THE INFLUENCE OF BRAND EQUITY ON THE COGNITIVE DIMENSION OF STUDENT BEHAVIOR WHEN OPTING FOR A HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION

This study aims to examine whether and how elements of brand equity influence the cognitive dimension of student behavior when opting for a higher education institution. Based on Keller’s model, brand awareness and brand image are used in this research as measures of brand equity, which represents the independent variable in the analysis. The cognitive dimension of behavior (the dependent variable) refers to an individual’s thoughts, knowledge, and perceptions acquired through direct interaction with the attitude object, as well as information obtained from other sources. To achieve the defined objective and test the proposed hypothesis, primary data were collected through field research using a survey technique in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). A random stratified sample included 1,141 students from the three largest university centers in BiH: Sarajevo, Mostar, and Banja Luka. The collected data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 25. The influence of the independent variables on the dependent variable was examined using regression analysis, with a significance level of 0.05. The results showed that brand awareness and brand image, as variables through which brand equity was operationalized, have a significant positive impact on the cognitive dimension of student behavior when opting for a higher education institution.