The Importance of Product Innovation in Driving Brand Success: An Empirical Study on Automotive Industry

Nowadays, business markets are characterized by high competition and therefore, reinforcing brand success is one of the challenging tasks for organizations. One of the key indicators of brand success appears in an organization’s ability to form strong brand equity. Previous literature reported that consumers form decisions based on their perceptions of added values and unique offerings of a brand. Among the key factors that ensure value embeddedness and attractive offering is product innovation. However, despite the importance of product innovation in driving brand success and competitiveness, but there are very limited researches that investigated its link with brand equity. Therefore, this paper is designed to test the association between product innovation and brand equity in Malaysian automotive industry. The data were gathered using a survey method from a sample of 287 passenger car users in northern Malaysia. The outcomes of this study showed that product innovation had significant positive relationship with brand equity. The findings also confirmed that product innovation has significant positive relationship with all elements of brand equity; namely brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand image and brand leadership. These findings open avenues for future studies to further examine the role of product innovation in driving brand equity and competitiveness with regard to different brands.