Evaluation of Iranian Knowledge and Information Science Publishers Based on the Brand Equity Indices from the Viewpoint of Graduate Students in this Field

Trademark experts consider the brand as an intangible asset of a company or organization. Today, due to the existence of competitive markets, both nationally and internationally, the economy of publishing has been particularly sensitive, and publishers have an economic view of this industry. Brand equity is also considered as one of the most competitive indices. On the other hand, the field of Knowledge and Information Science has grown in recent years in Iran with the growth of the number of departments, students and professors, and consequently the growth of books and publications. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate the most important publishers of Knowledge and Information Science in terms of brand equity indices (brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality, and brand loyalty) from the viewpoints of postgraduate students in this field.

This research is a descriptive survey. The data-gathering tool was a questionnaire prepared based on the Acer model and its validity and reliability have been obtained. The research population was all the master and Ph.D. students of Tehran, Ferdowsi and Shahid Chamran Universities in the field of Knowledge and Information Science. The questionnaires were designed electronically and sent to the students of the study by email. Among the publishers, four Iranian publishers, Ketabdar, Chapar, Ketabkhane Rayanei, and Dabizesh, which were measured in previous studies as the main nongovernmental publishers in the field of Knowledge and Information Science, were selected for review. To analyze the data, descriptive and analytical statistics have been used.

The results showed that Ketabdar and Chapar have more brand equity indices than Ketabkhane Rayanei and Dabizesh. In general, Ketabdar, Chapar, Ketabkhane rayanei and Dabizesh ranked high to low brand equity, respectively. Almost all publishers have had a medium score in brand equity. In addition, results showed that publishers, which were in Tehran, have more brand equity than the publishers in other cities.

In general, the publishers are in a moderate position in terms of brand equity and need to be more active in promoting each brand equity index. Almost all publishers had better score in brand awareness than other brand equity indexes. The minimum score was in brand loyalty. These results indicate that if new publishers or other publishers are not considered in this study to be more active, enter the competition, then these major publishers may be discarded from the competition. It needs to study other publishers and by other indexes in term of the brand.