IMPACT OF BRAND-RELATED USER-GENERATED CONTENT ON BRAND POSITIONING: A STUDY ON PRIVATE HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTES IN VIETNAM

Yıl 2020, Proceedings of The Third Economics, Business And Organization Research (EBOR) Conference, 148 - 166, 31.12.2020

Charitha Harshani Perera Rajkishore Nayak Long Thang Van Nguyen

Öz

With the advent of social media, Vietnam has changed the way customers perceive the information about the brand. In the context of higher education, the adoption of social media has received attention with the increasing rate of social media usage among undergraduates. Brand-related user-generated content (UGC) on social media emphasizes the social ties between users and users’ participation, which promotes the communication to build and maintain the relationship with the brands. Although brand positioning offers a significant competitive advantage, the association with brand-related user-generated content in social media with brand positioning in the context of higher education is still an under-researched area. Accordingly, using social identity theory and social exchange theory, this research aims to deepen our understanding of the influence of brand-related user-generated content on brand positioning and purchase intention. Employing a quantitative survey design,384 Vietnamese undergraduates were selected based on purposive sampling. The findings suggest that brand-related user-generated content influence brand positioning and brand choice intention. However, there is a significant mediating effect of the reliability and understandability of the content.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Brand Positioning, Brand-Related User-Generated Content, Emerging Countries, Higher Education

Kaynakça

• Aaker, D. A. (1996). Measuring brand equity across products and markets. California management review, 38.
• Al-rahmi, W. M., Alias, N., Othman, M. S., Marin, V. I. & Tur, G. (2018). A model of factors affecting learning performance through the use of social media in Malaysian higher education. Computers & Education, 121, 59-72.
• Alden, D. L. & Nariswari, A. (2017). Brand Positioning Strategies During Global Expansion: Managerial Perspectives from Emerging Market Firms. The Customer is NOT Always Right? Marketing Orientationsin a Dynamic Business World. Springer.
• Almasri, A., El Talla, S. A., Abu-Naser, S. S. & Al Shobaki, M. J. (2018). The Organizational Structure and its Role in Applying the Information Technology Used In the Palestinian Universities-Comparative Study between Al-Azhar and the Islamic Universities.
• Ashley, C. & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32, 15-27.
• Baker, A. M., Donthu, N. & Kumar, V. (2016). Investigating how word-of-mouth conversations about brands influence purchase and retransmission intentions. Journal of Marketing Research, 53, 225-239.
• Bhargave, R., Mantonakis, A. & White, K. (2016). The cue-of-the-cloud effect: When reminders of online information availability increase purchase intentions and choice. Journal of Marketing Research, 53, 699-711.
• Bolton, R. N., Mccoll-Kennedy, J. R., Cheung, L., Gallan, A., Orsingher, C., Witell, L. & ZAKI, M. (2018). Customer experience challenges: bringing together digital, physical and social realms. Journal of Service Management, 29, 776-808.
• Brexendorf, T. O., Bayus, B. & Keller, K. L. (2015). Understanding the interplay between brand and innovation management: findings and future research directions. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43, 548-557.
• Briggs, S. & Wilson, A. (2007). Which university? A study of the influence of cost and information factors on Scottish undergraduate choice. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 29, 57-72.
• Cantallops, A. S. & Salvi, F. (2014). New consumer behavior: A review of research on eWOM and hotels. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 36, 41-51.
• Carr, C. T. & Hayes, R. A. (2015). Social media: Defining, developing, and divining. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 23, 46-65.
• Casidy, R. & Wymer, W. (2018). A taxonomy of prestige-seeking university students: strategic insights for higher education. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 26, 140-155.
• Cho, Y. H. (2017). Towards an engaged campus: Measuring and comparing definitive stakeholders’ perceptions of university social engagement in South Korea. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 18, 185-202.
• Chugh, R. & Ruhi, U. (2018). Social media in higher education: A literature review of Facebook. Education and Information Technologies, 23, 605-616.
• Correa, T., Hinsley, A. W. & De Zuniga, H. G. (2010). Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users’ personality and social media use. Computers in human behavior, 26, 247-253.
• Davtyan, D. & Cunningham, I. (2017). An investigation of brand placement effects on brand attitudes and purchase intentions: Brand placements versus TV commercials. Journal of Business Research, 70, 160-167.
• Davvetas, V. & Diamantopoulos, A. (2017). “Regretting your brand-self?” The moderating role of consumer-brand identification on consumer responses to purchase regret. Journal of Business Research, 80, 218-227.
• Dessart, L., Veloutsou, C. & Morgan-Thomas, A. (2015). Consumer engagement in online brand communities: a social media perspective. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 24, 28-42.
• Dolan, R., Conduit, J., Frethey-Bentham, C., Fahy, J. & Goodman, S. (2019). Social media engagement behavior: A framework for engaging customers through social media content. European Journal of Marketing.
• Ebrahim, R., Ghoneim, A., Irani, Z. & Fan, Y. (2016). A brand preference and repurchase intention model: the role of consumer experience. Journal of Marketing Management, 32, 1230-1259.
• Eldegwy, A., Elsharnouby, T. H. & Kortam, W. (2018). How sociable is your university brand? An empirical investigation of university social augmenters’ brand equity. International Journal of Educational Management, 32, 912-930.
• Estrella-Ramón, A. & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2017). Do different kinds of user-generated content in online brand communities really work? Online Information Review, 41, 954-968.
• Foroudi, P., Dinnie, K., Kitchen, P. J., Melewar, T. & Foroudi, M. M. (2017). IMC antecedents and the consequences of planned brand identity in higher education. European Journal of Marketing, 51, 528-550.
• Foroudi, P., Yu, Q., Gupta, S. & Foroudi, M. M. (2019). Enhancing university brand image and reputation through customer value co-creation behaviour. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 138, 218-227.
• Fuchs, C. & Diamantopoulos, A. (2012). Customer‐Perceived Positioning Effectiveness: Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Implications for New Product Managers. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 29, 229-244.
• Füller, J. (2010). Refining virtual co-creation from a consumer perspective. California management review, 52, 98-122.
• Godey, B., Manthiou, A., Pederzoli, D., Rokka, J., Aiello, G., Donvito, R. & Singh, R. (2016). Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand equity and consumer behavior. Journal of business research, 69, 5833-5841.
• Goh, K.-Y., Heng, C.-S. & Lin, Z. (2013). Social media brand community and consumer behavior: Quantifying the relative impact of user-and marketer-generated content. Information Systems Research, 24, 88-107.
• Gwin, C. F. & Gwin, C. R. (2003). Product attributes model: A tool for evaluating brand positioning. Journal of Marketing theory and Practice, 11, 30-42.
• Hair Jr, J. F. & Lukas, B. (2014). Marketing research, McGraw-Hill Education Australia.
• Halkias, G., Davvetas, V. & Diamantopoulos, A. (2016). The interplay between country stereotypes and perceived brand globalness/localness as drivers of brand preference. Journal of Business Research, 69, 3621-3628.
• Hillen, M. A., Gutheil, C. M., Strout, T. D., Smets, E. M. & Han, P. K. (2017). Tolerance of uncertainty: conceptual analysis, integrative model, and implications for healthcare. Social Science & Medicine, 180, 62-75.
• Hooley, G., Broderick, A. & Möller, K. (1998). Competitive positioning and the resource-based view of the firm. Journal of strategic marketing, 6, 97-116.
• I Agustí, D. P. (2018). Characterizing the location of tourist images in cities. Differences in user-generated images (Instagram), official tourist brochures and travel guides. Annals of Tourism Research, 73, 103-115.
• Iglesias, O., Markovic, S., Singh, J. J. & Sierra, V. (2019). Do customer perceptions of corporate services brand ethicality improve brand equity? Considering the roles of brand heritage, brand image, and recognition benefits. Journal of Business Ethics, 154, 441-459.
• Islam, J. U. & Rahman, Z. (2017). The impact of online brand community characteristics on customer engagement: An application of Stimulus-Organism-Response paradigm. Telematics and Informatics, 34, 96-109.
• Izagirre‐Olaizola, J., Fernández‐Sainz, A. & Vicente‐Molina, M. A. (2015). Internal determinants of recycling behaviour by university students: a cross‐country comparative analysis. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 39, 25-34.
• Jang, S. & Moutinho, L. (2019). Do price promotions drive consumer spending on luxury hotel services? The moderating roles of room price and user-generated content. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 78, 27-35.
• Jin, N., Lee, S. & Jun, J.-H. (2015). The role of brand credibility in predicting consumers' behavioural intentions in luxury restaurants. Anatolia, 26, 384-396.
• Jun, S.-P. & Park, D.-H. (2017). Visualization of brand positioning based on consumer web search information: using social network analysis. Internet Research, 27, 381-407.
• Keller, K. L. & Lehmann, D. R. (2006). Brands and branding: Research findings and future priorities. Marketing science, 25, 740-759.
• Keller, K. L., Parameswaran, M. & Jacob, I. (2011). Strategic brand management: Building, measuring, and managing brand equity, Pearson Education India.
• Keynes, J. N. (2017). The scope and method of political economy, Routledge.
• Kim, A. J. & Johnson, K. K. (2016). Power of consumers using social media: Examining the influences of brand-related user-generated content on Facebook. Computers in Human Behavior, 58, 98-108.
• Kim, H.-J., Lee, J.-M. & Rha, J.-Y. (2017). Understanding the role of user resistance on mobile learning usage among university students. Computers & Education, 113, 108-118.
• Kitirattarkarn, G. P., Araujo, T. & Neijens, P. (2019). Challenging Traditional Culture? How Personal and National Collectivism-Individualism Moderates the Effects of Content Characteristics and Social Relationships on Consumer Engagement with Brand-Related User-Generated Content. Journal of Advertising, 1-16.
• Klein, K., Völckner, F., Bruno, H. A., Sattler, H. & Bruno, P. (2019). Brand Positioning Based on Brand Image–Country Image Fit. Marketing Science.
• Koivisto, E. & Mattila, P. (2018). Extending the luxury experience to social media–User-Generated Content co-creation in a branded event. Journal of Business Research.
• Kothari, C. R. (2004). Research methodology: Methods and techniques, New Age International.
• Krawczyk, M. & Xiang, Z. (2016). Perceptual mapping of hotel brands using online reviews: a text analytics approach. Information Technology & Tourism, 16, 23-43.
• Kumar, V., Choi, J. B. & Greene, M. (2017). Synergistic effects of social media and traditional marketing on brand sales: capturing the time-varying effects. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45, 268-288.
• Lax, J. R. (2017). The impact of local economic development activities on perceived brand equity in the higher education sector–an examination of three stakeholder segments.
• Lemmetti, H. & Tuominen, P. (2017). Expatriates’ Nostalgic Brand Relationships. Case Fazer Blue Chocolate. Regional Studies on Economic Growth, Financial Economics and Management. Springer.
• Lin, B. Y., Xu, F., Luo, Z. & Zhu, K.(2017) Multi-channel bilstm-crf model for emerging named entity recognition in social media. Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Noisy User-generated Text,. 160-165.
• Ma, T. J. & Atkin, D. (2017). User generated content and credibility evaluation of online health information: a meta analytic study. Telematics and Informatics, 34, 472-486.
• Mahfoodh, O. H. A. (2017). “I feel disappointed”: EFL university students’ emotional responses towards teacher written feedback. Assessing Writing, 31, 53-72.
• M, S. & R, M. (2016). Facebook and the others. Potentials and obstacles of social media for teaching in higher education. Computers & Education, 95, 216-230.
• Manhas, P. S., Manrai, L. A. & Manrai, A. K. (2016). Role of tourist destination development in building its brand image: A conceptual model. Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Science, 21, 25-29.
• Micu, A., Micu, A. E., Geru, M. & Lixandroiu, R. C. (2017). Analyzing user sentiment in social media: Implications for online marketing strategy. Psychology & Marketing, 34, 1094-1100.
• Miller, K., Mcadam, R., Moffett, S., Alexander, A. & Puthusserry, P. (2016). Knowledge transfer in university quadruple helix ecosystems: an absorptive capacity perspective. R&D Management, 46, 383-399.
• Mohd Suki, N. (2016). Green product purchase intention: impact of green brands, attitude, and knowledge. British Food Journal, 118, 2893-2910.
• Mohseni, S., Jayashree, S., Rezaei, S., Kasim, A. & Okumus, F. (2018). Attracting tourists to travel companies’ websites: the structural relationship between website brand, personal value, shopping experience, perceived risk and purchase intention. Current Issues in Tourism, 21, 616-645.
• Mundel, J., Huddleston, P., Behe, B., Sage, L. & Latona, C. (2018). An eye tracking study of minimally branded products: hedonism and branding as predictors of purchase intentions. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 27, 146-157.
• Muntinga, D. G., Moorman, M. & Smit, E. G. (2011). Introducing COBRAs: Exploring motivations for brand-related social media use. International Journal of advertising, 30, 13-46.
• Napoli, J., Dickinson-Delaporte, S. & Beverland, M. B. (2016). The brand authenticity continuum: strategic approaches for building value. Journal of Marketing Management, 32, 1201-1229.
• Neuman, W. L. & Robson, K. (2014). Basics of social research, Pearson Canada Toronto.
• Nguyen, B., Yu, X., Melewar, T. & Hemsley-Brown, J. (2016). Brand ambidexterity and commitment in higher education: An exploratory study. Journal of Business Research, 69, 3105-3112.
• Ojiaku, O. C. & Osarenkhoe, A. (2018). Determinants of Customers’ Brand Choice and Continuance Intentions with Mobile Data Service Provider: The Role of Past Experience. Global Business Review, 19, 1478-1493.
• Panda, S., Pandey, S. C., Bennett, A. & Tian, X. (2019). University brand image as competitive advantage: a two-country study. International Journal of Educational Management, 33, 234-251.
• Parveen, F., Jaafar, N. I. & Ainin, S. (2015). Social media usage and organizational performance: Reflections of Malaysian social media managers. Telematics and Informatics, 32, 67-78.
• PAYNE, A. & FROW, P. (2014). Developing superior value propositions: a strategic marketing imperative. Journal of Service Management, 25, 213-227.
• Peruta, A. & Shields, A. B. (2017). Social media in higher education: understanding how colleges and universities use Facebook. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 27, 131-143.
• Pham, M. T. & Muthukrishnan, A. V. (2002). Search and alignment in judgment revision: Implications for brand positioning. Journal of Marketing Research, 39, 18-30.
• Phau, I., Shanka, T. & Dhayan, N. (2010). Destination image and choice intention of university student travellers to Mauritius. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 22, 758-764.
• Phung, M. T., LY, P. T. M. & Nguyen, T. T. (2019). The effect of authenticity perceptions and brand equity on brand choice intention. Journal of Business Research.
• Pike, S., Gentle, J., Kelly, L. & Beatson, A. (2018). Tracking brand positioning for an emerging destination: 2003 to 2015. Tourism and Hospitality Research, 18, 286-296.
• Pinheiro, R. & Stensaker, B. (2014). Designing the entrepreneurial university: The interpretation of a global idea. Public Organization Review, 14, 497-516.
• Postareff, L., Mattsson, M., Lindblom-Ylänne, S. & Hailikari, T. (2017). The complex relationship between emotions, approaches to learning, study success and study progress during the transition to university. Higher Education, 73, 441-457.
• Quintal, V., Phau, I., Sims, D. & Cheah, I. (2016). Factors influencing generation Y’s purchase intentions of prototypical versus me-too brands. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 30, 175-183.
• Roma, P. & Aloini, D. (2019). How does brand-related user-generated content differ across social media? Evidence reloaded. Journal of Business Research, 96, 322-339.
• Román, S. & Sánchez-Siles, L. M. (2018). Parents’ choice criteria for infant food brands: A scale development and validation. Food Quality and Preference, 64, 1-10.
• Romaniuk, J. & Sharp, B. (2000). Using known patterns in image data to determine brand positioning. International Journal of Market Research, 42, 1-10.
• Rutter, R., Lettice, F. & Nadeau, J. (2017). Brand personality in higher education: anthropomorphized university marketing communications. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 27, 19-39.
• Sadek, H., Elwy, S. & Eldallal, M. (2018). The impact of social media brand communication on consumer-based brand equity dimensions through Facebook in fast moving consumer goods: The case of Egypt. Journal of Business and Retail Management Research, 12.
• Samiee, S. (2019). Reflections on global brands, global consumer culture and globalization. International Marketing Review.
• Schamari, J. & Schaefers, T. (2015). Leaving the home turf: how brands can use webcare on consumer-generated platforms to increase positive consumer engagement. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 30, 20-33.
• Talay, M. B., Townsend, J. D. & Yeniyurt, S. (2015). Global brand architecture position and market-based performance: the moderating role of culture. Journal of International Marketing, 23, 55-72.
• Tjia, L. R. & Honantha, C. R. (2013). Factors influence indonesian young consumers’online purchase intention in social media websites.
• Twitchell, J. B. (2004). Branded nation: The marketing of megachurch, college inc., and museumworld, Simon and Schuster.
• Tyner, K. & Costa, C. (2018). Anne Mette Thorhauge from the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen talks with Kathleen Tyner and Conceição Costa about opportunities and challenges as games are integrated into the formal learning environment. Revista Lusófona de Educação, 41.
• Urde, M. & Koch, C. (2014). Market and brand-oriented schools of positioning. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 23, 478-490.
• Vanwesenbeeck, I., Walrave, M. & Ponnet, K. (2017). Children and advergames: the role of product involvement, prior brand attitude, persuasion knowledge and game attitude in purchase intentions and changing attitudes. International Journal of Advertising, 36, 520-541.
• Vernuccio, M. & Ceccotti, F. (2015). Strategic and organisational challenges in the integrated marketing communication paradigm shift: A holistic vision. European Management Journal, 33, 438-449.
• Williams Jr, R. L. & Omar, M. (2014). How branding process activities impact brand equity within Higher Education Institutions. Taylor & Francis.
• Williams, R. L. & Williams, H. A. (2017). Vintage Marketing Differentiation Categories and Groupings. Vintage Marketing Differentiation. Springer.