Abstract— This paper is designed to test the effect of social media advertisements on brand equity in fast food restaurant industry. The data were collected using a survey instrument which was personally administered to 384 customers at different spots in East Coast region of Malaysia. Convenience sampling approach was utilized for collecting the data from respondents. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS and structural equation modeling. The findings indicated that social media advertisements have significant positive effect on brand equity. Moreover, this study found that social media advertisements have significant positive effect on all dimensions of brand equity (brand image, brand loyalty, brand preference, and brand leadership). These results confirm that social media advertisement is one of the key success factors for building and maintaining strong brand equity. It is therefore very important for restaurant managers to focus on social media marketing to establish successful relationships with customer to better inform them about the products or service in an easy and cost effective manner. Such activities would help them to establish successful relationships with customers in order to learn their needs and expectations as well as to respond to their issues on time and work out the appropriate solutions.
Index Terms— Brand equity, restaurant industry, social media advertisements.
Jalal Hanaysha is with the DRB-HICOM University of Automotive Malaysia, Pekan, 26607, Pahang, Malaysia (e-mail: jalal.hanayshi@ yahoo.com).
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Cite: Jalal Hanaysha, " The Importance of Social Media Advertisements in Enhancing Brand Equity: A Study on Fast Food Restaurant Industry in Malaysia," International Journal of Innovation, Management and Technology vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 46-51, 2016.