The determi̇nati̇on of employees' awareness of their impact on brand equity

Brand equity is a vital factor to gain competitive advantages for firms. Employees plays an important role in order to get superior brand equity in the eyes of customers. Their physical and mental capabilities affect the products' qualities and the overall brand equity when producing, developing and delivering the product and service. For this, firm's employees must be aware of their impact on the brand equity. When the employees have high awareness of their impact on the brand equity, they contribute the firm's brand equity much. This study aims to determine the employees' awareness of their impact on brand equity and its influencers. In order to reveal that, we reconsidered the Helm (2011)'s corporate reputation awareness study for the consumer-based brand equity (Aaker, 1991 and Keller, 1993). This study is to contribute the branding literature to handle the employees' awareness of their impact on brand equity and its influencers. The study has three sections. In the first section, we demonstrated the importance of brand and brand equity. Then we discussed the terms and explanations of perceived brand equity, affective commitment and job satisfaction. In the third section, we revealed the research model, hypotheses and data collection, measurements, statistical techniques and results. We tested our research model on the employers who work at Abant Izzet Baysal University. We used survey method and we collected 301 valid questioners. Finally, we discussed our findings and gave the some suggestions for managers and marketers. Using EFA, CFA and SEM, we founded that employees' awareness of their impact on the brand equity is affected by employees' affective commitment towards the organization. Our results also show that perceived brand equity affects both affective commitment and job satisfaction. However, the findings didn't support the effect of job satisfaction on the employees' awareness of their impact on brand equity. In conclusion, employees' perceived brand equity positively effects on affective commitment and it turned to employees' awareness of their impact on brand equity. This result showed that our research model is valid and managers should focus the improving the employees' awareness of their impact on brand equity. They should give an importance to employees' perceived brand equity and affective commitment to organization.