MEASURING BRAND EQUITY WITH SOCIAL MEDIA.

The main purpose of this paper is to suggest a consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) model that takes into account new ways of interaction between brands and consumers on social media, to propose its simple, valid and parsimonious measurement scale and to assess if and how differently brands are perceived when consumers are exposed (or not) to their participation on Facebook. The scale was applied to 361 consumers that follow a specific brand on Facebook and consumers that don't, in order to understand if differences can be found on brand equity between consumers. Hence, three groups of consumers of the same brand were considered and their reactions to brand compared: consumers that follow the brand on Facebook; consumers that do not follow the brand on Facebook, although they are Facebook users; and consumers that do not use Facebook. Findings suggest that for brand followers on Facebook the brand had better results on brand image, brand loyalty, and brand relationship than for the other two groups. No statistically significant difference was found on brand image, brand loyalty, and brand relationship between people that do not follow the brand on Facebook (whether or not they use it) in the same variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]