Abstract:
Industries face with issues in managing brand equity and its significant is that it helps firms
to enhance their cash flow and service differentiation to enjoy and obtain benefits out of
competitive advantage. Thus, brand equity is treated as the most valuable intangible asset
according to literatures. Brand creates the most powerful point of difference among service
suppliers. Therefore, it is imperative to explore the dimensions of brand equity such as
brand awareness, brand association, brand perceived quality and brand loyalty.
There has been a boom in the tourism industry after the prolong war in the Eastern province
of Sri Lanka. This helps hoteliers create innovative marketing strategies and enjoy
competitive advantage in the industry. Hence, the objective of the research was to explore
the customer based brand equity among the tourist hotels in the Eastern province of Sri
Lanka.
In order to explore the elements of customer based brand equity of the hotel industry,
researcher obtained filled questionnaires from 115 respondents who enjoyed the services
of hotels in the Eastern province. Multivariate analysis was carried out to explore the
elements of the customer based brand equity. Findings suggest that all dimensions of the
customer based brand equity significantly contribute to the brand equity of the tourist hotels
in the Eastern province of Sri Lanka. Further, the extent to which the dimensions create
the brand equity is also investigated in this research.
