MEASURING CONSUMER-BASED BRAND EQUITY - EVIDENCE FROM ALBANIAN BANKING SECTOR

Today brands and branding have gained a lot of attention among academics and practitioners as well, since they are considered crucial for the success of a company. The branding literature, however, has been more focused on goods branding, relatively neglecting the services branding. Branding equity in services, as an important concept of services branding, also has not received the deserved attention from academics and services companies’ managers.The study aims to measure the brand equity in services sector, since brand equity is very important for monitoring of the health of services brands. It has been focused in the banking sector, a well-developed and consolidated sector which employs hundreds of individuals and has a very important role in Albanian economy. Nine banks, which make up more than 98 per cent of the domestic market in banking services (according to the official data of the Bank of Albania), were chosen to be included in the study. 250 bank customers were interviewed, using direct interviews. After an extensive literature review about the branding and services branding, seven measures were chosen and used to measure the services brand equity. The findings of the study gave interesting insights about services branding equity and services branding in general. It has important and useful implications for banks’ managers as well as for academics.