Impact of Brand Community Participation on Brand Equity Dimension in Luxury Apparel Industry - A Structural Equation Modeling Approach
The role of consumers in brand management is increasing day by day due to rapid advancements in technology. Communication-related to the brand has been shifted from one-way (unidirectional) communication (mass marketing) to two-way (bidirectional) communication through social media. Hence, researchers and marketers are putting their utmost efforts to explore and understand the phenomenon. The present study is aimed to measure the impact of online brand community participation on brand equity elements. The conceptual framework was developed based on the available literature. Data were collected from 1811 respondents who were the students of different business schools at Karachi. We took the constructs and scale items from previous studies. Reliability and validity were re-ascertained. SEM was applied through AMOS. Results showed that participation in online brand communities has a significant impact on the three brand equity dimensions i.e. "brand awareness, brand association, and perceived quality". Both brand association and brand perceived quality significantly affect brand loyalty. The relationship between consumer brand awareness and consumer brand loyalty was insignificant. The findings revealed a good overall model fit as the fit indices were meeting the required values.