Among Marketing Mix and Customer Satisfaction: Does Brand Image have Intervening Effect?

Abstract

The efforts of the firm in anticipating the increasing trend of fierce competition recently is to apply proper marketing strategies, and one of such strategies is so called marketing mix strategy. As a result of proper marketing mix strategy implementation, once customer satisfaction greatly influences purchasing decisions, it will create the opportunities for customers to make subsequent purchases. Through a literature study, this study finds that there are many studies explain the role of marketing mix on customer satisfaction. Nevertheless, this study finds that there are lesser prior studies explain the mediating role of brand image on the relationship of marketing mix and customer satisfaction. Additionally, for the novelty of this study, many studies have been conducted in explaining the role marketing mix on customer satisfaction, however, such studies only focus on the Western countries, and lack of prior studies have been highlighted on the Asian region, especially within the developing countries. This study then intends to conduct an investigation that mainly focuses on the mediating role of brand image on the relationship between distribution, price, and promotion, and customer satisfaction. As a research novelty and theoretical contribution of this study, interestingly, this study finds that brand image becomes one of critical factor in influencing customer satisfaction, whereas, distribution, price, and promotion have no significant impact on customer satisfaction. For managerial contribution, this study elaborates in the particular sections of this paper.