Book Description

This dissertation, "The Effects of Trialability and Personalization on the Development of Consumer-based Service Brand Equity via the Internet: an Empirical Investigation of Internet Banking Service" by Ka-yan, Ho, 何嘉恩, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled "The Effects of Trialability and Personalization on the Development of Consumer-based Service Brand Equity via the Internet: An Empirical Investigation of Internet Banking Service" Submitted by HO KA YAN for the degree of Master of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in May 2004 The commercialization of the Internet has brought ample opportunities to the marketing of products, including the building of brands. Existing understanding on Internet commerce suggests that this new medium can complement with the characteristics of services to revitalize services marketing. However, little research has been done on the development of consumer-based service brand equity (CSBE) of branded services via the Internet. Taking Internet banking service in Hong Kong as the context, this thesis serves the objectives of investigating what efforts are useful in developing CSBE via the Internet, and how such development is brought about. Based on the existing body of literature related to Internet commerce, brand equity and consumer choice behavior, two efforts, trialability and personalization, are identified and posited to positively influence the development of CSBE of Internet banking service. A research model, which incorporates such other factors as the perceived benefits of the Internet banking service brand and information gathering and processing costs saved in association with the brand, is proposed to hypothesize the relationships between these two efforts and CSBE development. While trialability is postulated in the research model to have a direct effect on CSBE development of an Internet banking service brand, it is also proposed to exert an indirect effect by first mediating the information costs saved and then the perceived benefits of the brand. Personalization is posited to indirectly influence CSBE development by mediating the perceived benefits of the brand. After the conduction of a pilot study, which served the purpose of refining the scale items and the data collection process, laboratory experiment was conducted to collect data. Structural equation modeling was employed to examine the influences of trialability and personalization on CSBE development. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural path analysis using LISREL 8.30 were performed to analyze the collected data. Analysis results show that the collected data exhibit a satisfactory model fit with the proposed model and acceptable construct reliabilities and validities. The findings show that both trialability and personalization have significant positive effects on CSBE development of Internet banking service. While the findings confirm the direct effect of trialability and indirect effect of personalization as hypothesized in the research model, trialability is found to have a significant indirect effect on CSBE development by only mediating perceived benefits and the savings in information gathering but not processing costs. The findings of this research study contribute to the existing body of knowledge on the use of the Internet to develop CSBE of Internet banking service. These findings provide useful insights for brand management to better utilize the Internet as a service brand building medium. An understanding of the eff