EXPLORING THE CONSUMER-BASED BRAND EQUITY RELATIONS ON CROATIAN YOUTH FASHION MARKET

Brand equity is considered a precious marketing concept for practitioners and scholars. This study is focused on the perceptual consumer-based brand equity approach and widely adopted Aaker's (1991) conceptualization with four primary dimensions: brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality, and brand loyalty. These components represent the salient dimensions of a multidimensional brand equity index. The research followed the original 14-item Yoo and Donthu (2001) consumer-based brand equity measurement scale. The research hypotheses were successfully corroborated within the Croatian fashion youth market on a sample of college students (167). The results pointed out the associative relationships among all brand equity components, with the exemption of causal relation between brand associations and brand loyalty. The same exemption (brand associations) emanated from the investigation of causal relationships between brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality, brand loyalty and the overall brand equity index. This study contributes to the previously assumed hierarchy order between consumer-based brand equity components and points out the marketing activities which precedes particular component enhancement.