The effect of customer social participation in hotel social media brand communities on consumer-based brand equity and advocacy

الملخص EN

Brand equity brings about a plethora of positive outcomes for customers (e.

g.

, customer brand advocacy, consumer preference, brand choice, and positive word-of-mouth) and for organizations (such as brand reputation, market success, and market share).

Despite the importance of brand equity in hotels, there are few previous studies in the field that have examined hotel brand equity and the factors that influence it.

Therefore, it is necessary to investigate brand equity in hotels and identify the factors that affect it, such as customer social participation (CSP).

Additionally, the research aimed to examine the impact of brand equity on customer brand advocacy.

For accomplishing these objectives and testing the study hypotheses, the questionnaire was used as a data collection tool.

The questionnaire forms were distributed to a convenience sample of 760 customers from 19 investigated hotels in Greater Cairo.

However, 456 valid questionnaires were analyzed, with a response rate of 60 percent.

The main results showed that CSP was found to positively influence all five dimensions of brand equity.

Furthermore, the results showed that brand equity positively affects brand advocacy.

Therefore, hotel practitioners should continue to work on improving the areas of CSP in social media brand communities (SMBC), brand equity, and customer brand advocacy by actively managing their own SMBC, focusing on various gratifications obtained in the context of social media (e.

g.

, incentives), and enhancing the brand communities, which smooth the progress of customer brand advocacy.