EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SENSORY BRANDING, BRAND AWARENESS AND PREFERENCE AFTER A BLIND TASTING TEST: AN APPLICATION ON TEA BRANDS.

The aim of this research is to explore whether there is a relationship between sensory branding and brand awareness and blind taste. A questionnaire and an experiment were used together on 101 volunteers who were familiar with tea brands in the University of Düzce, Turkey. The questionnaire was applied to the participants to measure their sensory branding and brand awareness perceptions. In addition, for the blind taste test, the experiment was conducted. Frequency, Spearman's Rank Correlation, Cochran Q, McNemar, Mann Whitney U Test, and Logistic Regression tests were used to test the hypotheses. According to the results of the analysis, there were low and moderate relationships between sensory branding and brand awareness in tea brands. In addition, according to the results of the Cochran Q and McNemar tests, there was a difference between the tea brands based on the participants' blind taste test responses. Moreover, it was determined that the sensory brand perception of the participants did not differ according to the blind taste test results. Similarly, the findings of the blind taste test revealed that the participants' brand awareness perceptions did not differ. Furthermore, according to the logistic regression analysis findings, sensory branding and brand awareness did not have any effect on the blind taste test. According to the findings of this research, even though the product contents were same, brand studies created awareness in the consumer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]