Abstract:

The study examined brand equity and brand performance in retail pharmaceutical firms in Rivers State of Nigeria. Four hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The population of the study consisted of 125 pharmaceutical firms registered with the business unit of rivers state ministry of commerce and industry, Port Harcourt. Taro Yamen formula was used to determine the sample size of 75. The study randomly selected two staff as respondents from the sampled 75 firms. Hence, a total of 150 respondents was used for the study. The data was collected in the time frame of 16 days and afterward responses were imputed into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22.0 for analysis and evaluation. The Multiple Regression Analysis was used as statistical tests to determine the extent of the effect of the predictor variable on the criterion variable. The findings indicate that brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association and brand loyalty have positive and significant influence on distribution coverage. The study therefore concludes that brand equity positively and significantly affects brand performance through distribution coverage in retail pharmaceutical firms in Rivers of Nigeria. The study recommends that brand loyalty strategies of retail pharmaceutical firms should be sustained to guarantee distribution coverage that will attract ultimate brand performance. Further, brand equity strategies of retail pharmaceutical firms should be improved upon to boost their brand performance objectives in order to gain competitive advantage in the market place.