M.A. Thesis:

Investigating the effect of brand prestige and distinctiveness on customers brand identification by mediation of brand attractiveness (study of Samsung household customers)

The issue of maintaining and enhancing brand loyalty has become a strategic challenge for companies that are interested in developing their market competitive position. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of consumer-brand identification through brand attractiveness. The statistical population of this study consisted of Samsung household appliances consumers in Mashhad. The research tool was a questionnaire of 15 questions with a 5-level Likert scale. Data were collected in person from sample persons and the final sample size was 396. After reviewing and verifying content and structure validity and also reliability of the questionnaire, the collected data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling technique by AMOS software which based on this, brand distinctiveness and brand prestige influenced brand identification through brand attractiveness. Other results of the research were that the direct impact of brand prestige on brand identification was confirmed, but brand distinctiveness did not directly affect brand identification. Besides it was also found that the indirect effect of brand distinctiveness on brand identification was more than the indirect effect of brand prestige on brand identification. The effect of brand prestige on brand identification was 0.95 and the effect of brand distinctiveness was 0.32. In general, the findings of this study confirm the important role of brand prestige customer-brand identification with the brand of household appliances. .

Keywords: Keywords: brand distinctiveness, brand prestige, brand attractiveness, brand identification