THE EFFECT OF BRAND EQUITY TOWARDS STUDENTS DECISION IN CHOOSING PRESIDENT UNIVERSITY AS THEIR COLLEGE (STUDY CASE PRESIDENT UNIVERSITY STUDENTS BATCH 2012)

Abstract

This study is motivated by the growing phenomenon about the increasing number of private university that as a consequences from the increasing number of students every year who are willing to continue their studies in higher education instituiton. That situation increase the competition between private universities that are offering various or even the similar study program, and service attributes. This situation will create the brand parity, where there are many products or services offered with identical benefits. Then the consumer will not based their purchase decision in quality, since they see the quality among that brand name is not much different, then it is required the strong brand equity to create the differentiation and competitive advantage between one brand with its competitors. Particularly this study analyze the effect of brand equity of President University that can support the students to make decision about their college. The problem of this study is “whether brand equity elements in President University can influence the students decision in choosing President University as their college”. This study is aimed to analyze the effect of brand equity elements, that consist of brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association, and brand loyalty towards the students decision in choosing President University as their college. After literature review and hypothesis development, the data was collected by questionnaire method using simple random sampling technique to 90 respondents. The population in this research is President University students batch 2012. Data was analyzed by using quantitative analysis. Quantitative analysis consist of validity and reliability test, classical assumption test, multiple regression analysis, hypothesis testing by T test and F test, and coefficient of determination (R2) analysis. Where buying decision is (Y), brand awareness is (X1), perceive quality (X2), brand association (X3), and brand loyalty is (X4). Hypothesis testing using T test shows that partially brand awareness, brand association, and brand loyalty has significant effect into the students decision, meanwhile perceived quality does not have significant effect. F test showed that all independent variable are adequate to test dependent variable, means that independent variable have a significant effect into dependent variable with F score is 32.056. Adjusted R2 of 0.583 shows that 58.3% of students decision is explained by all of independent variables in this research, and the other 41.7% is explained by other variables.