Since the late 80s, brand equity (BE) has been regarded as one important marketing concept in both business practice and academic research as it gives marketers more competitive advantage through successful brands (Lassar, Mittal, & Sharma, 1995, p. 11).
Although there are many researches about brand equity carried on by numbers of authors, most of their conclusions are consistent with Farquhar’s concept of brand equity as “the value added by the brand to the product” (Srinivasan, Park, & Chang, 2005, p.
1433). However, there are a limited number of conceptual and empirical researches focusing on services, not products. Additionally, the research information of customerbased brand equity (CBBE) of service brands in hospitality industry is pretty basic (Hsu,
Hung, & Tang, 2012, p. 356). Brand equity knowledge in hospitality firms are mostly based on “theoretical or anecdotal evidence” only (Kayaman & Arasli, 2007, p. 93).
Similar to any other industries, hospitality marketers are pressurized to measure the marketing performances and justify the effectiveness of marketing activities as well
(Christodoulides & de Chernatony, 2010, p. 43). Brand equity measurement has become
“part of a set of marketing performance indicators”. The analysis of brand equity and the way it is measured has a wide range of believers and practitioners that contribute the idea of “black box orientation” (Christodoulides & de Chernatony, 2010, p. 44). In hospitality industry, brand equity may be related to the ability to geographically expand, expand through franchising or develop sub-brands of a hotel brand (O 'neill & Mattila, 2010, p. 29).
The authors also mentioned that this subject has been particularly salient for international hotel groups like Marriott or Accor.
Therefore, this paper will focus on brand equity measurements for services, framing within hospitality. In order to do so, author will critically examine the importance of brand equity
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