Conceptualizing and Measuring Community-Based Brand Equity: An Abstract

Abstract

Keller (1993) presented a conceptual model of brand equity defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. Over the last two decades, it has impacted significantly on both theory and practice with regard to issues in building, measuring and managing brand equity. Conceptualized based on associative network memory model, this examines brand equity from the perspective of the individual consumer (Keller 1993). Two key trends have dramatically increased richness of social context for a brand in recent times – customer-experiential marketing perspective, which focuses on customer retention and loyalty through customer relationships, and consumer-driven marketing perspective making firms to pay attention to consumer co-creation and consumer advocacy of the brand. In light of this, we present community-based brand equity (CommBBE) defined as differential effect of brand culture or shared values on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. Building on social identity theory, our model advances Keller’s (1993) model by examining brand equity from the consumer community. Brand culture is conceptualized in line with the theory in terms of two components – brand community attachment, which captures intimacy towards the brand as well as the influence that brand wields over the consumer, and brand community engagement, which captures how involved the customer is with the brand. A brand partnership model is also proposed for use by practitioners.