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Abstract

Purpose – The study aims to: measure brand associations in the context of a fitness club, test theinfluence of brand associations on the development of brand loyalty, and investigate the role of servicequality on the development of brand associations.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 165 members of a managed-owned fitness club,located in North Greece, participated in the study. They completed a 25-item questionnaire to measurebrand associations, and a 25-item questionnaire to measure service quality.Findings – The exploratory factor analysis revealed eight brand association factors: popularity,management, logo, escape, vicarious achievement, nostalgia, pride and affect. In terms of therelationships among brand associations, loyalty and service quality, the regression analyses revealedthat: five of the eight brand associations (escape, nostalgia, pride, logo, and affect) significantlycontributed to the prediction of loyalty, the service quality dimensions predicted significant amount ofvariances in all the eight brand associations.Practical implications – The study provides support for the value of measuring brand associationsin the fitness industry. Furthermore, various suggestions related to how fitness club managers canmeasure brand associations and design marketing strategies in order to develop them, are discussed.Originality/value – The study provides empirical verification of the links among brandassociations, brand loyalty and service quality, which have been theoretically proposed, but notempirically tested in the literature.

Introduction

The value of branding research has been well documented in the business academicliterature, since it can guide the development of effective marketing strategy, andincrease consumer loyalty (Gladden and Funk, 2002; Keller, 1993, 2003; Low and Lamb,2000). One of the key topics in branding research is the measurement and developmentof brand equity (Keller, 1993, 2008; Ross et al., 2006). Keller (1993) defined brand equityin terms of the “marketing effect uniquely attributable to the brand” (p. 1). Theseeffects are related to the outcomes derive as a result of the unique characteristics of abrand, in comparison to its competitors. Two models have been proposed for theconceptualisation of brand equity. Aaker and McLoughlin (2007) proposed afour-factor model consisting of: brand awareness, brand associations, perceivedquality and brand loyalty. Keller (1993), on the other hand, proposed that brand equityis determined by brand knowledge, which is a two dimensional construct, consisting ofbrand awareness and brand image. This model proposed that the development ofbrand image is based on brand associations held in consumers’ memory. The construct of brand associations is therefore a key one in both the above proposed models. Brandassociations are defined as thoughts and ideas hold by individuals in their memoryrelated to a specific service or a product (Aaker, 1991, 1996; Keller, 1993).Brand equity research, has been recently developed by North American researchersin the context of spectator sports (Gladden and Funk, 2002; Gladden and Milne, 1999;Gladden et al., 1998; Ross, 2006, 2007; Ross et al., 2006). These studies have mainlyadjusted and applied Aaker’s (1991) and Keller’s (1993) models of brand equity; theirmain purpose was to build the construct of brand associations i本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。