‘The Effect of Brand Image on the Customer Loyalty and Satisfaction in the Context of a Telecommunication Company’ Proposal

Introduction

Brand image can be termed as evaluating the beliefs and the perception of the customers with regard to a specific product, a service, or a company (Kahle & Kim 2006, p. 4). The theory has become one of the most accepted forms of marketing, as it involves satisfying the customers with their psychological need.

This theory has been adopted and accepted by many marketers as it facilitates benchmarking of brand value during marketing (Kerin, Hartley, & Rudelius 2009, p. 132). This idea is drawn from the fact that providing customers with psychological benefits creates room for loyalty, and thus increases the rate of customer turnover through repeat business. However, what effect does brand image benefits have on the customer satisfaction and loyalty?

Justification of the Question

The above question is crucial since it will help the researcher to utilise the academic knowledge drawn from diverse academic literatures on brand image benefits in relation to a telecommunication firm, and in this case, the Vodafone Egypt.

Thus, the researcher will be in a position of criticising the academic literature on brand image, with a focus on the role of customer satisfaction and loyalty in the in the industry. More so, the researcher will be in a position of Coming up with a up with a theoretical framework, which will help to assess the brand image benefits with regard to customer satisfaction as well as loyalty, and more so, establish the extent to which they are correlated.

Relation to Previous Research

Traditionally, brand image has been used as a tool of differentiating a product, service, or companies, as many people believe that it creates room for identity that customers seek while buying a product or a service from a given company (Romaniuk & Sharp 2004). A number of marketing research studies affirm that brand image benefit has a positive correlation with loyalty, which helps the customers repurchase the goods or services (Brooks 2010, p. 67).

In this regard, the brand benefit entails portraying high levels of relationships, showing confidence, as well as providing special treatments to customers.

This theory emphasizes on creating a good customer-company relationship, as this creates an avenue for loyalty. However, other studies have affirmed otherwise, citing no relationship between quality service provision and loyalty (Brooks 2010, p. 158). This aspect of contradictory inference brings forth one prime question: do benefits of brand image have a correlation with consumer loyalty?

Dubrovski (2001) rebuffs the idea of measuring brand image by considering attribute measurement as the only viable instrument. Dubrovski affirms that other practical measurement tools must be included in the process, such as value and benefit that comes with buying the good or service; thus, the author forms a current theory in market research.

Dubrovski’s assertion has contributed widely in establishing the rationale behind of assessing customer satisfaction with regard to brand image. Authenticating this assertion will lead is to one prime question: is there a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and brand image benefit?

Another theory conceptualizes that customers become loyal to a particular firm because of a previous satisfaction they had with the brand (Schmitt & Simonson 1997, p. 67). This is also evidenced by a number of market research, which has continually confirmed that loyalty has a positive correlation with satisfaction of the customers (Brooks 2010, p. 125).

The studies on this issue, however, dwell on recommendation and intentions to draw their inferences, bringing forth one prime question: is there a positive correlation between loyalty and satisfaction of the customers?

Vodafone Egypt is one of the companies that can be used to assess the brand image of a telecommunication service. However, the fact that it is a multinational company makes it challenging on evaluating ways to approach and evaluate the brand image for the company.

While a number of companies use symbolic benefits to draw potential customers to their products, the Vodafone Egypt has been using functional benefits to not only satisfy the customers but also create customer loyalty (Tamer 2012). The methodology in this proposal will consider customers of Vodafone Egypt as the participants.

Proposed Methods

Using experimental design, the study will delve into in-depth empirical research to study the ‘effect of brand image on the loyalty and satisfaction in the context of a telecommunication company’. Experimental design will prove to be of paramount importance in this study because it will help the investigator establish the cause-effect analysis of the variables. The study will make a casual inference of the following questions:

1. Do benefits of brand image have a correlation with consumer loyalty?
2. Is there a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and brand image benefit?
3. Is there a positive correlation between loyalty and satisfaction of the customers?

The study will use both quantitative and qualitative study that will allow a thorough investigation on whether the loyalty and satisfaction play a critical role in determining the brand image of a telecommunication company. To enhance the validity, the study will investigate on the research problem using a wide range of secondary sources (Yin 2006, p.14). More so, investigation will be carried out through the primary sources in an ethnographic study.

The participants will include all customers of telecommunication services across Egypt, who will be selected randomly. This cross-sectional study will provide all answers to the survey questions and interviews at the end of the study. Formulation of questionnaire will be based on the qualitative studies emanating from books and articles that are grounded with theories of brand image, customer value, as well as customer satisfaction, among others.

The instruments of measurement will include diverse scales that will measure social as will as emotional connotation of the customers with regard to telecommunication services. The questions will be phrased in such a way that they will answer the brand image benefit.

A Likert 5-level scale will be used to assess the questionnaire, and this will measure the attitude of the participants with regard to relationship between brand image, loyalty and satisfaction. Customer satisfaction will be measured using ten-scale instrument similar to likert scale. The customer loyalty will also be measured, with a view of assessing the brand image of the company.

To answer the questions of the study, data will be entered in the computer system to measure the brand image benefits, loyalty and satisfaction. SPSS software will be employed to analyse the results of the questionnaire, where the means, standard deviations, percentages, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), unpaired t-Test, and Pearson’s correlation coefficient will be calculated to establish relationships (Hardy & Bryman 2004, p. 54).

Reflection

Potential Practical and Empirical Obstacles

Even though the study will attempt to employ a number of secondary sources to come up with comprehensive information regarding the effect of brand image on the customer loyalty and satisfaction, the study will experience a limitation towards accessing some information, because there is little literature covered in the context of telecommunication service in relation to customer satisfaction and loyalty.

More over, even though probability-based sampling of participants will enhance the external validity, the fact that the study is a cross-sectional one limits its chances in as far as assessing the consistency of brand image is concerned. A cross-sectional study may jeopardize the external validity since it does not take a pre and a post evaluation test to establish the short and the long-term effects of the prevailing external factor on brand image of the Vodafone Egypt (Page, Cole, & Timmreck 1995, p. 92)

Conceptual and Theoretical Problems and Difficulties

Even though the researcher will attempt to use books and article grounded on theories of brand image, there are a number of contradicting inferences within the sources, and this calls for a careful selection of the sources.

For case in point, while some theories suggest that customer satisfaction leads to brand loyalty, which, in turn leads to brand image, other studies do not find a correlation between satisfaction and loyalty, demonstrating that they are mutually exclusive. Thus, the conceptual framework will call for a careful selection of variables.

Ethics

Ethical consideration will be critical in this study and will be attained by ensuring that the study gets an approval from the Institutional Review Board or similar ethics review committee, which will ascertain that the study does not infringe on the rights of the participants; thus, there will be no compulsion in recruiting participants.

More so, the researcher will ascertain the point of the participants’ interest in an effort to establish the content validity, which will help to eradicate biased responses from the participants. In this case, content validity will be established by assessing the extent to which the study represents the attitudes of the respondents (Creswell, 2003, p. 183).

My Position as a Researcher in a Political Field

This research study will aim at investigating the effect of brand image on the customer loyalty and satisfaction in a telecommunication context. As a researcher in a political field, I will be in a position of finding answers to a number of complex issues surrounding the brand image of Vodafone Egypt.

Being a multinational company will help me provide more answers as to what extent the company is able to create a positive brand image within the country. Hence, I will be in a position of highlighting the conditions under which the political environment should cooperate with Vodafone Egypt in order to create a brand image benefit.

Conclusion

The results of the study will be regarded as viable because they will be based on probability sapling of a large sample size of customers from all telecommunication services in Egypt.

According to the findings, it is imperative to note that, indeed, functional role of brand image has a positive correlation with satisfaction and this is consistent with some finding in the literature. However, even though the findings will have a great impact on understanding brand image of telecommunication firm, the study will need to be replicated in order to address matters concerning sustainability of brand image in cases where all aspects of brand image, including symbolic and social benefit.

Timetable

• April 6^rd -May 16, 2012 – Fully analysing the past and present literature review pertaining external factors affecting the brand image of Vodafone Egypt
• May 23 –May 30, 2012- Collecting data from participants through interviews, as well as organising it according to their topics/themes, constructs, and theoretical framework.
• June 5^th – June 28, 2012- Further collection of data from a case study of Vodafone Egypt with regard to its brand image.
• July 3^rd – July 27, 2012- Analysing all the data collected from the ethnographic study using diverse statistical methods.
• August 7, 2012- Submitting the entire report of brand image of the Vodafone Egypt

List of References

Brooks, 2010, The power of loyalty: 10 essential steps to build a successful customer loyalty strategy. Irvine, Calif.: Entrepreneur Press.

Creswell, J 2003, Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (2nd ed.), Sage publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Dubrovski, D 2001, The role of customer satisfaction in achieving business excellence. Total Quality Management, vol. 12, 920-925.

Hardy, M & Bryman, A 2004, Handbook of data analysis. Sage Publications, London.

Kahle, L & Kim, C 2006, Creating images and the psychology of marketing communication, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. Mahwah, NJ.

Kerin, R , Hartley, S, & Rudelius, W, 2009, Marketing, McGraw-Hill/Irwin, Boston.

Page, R, Cole, G, & Timmreck, T 1995, Basic epidemiological methods and biostatistics: A practical guidebook, Jones and Bartlett, Boston.

Romaniuk, J & Sharp, B 2004, Conceptualizing and measuring brand salience. Marketing Theory, vol 4 no. 4, 327-342.

Schmitt, B, & Simonson, A 1997, Marketing aesthetics: The strategic management of brands, identity, and image, Free Press, New York.

Tamer, Y 2012, Case Study: Vodafone Egypt. Web.

Yin, R 2006, Case study research: Design and methods, Sage, Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Appendix

Summary of the Ethnography

The interview process will involve collecting data concerning the views of the participants regarding brand image benefit, which include experiential, symbolic benefit, social benefit, functional benefit, as well as the appearance, in relation to customer satisfaction and loyalty. This will entail answering the following question:

Experiential Benefit

• What kind of telecommunication service makes you feel good?
• What kind of telecommunication service would enable you to increase service usage?
• What kind of communication service would induce pleasure to you?

Social benefit

• Does our bran help you feel accepted?
• Does our brand improve the how others perceive you?

Functional Benefit

• Does our brand perform according to its expectation?
• Is our brand reliable for service?

Symbolic Benefit

• Do you look cheap while using our brand?
• Do people think that you have an elegant lifestyle by using or brand?
• Do you normally fit well with other members of the community while using our brand?

Appearance Benefit

• Does our brand provide a solution that is within your expectation?
• Does our brand portray a good impression for the firm?
• Is our brand more effective than other brands across the country?

And in an effort to acquire qualitative information on the external factors affecting the brand image of Vodafone Egypt, the participants will subsequently be asked to support their answers by providing an explicit explanation.