THE INFLUENCE OF BRAND AWARENESS, PERCEIVED QUALITY, BRAND ASSOCIATIONS, AND BRAND LOYALTY ON THE BRAND EQUITY OF OPPO SMARTPHONES

Brand equity is a set of assets and values associated with a brand. Several factors influence it, namely brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations, and brand loyalty. This research is expected to provide insight to understand the influence of brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations, and brand loyalty on the brand equity of Oppo smartphones. This research used purposive sampling as the sampling method, the questionnaire as the data collection method, and distributed to 145 students of the Faculty of Business, PGRI University of Yogyakarta. The data were evaluated using validity and reliability tests and analyzed with partial, simultaneous, and multiple linear regression tests. Partial positive impact is shown by brand awareness, brand association, and brand loyalty on brand equity. However, perceived quality negatively affect brand equity. The simultaneous impact is shown by brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association, and brand loyalty on the brand equity of the Oppo smartphone. However, this research has a small sample size and limited variables used; future research is expected to expand the sample size and include new variables.


A. INTRODUCTION
Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, Infinix, Realme, Advan, Asus, Vivo, and Oppo are some brands that have graced the smartphone market competition worldwide, including in Indonesia, for years.The products launched are fairly attractive, with performance specifications, features, and prices.The high competition in Indonesia's smartphone market requires companies to have value for their brands to stay ahead in the market.The value attached to the brand is commonly known as brand equity.Brand equity is the assets and trust associated with a brand, name, or symbol, which can affect the value of products or services for companies and customers.These assets can increase or decrease the value of a product or service.
Oppo is a company brand that focuses on developing, producing, and selling various types of smartphones and their accessories.In the data graph displayed it can be seen that until August 2021, Oppo still ranks second as the smartphone brand with the largest market share of 21.72 percent, below Samsung, which is ranked first with a market share of 22.42 percent, followed by Xiaomi in third place at 19.88 percent.Even so, in reality, Oppo as a brand makes its efforts to build brand awareness by conducting publications and promotions through electronic media, television advertisements, social media, website advertisements, and non-electronic posters, billboards, and brochures.
Another effort is to collaborate with other brands, such as Lamborghini, Marvel, Jo Malone, and Disney.Besides that, Oppo also collaborates with various Indonesian public figures: Isyana Sarasvati, Rio Haryanto, Nicholas Saputra, Reza Rahadian, Raisa, Chelsea Islan, Afgan, Vanesha Prescilla, and Cinta Laura, as well as Yoshi Sudarso.Oppo presents products with many attractive features and innovations to build perceptions of quality, including advanced display devices, one of the first smartphone brands to support 5G connectivity systems and fast charging systems.Meanwhile, in its efforts to build brand associations, Oppo's product slogans always convey that the camera part is Oppo's dominant focus.Some examples include "Every moment in portrait," which is embedded in Oppo Reno 6 products, "Selfie expert" on Oppo F series products, and "Brilliant portrait in low light" on Oppo F11 products.Meanwhile, brand loyalty can be measured by Oppo, which remains in second place as the smartphone brand with the largest market share in Indonesia from January -August 2021 period.However, the position of the market share indicates that Oppo's efforts in building brand equity through these variables are not enough to beat Samsung as the brand with the largest market share in Indonesia.
Research conducted on brand equity variables is generally about the influence of each factor individually on brand equity.The effect of brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality, and brand loyalty on brand equity partially affects Padang residents (Alwan et al., 2020).Another study used different variables from the previous one, consisting of brand association, brand loyalty, brand awareness, and brand image, to determine the brand equity of residents around Tangerang (Lego & Hannes, 2021).However, this study only discusses the Meanwhile, brand awareness shows the ability of consumers (or potential consumers) to recall (recognize) or recognize (recall) that a brand is part of a certain product category (Durianto et al. in Firmansyah, 2019).A review of previous research shows that brand awareness positively and significantly affects brand equity (Asif et al., 2015;Sukiarti et al., 2016).Based on this explanation, the research hypothesis is as follows: H1: Brand awareness is suspected of positively affecting the brand equity of Oppo smartphones among students of the Faculty of Business, PGRI University of Yogyakarta.

Perceived Quality
Quality reflects all product offering dimensions that generate customer benefits (Tjiptono in Firmansyah, 2019).Aaker (2018) suggests that quality perception or impression is the customer's perception of a product or service's overall quality or superiority about the expected intention.Therefore, according to Aaker (2018), the impression of quality is customers' perception.Previous research shows that perceived quality positively and significantly affects brand equity (Hou & Phusit, 2016;Muzaqqi et al., 2016).Based on this explanation, the research hypothesis is as follows: H2: It is suspected that perceived quality positively affects Oppo smartphone brand equity among Faculty of Business, PGRI Yogyakarta University students.

Brand Association
Brand association is any impression that appears in a person's mind related to his memory of a brand (Durianto in Firmansyah, 2019).According to Aaker (2018), brand association is everything "related" to memories about a brand.Consumer perceptions are considered customer associations regarding the quality of a product's result, services, and overall satisfaction, which can be seen as indicators.Aaker (2018) also stated that a brand is a set of associations, usually arranged in various meaningful forms.Previous research shows that brand association positively and significantly affects brand equity (Indah et al., 2018;Sasmita & Mohd Suki, 2015).Based on this explanation, the research hypothesis is as follows: H3: It is suspected that brand association positively affects the brand equity of Oppo smartphones for students of the Faculty of Business, PGRI Yogyakarta University.

Brand Loyalty
Giddens explains that brand loyalty is a choice made by a consumer to buy products from a certain brand compared to products in the same category from other brands (Giddens in Firmansyah, 2019).Meanwhile, according to Aaker (2018), brand loyalty measures the relationship between a customer and a brand.This represents the possibility that a customer will switch from one brand to another, especially when a brand makes changes, both related to the selling price of the product and changes to the product itself.Research on this variable shows that brand loyalty positively and significantly affects brand equity (Ahmed, 2015;Alwan et al., 2020).Based on this explanation, the research hypothesis is as follows: H4: Brand loyalty is suspected to positively affect Oppo smartphones' brand equity among students of the Faculty of Business, PGRI Yogyakarta University.

Brand Equity
Brand equity is a customer's response to the products and services offered by a brand based on his knowledge of the brand (Kotler & Armstrong, 2014).Brand equity is the extent to which customers are willing to pay more for a product or service from a particular brand.Aaker (2018) explains that brand equity is a set of assets and trustworthiness associated with a brand, name, and symbol that can influence by adding or reducing the value attached to a product or service for the company or brand and its customers (Aaker, 2018).Brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association, and brand loyalty significantly affect brand equity, (Hidayat & Martini, 2019).Based on this explanation, the research hypothesis is as follows: H5: It is suspected that brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association, and brand loyalty simultaneously affect the brand equity of Oppo smartphones for students of the Faculty of Business, PGRI Yogyakarta University.

Research Framework
Based on the explanation that has been described in the literature review, the researcher applies the following research framework: The brand awareness variable is declared unreliable because the Cronbach alpha value obtained is 0.237 or below 0.60 (Suliyanto, 2018).Two things can be done to overcome this: improve the questionnaire or delete the highest value in the reliability test results table section.

D. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Researchers deleted or eliminated question items in the brand awareness variable in this study.
The table shows the Cronbach alpha of the item deleted section.So if item 1 is removed, the Cronbach alpha value that will be obtained from the results of the brand awareness variable reliability test is 0.615 so that the results become reliable.The following results of the reliability test show that item 1 was eliminated.It can be seen that the Cronbach alpha value obtained is 0.615.The Adjusted R2 test results using SPSS statistics obtained an Adjusted R2 value of 0.819.This means that the dependent variable is 81.9% influenced by the independent variable in this study, which consists of brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association, and brand loyalty.At the same time, the other 18.1% of the impact is determined by other variables outside the variables discussed in this study.

Discussion
This study shows that brand awareness positively affects brand equity but is

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Market Share of Smart Phone Brands in Indonesia Source: gs.statcounter.com,2021

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Market Share of Smart Phone Brands in Indonesia January -August Source: gs.statcounter.com,2021

Table 1 .
Validity Test Result

Table 3 .
Reliability Test Results After Deleting Item 1 Values 4) Hypothesis 4 is accepted.The brand loyalty variable shows a t value of 7.616, greater than the t table value of 1.97705.The test results also show that brand loyalty has a positive and significant relationship to brand equity.

Table 5 .
Simultaneous Test Results (F Test) Based on the table of F-test results above, it is known that the calculated F value is 163.676 while the F-table value is 2.44, which means that F count 163.676 > F table 2.44.The results indicate a simultaneous relationship between all independent variables consisting of brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association, and brand loyalty to the dependent variable, brand equity.Hypothesis 5 is declared accepted.