The above overview and
analysis of Burberry’s marketing strategy on Facebook revealed that the brand
is very successful at creating buzz, at building ways that enable fans to
promote and share the message themselves, and at encouraging user participation
and dialogue (Barker et al. 2012, p. 3) (Table 3). In regard to the impact that
this marketing strategy has on the brand equity concept, several claims can be
made that related to the research objectives of this study. The high level of
visibility and engagement of Burberry on its Facebook fan page appears to
positively influence the components of brand equity investigated with the
survey, including brand salience, brand performance, brand image, judgements,
feelings and brand resonance. Conversely, no such impact can be established
with the Hermes fans. This limited impact of
Hermes’ marketing strategy on
consumer-based brand equity can be explained with the limited activities this
brand performs on this social media network.
The
results reveal very strong brand salience among the Burberry fans as measured
by the easiness to recognise the brand among competing brands and to evoke the
brand’s logo in their minds. The awareness of the Burberry brand is thus very
high. Conversely, the reported level of brand recognition and logo was much
lower among the Hermes fans. This could be explained with the fact that they
had low involvement with the brand and the brand’s products on Facebook which
in turn reduced the awareness of the brand (Keller 2001, p. 9). In regard to
the brand performance dimension, the results revealed that Burberry’s fans
attach favourable characteristics to the brand’s products. Their assessment of
the brand’s uniqueness, stylishness and value were much more positive than the
assessments measured among the Hermes respondents. The fact that Burberry
regularly posts its newest products could explain the favourable
characteristics that its fans attach to the brand’s products. In terms of the
brand image the results were not as straightforward among the Burberry fans. A
considerable proportion of them (36%) disagreed or strongly disagreed with the
statement that they admire and respect the people who wear Burberry, compared
to an even higher proportion among the Hermes respondents (82%). A positive brand
imagery results in a mental image in customer’s mind or a profile by customers
of real users or users who are even more aspirational (Keller 2001, p. 11).
However, as the results show such a level of admiration appears to be very weak
among the
Hermes respondents and much stronger among the Burberry
fans. The brand Burberry can be
said to contribute towards the creation of
this positive brand imagery by posting content with individual and celebrities
wearing their products.
Judgements regarding the
brands’ quality and brand consideration also appear to be more positive among
the Burberry fans. The findings that the Burberry fans find Burberry products
to offer a better quality than competing brands and are more likely to
recommend it to others than the Hermes fans clearly indicate stronger brand
equity of the former brand. Burberry fans appear to hold much stronger
judgements regarding the quality of this brand and are more likely to include
this brand in the set of brands they might purchase (Keller 2001, p. 13).
Additional to this, 41 of the Burberry respondents as compared to only 5 Hermes
respondents reported that wearing the respective brand gives them a feeling of
social approval. These findings imply that the Burberry fans could be more likely
to purchase Burberry in order to gain social approval than the Hermes fans.
More importantly, this may also indicate that the Burberry brand is more
successful at meeting the needs of customers for social approval. Similar
distribution of answers was noticed for the questions regarding self-esteem and
pride. Again, it can be assumed that the Burberry fans are more likely to
purchase Burberry because this gives them a feeling of pride or self-esteem.
Feelings of pride and self-esteem occur when the brand makes consumers feel
good about themselves following the purchase (Keller 2001, p. 13) and this is
why it can be concluded that the brand Burberry is more successful at
triggering these feelings among its consumers than the Hermes brand.
According to Keller
(2001), the most valuable brand-building block is brand resonance which is
established only when the other brand-building blocks have been reached. If
there is true brand resonance customers experience high level of loyalty
towards the brand which encourages them to actively look for ways to interact
with the brand and share their brand experiences with others (Keller 2001).
Several conclusions can be made about Burberry and Hermes in regard to brand
resonance and its four categories, behavioural loyalty, attitudinal attachment,
sense of community and active engagement. In terms of the loyalty towards the
brands and the impact of social media marketing on this concept, 41 of Burberry
respondents answered that they consider themselves loyal to Burberry and that
they are willing to pay premium price compared to only 5 Hermes respondents.
Loyalty is a core dimension of brand equity. The fact that Burberry scores much
better on this dimension implies much stronger brand equity. Consequently, we
can conclude that Burberry’s more engaging Facebook marketing strategy and
frequent posting also has a positive impact on brand loyalty. The attachment
the Burberry fans feel towards the brand (as measured by their statements
whether they love the brand) appears to be higher than the one among the Hermes
fans. This implies that the Burberry fans feel a greater deal of attitudinal
attachment to the brand than the Hermes fans and that the former regard the
respective brand as being something special in the broader context and when
compared to competitors. In regard to the sense of community, however, neither
of the brands appear to perform very good because only small proportions of the
respondents answered that they identify themselves with other individuals who
wear the brand. This implies that it is impossible to make any inferences as
regard the influence of social media marketing on the sense of community among
consumers and their identification with the brand community. Similarly, only a
small proportion appears to be actively engaged with the brand as measured by
their willingness to talk to others about the brand. These results again make
it difficult to draw any
inferences regarding social media
marketing’s impact on the level of active engagement among consumers. However, in this regard it has to be
emphasised that even though the Burberry fans reported that they are not so
inclined to talk about the brand to others, the number of ‘likes’,
‘shares’ and comments on the fan page
indicate a very strong and active engagement. According to Keller (2001, p.15)
when customers are willing to invest time, energy and other resources into the
brand, such as form instance, receiving updates and exchanging correspondence
with other brand users, this implies active engagement. The high number of
‘likes’, ‘shares’ and comments on the Burberry Facebook fan page thus implies
strong attitudinal attachment towards the brand and a strong sense of
community. For this reason, the findings
may thus have been influenced by the particular type of engagement that was
investigated in the survey. Therefore, it is recommended that future studies
should also include level and type of engagement on social media. In general,
it can be concluded that the brand resonance is stronger among the Burberry
consumers due to the stronger loyalty and attachments they feel towards the
brand as compared to the Hermes fans.
In summary, the above
finding indicates that (i) Burberry has much more engaging Facebook marketing
strategy; and (ii) that brand salience, performance, imagery, judgements, and
loyalty are much stronger among the Burberry fans than among the Hermes fans.
On the basis of this, it can be concluded that the effective and engaging
marketing strategy of Burberry positively influences these brand equity
dimensions and thus contributed towards the creation of a stronger brand
equity. The findings are thus in line with previous research according to which
SMM of luxury brands can impact different dimensions of customer-based brand equity
(Godey et al. 2016; Lee and Walkins 2016). On the basis of this, it is
recommended that luxury brands can significantly impact the strength of their
brand equity by offering engaging, interesting, relevant content on social
media on a frequent basis.
One of the limitations
of the study is that the questionnaire did not elicit information about the
respondents’ nationality. As already established by some authors, the impact of
SMM on luxury customer-based brand equity as reflected in brand awareness and
brand equity differs across different countries (Godey et al. 2016, p. 7).
Consequently, this present research study cannot discover whether some
country-specific characteristics have moderated the impact of SMM on these
aspects of brand equity among the Burberry and Hermes fans. Future studies
could incorporate this dimension in order to identify whether nationality could
moderate the impact of SMM on brand equity.
In addition to this,
another limitation of the study arises from the sampling strategy. The present
study sourced the data from fans of Burberry and Hermes only. The rationale for
focusing on these two brands only was that the brands have rather opposite
social media marketing strategies and consequently the assumptions were made
that the impact on brand equity would be different as well. Nonetheless, to be
able to make stronger inferences about the impact of social media strategies on
brand equity dimensions among luxury fashion brands it is advisable that more
brands are included in future studies. Incorporating several luxury brands that
pursue different social media strategies would result in even broader and more
comprehensive data as to the impact of social media marketing on social media
dimensions. In addition to this, such an approach would also be valuable from a
methodological perspective. Namely, incorporating several luxury fashion brands
would increase the sample size that would thus be more representative of the
population of interest and would generate findings that can be more accurately
generalised.
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