely. The total CBBE is measured by three sub-dimensions according to the previous existing models: brand awareness(BA), brand image(BI) and overall brand equity(OBE) and consumers' attitude is measured by three components: Cognition, Affect, and Conation.The result of the research shows that consumers' attitude towards Volvo's CBBE negatively changed. As for consumers' attitude towards Volvo, the value from the measurement decreased by 4.55%. And as for the change of Volvo's CBBE, it declined by 4.06% after the acquisition by Geely. Besides, Volvo's financial report shows an increasing trend of retail sales. Therefore, in the case of Geely's acquisition of Volvo, it can be concluded that lowequity brand(Geely) acquiring high-equity brand(Volvo) does not have big influence on the acquired brand equity(Volvo).