The Strategic Roles of Social Media Marketing to Build a Strong Brand Equity (The Case of Selected Companies in Ethiopia)
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Date
2014-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
A great interest in the Social Media has emerged along with the rise of online social media during the past few years. Marketing practitioners were the first ones attempting to define and understand the potential roles of Social media marketing for brand.
However, due to a lack of scholarly interest and empirical support, the role of social media has remained rather vague and its presupposed capability to use social media for marketing purpose is still uncertain. The aim of this study is to bridge this gap by empirical analysis and identify the roles of Social Media Marketing on strong brand equity from an Ethiopian business organizations context. Among branding concepts, brand equity is always considered as one of the most significant concept in both practical and academic environment.
Drawing on the overview of academic literature and the results of both quantitative online survey and qualitative observation the paper delivers a thorough investigation of the concept and offers empirical evidence of its role and the relationship with brand equity ultimate brand equity performance. The most important findings of this study suggest that social media marketing has strategic role and social media marketing and brand equity are related. Thus, this paper is an important contribution to in the field of social media marketing in the context of Ethiopia which still remains mostly conceptual or qualitative, and provides useful insights and recommendations for marketing practitioners
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Keywords
: brands, brand equity, social media