DISCLAIMER:  

This  document  does  not  meet  the current  format  guidelines  of

the Graduate  School  at    The  University  of  Texas  at  Austin.  

It  has  been  published  for  informational  use  only.  

Copyright

by

HyunJoo Lim

2018

The Thesis Committee for HyunJoo Lim Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Thesis:

Digital Engagement in Social Media:

Likes as a Predictor of Brand Value

APPROVED BY

SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:

Gary Wilcox, Supervisor Angeline Close Scheinbaum

Digital Engagement in Social Media: Likes as a Predictor of Brand

Value

by

HyunJoo Lim

Thesis

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of

The University of Texas at Austin

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Master of Arts

The University of Texas at Austin

May 2018

iv

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Gary B. Wilcox for his expert advice and encouragement

throughout the development of this thesis, as well as Dr. Angeline Close Scheinbaum for

her guidance.

v

Abstract

Digital Engagement in Social Media: Likes as a Predictor of Brand

Value

HyunJoo Lim, M.A.

The University of Texas at Austin, 2018

Supervisor: Gary Wilcox

This study suggests indicators of consumers’ digital engagement with brand-

related social media contents as a contemporary measure of brand equity and examines

its relationship with brand value. The study analyzes this relationship based on the data

collected from January 2016 to December 2017 on US brand performances, advertising

spending, and Facebook interaction devices including “Likes” as well as “the number of

users talking about this brand”. The results show that the total number of “Likes” a

brand’s official fan page receives on Facebook has a statistically significant positive

impact on the brand’s value. These findings not only support the consensus on brand

equity as a driver of brand value, but also successfully denote consumer engagement

measures as indicators of brand equity.

vi

Table of Contents

List of Tables .......................................................................................................................... ix

List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... x

Chapter 1: Introduction ......................................................................................................... 11

Objective ....................................................................................................................... 12

Chapter 2: Literature Review ................................................................................................ 13

Defining Brand Valuation............................................................................................ 13

Determinants of Brand Value ......................................................................... 15

Brand Equity as a Driver of Brand Value ................................................................... 16

Elements of Brand Equity ............................................................................... 18

Consumer Engagement ................................................................................................ 20

Digital Engagement and Brand Equity ........................................................... 22

Digital/Consumer Engagement on Social Media........................................... 23

Hypotheses .................................................................................................................... 24

Chapter 3: Methods ............................................................................................................... 26

Data ............................................................................................................................... 26

Dependent Variables........................................................................................ 26

Independent Variable I: Facebook Social Impacts ........................................ 28

Independent Variable II: Advertising Spending ............................................ 32

Data Analysis................................................................................................................ 35

vii

Chapter 4: Findings ............................................................................................................... 36

Chapter 5: Discussion ............................................................................................................ 39

Digital Engagement and Brand Value ........................................................................ 39

Limitations and Future Recommendations ................................................................. 41

References .............................................................................................................................. 43

viii

List of Tables

Table 1: Conceptual Research on Consumer-Based Brand Equity ............................. 19

Table 2: Brand Values of Top 48 Performing US Brands (2016) ............................... 26

Table 3: Facebook Social Impact by Brands (2016) .................................................... 29

Table 4: Facebook Social Impact by Brands (2017) .................................................... 31

Table 5: Advertising Spending by Brands 2016-2017 ................................................. 33

Table 6: Results for 2016 ............................................................................................... 37

Table 7: Results for 2017 ............................................................................................... 37

Table 8: Results for 2016-2017 ..................................................................................... 38

ix

List of Figures

Figure 1: Levels of Brand Value ..................................................................................... 15

Figure 2: Different Perspectives on the Meaning of Brand Equity .............................. 17

Figure 3: Consumer-Based Equity Conceptual Relationships ...................................... 21

1

Chapter 1: Introduction

Over the last few decades, the world has witnessed a rapid economic growth in

many regions. This has led to greater amount of disposable income for households,

thereby, boosting their demands for goods and services. Consumers are now exposed to

unprecedented variety of goods and services, which consequently, increased competition

among businesses. In such intense competition, a company cannot succeed by simply

providing a product that will meet consumers’ demands, but by creating value significant

enough for consumers to want to return to the brand for their next purchases. This logic

partly explains the concept of brand equity, which is broadly defined by Leuthesser

(1988) as the relationships and actions associated with a company and their stakeholders

that allow the brand to generate larger profitable values than it could without the brand

name. Consumers’ digital engagement with brands is thought to relate to brand equity.

From a consumer-centric standpoint, digital engagement is “an online behavior

resulting from a consumer’s thoughts, emotional connection, and intrinsic motivation to

interact and cooperate with a brand or its community members in a digital, mobile, or

social media setting” (Scheinbaum, 2016, p. 2). Digital engagement is “characterized by

thoughts, emotional connections and/or consumer actions (e.g., “likes”, clicks, reactions,

comments, shares, check-ins, posts) in the context of mobile and/or social media”

(Scheinbaum, 2016, p. 2).

In respect to digital engagement, a brand can build positive brand equity by

establishing a relationship directly with consumers through exposure and interaction

(Rodgers & Thorson, 2018). It is the ubiquity of social media which helps brands build

unique relationship with consumers that cannot be addressed by the traditional channels.

This means that the brands now have greater potential to reach target audiences for less

2

cost because of content-sharing behavior and popularity of social influencers as brand

ambassadors. However, in terms of social media engagement, there are only a limited

number of studies available to measure the impact of consumer-driven brand equity on

the company’s performances (e.g., Barger, Peltier, & Schultz, 2016; Hollebeek, Glynn, &

Brodie, 2014).

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study is to examine various indicators of consumers’ digital

engagement with brand-related social media activities as measures of brand equity,

thereby generating additional brand value. Hence, the research question is: What is the

relationship between digital engagement (e.g., likes, social media brand mentions) and

brand valuation? In order to answer this question, this paper first explores the concept of

brand value, brand equity, and digital engagement as the major constructs.

This paper is organized as follows. First, the link between these notions and their

applicability on social media is discussed. Based on the literature, three hypotheses are

introduced. The second section introduces and examines the dependent variable (brand

values) and independent variables (Facebook social impacts; advertising spending) that

were collected to serve as a database to test the hypotheses. The last two chapters analyze

the findings from the previous chapters and elaborate on the limitations along with

recommendations for the future studies.

3

Chapter 2: Literature Review

The focus of this paper is to examine the effect of consumer engagement

measures on brand value creation in the current market, especially in social media setting.

Therefore, this chapter is divided into three sections to review relevant constructs: brand

value, brand equity, and consumer engagement.

The first section presents the notion of brand value by introducing various

definitions that has been stemmed from different disciplines and affiliated brand

valuation mechanisms. In the sub-section that follows, a number of factors that may

influence the process of brand valuation is identified. The second section focuses on the

idea of brand equity as a major construct that influences brand value. In this process,

diverse dimensions of brand equity are introduced by reviewing the previous literatures.

Based on the attributes of brand value and brand equity established in the previous

sections, the last section introduces the concept of consumer engagement as a new

measure of brand equity.

DEFINING BRAND VALUATION

For many years, brand reports published by financial analysts have been referred

to when trying to determine the worth of a brand. These reports provide a list of brands

called the league tables which rank the brands according to their financial values, often

under the title of “best performing brands”. For related stakeholders in the market – from

consumers, employees, managers to investors – these tables serve as a useful benchmark

that reflects a certain kind of image associated with the brand, as well as other

performance estimations (Raggio & Leone, 2009; Reyneke, Abratt, & Bick, 2014). It is

also important to note that the brand valuation does not only demonstrate the productivity

4

of the brands, but it is too a source of motivation where different elements of valuation

process can positively affect brands’ financial performances (Raggio & Leone, 2009).

To fully understand what brand value is and how it is generated, the concept first

needs to be approached from an economic perspective. A brand can generate additional

value when its consumers recognize the businesses’ efforts to differentiate the brand’s

offerings (Doyle, 2001; Reyneke et al., 2014; Salinas, 2009). In fact, the ability to

differentiate the brand is a key to increase the level of demand for its goods and services

in the market as elaborated in Salinas’s (2009) work, and also shared by Raggio and

Leone (2009). Both literatures agree on the idea that the role of “brand” is to signal

consumers of functional and emotional qualities that are unique to the brand, thus to

make their products and services more distinctive and noticeable in the market, which

leads to a stable level of demand for the brand against competition.

There are numerous valuation service providers around the world that operate

with different purposes, thereby implement different methodologies. Models like

AbsoluteBrand, AUS Consultants, BBDO, and Interbrand are the examples of these

methodologies to name a few. These models may vary in terms of their formulas, but

they all share the similar process that defines the overall concept of valuation. Brand

valuation is an expert’s viewpoint on the worth of a brand, derived from various

prepositions built around different objectives and participants (Salinas, 2009). In general,

the brand valuation objectives include valuations for transactional and accounting

purposes, as well as for brand management purposes which is the primary focus of this

paper.

5

Determinants of Brand Value

While the brand value has been used widely as a yardstick to measure brand

performance, it is important to note that this concept is distinctively different to the

notion of brand equity, so that these terms should not be used interchangeably. Brand

equity is one of the contributing factors of brand value and does not represent the

financial value of the brand. In their paper, Raggio and Leone (2009) clearly

distinguishes two concepts by identifying brand equity as “an interpersonal construct that

moderates the impact of marketing activities”, whereas brand value is recognized as the

worth of a brand in financial terms. Furthermore, they emphasize on these differences

through a visualization of the concepts as it is shown in Figure 1, demonstrating that the

value of a brand is determined by its ability to recognize and utilize the equity that it

possesses.

Figure 1: Levels of Brand Value (Source: Raggio & Leone, 2009).

This view is also in line with that of Keller and Lehman (2009), where the authors

refer to brand equity as an indicator of a brand’s potentials that can be developed and

incorporated strategically into the brand’s management to yield brand value in the long-

6

term. In this sense, businesses need to be aware of the present value of their brands in the

market to be able to estimate the level of brand equity that they currently possess.

BRAND EQUITY AS A DRIVER OF BRAND VALUE

The concept of brand equity is one of the central elements in today’s market,

however, the broad nature of this construct makes it difficult to draw out a definition or a

measurement that can be applied universally. Its interpretations vary across disciplines,

and the two most prevailing perspectives come from the financial and marketing

literatures.

Brand equity, when viewed from a financial point of view, has been defined by

Motameni and Shahrokhi (1998) as “incremental discounted future cash flows” that

would be generated by products and services due to the brand name they are associated

with in relative to the same offerings appearing as generic brands. In this respect, the

level of equity a brand has can be estimated using the parent company’s stock prices,

which is also an indicator of the company’s degree of commitment to marketing as

suggested by Simon and Sullivan (1993). Other measures proposed by Wentz and Martin

(1989) and Kapferer (1992) include brand-earnings multiplier, averaged profits, as well

as weights measured based on past marketing expenditures and assessments, which are

often used by valuation companies and publications like the Interbrand Group and The

Financial World.

While the financial perspective provides company-oriented interpretations of

brand equity, definitions used in marketing literatures are more consumer-oriented

(Aaker, 1991; Christodoulides & de Chernatony, 2009; Christodoulides, de Chernatony,

Furrer, & Abimbola, 2006; de Chernatony, Harris, & Christodoulides, 2004; Keller,

7

1993; Pappu, Quester, & Cooksey, 2005; Vazquez, Del Rio, & Iglesias, 2002; You &

Donthu, 2001). Here, brand equity is defined by Keller (1993) as the differences in

consumers’ responses to marketing activities of a brand as a result of their awareness and

perceived image of the brand. In other words, when a brand has a positive brand equity,

consumers’ reactions will be more favorable to the marketing mix of the brand than they

would when the same mix had been implemented to a generic version of the same

product.

Hence, the financial approach of brand equity focuses on the economic values

associated with brands, whereas the marketing literatures address the concept as an

outcome of individual consumer’s perception and attitudes about brands (Salinas, 2009).

Therefore, these perspectives can be categorized again as to represent “brand value” and

“brand strength” as visualized in Figure 2 (Lassar, Mittal, & Sharma, 1995;

Salinas_2009; Srivastava & Shocker, 1991).

Figure 2: Different Perspectives on the Meaning of Brand Equity [Source: Developed by Salinas (2009) based on Aaker (1991), and Yoo and Donthu (2001)].

8

These classifications indicate that the economic benefits of brand equity (“brand

value”) cannot be apprehended unless a brand’s name has been recognized by a consumer

followed by a corresponding reaction (“brand strength”). To put it differently, consumer-

based brand equity needs to be established primarily in order to create a certain image in

the market, based on which brands can generate profit and enhance their presence in the

market that leads to development of firm-based brand equity (Christodoulides & de

Chernatony, 2009).

Elements of Brand Equity

Based on the different interpretations provided in the previous section, it can be

inferred that the consumers’ perceived value of brands is the source of brand equity.

Developed upon this notion, there has been a numerous research conducted over the last

few decades that explores various dimensions of brand equity.

Consumer’s brand association was first identified by Keller (1991, 1993) as one

of the key constructs of brand equity. Brand association consists of consumers’

awareness of a brand, knowledge about this brand, as well as their perceived image of the

brand (Lassar et al., 1995). This explains the reason why a consumer’s response to a

specific brand is different to its competitors. For instance, if an individual has a favorable

association with a specific brand, then it is more likely for this person to develop a

positive attitude toward the promotional activities of this brand when compared to that of

the same goods and services offered without a recognizable brand name (Christodoulides

& de Chernatony, 2009).

Another recognizable construct of brand equity is brand loyalty. Brand loyalty

was distinguished as a key dimension of brand equity in Bridge (1992) and Aaker’s

9

(1991) works along with brand association, brand awareness, perceived quality, and other

exclusive assets of a brand. Consumer’s loyalty towards a brand is developed from the

individual’s confidence in the brand, based on which they become more inclined to pay

premium when purchasing goods and services from this brand. This is how brands’

profitability can be affected by consumer-based brand equity (Lassar et al., 1995).

Like mentioned previously, there is no consensus on how to define or to measure

brand equity. In this sense, Christodoulides and De Chernatony (2009) provide a list of

dimensions that have been identified as the estimators of brand equity, like shown in

Table 1.

Study Dimensions of Consumer-Based Brand Equity

Aaker (1991, 1996) brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality, brand loyalty

Blackston (1992) brand relationship (trust, customer satisfaction with the brand) Keller (1993) brand knowledge�(brand awareness, brand associations)

Sharp (1995) company/brand awareness,�brand image,�relationships with customers/existing customer franchise

Berry (2000) brand awareness brand meaning Burmann et al. (2009)

brand benefit clarity, perceived brand quality, brand benefit uniqueness, brand sympathy, brand trust

Table 1: Conceptual Research on Consumer-Based Brand Equity (Source: Christodoulides & de Chernatony, 2009).

Considering that the brand equity is not an objective indicator of brands’

performance but rather an evaluation of the consumers’ perceived value about the brands,

the way brand equity is measured should be revised to reflect the current market

conditions. To be more specific, in today’s environment surrounded by smart technology,

the idea of brand equity is now more than what consumers think of the brand. It is

10

consumers’ relationship with the brand that they have developed through personal

experiences of mutual communication in real-time with brands. Therefore, the focus of

these measures should go beyond from merely observing consumers’ responses and

attitudes toward the brands to acknowledging these consumers as active, primary agents

that drive brand equity through engagement and interaction.

CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT

Consumer engagement is a relatively new area of study, therefore represented by

a very limited availability of literatures. While the concept needs to be defined and

conceptualized more thoroughly by identifying appropriate measures in time to come, it

has been gaining a lot of attention for its relevance in the current market environment

(Baldus, Voorhees, & Calantone, 2015; Barger et al., 2016; Brodie, Ilic, Juric, &

Hollebeek, 2013; Kuvykaite & Piligrimiene, 2014).

This concept of “engagement” is very broad and focuses largely on the interactive

aspect of relationship building between consumers and brands. Consumer engagement

looks at this process as a form of two-way communication, where a consumer’s

experience about a brand does not just arise from the individual’s one-sided observations

of the brand, but it is a co-created outcome of consumer-brand interaction (Brodie,

Hollebeek, Juric, & Ilic, 2011; Calder, Malthouse, & Schaedel, 2009; Close, Finney,

Lacey, & Sneath, 2006; Kuvykaite & Piligrimiene, 2014; van Doorn et al., 2010). In this

regard, consumer engagement should be considered as a concept that is different to

consumer experience, which is a more involuntary process that does not require any

incitement from either entity (consumers and brands). That is, “experiences” can take

place even when the consumer is not emotionally or physically attentive of the brand

11

(Brakus, Schmitt, & Zarantonello, 2009; Lemke, Clark, & Wilson, 2011; Hollebeek et al.,

2014).

Therefore, the concept of brand engagement acknowledges today’s consumers as

representatives that are more active and social than the previous generations in

developing relationships with brands (Hoffman & Novak, 1996; Hollebeek et al., 2014;

Kuvykaite & Piligrimiene, 2014; Pagani, Hofacker, & Goldsmith, 2011; Prahalad, 2004;

Ramani & Kumar, 2008; Singh & Sonnenburg, 2012; Vivek, Beatty, Dalela, & Morgan,

2014). The key attribute here, is the “interactivity” of consumers with brands, meaning

that consumer-brand interaction does not start or end at the point of purchase, but it exists

throughout all stages of consumers’ buying process from cognitive, affective to cognitive

like in the model visualized by Hollebeek and colleagues’ (2014) as presented in Figure 3

(Patterson, Ting, & De Ruyter, 2006; van Doorn et al., 2010).

Figure 3: Consumer-Based Equity Conceptual Relationships (Source: Hollebeek, Glynn, & Brodie, 2014)

12

Digital Engagement and Brand Equity

While consumer engagement is broader, digital engagement is a specific

consideration of consumer engagement (Scheinbaum, 2016). From a consumer-centric

standpoint, digital engagement is “an online behavior resulting from a consumer’s

thoughts, emotional connection, and intrinsic motivation to interact and cooperate with a

brand or its community members in a digital, mobile, or social media setting”

(Scheinbaum, 2016, p. 2). Digital engagement is “characterized by thoughts, emotional

connections and/or consumer actions (e.g., “likes”, clicks, reactions, comments, shares,

check-ins, posts) in the context of mobile and/or social media” (Scheinbaum, 2016, p. 2).

This definition demonstrates that there is a positive relationship between brand

engagement and brand value creation. Other research shows that, based on the

observations of increased consumer-brand engagement generating greater value for

brands as reflected in terms of increased performance and profitability, customer

relationships, as well as product and service development (Bijmolt et al., 2010; Higgins

& Scholer, 2009; Hollebeek et al., 2014; Kuvykaite & Piligrimiene, 2014; Nambisan &

Baron, 2007; Prahalad, 2004; Sawhney, Verona, & Prandelli, 2005).

For many decades consumers were considered as just a passive recipient of brand

related benefits that had been sent out by the producers and delivered through a unilateral

form communication (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). Hence, the consumers had a

limited role in the process of value creation which had been developed and managed

within the businesses. Digital engagement however is not passive, but is interactive.

It is the emergence of the Internet and more critically the introduction of social

media that has changed this context dramatically. Most of today’s consumers are never

really “offline”, with the Internet being accessible through multiple mobile devices

13

anytime and anywhere. They do more than just networking on social media, and, as

indicated by Hoffman and Novak (2012), they are now constantly consuming content,

and even going a step further to share this content voluntarily. This phenomenon of

consumers socializing on internet communities, and brands looking into these

communities to create a relationship with potential customers formed a “three-party

relationship”, based on which a new notion of brand value was developed (Heding,

Knudzen, & Bjerre, 2009).

As greater number of consumers now take active part in shaping different parts of

brands, the way companies respond to consumer needs is changing correspondingly.

Previously, business operations have been largely based on the Goods Dominant Logic

perspective, which focuses on the value generated from exchange of goods and services.

This view is being replaced gradually by Service Dominant Logic, which focuses on the

purpose of exchanges and values co-created from the user-provider interaction (Vargo &

Lusch, 2004).

Digital/Consumer Engagement on Social Media

Social media is one of the areas that shows a strong presence of interaction among

individuals and brands, especially in regard to brand-related content sharing. It is a

medium that enables users to follow and interact with brands that they are interested in at

no cost and more conveniently than ever (de Vries, Peluso, Romani, Leeflang, & Marcati,

2017). In fact, nearly half of social media populations use the services as a means to

communicate with different brands, with almost 20 percent of all Tweets generated are

brand-related (Jansen, Zhang, Sobel, & Chowdury, 2009; Sharma, 2017).

While this sharing behavior indicates consumer’s active engagement with brands,

14

it is also a source of enhanced brand equity, thereby value-creation for these brands.

When a user shares and/or creates a branded content to their social media space, not only

is this individual endorsing the brand but is also creating an additional freely earned

exposure for the brand that serves as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) (Sharma, 2017;

Yuki, 2015). The power of eWOM has been recognized in Booth and Matic’s (2010)

work as to have greater impact on consumers’ purchase decisions and developing

preferences when compared to the effectiveness of brand-delivered promotional contents.

Hence, it has been suggested that there is more likelihood of enhanced brand

knowledge and equity for an individual and related others when the level of the

consumer’s engagement on social media increases, whether it is by creating a direct

connection with a brand or by sharing a brand-related content (Aaker, 1997; Bruhn,

Schoenmueller, & Schäfer, 2012; Christodoulides, Jevons, & Bonhomme, 2012; Keller,

1993; Schivinski & Dabrowski, 2014; Schivinski, Christodoulides, & Dabrowski, 2016).

HYPOTHESES

As emphasized throughout this paper, there are a limited number of studies

associated with consumer engagement, especially in relations to its applicability in social

media settings, concerning that both are relatively new fields of studies. While available

literature that explores these areas agree that social media is an interactive platform that

generates engagement among consumers and brands (Aaker, 1997; Bruhn,

Schoenmueller, & Schäfer, 2012; Christodoulides, Jevons, & Bonhomme, 2012; Keller,

1993; Schivinski & Dabrowski, 2014; Schivinski, Christodoulides, & Dabrowski, 2016).

These studies still show a restricted use of social media as a way to approach consumer

engagement to estimate its effect on brand values. Therefore, this paper proposes

15

Facebook’s interactive features (i.e. “Likes” and “the number of users talking about this

brand on Facebook”) as a measure of consumer engagement and intend to examine their

impact on brand values that is the outcome of brand equity. Based on this motivation, the

following hypotheses were developed:

H1: The total number of Likes a brand’s official1 fan page receives on

Facebook will be positively related with the brand’s valuation.

H2: The total number of users talking about a brand on Facebook will be

positively related with the brand’s valuation.

H3: A brand’s total amount of advertising spending will have a significant

relationship with the brand’s valuation.

The first two hypotheses were developed to test whether the number of Likes on a

brand’s official Facebook fan page and the number of users talking about this brand on

Facebook can be used as estimators of the brand’s place on the league tables. This is

based on the brand-related factors that can affect consumer engagement identified by

Barger and colleagues (2016), which includes brand attitude, word-of-mouth for brands,

commitment to communication methods. Spending on advertising was another factor

mentioned in the same work, thereby the last hypothesis was developed based on this to

clarify whether a brand’s advertising spending is an antecedent to consumer engagement,

thus affecting the brand’s valuation.

1 The term “official” is used to clarify between brand-related Facebook pages created by individual users to the pages created by official personnel of brands and acknowledged by Facebook.

16

Chapter 3: Methods

DATA

In order to test the relationship between the concept of consumer engagement in

social media and its impact on brand value, the primary objective of data selection was to

find a list of brands from a league table that specified the operating region of the brands

(i.e., US), as the coverage of the Facebook interaction devices is limited to show only the

top 25 countries with the highest number of likes and mentions.

A list of brands was pulled from Brand Finance’s league tables provided in their

annual reports (January 1 to December 31) for 2016 and 2017, and the total number of

Likes of these brands’ fan pages and users talking about these brands on Facebook were

retrieved from Facebook’s Graph API for the same time span to serve as the consumer

engagement measures.

Dependent Variable

The dependent variable used in this study is the brand value of the US brands

estimated by Brand Finance in US dollars, based on performance measures such as

Brand Strength Index (brand investment, brand equity, and brand performance), brand’s

royalty rate, and its revenues. Total of 48 US brands were collected for year 2016 and

20172, and the numbers are listed in Table 2.

2 All brand values were for the year ending December 31.

17

Brand name Brand Value ($m USD)

2016 2017

Apple 145,918 107,141 Google 88,173 109,470 Amazon.com 69,642 106,396 Microsoft 67,258 76,265 Verizon 63,116 65,875 AT&T 59,904 87,016 Walmart 53,657 62,211 Wells Fargo 44,170 41,618 McDonald's 42,937 38,966 GE 29,211 35,318 Coca-Cola 34,180 31,885 Facebook 34,002 61,998 IBM 31,786 36,112 Walt Disney 31,231 34,454 Chase 30,603 33,737 Marlboro 29,935 32,471 The Home Depot 28,798 30,216 Nike 28,041 31,762 Bank of America 26,928 30,273 Citi 26,031 27,674 Starbucks 23,185 25,615 CVS 22,884 23,286

Table 2: Brand Values of Top 48 Performing US Brands (2016) (Source: Brand Finance, 2017).

18

Intel 22,845 20,369 Oracle 22,136 25,878 Ford 19,771 22,432 UPS 19,565 22,128 HP 8,090 8,090 ExxonMobil 19,227 20,736 Cisco 19,162 20,734 Pepsi 18,947 18,279 PwC 18,569 18,510 American Express 18,483 15,014 Chevron 17,822 22,058 Xfinity 24,186 26,180 Deloitte 16,160 16,776 NBC International 16,103 13,736 FOX 15,541 15,814 Target 15,331 17,016 Johnson's 15,115 16,829 Unitedhealth 14,934 13,379 Walgreens 14,315 15,969 Boeing 13,956 16,333 FedEx 13,079 17,092 JP Morgan 12,948 15,710 Lowe's 12,717 13,938 Accenture 12,687 17,464

Table 2: Brand Values of Top 48 Performing US Brands (2016) (Source: Brand Finance, 2017).

19

Independent Variable I: Facebook Social Impacts

There is an increasing number of social network services available; however,

Facebook remains to be one of the largest and most well-known service as a pioneer of

this phenomenon (Shih, 2011). Not only does Facebook serves as a platform for users and

brands to create contents, but it also allows these contents to be shared within and outside

the site. Here, participants can disperse contents by clicking on “Likes” button as a form

of digital engagement. Facebook “Likes” are an indicator of the users’ personal

preferences and reactions toward the contents, and at the same time, these users are

endorsing the contents and generating electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) among the

network of users (Hof, 2011; Hoffman & Fodor, 2010; Sharma, 2017).

It has been suggested that the recommendation from friends and families is one of

the most powerful elements that influences a consumer’s purchase decision process and

development of attitude towards a brand (Kotler & Keller, 2012; Sharma, 2017). And

considering that a typical user’s Facebook network consists largely of friends and

families, the effect of the user’s engagement with brands and brand-related content on

Facebook can be multiplied by the connected others (Sharma, 2017).

Facebook reported that the users that make the effort of clicking “Likes” is more

actively connected to Facebook with greater level of engagement compared to the

average users (Facebook, 2010). Therefore, the number of Likes displayed on a brand’s

official fan page and the number of users talking about this brand on Facebook can be a

reflection of consumers’ level of engagement toward that brand.

Based on the list of brands gathered from Brand Finance, Facebook Graph API

was used to retrieve the total number of Likes received through brands’ official fan pages

as well as the number of users that talked about each brand during 2016 and 2017 as

listed in Table 3 and 4.

20

Brand name Total page likes on Facebook

People talking about this on Facebook

Apple 1,066,984 3,290,415 Google 2,676,782 1,593,518 Amazon.com 24,133,624 6,451,417 Microsoft 1,187,720 1,095,975 Verizon 6,858,334 1,924,870 AT&T 5,570,470 2,438,461 Walmart 30,083,869 5,941,372 Wells Fargo 882,393 541,046 McDonald's 10,515,710 2,786,863 GE 794,124 172,068 Coca-Cola 12,518,699 2,404,123 Facebook 23,654,124 10,296,455 IBM 170,234 466,765 Walt Disney 11,481,259 7,243,711 Chase 3,233,577 159,187 Marlboro N/A N/A The Home Depot 2,221,613 3,313,138 Nike 4,327,997 1,918,460 Bank of America 2,467,797 2,029,042 Citi 941,053 70,443 Starbucks 17,670,531 17,139,141 CVS 1,856,569 2,641,426 Intel 2,067,273 1,238,407 Oracle 58,429 27,390 Ford 1,529,255 1,611,614

Table 3: Facebook Social Impact by Brands (2016)3 (Source: Facebook Graph API, 2017).

3 Marlboro and ExxonMobil were excluded from the final data set due to insufficient information.

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UPS 1,261,696 658,679 HP 1,232,461 1,227,367 ExxonMobil 16,891 N/A Cisco 161,838 180,517 Pepsi 6,436,676 1,042,465 PwC 8,124 9,501 American Express 2,535,763 2,293,742 Chevron 632,185 252,013 Xfinity 6,025,411 1,412,796 Deloitte 44,945 5,895,499 NBC International 1,331,156 12,424 FOX 409,143 658,378 Target 22,045,833 7,890,349 Johnson's 1,208,468 220,966 Unitedhealth 80,179 156,690 Walgreens 4,183,068 1,536,035 Boeing 172,077 286,845 FedEx 894,940 963,894 JP Morgan 52,956 177,640 Lowe's 3,768,989 4,884,920 Accenture 33,299 19,984

Table 3: Facebook Social Impact by Brands (2016)4 (Source: Facebook Graph API, 2017).

4 Marlboro and ExxonMobil were excluded from the final data set due to insufficient information.

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Brand name Total page likes on Facebook

People talking about this on Facebook

Apple 1,756,299 3,290,415 Google 2,920,947 1,593,518 Amazon.com 25,018,596 6,451,417 Microsoft 1,281,278 1,095,975 Verizon 6,971,533 1,924,870 AT&T 5,830,343 2,438,461 Walmart 30,484,001 5,941,372 Wells Fargo 964,507 541,046 McDonald's 10,764,431 2,786,863 GE 826,167 172,068 Coca-Cola 12,461,888 2,404,123 Facebook 24,951,193 10,296,455 IBM 223,476 466,765 Walt Disney 11,490,218 7,243,711 Chase 3,338,430 159,187 Marlboro N/A N/A The Home Depot 3,099,251 3,313,138 Nike 4,785,742 1,918,460 Bank of America 2,650,202 2,029,042 Citi 996,062 70,443 Starbucks 18,226,585 17,139,141 CVS 2,174,065 2,641,426

Table 4: Facebook Social Impact by Brands (2017) (Source: Facebook Graph API, 2017).

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Intel 2,149,305 1,238,407 Oracle 220,083 27,390 Ford 1,689,035 1,611,614 UPS 1,301,972 658,679 HP 1,320,335 1,227,367 ExxonMobil 1,013,891 N/A Cisco 182,845 180,517 Pepsi 6,507,599 1,042,465 PwC 14,496 9,501 American Express 2,592,668 2,293,742 Chevron 628,788 252,013 Xfinity 6,049,441 1,412,796 Deloitte 47,920 5,895,499 NBC International 1,525,251 12,424 FOX 467,533 658,378 Target 22,517,475 7,890,349 Johnson's 1,230,631 220,966 Unitedhealth 135,696 156,690 Walgreens 4,258,030 1,536,035 Boeing 233,480 286,845 FedEx 950,515 963,894 JP Morgan 71,569 177,640 Lowe's 4,278,301 4,884,920 Accenture 40,388 19,984

Table 4: Facebook Social Impact by Brands (2017) (Source: Facebook Graph API, 2017).

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Independent Variable II: Advertising Spending

Spending on traditional advertising was suggested by Barger and colleagues

(2016) as one of the brand-related factors that can influence consumer engagement. To

examine whether brands’ spending on advertising can estimate the value of the brand,

annual advertising spending of the brands listed in Table 2 were collected. The values

were taken from Ad Age Datacenter annual reports for 2016 to 2017 as listed in Table 5.

Brand name Advertising Spending (in $m USD)

2016 2017

Apple 610 750 Google 241 331 Amazon.com 445 537 Microsoft 569 611 Verizon 1,257 1,141 AT&T 1,262 905 Walmart 658 472 Wells Fargo 136 158 McDonald's 810 773 GE N/A N/A Coca-Cola 257 355 Facebook 310 310 IBM 482 507 Walt Disney 159 118

Table 5: Advertising Spending by Brands 2016-20175, Source: Ad Age Data Center, 2017).

5 GE, Oracle, UPS, Cisco, PwC, Chevron, Deloitte, Boeing, and Accenture were excluded from the final data set due to insufficient information.

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Chase 277 219 Marlboro N/A 405 The Home Depot 329 303 Nike 1,406 1,468 Bank of America 168 144 Citi 335 235 Starbucks 63 63 CVS 380 310 Intel 102 112 Oracle N/A N/A Ford 793 892 UPS N/A N/A HP 219 219 ExxonMobil N/A N/A

Cisco N/A N/A

Pepsi 172 192 PwC N/A N/A

American Express 296 349 Chevron N/A N/A

Xfinity 505 470 Deloitte N/A N/A

NBC International 150 135 FOX 108 108 Target 122 473 Johnson's 2,009 1,929 Unitedhealth 193 193

Table 5: Advertising Spending by Brands 2016-20176, Source: Ad Age Data Center, 2017).

6 GE, Oracle, UPS, Cisco, PwC, Chevron, Deloitte, Boeing, and Accenture were excluded from the final data set due to insufficient information.

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Walgreens 248 266 Boeing N/A N/A

FedEx 291 315 JP Morgan 2,063 2,233 Lowe's 209 324 Accenture N/A N/A

Table 5: Advertising Spending by Brands 2016-20177, Source: Ad Age Data Center, 2017).

DATA ANALYSIS

The hypothesized relationships were tested using simple linear regression

analysis. The SAS Proc Reg procedure was used to investigate the relationship between

brand value and Facebook Social Impacts and advertising spending. First, the analysis

was conducted on the data set for 2016 and 2017 separately, and then all data were

combined for the final analysis.

Throughout the series of analyses, the backward elimination technique was used

to determine an explanatory variable that showed statistically significant contributions.

Hence, the analysis began with all variables entered into the equation, and then at the end

of each analysis the least significant predictor variable was removed until the model was

left with a variable that was significant at the 0.05 significant level (p < 0.05).

7 GE, Oracle, UPS, Cisco, PwC, Chevron, Deloitte, Boeing, and Accenture were excluded from the final data set due to insufficient information.

27

Chapter 4: Findings

This chapter presents the results of regression analyses on data collected for years

2016 and 2017 and examines the relationship between valuations of 32 US brands8,

Facebook social impact indicators and the brand’s spending on advertising as measures of

consumer engagement.

Table 6 and 7 presents the analyses of data for year 2016 and 2017 each

conducted separately. These data were then combined for data analysis as summarized in

Table 8. In the previous section, assumptions were made that both the total number of

Likes a brand’s fan page receives on Facebook (H1), as well as the total number of users

talking about the brand on Facebook (H2) will be positively related with the brand’s

valuation. It was also assumed that the brand’s total amount of advertising spending will

show a significant relationship with its valuation (H3).

However, in the series of analyses, the total number of users talking about brands

on Facebook and advertising spending did not show statistically significant contributions

to the models in all cases, therefore, these variables were considered as non-significant

predictors, thus were dropped from the model.

On the other hand, “Likes” was a significant predictor variable in all three sets of

data as it can be seen from the tables below. The results indicate that about 20 per cent of

the variance in brand value can be predicted from the variable “Likes”. While the

strength of association seems relatively weak, it still shows a significant, positive

correlation between the number of Likes and brand valuation (see Table 8: t=2.70, p <

0.05).

8 In addition to Marlboro, ExxonMobil, GE, Oracle, UPS, Cisco, PwC, Chevron, Deloitte, Boeing, and Accenture that were excluded from the final data set due to insufficient information, Apple, Google, and Starbucks were considered as outliers and were also excluded from the final analyses.

28

Table 6: Results for 2016.

Table 7: Results for 2017

29

Table 8: Results for 2016-2017.

The primary finding of this study is that the number of people that generate brand-

related posts on Facebook or advertising expenditures of these brands demonstrated no

significant relationship with brand value. Nevertheless, the total number of likes

indicated a significant relationship with brand value, suggesting that for a one unit

increase in Likes, it can be expected a 0.25-unit increase in brand value. In other words, if

the number of Likes a brand’s official fan page receives on Facebook, it is more likely for

the brand to generate additional brand value than those brands that receive less number of

Likes.

30

Chapter 5: Discussion

This chapter is divided into two sections. The first analyzes the findings of this

study in respect to the relationship between consumer engagement and brand value. To

conclude, the paper elaborates upon such observations by discussing the limitations that

were identified throughout the study, as well as the recommendations for future research

and implications.

DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT AND BRAND VALUE

The purpose of this paper is to suggest digital engagement in a social media

setting as a contemporary measure of brand equity, as well as to examine its impact on

brand value.

As an independent variable, digital engagement was operationalized using

Facebook interaction devices including the total number of Likes received by a brand’s

fan page and the total number of users talking about the brand on Facebook, as well as

the brand’s total amount of advertising spending as a brand-related factor that can

influence consumer engagement, thereby brand value.

Despite the assumptions, the results showed that the number of users talking

about a brand on Facebook and the brand’s advertising spending had no relationship with

the brand’s value. However, despite its relatively weak associations, the number of Likes

a brand’s fan page receives and the brand’s values, suggested a significant correlation.

The findings of this study contribute toward expanding the stream of research by

bridging the two separated areas of focus; brand value creation from consumer

engagement (Hoffman & Novak, 1996; Hollebeek et al., 2014; Kuvykaite & Piligrimiene,

2014; Pagani, Hofacker, & Goldsmith, 2011; Prahalad, 2004; Ramani & Kumar, 2008;

31

Singh & Sonnenburg, 2012; Vivek, Beatty, Dalela, & Morgan, 2014), and consumer

engagement as a subject of social media activities (Aaker, 1997; Bruhn, Schoenmueller,

& Schäfer, 2012; Christodoulides, Jevons, & Bonhomme, 2012; Keller, 1993; Schivinski

& Dabrowski, 2014; Schivinski, Christodoulides, & Dabrowski, 2016). The findings

indicate that these two fields of research are closely related by demonstrating the

correlation between consumer’s engagement with brand-related social media contents

and the brand’s value, thus suggesting the level of social media engagement as an

indicator of brand equity affecting brand value.

Not only do these findings have academic value, but they also provide meaningful

insights for practitioners. The major implication of this study is that the brands need to

change the perceptions they have about today’s consumers. Compared to the previous

generations of consumers who were more passively involved with brands due to the

unilateral characteristics of promotional activities, the current consumers expect

“interaction” from the brands at every point to create relationship and want their voice

heard. It is critical for the brands to implement strategies to reflect such changes, as these

are now the new basis of brand equity, ultimately influencing the brand’s financial

performances and values.

This is especially crucial considering that many products and services in today’s

market offer benefits almost identical, where each can only be distinguished by the level

of equity the brand possesses. Hence, to create a value significant enough for consumers

to want to return to the brand for their next purchases, brands need to acknowledge

consumers as more than just recipients of offerings but as a focal subject of engagement.

Hence, knowing how to reach their target audiences will determine the brand’s

performance more than ever. This study clearly shows that the strength of engagement in

32

this digital world costs too much to ignore for any brands trying to build positive brand

equity.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RECOMMENDATIONS

As described in the previous chapter, this study was conducted based on the data

collected using Facebook Graph API. While this tool provides the total number of Likes

received through brands’ official fan pages and the number of users that talked about

each brand, other indicators of user-brand interaction on Facebook, such as the number of

followers and shares were restricted from public access.

Even for the data that could be retrieved, any materials dated prior to 2016 were

not accessible and the same data only showed the top 25 countries with the highest rate of

interaction. Therefore, this study was conducted using the data on US users accumulated

subsequent to January 2016. Consequently, this restricted the use of the league tables,

where the data collected were restricted to their performance scores from the US market

while the brands referred to in the study are global businesses.

Again, acquiring the total amount of advertising spending for the brands was also

restricted by the factors mentioned above. Because many brands are operating globally, it

was often the case that their spending was not specified by regions. This eliminated a

handful of brands from the list, thus decreasing the total number of samples that could be

examined.

For future studies, the issue of data accessibility should be solved in order to

generate more precise results. Some recommendations include extended regions, external

sources, longitudinal observations, and alternate measure of impacts:

33

It is suggested the future studies to overcome the limited sample size by collecting

data on countries outside United States by referring to the brand’s fan pages dedicated to

specific countries. However, the number of measurable brands may decrease due to the

brands that only have one official fan page.

Another possible way to resolve the issue of data limitation is by referring to

external services that offer paid social media data. These services provide overall

statistics on the number of traffic and shares on the brands, thereby making more

elements available as measurable independent variables.

The same data could also be collected over the longer time period. While this

study could only present data accumulated over the last two years, the same data can be

collected over the next few years to increase the number of data for more precise

analyses.

It is also recommended for future studies to refer to other measures of social

engagement and platforms outside Facebook. In other words, brand-related social media

activities like the number of “shares” of contents or “hashtags” can also be referred to,

along with that of other social network services such as Twitter and Instagram. This will

help inducing a conclusion that is more precise and comprehensive.

The results may have been more precise or different, if larger number of data

could have been obtained from countries outside of United States and across greater time

span. Hence, future studies will have to find an alternate source or greater amount of data

to tackle such challenges for improved results.

34

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