Social Media Marketing and Customer-Based Brand Equity for Higher Educational Institutions

This book examines the extent to which social media marketing influences the customer-based brand equity of higher education institutes. Higher  education  institutions  operate  in  a  strong  competitive  environment  due  to  the homogenous  nature  of  their  services  and  always  look  for  new  marketing  strategies  to  be competitive  in  the  marketplace.  Therefore,  building  customer-based  brand  equity  has  become crucial  for  higher  education  institutions  to  differentiate  themselves  from  others  to  attract prospective  students.  Social  media-based  marketing  facilitated  prospective  students  to communicate and collaborate to gather information relevant to higher education institutions and their respective brand equity. However, many models on customer-based brand equity received limited support in the higher education sector, particularly in emerging Asian countries. As  such,  drawing  from  social  information  processing  theory,  this  book empirically investigates how higher education institutions can develop customer-based brand equity by using social media marketing and subjective norms mediated by brand credibility, taking cross-country comparisons between Sri Lanka and Vietnam. The book goes on to examine the applications and implications of the findings for higher education institutions in developing branding strategies through social media.