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This study aims to investigate the role of three customer equity drivers on customer repurchase intent in business-to-business (B2B) markets. It also explores the interconnected nature of equity drivers, specifically, the effects of brand equity and value equity on relationship equity. Further, it investigates how perceived switching costs moderates the interrelationships between customer equity drivers. The authors explore the interrelationships between the customer equity drivers in a B2B context involving commodity products in a developing market.

Data collection was done from a pool of 184 institutional customers of a lubricant brand in a developing market. The sample had representations of buyer organizations across sectors, namely, automobile, cement, metal, fertilizer, railway, defence and mining, etc. The final data were subjected to partial least squares-based structural equation modeling to test the hypothesized model.

The study found a direct effect of brand equity, and value equity on relationship equity and an indirect effect on repurchase intent, namely, relationship equity. Perceived switching cost was found to moderate the interaction between brand equity and relationship equity as well as between value equity and relationship equity. The direct effect of relationship equity on repurchase intent was also significant.

The study implies that B2B firms should ground their marketing program on these customer equity drivers, especially when dealing with commodity products. The absence of any of these drivers would be detrimental in customer retention. The study also establishes the relevance of switching cost(s) and its impact on the underlying dynamics between the different equity drivers in the context of commodity products. The customer equity drivers along with switching costs, if managed well, may become switching barriers for customers and eventually would ensure recurring revenue through repeat purchases.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies that focuses on the disaggregated effect of customer equity on customer outcomes in the B2B context. Furthermore, this study investigates how perceived switching costs moderates the interrelationships between customer equity drivers in the industrial sales context in an emerging market.

The purpose of this study has to conduct an integrated effective evaluation system to discover consumers' travel attitudes of the culinary experiences or cuisines and establishing an optimal mutual relationship of a brand equity evaluation model.

Based on a sample of 624 participants, the results support that social media engagement has indirect effects on culinary brand equity development through travel attitudes and information sharing.

The study finds that values are expressed as foundational attributes that have indirect effects on brand equity through hedonic function, perceived quality, brand awareness and brand image. In contrast, the social interaction mechanism strengthens subdimensional relationships. These findings extend the customer brand equity literature and the nature of tourists' perspectives in the context of Taiwan's culinary destination brand equity.

It is a suggestion for tourism and hospitality managers to identify the different characteristics of attitudes towards visits and the customers' desert of participation in food-related activities when it derives to the classifications of food and culinary tourism.

The current study extended the findings and asserted that social interaction leads to and strengthens the relationships between memorable culinary hedonic experiences and perceived quality and improves tourists' positive awareness and image compared to other tourism experiences.

Drawing from the literature on internationalization, higher education marketing and place branding, this paper aims to link the internationalization of higher education to country branding. It explores the impact of internationalization within the higher education system on Egypt’s destination brand equity. This investigation offers insights for decision-makers in both the higher education and country branding sectors.

This empirical paper adopts an exploratory approach and serves as an initial step for researchers. It utilizes a quantitative methodology, employing a survey with 366 responses, to examine the effects of internationalization efforts in higher education on country brand equity.

The results reveal a direct correlation between student engagement and the brand equity of international branch campuses (IBCs), as well as a link between IBCs and Egypt’s brand equity. Notably, the study highlights the mediating role of IBC brand equity in the relationship between student engagement and the overall brand equity of Egypt.

This paper is innovative in its method of assessing the impact of internationalization efforts in higher education, specifically at IBCs in Egypt, on Egypt’s destination brand equity. Additionally, the study identifies student engagement as an antecedent to IBC brand equity.

The purpose of this study is to propose and develop an antecedent model from star hotel employee viewpoint and a consequence model for star hotel customers’ evaluation of the brand equity development process.

In terms of the study setting, structural equation modelling was conducted. Study 1 used the views of 323 star hotels’ employees on the mutual relationships among employee-based brand equity, and Study 2 used 516 star hotels’ customer perspectives concerning the mutual relationships among customer-based brand equity.

In the antecedent model of Study 1 from an employee viewpoint, service quality is a foundational attribute of the indirect influences of brand equity development through brand promise, values and message. A moderating role of brand identity is also found. In the consequence model of Study 2 from the perspective of customers’ evaluation, mutual relationships of brand equity are identified, and social interactions are established that enhance the positive relationships among the different critical attributes of brand equity.

Although numerous hotel branding studies have identified the consequences of hotels for employees, few have simultaneously considered employees and customer feedback in terms of star hotel branding. This research considers the bidirectional effects of such a comprehensive perspective.

The main purpose of this study is to fill the research gap on how B2B global service firms integrate dynamic capabilities within their omnichannel management to influence positive word of mouth (WOM), customer engagement (CE) and customer equity.

Drawing on the dynamic capability and WOM theories, a model has been developed that defines the subjects of the empirical test. The paper reports on data collected from 312 service-oriented global firms in Australia, through a cross-sectional survey. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The findings suggest that content management (i.e. information consistency, source trustworthiness and endorsement) and concerns management (i.e. privacy, security and recovery) capabilities are the two significant antecedents of positive WOM within a B2B omnichannel setting in international marketing. The findings also confirm the key mediating role of CE between positive WOM and customer equity.

The findings extend dynamic capability theory in the context of international marketing by linking WOM, CE and customer equity. The findings add further theoretical rigor by establishing the nomological chain between positive WOM and customer equity, in which CE plays a key mediating role.

The study aims to identify critical factors that influence football fans’ support of their favorite team by examining the impact of social responsibility, brand credibility and team brand equity on patronage intentions of professional football teams.

An online survey collected data from 331 football fans of the Persian Gulf Premier League (PGPL) in Iran. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is able to influence brand equity, brand credibility and patronage intentions. Also, brand equity and brand credibility were found to be positively related to patronage intentions. In addition to that, the findings show that brand equity and team credibility partially mediate the relationship between CSR and patronage intentions.

The findings provide valuable insights to sports teams/club managers aiming to attract new fans and retain current ones by investing in CSR and enhancing brand credibility and equity. Strategies to integrate CSR into relationship marketing and brand management are outlined.

This study empirically highlights the critical role of adhering to CSR and the effects of brand credibility and equity in enhancing patronage intentions among football team fans.

The purpose of this study is to understand the strategic roles of service customer equity (SCE) and innovation protection on firm performance (FP).

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the proposed model. The authors tested the model using managerial data from two countries: USA and India.

The findings of this study indicated positive direct impacts of service innovation (SI) on FP and positive indirect impacts via SCE in both samples. SI and SCE impacts on FP were both stronger in the US samples. However, the effect of SI on SCE is stronger in India than in the USA. This study also identified moderating impacts of service innovation protection (SIP) on the relationship between SI and FP in the Indian sample and between SI and SCE in the US sample.

Although there is scholarly research in SI and its impact on FP, there are no studies the authors identified that discuss the moderating effect of SIP. The authors studied the moderating effect of SIP because (1) it is crucial for industries to maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace, (2) it protects industries investment in research and development and (3) it also protects industries intellectual property, such as trademark, copyrights and patents. There are two key contributions of this study: (a) investigating the effect of SCE between SI and FP and (b) investigating the moderating effect of SIP using managerial data from two countries (USA vs India).

We explore the impact of equity liquidity on a firm’s dynamic leverage adjustments and the moderating impacts of leverage deviation and target instability on the link between equity liquidity and dynamic leverage in the UK market.

In applying the two-step system GMM, we estimate our model by exploring suitable instruments for the dynamic variable(s), i.e. lagged values of the dynamic term(s).

Our analyses document that a firm’s equity liquidity has a positive impact on the speed of adjustment (SOA) of its leverage ratio back to the target ratio in the UK market. We also demonstrate that the positive relationship between liquidity and SOA is more pronounced for firms whose current position is relatively close to their target leverage ratio and whose target ratio is relatively stable.

This study provides important implications for both firms’ managers and investors. Particularly, firms’ managers who wish to increase the leverage SOA to enhance firms’ value need to give great attention to their equity liquidity. Investors who want to evaluate firms’ performance could also consider their equity liquidity and leverage SOA.

We are the first to enrich the literature on leverage adjustments by identifying equity liquidity as a new determinant of SOA in a single developed country with many differences in the structure and development of capital markets, ownership concentration and institutional characteristics. We also provide new empirical evidence of the joint effect of equity liquidity, leverage deviation and target instability on leverage SOA.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of equity market misvaluation on manager behavior. Using a sample of 535 French-listed over 2000–2018, the authors analyze whether corporate investment decision is sensitive to equity market overvaluation.

The study adopts market-to-book (M/B) decomposition developed by Rhodes-Kropf and Viswanathan (2004, RKV) that proxies for market misvaluation at the firm and industry levels. The authors conducted a long-term performance analysis via a portfolio sorting procedure and a Carhart (1997) four-factor pricing model. The authors tested the relationship between equity misvaluation, corporate investment decisions and equity issuance. The authors ran several robustness tests.

The empirical results show that equity market misvaluation affects corporate investment positively as the stock price deviates further away from its fundamental. Based on market timing theory, the authors find that corporate investment occurs in periods of high valuation motivated by equity issuance to benefit from the low cost of capital. This effect is more prominent for financially constrained firms. Consistent with the catering channel, the authors find that the misvaluation-investment nexus is more pronounced in firms with short-horizon investors. By examining the stocks’ long-term performance of misvalued firms, via a sorting portfolio procedure, the authors find that undervalued firms outperform and generate higher abnormal returns (Jensen’s alpha) than overvalued firms, suggesting that mispricing-driven investment appear to be short-lived and lead to lower return in the long term.

Corporate decision-makers and governance structures should pay attention to the rationality of the corporate investment decision in the context of equity market misvaluation. Managers who focus on maximizing the stock market value in the short-run at the expense of its long-term performance must give preference to value-creating investment, not driven by an external mechanism such as equity market mispricing. More generally, investors and portfolio managers must take into account the market mispricing process in decision-making. Nonetheless, from the portfolio sorting perspective, decision-makers must act in terms of high governance quality to mitigate suboptimal investment due to stock market mispricing (Jensen, 2005). Finally, equity market overvaluation, leading managers to invest via equity financing in particular, should be a signal to attract investors’ attention to seize the window of opportunity and embark on a short-term portfolio strategy. Such a strategy promises high returns in the short term.

This paper investigates jointly two theoretical channels: equity market timing and catering. The authors propose for the analysis three components of the M/B decomposition to dissociate market misvaluation at the firm and industry level from the fundamental component of market value (growth). This procedure provides a better understanding of the role of firm and industry misvaluation in explaining corporate investments. The authors provide evidence of the equity market misvaluation via a portfolio sorting procedure and a Carhart (1997) four-factor pricing model. The authors examine the effect of misvaluation on both the investment and the financing decisions.

The world has been forced to implement movement restriction strategy because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and industries have to embrace online technologies and social media marketing activities (SMMAs) to continue their business operations. Considering the aftermath of COVID-19 on the business world, this study aims to explore the determining elements of SMMAs and analyse how these factors affect brand equity (BE), relationship equity (RE) and purchase intention (PI) among smartphone consumers in China. Five constructs of SMMAs, namely, entertainment (EN), interactivity (IN), trendiness (TR), customisation (CU) and electronic word-of-mouth (WM), were examined to examine the effects of SMMAs on BE and RE. Subsequently, the mediation effects of BE and RE on the relationships of all constructs of SMMAs with PI were analysed.

An online survey was conducted with the participation of 347 Chinese consumers who used social media platform managed by the smartphone brands as their marketing activities during COVID-19. The data were analysed via structural equation modelling using SmartPLS.

This study’s result showed the significant and positive influence of CU, TR and WM on BE and the strong and positive influence of CU, IN and TR on RE. Furthermore, BE was found to fully mediate the relationships of CU, TR and WM with PI, while RE was found to mediate the relationships of TR and CU with PI. The performance and impact factor analysis revealed RE as the most important factor for PI, followed by BE, CU and TR.

This study extended the authors’ knowledge and understanding about social media marketing, BE and smart phone PI during COVID-19. Findings of this study can assist smartphone brands in China to develop the most effective strategies for SMMAs, which can be tailored for consumers to maximise profits, even during any crisis when physical business activities are deemed difficult. Moreover, this study’s findings can benefit the government and policymakers in developing and regulating rules and regulations for e-commerce and social media commerce for all industries and areas.