THE INFLUENCE OF BRAND AWARENESS, PERCEIVED QUALITY, AND BRAND ASSOCIATION ON CUSTOMER PURCHASE DECISION (A CASE STUDY AT PRESIDENT UNIVERSITY EXTENSION PROGRAM BATCH 2012)

Abstract

Higher education is considered as one of the most valued investment for most people. As the needs of education increase the competition in private universities increase, branding is becoming as one of the most important thing to conduct in order to survive in the competition. This study aims to determine whether the factor of brand awareness, perceived quality, and brand association affects student decisions to continue his studies at the President University extension class. These research data were collected from President University extension class student batch 2012 with 110 students’ respondents as the sample. The data were collected based on probability, random stratified sample where population were categorized into an equal category where from each category the data are taken randomly. The most influential variable on the independent variable is the brand awareness (0.241), followed by the variable of perceived quality (0.235), then the last is the brand association variable (0.225). T test result prove that the independent variable affects the dependent variable is the decision to continue their studies at President University extension class and the coefficient of determination (adjusted R Square) obtained 0.228 which means 22% of the study decision variable can be explained by the variable of brand awareness, perceived quality, and brand association, while the remaining 78% is influenced by other variables not examined in this study. F-test result provide that brand awareness, perceived quality, and brand association has significant influence towards purchase decision simultaneously.