THE EFFECT OF CORPORATE BRANDING DIMENSIONS ON CONSUMERS’ PRODUCT EVALUATION CROSS CULTURAL ANALYSIS (A CASE STUDY OF UNILEVER AT PRESIDENT UNIVERSITY)

Abstract

The question on ‘how important the corporate branding is’ appears in the researcher mind which gives further thought on how the corporate branding effects the public. The thought is poured into this research by shrinking the scope of research and observing the effect of corporate branding of multinational company, Unilever, to its consumers. The way of evaluating the corporate branding by consumers is from product brands that measuring the effect of corporate branding dimensions: corporate name, corporate image, corporate reputation and corporate loyalty. The narrowing scope-process gives the main problem in this research which is ‘How is the effect of corporate branding dimensions on consumers’ product evaluation?’ The researcher also extends the problem towards cross-culture analysis which incorporates Indonesian respondents to evaluate Unilever Indonesia’s corporate branding and Chinese respondents to evaluate Unilever China’s corporate branding. The researcher uses the quantitative method and the multiple regression tools to help in discovering the right hypothesis for the effects and then proceeds with the t-test in discovering the comparison of two cultures corporate branding. The conclusion of this research aims towards three corporate branding dimensions (corporate name, corporate reputation and corporate loyalty) of Unilever have given positive effects on the consumers’ evaluation. For the cross-culture analysis, the researcher discovers that the corporate name and corporate image have significant differences between Unilever Indonesia and Unilever China and vice versa for corporate reputation and corporate loyalty. This research proves that there are strong relationships between each of the three corporate branding dimensions (corporate name, corporate reputation and corporate loyalty)and the consumers’ product evaluation of Unilever’s corporate branding.