Investigating the impacts of brand equity on customer satisfaction, brand popularity, and brand performance for portable gadgets

Although numerous studies investigated the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, a few studies considered the simultaneous relationships between brand equity, customer satisfaction, brand popularity, and performance for portable gadgets. The present study primarily aims to evaluate the relationships of brand equity with customer satisfaction, popularity, and performance for portable gadgets, such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets, among the students of Islamic Azad University of Arak Branch, Iran, who use Samsung devices. A total of 406 questionnaires were delivered to Samsung users among Islamic Azad University students in Arak Branch. Once the questionnaires were collected, correlation and significance analyses were carried out by using SPSS and SmartPLS and path coefficient techniques. According to the results, brand equity and customer satisfaction were able to explain 0.731% of the variations in brand popularity, and brand equity explained 0.688% of the variations in customer satisfaction. The results also revealed that customer satisfaction, brand equity, and brand popularity were able to explain 0.823% of the variations in brand performance. It was found that brand equity had positive, significant relationships with customer satisfaction, brand popularity, and brand performance. Furthermore, customer satisfaction had positive, significant relationships with brand popularity and brand performance, while the relationship between brand popularity and brand performance was not found to be significant. The results indicated that the proposed model was fitted properly.