Innovation and its Impact on Consumer Brand Equity: With Evidence from Modern Trade Industry in Colombo, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Innovations enable organizations to introduce novel products and services to its customers. However, within the Modern Trade Industry in Sri Lanka, firms deploy innovations, yet if that is influencing firms establish greater relationships with its customer’s, remains unclear. Similarly, firms focus greatly upon consumer-based brand equity within the modern trade industry but there are no sufficient empirical studies to confirm the contribution of innovation for enhancing consumer based brand equity in modern trade environment. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the innovation on consumer based brand equity in modern trade sector in Sri Lanka. Literature suggests that concept of innovation is formed using innovative outcomes and innovative planning. Hence authors used these two dimensions that form innovation as independent variables to determine the consumer-based brand equity. The research was designed as quantitative research based on positivist paradigm and data were collected through a survey. Accordingly, 280 self-administered questionnaires, were obtained from respondents who are modern trade consumers in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The collected data were analyzed by using both descriptive and inferential statistics tools. PLS-SEM was employed as the main measurement model for testing hypothesis by using Smart-PLS 3 as the main analytical software. The findings revealed that innovation as an outcome and innovative planning, both can significantly influence upon consumer-based brand equity. Hence, authors suggest management of modern trade retailers to develop innovative technology driven retail platform to provide pleasant shopping experience to the customers with the purpose of improving consumer-based brand equity. Authors suggests future researches to investigate the impact of leadership on the implementation of innovations within the modern trade retailers in Sri Lankan context.