Impact of Branding on Consumer Purchasing Decision: A Case of the Telecommunication Industry

ABSTRACT 

The study investigated the influence of branding on consumer purchasing decision of mobile network provider. Specifically, the objectives of the study were; to assess the effect of brand awareness on consumer purchasing decision of mobile network provider, to measure the relationship between brand image and consumer purchasing decision of a mobile network provider and lastly to ascertain how the perceived quality of a brand affect consumer purchasing decision of a mobile network provider. This study followed the cross-sectional research design hence, quantitative methodology was adopted. The target population for the study constituted undergraduate students of the University of Education-Winneba, Kumasi campus. Therefore,a projected number of 7,500students within the Kumasi campus of the university was targeted for this study. Based on the Krejcie and Morgan (1970) sampling table, the sample size for this study was 365 with a 95% confidence interval and 5% error of margin. This study used a self-administering questionnaire as its data collection instrument.The study distributed 365 questionnaires to the selected samples from the University of EducationWinneba, Kumasi campus. From the questionnaires distributed, a total of 177 completed questionnaires were returned to the researcher. Out of these, 167 were usable for analysis, giving an effective response rate of 47.04 %. Data was subsequently analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation. Findings from the study showed that most of the respondents agreed that how reliable and trusted a mobile service network is, is very critical to them when choosing a mobile service network. On this score, it is recommended to the mobile telecommunication networks that the farce that Ghanaian consumers will always look at cost and service charges  when choosing a network than factors such as, quality and trusted 

network cannot be wholly true hence, they should see this as a wakeup call to provide its clients with quality services since how a person perceive their network coverage to be reliable and trusted tends to be key factor that shape their selection decision of a mobile service provider.