Measuring Brand Equity:an Investigation of the Kenyan Malted Beer Industry in the East African Breweries Limited and Keroche Industries

Abstract

Measuring brand equity has been a big challenge for brand managers and marketers in Kenya and Africa in general. As a manager one need to have the necessary skills to measure brand equity overtime so as to be kept up to date of the health of a brand and know which direction the brand is headed. The challenge for most brand managers is to develop credible and sensitive measures of brand strength to enable them track the health of a brand overtime. Various scholars have come up with effective and efficient models and parameters to measure brand equity and have demonstrated how best one can make use of them. The research focused on the various managers of different brands who are responsible in managing these brands and concentrated on East African Breweries Ltd and Keroche industries ltd, two main beer industries in the Kenyan market. The aim of this research was to find out the brand equity measurement practices in the beer industry and explain the challenges encountered when measuring brand equity. For this purpose the researcher did a survey where he interviewed thirty eight respondents who were mainly managers of the various beer brands. The questionnaire comprised eight questions covering the two objectives. The main findings showed that the two beer industries used almost similar measures which include brand loyalty, brand awareness, perceived quality, and brand association to measure brand equity as suggested by authors such as Aaker. The study also found out that the main challenges that were experienced by managers in the practice were, poor training, underfunding in research and lack of cooperation from staff, retailers and middlemen. The practical implication of this research is that learning institutions offering marketing courses should integrate brand management skills that will help marketing managers or brand managers to be able to participate professionally in brand building activities and measuring brand equity. This will help a great deal address the challenges faced by most managers while measuring brand equity and managing brands in general.