Abstract
Building customer-based brand equity (CBBE) has become a priority for several business practitioners across the globe. Several strategies are being implemented towards this, and communication is arguably one of the central strategies towards building brand equity. However, the transformation of the communication landscape has posed several challenges in developing communication strategies for building brand equity. Social media, in particular, has brought about a paradigm shift in the communication landscape as traditionally, firms were regarded as the central source of brand-related communication but nowadays customers can freely and easily disseminate brand-related content. This is so because, on social media platforms like Facebook brand communities, both firms and customers can create and disseminate content that can be accessed by other customers. While firms of today are making increased use of Facebook to communicate with customers and promote customer-to-customer interaction, not much is known about the role of management and customers in building brand equity on social media brand communities. Focusing on the higher education (HE) sector of Zimbabwe, this study aims to investigate how firm-generated and customer-generated activities on HE Facebook brand communities influence CBBE.
To address the study’s objective, a comprehensive conceptual model was developed based on the integrated lenses of the service-dominant logic (S-DL) theory, social identity theory (SIT) and CBBE theories to examine the roles of management and customers in building brand equity through Facebook brand communities.
A positivistic philosophical stance was adopted following a deductive approach to quantitatively test the proposed integrated conceptual model. Data were collected through a structured self-administered questionnaire from followers on Facebook brand community pages of 10 selected Zimbabwean state-owned (six) and private-owned (four) universities. In total 967 questionnaires were administered and 800 were found usable. Analysis was done quantitatively through the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and the SmartPLS.
The results of the study show that both management-generated and customer-generated Facebook activities contribute positively to brand community perceived value. However, customer-generated activities took the lead. Brand community perceived value was found to be positively related to brand community identification both cognitively and affectively. Both affective and cognitive brand community identification were also confirmed to be precursors
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of CBBE. Furthermore, message valence was also found to be a very strong precursor of CBBE thereby further confirming the significance of customer-generated Facebook activities in building CBBE.
The insights emanating from this study are of great significance to marketing practitioners who wish to understand and boost customer-based brand equity through social media platforms to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. This study theoretically contributes towards an understanding of the influence of both firm-generated activities and customer-generated Facebook brand community activities on customer-based brand equity. The integration of the social identity theory (SIT), service-dominant logic (S-DL) theory, and brand equity theories helps provide a more comprehensive description of the mechanisms behind the creation of CBBE in Facebook brand communities.
Key Words: Management social media activities; Customer social media activities; Perceived brand community value; Brand community identification; Customer-based brand equity