Assessment of customer based brand equity and its impact on hospital selection intention in private health care enterprises

Along with the globalization, the variety of products, services and brands in every area has increased. It has become very difficult for customers to decide on this diversity. For businesses; it becomes a difficult process to get the attention of the conscious and researching customer. Because of the changing environmental conditions and customer behaviors, customer-based brand equity is getting more and more important every day. The customer-based brand equity can be described as the general impression that the brand has left on the customer. The relationship between the hospital selection intention of the concept of customer-based brand equity, whose importance is rapidly increasing every day, has been examined in this research. Based on Aaker's customer-based brand equity model, a research model was developed and four basic dimensions (brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand association and perceived quality) of the model were examined. Online survey questions were applied to 630 people within the provincial borders of Istanbul. Participants who were included in the survey were selected from persons who purchased services at least once from a private healthcare institution. As a result of the study, it has been found that perceived quality, brand loyalty and brand associations have positive effects on the brand equity from the factors determining the customer based brand equity. It is also observed that there is a positive relationship between the brand equity and the customer selection intention of hospitals. The information on the relationship between the concept of customer-based brand equity and the intention of the hospital selection will provide different contributions to the academicians in the field of marketing and private healthcare providers. It can be said that there are basically two important contributions of this study. The first of these; the relationship between the customer based brand equity concept and the hospital selection intention is examined in a model and a reliable and valid model is presented. The second important contribution is; information about customer behavior and choices about the marketing of private health institutions. Proposals may be made to researchers who will work on this topic in the future, and decision makers involved in determining the marketing strategies of businesses. The fact that there is not a comprehensive study on this subject in the field of health in our country also makes it important to include this subject in the thesis.