Measuring Brand Equity in the Digital Environment

The internet has had a major impact on the balance of information that for so long worked in favor of brand managers. Consumers are now empowered to interact with brands, and are often willing to “co-create” by sharing their experiences, product knowledge and ideas with brand communities and stakeholders. Although brand equity is an important source of competitive advantage, previous conceptualizations do not reflect the unique characteristics of the internet, and the new participatory approach to branding. Christodoulides, De Chernatony, Furrer, Shiu, & Abimbola, T. (2006) addressed this gap by developing a series of constructs and scale items that aligns with the interactions between consumers and online brands. The construct contains five correlated yet distinct dimensions: emotional connection, online experience, responsive service nature, trust, and fulfilment; consisting of 12-item scale with strong psychometric properties.

The purpose of the current research presented here, is to apply the ORS (online retail/service) brand equity scale using a set of predominantly online brands, and to identify any new dimensions and scale items that should be added to reflect recent changes in consumer attitudes and behaviors. In this way we continue to update and build knowledge for the effective evaluation of online brands.