BRAND EQUITY AS A DETERMINANT OF CUSTOMER COOPERATION GROWTH IN THE ROAD FREIGHT TRANSPORT INDUSTRY

Abstract

This article presents the results of a survey that was carried out among companies commissioning cargo handling on the national transport services market. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between brand awareness, image and brand equity in terms of companies specializing in road freight transport. The relations between brand equity and the process of handling transport orders were also evaluated. Specific hypotheses about significant dependencies between the parameters referred to above were formulated and were then verified by performing a quantitative data analysis, relying on Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and the chi-square test of independence. A statistically significant correlation between brand image and equity, on the one hand, and between brand awareness and image, on the other, has been identified based on the survey. The research confirms the importance of brand equity in the development of business operations, mainly due to the existence of significant and statistically important dependencies between brand equity and customer cooperation-related parameters that have been observed in the three types of relationships under analysis.

Keywords

• brand equity
• brand image
• brand awareness
• customer cooperation
• road freight transport