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CASNIC 2014 : The 2nd CAS National and International Conference 2014
BE 024

Key factors of choosing high performance motorcycle brands in Thailand

Mr. Lertsak Tangkiatlert1
Assistant ProfessorDr.Kriengsin Prasongsukarn2
1 Master degree student at Assumption University. Address: 68/18 Ramkhamhaeng 164,
Minburi, Bangkok, Thailand, 10510. Tel: 087-088-7836; Email: lertsak164@hotmail.com
2 Assistant Professor at Assumption University, Thailand. Email: kriengsin@hotmail.com

Abstract
The sales of motorcycles with more than 151cc engine displacement in 2013
increased by 45.5% as many production plants from Japanese, Chinese and European
motorcycle brandsset in Thailand in 2012. This study indicates the degree in which several
influencing factors were affect consumers on choosing high performance motorcycle brands.
Those influencing factors include brand awareness, brand image, product accessibility,
emotional connections, price, product attributes and other external influences. This study is a
descriptive research using questionnaires to collect information from 209 motorcycle owners
as respondents in Bangkok via websites, social media and mobile messenger application. The
data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. The results give the
finding that brand awareness has the strongest relationship to consumers’ motorcycle brand
choice followed by emotional connection as the 2nd strongest factor. Product accessibility,
external influences, brand image & price of motorcycle have moderate relationship, and
motorcycle attributes has the weakest relationshipto consumers’ motorcycle brand choices
among other influencing factors. Brand exposure,brand trustworthiness, exclusive privileges
for the owners,maintenance & repair service availability, price fairness,word of mouth via
brand fans and well-designed features are the key factors that create Thai consumers’
purchase intention.

Keywords: Motorcycles, Brand awareness, Brand management, Consumer psychology,

Buyingbehaviour

Field of research: Brand Management, Business Administration.

1. Introduction
Akaranan Titsiriwit, Managing Director of Kasikorn Leasing Co., Ltd. claimed that the
registration volume of motorcycles with more than 151cc engine displacement in 2013 is
69,787 units or a 45.5% increase from 2012, when the registration volume was 47,960 units
(Nat-Hin, 2014).Kasikorn Research Center (2013) added that 45% of high performance
motorcycles were registered in Bangkok as motorcycles in this segment are highly expensive,
and were mostly used for hobby or touring purposes. Akaranan also added that the coming of
domestic production investment of this motorcycle segment from Japanese, Chinese, and
European brands since 2012 make the retail prices decrease (Nat-Hin, 2014).

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Athar (2006) suggested there are many brand choices of automotive products to choose
before making a purchase decision, and it is necessary for automotive firms to understand and
serve the product that customers need.Lin and Change (2003)found brandawareness,Pappu et
al. (2005) found brand image, Van Auken (2003) &Schiffman and Kanuk (2009) found
accessibility,Morris et al. (2002)&Aggarwal(2004) found emotional connections, Hermann et
al. (2007) found price, Russell and Taylor (2006) & Wu (2011) found product attributes, and
Wang and Yang(2008)& Wu (2011) found other external influences such as country of origin
(COO) and impact form family and friends as the major factors that affect consumers’ brand
purchase decision.
This study indicates the degree in whichseveral influencing factors affect consumers
in choosing high performance motorcycle brands. This study mainly focuses on high
performance motorcycles users in Bangkok. This study would benefit the high performance
motorcycle brands, those both who already invested and those coming to invest soon in
Thailand to understand Thai consumers’ brand purchase decision. This study would also
benefit other investors interestedin investing on other high performance motorcycle support
products or services such as safety riding gears, aftermarket maintenance parts, modification
parts, service center and so on.

Literature Review

Brand choice
Narteh et al. (2012) found that brands are the factor that helps consumers to recognize the
attributes that the brands’ product serves to consumers.Kotler and Keller (2009) defined the
brand as any of names, signs, terms, designs, and symbols that represent the identity of a
maker or seller of one certain product. That identity contains attributes or personalities of the
brand itself, which consumers normally take as the factors of their purchase decisions (De
Chernatony and McDonald, 2003).

Brand awareness
Keller (2009) defines this concept as the easiness of making consumers to memorize the
brand as when consumers are aware or are familiar with the brands that contain with
outstanding brand associations among other brands. Keller (2009) also added that, it is
necessary for advertising to concentrate on creating the brand awareness and exposure to
consumers as the first priority. Lin and Change (2003) found in their study that brand
awareness significantly affect consumers’ purchase decision and also leads consumers to be
loyal to the brands, and the first hypothesis of this study is:

Hypothesis 1:Brand awarenesshas a positive relationship withconsumers’ motorcycle brand

choice.

Brand image
Brand image is defined as the identity of the brand that consumers think of or
perceived (Kotler and Keller, 2009). Pappu et al. (2005)proved that brand image has a direct

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impact to the way consumers perceive products. Kotler and Keller (2009) explained the
relationship that the brands and consumers create as the brands served the benefits as they
promised. That reduces the potential for consumers to switch to other brands, especially the
brands they are not familiar with (Aaker, 2003).The second hypothesis of this study is:

Hypothesis 2: Brand image has a positive relationship with consumers’ motorcycle brand
choice.

Product accessibility

Lin and Change (2003) explained that brand accessibility is important as consumers need
easiness of product access. Schiffman and Kanuk (2009) &Van Auken (2003) suggested
automotive firms should be concerned about the location as consumers take distance of
dealerships as the factor to evaluate their brand choice. Further from the importance of
dealerships location and distribution channels, simpleness of process, waiting time, operation
hours, product and spare parts availability are also considered as brand accessibility (Nartehet
al., 2012). The third hypothesis of this study is:

Hypothesis 3: Product accessibility has a positive relationship withconsumers’ motorcycle

brand choice.

Emotional connection
Emotional connection is defined as the relationship between consumers and the brands
emotionally (Aggarwal, 2004). Aggarwal (2004) called this relation as “emotional brands” by
the reason that consumers may have a close connection towards a brand emotionally andit is
a connection that is similar to the strong relationship between consumers and their close
friends or family. Morris et al. (2002) also found this relationship as a strong factor that
affects consumers’ purchase intention.The forth hypothesis of this study is:

Hypothesis 4: Emotional connection has a positive relationship withconsumers’ motorcycle

brand choice.

Price
Mcdonald and Sharp (2000) explained that price can be applied in 2 brand choosing
situations as consumers prefer to spend on low price brands for less financial risk, or they
prefer to pay higher price brands to gain better product quality. Foster and Cadogan (2000)
disagreed that consumers take price as one of the most necessary factor to evaluate in
purchase decision. Hermann et al. (2007) included that consumers’ satisfaction and
perception in price fairness are also related with the way they perceive price.The fifth
hypothesis of this study is:

Hypothesis 5: Price has a positive relationship withconsumers’ motorcycle brand choice.

Product attributes
Russell and Taylor (2006) explained that product features and characteristic used to serve

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consumers’ needs and satisfaction to match with consumers’ expectation as the brand
standards. Wu (2011) also found that consumers also weighted reliability and safety as the
most important attributes followed by service and style.Nartehet al. (2012) stated that design
and style of the automotive brands can create better attention to consumers than advertising
based on some marketers’ thoughts. The sixth hypothesis of this study is:

Hypothesis 6: Product attributes has a positive relationship withconsumers’ motorcycle

brand choice.

External influences

Schiffman and Kanuk (2009) stated that family, groups of people, social role and status of
consumers also include as the factors that affect consumers’ brand choice. Wu (2011) found
that consumers weighted their friends and family suggestions as the most important
information that respondents use to make their purchase decision.Wang and Yang (2008) also
found that the image of the country that produced automotive products influences the
relationship between products’ brand personality and consumers’ purchase intention. Wu
(2011) found US automobile owners prefer to purchase Japanese or European automobiles
brands as they believe they would receive better reliability and safety than the local brands.
The last hypothesis of this study is:

Hypothesis 7: External influences have a positive relationship withconsumers’ motorcycle

brand choice.

Figure 1: Conceptual framework of influencing factors on consumers’ motorcycle brand

choice

Brand
awareness
H1
Brand image
H2
Product
accessibility H3

Emotional H4
Brand
connection choice
H5
Price
H6
Product
attributes H7
External
influences

2. Material and Methods

The questionnaires were mainly based on multiple-item measurement scales.The

items were adopted from previous studies on purchase decision of the brands, and the

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CASNIC 2014 : The 2nd CAS National and International Conference 2014
questionnaireswere separated into 2 parts. First part is the demographic information,
designedfor collecting information such as age, gender, occupation, monthly income,
education level, and motorcycle brands owned by respondents. The second part is the
variables measurement by 5-point Likert scale, which strongly disagree represented as 1 and
strongly agree represented as 5.28 measurement items were used to measure all variables of
this study, and were categorized into 8 variables. 3 items were adopted from Keller (2008) to
measure brand awareness. 3 items were adopted from Erdem and Swait (2004) &Baek et al.
(2010) to measure brand image. 4 items were adopted from Van Auken (2003) to measure
Product accessibility. 4 items were adpoted from Belaid and Behi (2011) to measure
emotional connection. 3 items were adopted from Chattopadhyay et al. (2009) to measure
price. 4 items were adopted from Russell and Taylor (2006) to measure product attributes.
4 items were adopted from Wang and Yang (2008) &Schiffman and Kanuk (2009) to
measure external influences. 3 items were adopted from Shabbir et al. (2009) to measure
brand choice. The data was collected via the internet in late June, 2014. The online
questionnaires were provided via websites, social media and mobile messenger application to
several groups of motorcycle owners and enthusiasts. 236 people responded to the
questionnaire, and data from 209 people were qualified to use for the analysis of this study.

3. Result and Discussion

Based on analysis of demographic information from table 1, 98.6% (206) of
respondents were males and 1.4% (3) were females. For respondents’ age, 45.9% (96) of
respondents were aged between 26-35 years old, 24.9% (52) were aged between 18-25 years
old, 21.1% (44) were aged between 36-45 years old, 5.7% (12) were aged between 46-55
years old, 1.4% (3) were aged lower than 18 years old, and 1% (2) were aged higher than 56
years old. For respondents’ education, 70.3% (147) of respondents held bachelor’s degree,
19.1% (40) held lower than bachelor’s degree, and 10.5% (22) held master’s degree. For
respondents’ occupation, 48.8% (102) of respondents were salaried employees, 22.5% (47)
were self-employed or business owners, 13.9% (29) were students, 12% (25) were
government officers, 2.4% (5) were unemployed, and 0.5% (1) was retried. For respondents’
monthly income, 41.6% (87) gained the monthly income between 20,000 to 40,000 Baht,
34.4% (72) gained lower than 20,000 Baht, 16.3% (34) gained higher than 60,000 Baht, and
7.7% (16) gained between 40,001 to 60,000 Baht.

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CASNIC 2014 : The 2nd CAS National and International Conference 2014
Table1: Respondents’ demographic information

Frequency % Frequency %
Gender Occupation
Male 206 98.6 Salaried employee 102 48.8
Self-employed/
Female 3 1.4 47 22.5
Business Owner
Government officer 25 12
Student 29 13.9
Age Retried 1 0.5
Below 18 years old 3 1.4 Unemployed 5 2.4

18-25 years old 52 24.9

26-35 years old 96 45.9 Income (Per month)

36-45 years old 44 21.1 Below than 20,000 Baht 72 34.4

46-55 years old 12 5.7 20,000 – 40,000 Baht 87 41.6
More than 56 years old 2 1 40,001 – 60,000 Baht 16 7.7
Higher than 60,000 Baht 34 16.3
100
Education level Total 209

Lower than Bachelor’s Degree 40 19.1

Bachelor’s Degree 147 70.3
Master’s Degree 22 10.5

Table2: Respondents’ motorcycle brands

Frequency % Frequency %

Motorcycle brands Motorcycle brands

Honda 76 36.4 Ducati 21 10

Kawasaki 66 31.6 BMW 8 3.8

Suzuki 16 7.7 Others 11 5.3

Yamaha 11 5.3

Total 209 100

Table 2 represents the analysis on motorcycle brands used by respondents as majority

of respondents were owners of Honda and Kawasaki by 36.4% (76) and 31.6% (66)
respectively, followed with Ducati by 10% (21), Suzuki by 7.7% (16), Yamaha by 5.3% (11),

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BMW by 3.8% (8), and other brands by 5.3% (11).Table 3 represents the results of reliability
test on the research instrument. The values of all variables are higher than 0.7, which means
all variable items are reliable and consistent to apply as the research instrument in this study.
The correlation analysis from table 4 also represents that all independent variables excluding
motorcycle attributes have the positive relationship with dependent variable (brand choice)
significantly at 0.01 level.

Table3: The reliability analysis of research instrument

Variables Cronbach’s alpha NO. of items

Motorcycle attributes 0.712 4

Emotional connection 0.741 4

Brand image 0.854 3

Brand Awareness 0.781 3

Product accessibility 0.831 4

Price of motorcycle 0.726 3

External influence 0.733 4

Brand choice 0.896 3

Table4: Correlation analysis

MA EC BI BA PA PM EI BC

Motorcycle attributes (MA) 1

Emotional connection (EC) 0.211** 1

Brand image (BI) 0.175* 0.524** 1

Brand Awareness (BA) 0.114 0.532** 0.398** 1

Product accessibility (PA) 0.177* 0.059 0.194** 0.400** 1

Price of motorcycle (PM) 0.295** 0.219** 0.308** 0.210** 0.097 1

External influence (EI) 0.081 0.442** 0.389** 0.491** 0.256** 0.056 1

Brand choice (BC) 0.150* 0.477** 0.282** 0.804** 0.323** 0.218** 0.333** 1

MA EC BI BA PA PM EI BC

*Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (two-tailed)

* *correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (two-tailed)

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The results from the analysis give the finding that brand awareness has the strongest
relationship to consumers’ motorcycle brand choice among other influencing factors, which
also support hypothesis 1 and confirms previous studies on brand awareness (Lin and Chang,
2003) that brand awareness is the most important factor for consumers to choose their
motorcycle brands. Emotional connection also has the 2nd strongest relationship to
consumers’ motorcycle brand choice, which support hypothesis 4 and confirms previous
studies on emotional connection (Morris et al., 2002; Aggarwal, 2004) that emotional
connection is another important factor for consumers to choose their motorcycle brands.
Brand image, Product accessibility, price of motorcycle, and external influences seem
to have the moderate relationship to consumers’ motorcycle brand choice. These factors
support hypothesis 2, 3, 5, 7 and confirm previous studies (Mcdonald and Sharp, 2000; Lin
and Chang, 2003; Pappu et al., 2005; Hermann et al., 2007; Wang and Yang, 2008;
Schiffman and Kanuk, 2009; Wu, 2011 &Narteh et al., 2012) that consumers would consider
these 4 factors for choosing their motorcycle brands.Motorcycle attributes has the weakest
relationship to consumers’ motorcycle brand choice among other factors, supports hypothesis
6 and confirms previous studies on product attributes (Russell and Taylor, 2006) that
motorcycle attributes are one of the factor that consumers would use to consider for choosing
their motorcycle brands.

4. Conclusion
The results of this study would conclude that brand awareness and emotional
connection are the most influencing factors for Thai consumers to choose their motorcycle
brands. Exposure and trustworthiness from the motorcycle brands would create strong brand
awareness and emotional connection to consumers as the brand familiarity and reliability.
Brand image, Product accessibility, price of motorcycle, and external influencesalso
influence consumers on their motorcycle brand choices moderately. Exclusive privileges
offer by brands,maintenance & repair service availability, price fairness& creation of word of
mouth via brand fans would make consumers consider motorcycle brandsas consumers prefer
benefits as the owners of the brands, readiness of maintenance & repair service, satisfied
worthiness and confidence creation in purchase decision by suggestions from their close
people.Thai consumers do not strongly take motorcycle attributes on their brand purchase
decision, but motorcycles with well-designed features would make consumer consider about
the brands.
The results may not be applicable for the whole country as the respondents are the
motorcycle users in Bangkok.High performance motorcycle users outside Bangkok would
have different purposes of using this segment of motorcycle (e.g. hobby, touring) and
different demographic information. This study may also not be applicable for other countries
or regions as contexts of demographic information, consumer behaviors, and economic
variables can be different.

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5. Acknowledgement
The researcher would like to thank Assistant Professor Dr.Kriengsin Prasongsukarn
for guidance. Thanks to my classmates in section 9, MBA weekend class for consultation.
Thanks to all respondents who gave responses to the questionnaires, and my parents for
sponsoring my study in the MBA program.

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