Abstract
Johannesburg City has seen many people coming to its centre for work opportunities in the hope to better their lives. The City, however, is faced with several challenges, from unemployment, infrastructure issues, crime, and housing shortages, resulting in informal settlements and the decay of the inner city. Young professionals migrating to the city centre have not found it easy, as they struggle to find affordable housing. These professionals find themselves torn between meeting their basic physiological and their psychological needs. Limited research has been done on consumer-based brand equity (CBEE) in an African context in terms of strategic communication for place branding. Most of the research done has looked at cities, like Johannesburg, from a tourist perspective rather than from a residents’ relationship perspective. Furthermore, more focus seems to be placed on the development of other areas of the Johannesburg city centre, with little being done in the Berea area in terms of development. The research undertaken aims to investigate millennials’ psychological need factors influencing consumer-based brand equity of the City of Johannesburg (CoJ), Berea area. This was a descriptive study utilising qualitative methods. Purposive snowball sampling was utilised to obtain a sample of seven millennials (24–35-year-olds) residing in the CoJ, Berea area. The study results revealed that some of the intrinsic and extrinsic psychological motivators for buying a product or using a service in the retail FMCG (Fast-moving consumer goods) environment are the same motivators when one decides to stay in an area (in this case, Berea). Of the three intrinsic motivational needs; namely autonomy, competence and relatedness, only two intrinsic psychological motivational needs seemed to be partially met, namely, autonomy and relatedness. Of the four extrinsic psychological motivational needs, only one, which is the integrated regulation motivation, was mostly fulfilled by the CoJ, Berea area. In terms of consumer-based brand equity, the findings revealed that these millennial residents were dissatisfied with not having their psychological motivational needs met. This was mostly due to one of the CBEE elements, namely, the perceived quality of the residential offering and the services that do not meet the participants’ expectations and needs.
M.A. (Strategic Communication)