Impact of Brand Awareness on Customer E-loyalty, in Online Banking of Sri Lanka: With the Mediating Effect of Emotional Attachment with Reference to Western Province of Sri Lanka

There is a huge need for digital presence in the modern context in businesses. Not only for product based companies but service providing companies such as banks. This is a timely research as banks are moving towards digitalization with the pandemic. Therefore, customer loyalty should be secured when banks provide online banking facilities to customers. The research will be focused on the how brand awareness impacts customer E loyalty when banks provide online banking facilities.  In addition, how emotional attachment mediates this impact. Narrowing down the scope to the western province of Sri Lanka, convenience sampling method was adopted to gather data as it adheres with previous literature. Data analysis was done by performing bivariate regression, multiple regression and sobel test to identify the mediating effect. The findings show a significant positive relationship between brand awareness and customer E loyalty and also that there is a mediating effect of emotional attachment. The limitations of the study are the non-generalizability to other industries and the limitedness for the western province in Sri Lanka. The significance of the study is that there a very handful studies done with regard to brand awareness and customer E loyalty in Sri Lanka and it will be very beneficial for brand managers in banks to look into this relationship when providing new online banking facilities and providing a better online service that will enhance brand awareness. Further giving prominence to facilities that creates higher emotional attachment so higher E customer loyalty will be retained.