STUDENT PARENT PERCEPTION TOWARDS CONSUMER BASED BRAND EQUITY

It can be argued that parental role in selecting which university should a student candidate take is instrumental. With the rapidly growing Indonesia higher education industries over the last ten years, study in brand equity area focussing on the parent's perception towards the brand equity of a university become more and more crucial. This study investigates student parent's perception using five variables of consumer based brand equity from Lassar et al. (1995) in a private university in Jakarta (University X) . There are two different departments to be compared with in order to know whether there are differences in brand equity perception between student parents from both departments. The result shows most variables are indifference with exceptions in three questions and the three questions relate to performance and attachment concerning quality and long-term commitment. Implication and suggestion have been promoted according to the result.


Introduction
With numerous universities in Indonesia nowadays, competition rate among higher education increased and forced universitiy/higher education instituions providing a better education service in order to stay in the education market. The situation brings benefit to parents as well as potential college students as they have more options and they can choose selectively which university they should enroll. Unfortunately, the more choices also means they have to consider more things before making decision. Among many decision making variables, it can be argued the vision and mission statement of one particular university can lead into good perception since it carries personal message to potential customers (De Gregorio and Sung, 2010;Guido et al., 2010). The vision and mission statement plays an important role to the decision of whether a potential student should enter the university or, it can be called good brand equity. A lot of extensive studies have been done in the brand equity area to determine relationship between brand equity and consumers over various kinds of industry in various countries, namely the most current such as Hu et al. (2010); Afzal et al. (2010); Chen and Tseng (2010); and Fetscherin and Toncar (2009).
Given that, having a good brand equity also can favor one university among its competitors. Lassar, et al. (1995) suggested to break down the brand equity concept into five variables, i.e.: performance, value, social image, trustworthiness, and attachment. This study aims to compare and contrast the degree of perception among parents of their students and find out the differences as well as the similarites between the two departments of a particular private university located in Jakarta. The five variables from Lassar et al. (1995) is used to compare two departments. Management and Accounting, at the university.While some similar studies about university's brand equity had been done previously, such as the work of Soelasih et al. (2010, the uniqueness of this study is focussing on student parents for their importance role in decision making makes this study unique. This study brings new perspective on put more emphasize on student parent since it is believed their role in determining which university should they children go is dominant, especially in Indonesia culture (Ubaydillah 2009;Hartaji and Sedjo, 2009;Saomah 2006). For ethical reason, the name of the university is not disclossed and replaced into "University X" instead.
The rest of this article starts with promoting issues in parental role and relevant brand equity theory, introducing method used in this research, presenting the results, discussing the implications and proposing some relevant suggestions.

Parental Role in Choosing a Place to Study
While it can be argued by different countries, it is a given fact that most students in Indonesia choose their field and place of study according to their relatives. Indeed, they may have discussion with their siblings and friends but most cases in Indonesia shows that the final decision will be made by the parents. For example, some motivation and encouragement from family group are acknowledged by the study of Hartaji and Sedjo (2009, or different parental style may lead to independency level of the students (Saomah, 2006). The dream of the parent immerse into their suggestion to what they expect their children should be (Psychology article 2009).
Furthermore, Ubaydillah (2009) found out that low level of independency in their children, in most cases is the reason why parent still have strong influence to the student's choice. Lack of knowledge leads the student to the point that they have to choose because of the social factors driven by the parent's perception. Ubaydillah (2009) claimed that the role of parents dominates in selecting the higher education for their children.
Next, the study of Alim (2009) indicated that strong or weak financial wealth takes part of the decision as well. Strong financial parents usually urge their children to choose a field of study that is belived can guarante their children future. In reality, as argued by Alim (2009, it is quite common when one student fails because he/she follows his/her parent suggestion. This situation also happens in most of the Indonesian universities, indicated by the high rate level of dropped out students every year. Some studies accross nations also revealed the dominance of parental role in determining their children's education related to the their future. For example, a study from Ho et al. (2010) about parental role becomes more intense when the parents consider some actitivies were highly beneficial to their children. Another similarity also presented by study from Zainal et al. (2009) which found out that most parents do have specific saving to finance their children higher education in Malaysia.
Given the importance role of parents in deciding which university should their children go imply a meaning that the knowledge of a university brand in the parent's perception becomes more important and very cruicial. It is important to cultivate such a good image to parent for creating positive aura in order to maintain sustainable growth of a university. Also, some of the student parents are also alumni from University X. Thus, it can be argued that the first step to maintain university market share in Indonesia should be started with the parents.

Brand and Brand Equity
Brand is important. American Marketing Association (AMA) defines brand as ''a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and differentiate them from those of competitors" (Kotler and Keller, 2006). A good brand management creates better oppotunity and influence market perception towards a better financial position (Kapareliotis and Panopoulus, 2010). Competitors may produce similar product/service but brand equity of a product is different one from another. Given that, brand equity of one product is very specific. Its stength relies on its ability to be known by customers, to attract customers, and to influence repurchase action. As a result, there has been a theoretical development in brand theory to understand how the brand works for a product/service.
For example, Aaker (1996) suggested the concept of brand equity into several elements. First, brand awareness. It measures the ability of one person to recall or recognise one product brand (Rangkuti, 2008). Second, perceived quality. It measures customer perception to the overall quality or one particular advantage of a product/service (Rangkuti, 2008). Third, brand association. It covers everything about memory of a brand that collectivelly build an image of a brand or brand image (Rangkuti, 2008). A customer using one brand consistently has tendency to this brand image model. Last but not least is brand loyalty. It measures customer loyalty towards one brand (Durianto et al., 2004). Brand loyalty is the centre of brand equity model because it correlates between customer and brand.
Further, Keller (1993) introduces a technique to measure brand equity focussing on customer behavior called customer based brand equity. This model assumes that the strength of a brand is coming from what customer feels, sees, learns, and listen about the brand over time. Moreover, a brand is having a positive customer based brand equity if customer reacts in a positive direction toward the brand when is being marketed.
The concept has been tested in recent years to akcnowledge useful measurement for customer based brand equity. One important study is coming from Lassar et al. (1995). They developed a survey on this topic and they came with several measurement scales that they claimed can be used to measure customer based brand equity. They provides five dimension, i.e.: performance, value, social image, trustworthiness, and attachment. These five dimensions are the main measurement of this study.
Performance refers to customer perception about a brand from its functionality such as features, design, quality, etc. When a product brand can not fulfill its function, customers won't buy the product and theoretically the product would have a low value of brand equity. Next, value refers to customer perception about benefit given compared to its cost. Value is consider to be important because customer decision is also relied on balancing between price and benefit of a product. When the balance is not equal, it will affect the decision. Third, social image refers to understanding that a brand should create a sense of proud. Social image is also very often to be associated with ownership of one particular brand with specific purpose. For example, although Timex and Swatch watches give similar performance (display time) but Swatch is associated more intensively with male teenager watch in the United States of America. Fourth, trustworthiness is customer's trust to brand's owner that the owner will perform on behalf on customer's interest. The bigger magnitude of trust will contribute to positive brand equity while the lesser will do the opposite. Finally, attachment represents customer positive perspective on a brand that can contribute to greater customer loyalty. Customers can identify and develop a sentimenal attachment towards particular strong brands, such as Apple brand, Rolex brand, Mercedes brand, etc.

Hypothesis
This research performs a comparative study using the five customer based brand equity introduced by Lassar et al. (1995) to compare Management and Accounting Departments from Faculty of Economics of University X. The aim is to find out what dimensions share similar importance as well as importance differences from these two departments.
As stated in the introduction, the importance of having good indicators of the five brand equity variables is important for universities, including University X. Having good brand equity correlates with the existence of a university and guarante its sustainability in the market. Arguably, it can be expected that both Management and Accounting Departments will expect good value in all variables.
Therefore, the null hypothesis of this study is the Management Department and Accounting Department share similar value of their brand equity while the tested hypothesis proposes the opposite. It is expected the best comparative result is similarity(ies) between the two departments while the difference(s) will indicate which elements one department stronger than another.

Research Method
This study targeted student parent population from each department. The given criteria is the parent must have at least one student in these two departments. Slovin with alpha factor is 10% (Umar, 2004) was used to determine the number of samples, given the population is the number of students in each department and we use 95% significance level. The data were collected using convenience sampling and the number of samples of each population is 100 participants, giving the total is 200 participants.
It should be noted that in doing a preliminary discussion to setup this study, it is revealed that the student parent consider "department" and "faculty" as one single entity in terms of the five used brand equity elements. It is assumed the difference between words department and faculty levels do not really apply to the parent's perception. Given that, all questions are proposed by word "faculty" instead of "department" but, in the analysis level, the word "department" was used as the unit of analysis.
Telling the data collection process in brief, the chosen parents were interviewed by telephone or by visitation (either both). They answered a collection of questions (see appendix) derived from five dimensions of customer based brand equity. Our questions used five scales (Likert Scale) starting from "strongly disagree" (scale 1) to "strongly agree" (scale 5). There are 23 questions derived from five dimensions from Lassar et al. (1995). These 23 questions have been established by quoting original questions from Lassar et al. (1995) with some adjustments necessary for this study. While the questions were being asked, the participants could raise questions to clarify the questionaire questions. In addition, validity testing (Pearson correlation) and reliability testing (Cronbach Alpha) have been performed with good result (above standardized expected test value) in order to ensure data integrity.
Next, the data processing was performed to accumulate answers from participants and calculate their mean score (Sudjiono, 2006). The result of data processing as described in result section consists of three sections. First, descriptive statistics result descibes about the participant profiles and their answers. Second, mean scores and overall mean scores result from both groups were used to indicate whether the brand equity variable was good or bad, with notification that mean score higher than 3.40 -5.00 (interval 0.8) is considered to be good (Sudjana, 2002). Last but not least, answers from both groups were compared statistically using Mann-Whitney according to the data characteristic (Uyanto, 2009). For result interpretation purpose, this study used confidence level 95% and SPSS to do data processing.

Results and Discussions 4.1. Descriptive Result
The descriptive result presents in two Tables. Table 1 displays participant characteristics in comparative age and gender. Table 2 displays dispersion characteristics from comparative occupation and expenses. Table 1 reveals that majority of the respondents are males (58%) and consists of 54 male participants from Management Department and 62 respondents from Accounting Department. The most range group age lies between 46-55 years (criteria 2 and 3) indicating that most of them are in their peak of their working age period. Next, Table 2 lists three different information about the participants. First information describes about types of occupation from the parents. Table 2 reveals that most of participants are enterpreneur (39%) and working in private sectors (29%). This pattern is similar between two departments. Second information is education level of the parents. Most parents are in the stage of undergraduate degree in the first place and followed by high school graduates in the second place. Fewer of them are postgraduate, whereas Accounting Department has more number of postgraduate degree parents compared to Management Department. Lastly, Table 2 describes information about expenses per month from the parents. Both groups shows that participant's majority montlhy expenses range mostly between IDR 4-10 millions. However, there is difference in detail from the two groups. Participants from Management Department mostly is coming from expenses range from 4 millions-6 millions while participants from Accounting Department is mostly coming from expenses range from 6 millions -8 millions.

Mean Score Result
The mean scores and overall mean scores for each variables Table 3 summarizes participant answers from both groups into mean score and its overall mean score in every dimension of brand equity.
Conclusively from the result, the social image excels in both departments (Management Department OMS = 3.66 and Accounting Department OMS = 3.61) respectively. Given that, it can be infered that specific image on this university is a major factor for parents in both departments to choose. Such images such as "a good university", "a valuable university", or "a reliable university" contribute deeply on their decision. Also, reputation and peer evaluation are additional factors to be added to the impact.
Performance goes in the second place for Management Department and it can be seen in factors such as how to held a good teaching and learning process, providing good lecturers, good administration and infrastructure. In detail, however, there are some weak answers for this performance (Q2 and Q8).
It is also interesting to note that emotional dimension (represents in attachment dimension) is in the second place in Accounting Department and ranks #3 in Management Department. It confirms that parents from both groups positively consider Faculty of Economics of University X in high regard. This could be a strong motive to suggest university as a place of study for their children.
Finally, the least oveall mean score from both groups is value. The value dimension covers cost and benefit issue to pursue a degree in both departments. The lowest mean score from both groups is question 12, which covers about campus environment that considers as a part of cost and benefit to create supporting academic athmosphere. Indeed, the lowest score in this question is expected because the parents are not experiencing the campus athmosphere day by day.

Comparative Result
The comparative result (Mann-Whitney) is presented in Table 4 (with a = 5%). The result in overall performance shows that participants from Management Department has statistically equal compared to participants from Accounting Department in all five dimensions. Indeed, there are three siginificant difference in question 7 (performance -belief that university X has a good reputation, question 21 (attachment -proud and believe in University X's quality, question 23 (attachment -by time the feeling of liking will grow and deliver good recomendation to University X). Also, it has some "minor" significant difference in question 5 (performancebelief in education quality). All in all, null hypotheses can not be rejected in most questions with exception on the three questions.

Implication and Suggestion
By and large, all values represented from Lassar, et al. (1995) confirm our participant's perception towards the University X. Hence, we conclude that in our participant's perception, most duties have been accomplished by University X in term of delivering its services, benefit equal to cost, having good reputation to be proud of, objective, and creating loyalty. The overall mean scores presented in both groups are larger than 3.4 with one exception in "value" in Accounting Department, which means that mostly the participant's perception is range from good to excellent. Indeed, some lower mean score values are also detected in the detailed questions but they are nearer to minimum good criteria (3.4) as the lowest scores are 3.17 (Management Department, question 2) and 3.2 (Accounting Department, Q8).
However, the lowest score in this research, which happens to be the same in both groups (3.4 for Management Department and 3.36 for Accounting Department) is expected to happen in this dimension. Value refers to understanding that what is delivered equals to what is to be paid and this is one common expected finding since economical reason is always the most reason people bring disagreement. To deal with this issue, it is suggested that the university should keep the cost to be marking to the market while internally it still delivers the best performance. The lowest mean score on value is should also be taken into consideration as discussed above. It is suggested that the faculty management board (or even the university management board) can actively announce long term critical issues such as concern in academic quality, environmental issue, etc using above the line and below the line marketing media.
It is interesting to note that despite majority answers from each dimension are statitically indifferent for Management Department and Accounting Department, the three significant difference (with additional one "minor" significant difference) questions are talking about quality performance, and long term loyalty better than Management Deparment. Hence, it can be argued that Accounting Department delivers something that can keep its customer loyalty to be established better in the long run, as also indicated by Lassar, et al. (1995). Usually, liking the brand grows when the use of product proves the product to be solid, endured, and having good after sales services (Moisescu and Allen, 2010). As a result, the attachment perception could be influenced by the value of "after graduation" by the students such as proof of successfulness in the job market, and career path of its alumni.
According to the result, it is urged some personal/informal promotion should be initiated in addition to formal promotion. This informal promotion is instrumental in maintaining the longitudinal perception of parents in both groups. Such personal promotion can be done in creating meeting forum between university or faculty with parents. Also, some help to promote its alumni from each department to job market would create long term loyalty as the alumni becomes parent in the future and revolves the enrolment process in the future by puting their children into the same university.
This study contributes some thoughts about the importance to cultivate long term values for a university/faculty to strengthen its position in the market place. It is noted, however, the result of this study might be limited in local result and cannot be generalized over time and place.
In light of improving the quality of work in similar interest, some possible further studies can be proposed. For instance, a future study might consider taking students and their parents together to compare their answer and confirm each dimension from both different groups. Also, a periodic tracer study to its alumni would be good to keep update about their status, to confirm whether their perception about the university is intact, to investigate changing point of view from student perception to parent perception, and to confirm loyalty to their almamater. Finally, to improve generalisation of the result, the future study could use probability sampling technique with larger adequate sample size to represent the population.