Influence on Brand Equity from Brand Identification Within the Environment of Social Media - The Mediating Effect of User-Generated Content

Brand is generated when cognitive connection, value evaluation and emotional engagement are done by customers and introduce the brand into their personal self-concepts. As the development of social media platforms, customers interact with brand enterprises, communicate with other customers as well as release their evaluation of the brands through those platforms, which leads to the generation of a large amount of user-generated contents (UGC). Previous studies have proved that customers' interaction and communication on social media platforms have a positive influence on brand equity. In this paper, the author collates, analyzes and summarizes previous studies, constructs an integrated framework based on the constitution of brand equity in an environment with abundant social media platforms and systematically discusses the structure of brand identification as well as its influence on brand equity. Using an empirical research approach, the study shows the mediating effect UGC has on brand equity.