Developing a Brand Equity integrated model for Nonprofit Organizations: Design and viability of the Measuring Instrument

The Third Sector includes entities that contribute to shape the world we live in, having a remarkable worldwide impact and growth, being an important social, economic and political force, with a presence in mostly all countries and regions. Thanks to this increase, which implies a trend toward greater relevance of the Third Sector, non-profit organizations must face an increasingly competitive environment. A research review on this sector from marketing discipline shows that they focus mainly on brand strategies, but very few analyze their Brand Equity, at least as regards the specification of measurement scales, an aspect that curiously has been addressed in depth in the private sector. Therefore, the purpose of this study lies in the research approach of the conceptual gaps that have been identified, with the intentionality of developing an appropriate instrument that allows the evaluation of the Brand Equity adapted to non-profit entities by validating the proposed dimensions and indicators. The methodological process began with the design of the first version of the questionnaire, starting with the bibliographic review and qualitative techniques, afterward, the viability was validated through semi-structured interviews with five experts and a convenience sample of sixteen volunteers, assessing the clarity of drafting, the order and design of questions, the complexity of questions, the difficulty of response scales, and the length of time of the survey, conclude with a pilot test of 20 volunteers. The results of the test and the control interview were qualitatively assessed with a concordance analysis, and quantitative with a review of the reliability to value the internal consistency of the instrument by calculating Cronbach's alpha statistic. The main findings were: The Interrater agreement (IRA) of both groups exceeds the minimum required of 0.80 (experts 0.86 and volunteers 0.91) which allows affirming that there is a high degree of consistency in their evaluations. In addition, the instrument presented a level of internal consistency analyzed through Cronbach's Alpha with a highly satisfactory result of 0.981. An initial proposal of 11 dimensions and 60 items was adjusted to a measurement model with 10 dimensions and 43 items. Although the main results are satisfactory and positive, it remains to corroborate the instrument with a retest and then in a larger population, to validate the proposed model and to ratify hypotheses on the relation between the dimensions of the instrument, which will allow better analysis of future results.