Individual Cultural Values and Brand Awareness: A Gender Perspective in Higher Education Sector of Pakistan

Purpose: The research investigates the influence of individual cultural values on brand (university) awareness. The first objective of research is to find the impact of individual cultural values like collectivism, long term orientation, masculinity, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance on university awareness. The second objective was to find out the role of gender in these relationships.Methodology: The research uses quantitative research methodology. The population has been all the students enrolled in all the universities of Pakistan. Probability based stratified sampling technique used. Questionnaire based survey conducted among seventeen universities of Islamabad Pakistan. Data collected from 1001 students out of which 842 respondents considered for data analysis. Reliability of measurement model verified through Cronbach’s alpha and composite reliability. The validity of measurement model verified through outer loadings, cross loadings and average variance extracted. Smart PLS 4 software and bootstrapping technique used to analyze the data.Findings: The results reveal that collectivism, long term orientation, masculinity, and uncertainty avoidance except power distance impact university awareness of students. The results also show that gender plays an important role in these intricate relationships with varying results. Finally, the research shows that long term orientation found to be the most important and the strongest individual cultural value affecting university awareness among male students. While uncertainty avoidance found to be the strongest individual cultural value affecting university awareness among female students.