Impact of brand‐building activities and retailer‐based brand equity on retailer brand communities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose Retailer brand communities exist between a franchisor brand and individual retailers, with retailer‐based brand equity and brand‐building activities being key drivers of their success. This paper aims to introduce retailer‐based brand equity and examine its relationship with brand‐building activities and retailer brand community. Design/methodology/approach Individual stores in a variable format franchise from the retail hardware industry were studied at annual conventions in two North American cities. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and regression. Findings Results show that retailer‐based brand equity mediates the relationship between brand‐building activities and brand community identification and demonstrates the importance of branding in retailing contexts. The franchisee's continuation as part of the retailer brand community is influenced by the retailer‐based brand equity, with increased identification leading to increased purchase and higher performance. Research limitations/implications The practical demands of the field study constrained the ability to examine other issues relevant to this research. There is also need to develop and refine further the items that measure the relationships. Practical implications Increased brand‐building activities do not automatically translate into higher commitment by franchisees, and franchisors need to increase the value of the brand. Engaging the franchisee as a member of the brand community has important outcomes for both parties. While franchisor brands benefit through increased sales, franchisees benefit through increased profit. Originality/value This is the first paper that has applied brand community principles to understand the franchisor‐franchisee relationship. The results from a field study have important implications for both brand building and franchising areas.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".