Domestic restaurant industry had a steady growth due to the enlargement of franchise restaurant industry, the development and diversification of SMEs, and increasing number of conglomerate-style restaurants. However, with famous foreign companies with strong funds, organizational power, and strong brand power entering the domestic restaurant industry, it is critical that domestic companies work hard to ensure internal stability and to rigorously deal with changing marketing environment.
Brands with the highest customer loyalty formed with different, strong, and unique image are hard to be imitated easily and act as a strong barrier to market entry. Many of past studies regarding brand equity exist however integrated discussion of brand equity measure by collecting industry experts’ opinions has not been attempted that can be applied to real industry.
The purpose of this study is to conduct to derive and refine attributes of brand equity measurement with Delphi technique. To attain the purpose of the study, a panel discussion has been performed with university professors in related area and industry experts who are currently working in restaurant industry. For the validity and reliability test, Kendall’s W analysis has been used. In this study, the attributes of brand equity was classified with 10 sectors; brand satisfaction, brand loyalty, food quality, service quality, atmospheric quality, leadership, perceived value, brand personality, image, and awareness, and 47 variables composed of each attribute has been deduced.
The following results were obtained from this study. First, by analyzing the importance ration scales, it shows that food quality is the most important attribute of all to build and enforce brand equity in restaurant industry. This means that because this brand equity measurement is for restaurant industry, food perceived quality is the essence among all attributes. Second, top 10 factors using Kendall’s Worder are from 8 sectors, meaning that there are not major sector that contribute to restaurant brand equity. Person in charge of marketing department and top managers in restaurant industry should keep these in mind for effective and logical approach to enforce brand equity.