Social media communication and higher education brand equity: The mediating role of eWOM

Abstract

Beyond its ability to enhance the generation of goals and objectives, understanding an organization's brand equity is a key driver in communicating values to consumers and end‐users. In a very competitive marketplace, it is high time universities ditched the traditional means of communication and comply with the trending social media communication forms so as to better capture both the virtual as well as the real social space of their students who, in turn, are ambassadors of the institutions. Using data solicited from 317 university students, this study found that universities can better position themselves to compete when they employ both user‐generated and firm‐generated social media communication in building their brand equity. Our study also validates electronic word of mouth as a mediator of the relationship between social media communication and higher education brand equity. Recommendations for practice were also suggested.

The Perception of Employees in the Construction of University Brand: Spanish Context Case Study

“…In other words, if internal agents have good brand awareness and are willing to recommend their University courses, the brand capital of the same will be consolidated in a more significant way. This result that brand awareness stands out as a pillar of the construction of brand capital is in line with previous research (Foroudi et al, 2017;Rachmadhani et al, 2018;Sagynbekova et al, 2021), which reiterates that such variable is a key element in the perception of education brand capital.…”

“…The proposed global model demonstrated a positive and direct relationship between the four variables described and the brand capital with respect to internal empoyees, thus supporting other research on brand awareness (Foroudi et al, 2017;Rachmadhani et al, 2018;Sagynbekova et al, 2021), brand image (Mirzaei et al, 2016;Rauschnabel et al, 2016;Yuan, et al, 2016;Ruiz et al, 2019;Alcaide et al, 2021), perceived quality (Pinar et al, 2014;Ali et al, 2016;Lomer et al, 2018;Perera et al, 2020) and brand loyalty (Schlesinger et al, 2014;Kaushal & Ali, 2019;Rodríguez et al, 2019;Rasoolimanesh et. al., 2021).…”

Does Brand Equity Affect Patient Loyalty to The Hospital?

“…Pemahaman ekuitas merek menjadi pendorong utama dalam mengkomunikasikan nilai kepada konsumen dan pengguna akhir. Peningkatan nilai merek didefinisikan sebagai ekuitas merek (Ebrahim, 2020;Sagynbekova et al, 2021). Citra dan ekuitas merek juga dapat dibentuk dari kepercayaan, kepuasan, komitmen hubungan, loyalitas merek dan kesadaran merek.…”

Analyzing the Effect of Social Media Use, Perceived Value, Brand Trust and Electronic Word of Mouth on Brand Equity: The Mediating Role of Brand Image: An Applied Study on Egyptian Banking Sector

“…Furthermore, after investigating the impact of e-WOM on brand equity, it was found that e-WOM positively influences brand equity. Sagynbekova et al (2021) have investigated the effect of e-WOM on brand equity using data solicited from 317 university students in Cyprus. The results indicated that e-WOM is significantly affect brand equity.…”