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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 paper is to measure consumer‐based brand equity in the supermarket industry and to identify the strategy drivers associated with levels of brand equity for consumers' typically patronized supermarkets.

A nine state survey of consumers was conducted to provide brand equity ratings of 22 national, regional, and specialty supermarket brands.

Factor analysis yields two brand equity outcome dimensions and eight brand equity drivers. A large proportion of consumers clearly have strong feelings about the supermarkets they patronize, and that effort expended in keeping customers, service level, and product quality and assortment appear to be basic requirements for achieving high levels of consumer‐based brand equity. The top supermarket brands typically score highly on at least one other key driver of equity. Supermarket brands that use formal loyalty programs to drive patronage in general have lower levels of customer‐based brand equity.

Selection of designated supermarkets was limited by spatial distribution in the geographic area. The sample is more affluent and educated than the general US population.

As retailers search for ways to compete more effectively for consumer dollars and loyalty, they need to explore in more detail the customer‐based brand equity and the drivers of customer equity associated with their retail brands.

This paper is the first to link consumer‐based brand equity and the supermarket branding efforts that drive it for specific retail brands. In an industry with numerous choices in nearly all market areas and low switching costs, successful branding can translate into emotional commitment, shopping loyalty, and even person‐to‐person promotion of the brand to others.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significant contribution of emotions along with other conventional loyalty drivers on the loyalty intentions.

The influence of three conventional loyalty drivers, i.e., value equity, brand equity, relationship equity on loyalty intentions was investigated by further exploring the moderating effects of negative and positive emotions. A sample of 834 Pakistani consumers in the supermarkets and banking industries was studied employing store-intercept survey design.

Consumer behavior is driven by emotions in both the supermarkets and banking context. Thus, in order to better predict customer loyalty intentions, the emotional component is crucial and should be included along with other cognitive components.

Since customers’ emotional responses throughout service delivery are strongly linked to loyalty, therefore supermarkets and bank service managers need to make sure that the customers experience with their services as pleasurable as possible and for this purpose, customer service employees need to be trained in order to better understand the customers’ emotional responses during the course of service delivery process.

The present study complements the existing literature regarding the role of emotions in service settings and offers a new point of view for the linkage among emotions, customer equity drivers and customer loyalty intentions.

This study focuses on the relationship between innovation and customer equity drivers and the moderating effect of advertising appeals on this relationship. First, the authors divided innovation into incremental innovation and radical innovation, and explained the influences of each type of innovation on drivers of customer equity based on literature review. Second, the authors tested the conceptual model using structural equation modeling find out the effects of innovation. Third, the authors also tested the effect of advertising appeal using moderating regression. The results indicate that both incremental innovation and radical innovation can positively influence value equity, relationship equity, and brand equity. Functional advertising appeal is more useful than emotional advertising appeal for radical innovation. On the contrary, emotional advertising appeal is more useful than functional advertising appeal for incremental innovation.

The objective of this research is to explore the relationship between brand experience and customer equity (value equity, brand equity, and relationship equity). We examine the impacts of different contact points’ experiences (media contact, physical environment contact, people contact, and product usage contact) and different dimensions of brand experience on customer equity. Further we investigate the possible moderating effects of different brand positioning and strategies – hedonic and utilitarian, on this relationship. The data which are collected via online survey includes 410 observations with brand experience and 83 without brand experience, 493 valid samples in total. We found that positive and strong brand experience is the key factor for building strong customer equity. Although the impacts of all four contact points’ brand experiences are significant, product usage contact has the most powerful influence on customer equity and its individual drivers. The results also indicate that the different brand positioning strategies do have moderating effects. For utilitarian brand, only brand experience at product usage contact point has significant impact on customer equity and its three drivers. For hedonic brand, all four contact points’ experiences have significant relationships with customer equity. Finally, the four experience dimensions (sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioral) have different impacts on customer equity and its three drivers at different experience contact points.

This paper aims to investigate the effects of customer equity drivers on customer loyalty via customer trust in a B2B context.

A self‐administered online survey was conducted to collect data from the organizational customers of an on‐hold service company in Australia. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The study reveals that in a B2B context, value equity and relationship equity have significant influence on customer loyalty through the mediating effect of customer trust. On the other hand, brand equity is found to have no effect on customer trust and loyalty.

In order to obtain business customers' loyalty, managers should focus more on value and relationship equity than brand equity.

While most of the previous studies on “customer equity” focused on the B2C context, this study focuses on a B2B context. It demonstrates the impact of customer equity drivers on business customers' loyalty.

To provide a theoretic framework of the development of customer capital and an empirical verification using Taiwanese multilevel firms.

The authors used survey research to collect data from members of four Taiwanese multilevel companies. They explored the mediating roles of the drivers of customer equity in the “relationship marketing activities‐customer capita” effect. A total of 306 valid responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling analysis.

Four types of relationship marketing activities – core service performances, recognition for contributions, dissemination of organization knowledge, and member interdependence enhancement – have significant influences on relationship equity. Relationship equity in turn affects customer capital. Value equity and brand equity respectively have significant effects on customer acquisition and customer retention. Customer acquisition has a significant “feedback” effect on value equity, and relationship equity affects brand equity positively.

The generalizability of this research is constrained due to a non‐probability sample of firms being used to verify the theoretic framework. It is also constrained due to the fact that only customer‐side data were collected and proxy measures of customer capital were used.

Effective and ineffective types of relationship marketing activities have been identified. The causal paths between relationship marketing and customer capital have been illustrated.

This paper sheds light on the approach to building customer capital for membership‐emphasized organization.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the return‐on‐marketing framework and its customer equity drivers (value, brand, and relationship) can be combined with service quality (SERVQUAL) measures to help managers develop strategies for high‐ and low‐ethnocentric Vietnamese customers.

The services literature is employed to propose a framework. The structure of the framework is evaluated from data obtained from self‐administered questionnaires, which are mailed to an automobile firm's customers. To explore the moderating affect of ethnocentrism, the model's proposed relationships and fit statistics are tested by employing multi‐group comparisons (high‐ and low‐ethnocentrism) through structural equation modeling.

Ethnocentrism encourages customers to express loyalty and to spread positive word of mouth about Company X, which is a local automobile manufacturer. High‐ethnocentric customers are also less reactive to Company X's value drivers, including product quality, price, and convenience, than low‐ethnocentric customers. However, high‐ethnocentric customers place greater importance on dealership SERVQUAL than low‐ethnocentric customers.

The findings indicate that Southeast Asian managers should consider consumer ethnocentrism a factor that influences marketing planning, as well as ways they can use the return‐on‐marketing and SERVQUAL frameworks for strategic planning. In addition, managers should understand that ethnocentric customers counterbalance their willingness to forgo product quality with augmented expectations of dealership SERVQUAL.

This paper combines the product‐focused return‐on‐marketing framework with the SERVQUAL‐focused SERVQUAL framework to show how these elements influence consumers' future behavioral intentions under the moderating influence of ethnocentrism.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors driving consumers’ social media brand experience and its effect on customer equity and customer lifetime value (CLV). A conceptual model is proposed including the variables of product attributes, brand experience, brand attachment, brand trust, customer equity and CLV.

The proposed research model is analyzed using a survey of 708 South Korean and Chinese consumers.

The results indicate that utilitarian and hedonic values influence brand experience, and that brand experience directly influences brand attachment, brand trust and customer equity drivers. There is a positive relationship between brand attachment and trust. As a customer equity driver, brand equity has a positive effect on CLV.

This study sheds light on how brand experience in social media can improve customer equity. It contributes to the theory of brand experience and customer equity as well as smartphone product marketing strategies. From a managerial perspective, guidelines are provided for firms to implement value communication activities using social media, and to maintain and increase their CLV.