ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC RELATIONS STRATEGIES ON CUSTOMERBASED BRAND EQUITY: A STUDY OF NIKE CUSTOMERS IN THE UK

This research aims to evaluate the impacts of Nike's public relations strategies on customer-based brand equity by analyzing the perceptions of Nike customers in the UK. It has also evaluated the effectiveness of Nike's PR strategies and its customer-based brand equity based on customers' perceptions through rating on a five-point Likert scale. This study was conducted based on positivism philosophy and deductive reasoning. This means seven hypotheses were developed based on literature and theories associated with public relations and customer-based brand equity. Primary data from the customers of Nike were collected to test those hypotheses. The strategy of a survey through an online questionnaire tool has been implemented to collect data from Nike customers in the UK. A sample of 151 customers was chosen based on the convenience sampling technique. The data analysis followed statistical and mathematical techniques, including frequencies, charts, percentage analysis, standards deviation, arithmetic mean, correlation, and regression. This study identified that PR strategies have significant positive impacts on customerbased brand equity. This means all the seven PR strategies considered in this study have significant positive impacts on CBBE. The correlation and regression between PR strategies and CBBE indicated that the PR strategies of Nike and customer-based brand equity are intercorrelated with each other and overall PR strategies have significant positive impacts on CBBE with β = 0.817 and p = 0.000. PR strategies implemented by Nike are significantly effective based on customers' perceptions in the UK. Nike has also been significantly managing its customer-based brand equity in the UK.