The Impact Of Brand Awareness On Market Brand Performance Of Service Brands: Contextual Consideration of Kenya’s Banking Industry

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of brand awareness on market brand performance in the services sector within the context of a developing economy, in particular the banking industry in Kenya. The study was necessitated by lack of empirical evidence from a developing economy's context linking brand awareness measures from the perspective of the customer and brand market performance measures from the brand managers' perspective.The study adopted apositivist, quantitative research design, with cross-sectional field survey data collection method. Data were collected from stratifies, randomly selected sample of 347 consumers of financial services of 35 commercial banks in Kenya and 35 senior managers of these banks.Correlation analysis was conducted to investigate the impact of brand awareness variables on market brand performance. The study finds that brand recall and brand recognition are positively and significantly correlated, and that brand recall and overall brand awareness are significant predictors of market brand performance. However, brand recognition has no significant correlation with market brand performance.These results suggest that marketing/brand managers should continue to develop and implement effective brand awareness campaigns in order to attract and enhance consumers’ attention towards their brands and thus enhance market brand performance.

Keywords: Brand Awareness; Brand Recall; Brand Recognition; Market Brand,  Brand Performance.