What are the 4 dimensions to evaluate a brand from the customer perspective?

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Radical advancements in digital, social media and mobile communication has created a new playing field, forcing marketers to reimagine the customer experience to effectively convey value propositions and maintain meaningful customer-brand relationships (Kumar and Reinartz, 2016, Lamberton and Stephen, 2016). The emergence of the “always on, constantly connected” consumer (Lamberton and Stephen, 2016, p.159) coupled with the substantial increase in the adoption of mobile smartphones globally, has fuelled the growth of mobile marketing spending (Gao et al., 2013). This has led to the importance of using mobile social media for brand building advantage. Mobile social media allows marketers to take advantage of its unique characteristics, including being portable, personal, interactive, multimodal and converged (Larivière et al., 2013). For example, smartphone applications developed by social media platforms (e.g., Facebook and Instagram in Western countries, and WeChat and Weibo in China) enables intuitive, user-friendly interaction with a brand's social media brand page (hereafter referred to as “mobile social media brand page”). Such initiatives have enabled marketers to develop novel approaches to building a dynamic brand presence that enables existing customers to seek out mobile social media brand page experiences to enhance their relationship with the brand (Viswanathan et al., 2017). These enhanced and evolving relationships with the brand has resulted in creating a marketing platform for the consumers’ primary and most intimate communication channel, which is referred to as “brand in the hand” (Sultan and Rohm, 2005, Thakur, 2016).

While the use of mobile social media in marketing practice is growing dramatically, scholarly research on this topic has not kept pace. So far, studies have focused on understanding factors influencing consumer acceptance of branded mobile apps such as banking, hotels and cosmetics (e.g. Alnawas and Aburub, 2016). However, studies have yet to examine what value consumers derive from mobile social media brand page consumption experiences which in turn translates to customer engagement behaviours. Therefore, this nuanced understanding is critical as it helps firms to create consumption experiences with mobile technologies that are engaging and meaningful (Larivière et al., 2013; Viswanathan et al., 2017), as well as fostering stronger customer brand relationships (Kumar et al., 2016).

Despite this managerial importance of understanding how consumers interact with social media platforms using mobile applications, there are number of research gaps. First, little is known about the various forms of value consumers derive from their mobile social media brand page consumption experience. While customer perceived value/benefit frameworks have been applied in the context of digital technologies, they are limited to value assessments made in e-retailing (e.g. Carlson et al., 2015; Wetzels et al., 2009), branded mobile shopping applications (Thakur et al., 2016; Alnawas and Aburub, 2016) and mobile services (e.g. Gummerus and Pihlström, 2011). Furthermore, while studies theoretically discuss the concept of customer perceived value within the context of disruptive change characterised by the blending of mobile and social media technologies (Larivière et al., 2013; Ström et al., 2014), empirical evidence that demonstrate its constituent components and its influence on consumer behaviour, is lacking. Therefore, there is a need for more theoretical and empirical elaboration on the specific drivers of value creation in mobile social media platforms for brands. Such a critical examination of the value construct in mobile social media will aid practitioners in effectively allocating their resources to benefits that enhance consumer value perceptions of a brand's social media presence.

Second, more studies are needed to unveil the effect of value judgements on satisfaction and customer engagement behaviours (CEB) in mobile social media. In recent years, CEB has attracted significant attention in the marketing literature as firms introduce strategies to encourage customers to participate in voluntary, discretionary, helpful behaviours with a brand which include purchase and beyond-purchase behaviours (Kumar et al., 2010, Pansari and Kumar, 2016, Verleye et al., 2014). The interest in CEB has peaked with the fusion of mobile and social media technologies that create value for customers and brands (Larivière et al., 2013). While past empirical studies indicate a value-satisfaction-loyalty interrelationship (e.g. Carlson et al., 2015; Chuah et al., 2017), customer perceived value studies have yet to incorporate a multidimensional, hierarchical value construct within a mobile social media setting together with customer outcomes of satisfaction and critical CEB's involving purchase and non-purchase behaviours.

Third, although growing attention has been placed broadly on mobile marketing acceptance in emerging markets (e.g. Fang et al., 2017), little to no scholarly studies have focused on mobile social media usage by consumers and brands in this context. This is surprising given that in emerging markets, mobile broadband is more pervasive than fixed broadband and rapid growth in mobile usage is occurring in emerging markets like China and India which account for 33% of mobile handsets worldwide (Shankar et al., 2016). Furthermore, the number of smartphone users in China alone has reached 380 million in 2016 (Statista, 2017a) surpassing the U.S. which is estimated to reach 222.9 million in 2017 (Statista, 2017b). As a result, understanding how consumers perceive and derive value from mobile social media in emerging markets is critical.

In closing these research gaps, this study advances customer perceived value and customer engagement literature within the mobile social media domain in three key areas. First, we combine the discourse on customer-perceived-value theory (Sheth et al., 1991, Sweeney and Soutar, 2001) with customer dominant logic and value-in-the-experience perspectives (Heinonen et al., 2013; Helkkula et al., 2012). To this end, we introduce a hierarchical, multidimensional model of Value-In-the-Brand page-Experience (i.e. VIBE) which is derived from a brand's social media consumption experience through a mobile application. Drawing upon customer dominant logic in particular, this paper examines how value perceptions in the mobile domain are not made in isolation with the brand (i.e. consumer interactions with the firm's value proposition only). But rather, they occur in the mobile social media setting in-conjunction with the ecosystem of the customer which involves ubiquitous individual and communal interactions with social networks and the brand that transcend physical and virtual environments, anytime and anywhere. Specifically, this model identifies five focal value dimensions (i.e. functional, socialisation, emotional, innovativeness and relationship building) that form the hierarchical VIBE construct.

Second, it empirically examines the VIBE model's nomological interdependencies with customer satisfaction and critical customer engagement behaviour (CEB) intentions to provide predictive ability and further theory elaboration. The study incorporates satisfaction and CEBs, based on Kumar et al. (2010) and Pansari and Kumar (2016) arguments that engagement behaviours include both transaction-related (e.g. future purchase behaviours, channel preference) and behaviours beyond transactions (e.g. intention to provide feedback to the brand, customer influencer intentions). In doing so, we capture customers’ perceptions of value in the mobile social media context from a broader theoretically and managerially relevant nomological network. Such an approach provides insights that enable practitioners to prioritize the allocation of organisational resources to those value-creating activities that lead to customer satisfaction and greater customer lifetime value with the brand.

Third, this study contributes new insights on how consumers perceive and derive value from social media brand pages through mobile applications in an emerging market setting of China. With China emerging as one of the world's most dominant digital market places, with its significant rate of mobile adoption and subsequent shifts in consumer behaviour, it is crucial that both academics and practitioners gain deeper consumer insights. For instance, in China the social media platform Sina Weibo recorded 198 million monthly active users in 2015 (TechInAsia, 2015), and is predicted to reach 679.19 million total social network users in China by 2021 with 418.33 million of these users using mobile devices (Statista, 2017c). In addition, Chinese consumers are also leading the way in mobile shopping behaviour with 90% of Chinese consumers making at least one online purchase from a mobile device, ahead of India (87.8%), the UK (74.6%), the US (74%) and the global average (69.9%) (KPMG, 2016). Given these trends, both domestic and international brands must now focus on utilising mobile social media to build customer brand relationships in China. Furthermore, China enables a great laboratory to understand the impact of mobile social media branding activities on consumer behaviour. This is because while brands are under competitive pressure in developed markets, emerging markets such as China provide brands with high-growth opportunities through the implementation of innovative branding strategies (Roberts et al., 2015).

The following section presents the theoretical framework of the study. Following this, the research model and hypotheses are presented with supporting arguments. A description of the research methodology used, data analysis, and results follow. The final section discusses the practical and theoretical contributions along with the limitations and future directions of the study.

Jamie Carlson is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the Faculty of Business and Law, the University of Newcastle, Australia. He holds a Bachelor of Business with Honours I, and a PhD in Marketing. His research interests include consumer behaviour, service performance and branding. His publications appear in journals including the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Journal of Brand Management,

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