The impact of consumer brand egagement in social media on overall brand equity and repurchase intention

Consumer brand engagement (CBE) is a timely concept that has gained significant attention within the literature. However, the Internet and social media changed customer-brand communication. With the advent of social media customers have gained a powerful position. They are no longer only passive information recipients, but are rather actively engaging in brand interactions. Hence, there is a need to explore consumer brand engagement in the social media context.
The literature on the topic is growing, yet there is still a great urge for empirical studies on consumer brand engagement and its outcomes. Especially in the social media context, the existing empirical studies are very limited.
The study therefore examines consumer brand engagement (CBE) in the social media context and tests the relationship of CBE on the hypothesised outcomes overall brand equity (OBE) and repurchase intention (RI). This work gives insight into the concept of engagement and argues that CBE is a multi-dimensional concept. In this study CBE is purposed to have the five dimensions Attention, Absorption, Enthusiasm, Identification and Interaction.
As a first step, for the purpose of this study, an extensive literature review is conducted. Further, in order to collect primary data for the empirical study of this thesis an online survey, as an appropriate quantitative research method, is chosen. For the empirical analysis 216 survey answers are used, gathered from respondents of generation Y.
Data analysis is conducted with partial least squares equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The goal of the conceptual model of this study is to explain the relationship between CBE and its hypothesized outcomes overall brand equity and repurchase intention.
The empirical findings show how CBE impacts CBE consequences in the social media context. Further, the empirical study tests the type of social media as a moderator within the purposed conceptual model. The findings highlight that consumer brand engagement (CBE) positively impacts overall brand equity (OBE) and repurchase intention (RI). Further, this study contributes to the existing literature by the finding that OBE is positively associated with RI. To the best of the authors knowledge, no further study reveals this relationship in the social media context. Further, this paper sets new directions for future research on consumer brand engagement in the social media context.