Study On User-Perceived Value And Its Impact On Brand Equity Of The Social Media

Human society develops with mutual communication. It is all kinds of communication that have expanded the scope of human community.Globalization, global village, etc., have become a reality with involvement of all social activities. History of human social network's evolution has been accompanied by the development of human civilization, from ropes hint, cliff rock paintings to the invention of writing, oral language, human use of spoken and written language to communicate. People and information about people's communication are recorded via noticeable means like language in their thousands of years of history. Diversified communication methods, including forms, letters, phone calls, telegrams in a very long time, have always been social media communication medium. With the coming of science, technology, and network era, new communicative elements, such as email, QQ, MSN, Weibo (Twitter's Chinese competitor), WeChat, etc., have quickly occupied half of the social interaction domain at a rapid pace to enrich the concept of social media as an unstoppable trend. Development of social media has become one of the hottest research subjects of the Communication Theory.Internet's popularization has changed human media consumption habits.44 years after the first email sent successfully, nowadays more convenient social media platform like Facebook, Weibo, WeChat, etc. have emerged. Before that, TV media brands like CNN have dominated the dissemination of media information. Professor Walter Mcdowell's 2005 research on TV media brands discussed the core issue regarding how to manage and protect TV media brand assets, and forecasted on the future of TV brand marketing. This Thesis' research targets include social media like Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, WeChat, etc., which may represent internet company of platform and the products. Their differences from traditional media are:first, sociality is their basic nature; second, internet is the platform to provide online services; third, no Internet, no social media. Currently the academic world has not touched much on social media's brand asset. Social media brand in the study of media brands is missing. However, while the number of online social media platform in the Chinese market grows, the media consumer consumption choices, Media Manager marketing communication strategy, realization of the value of brand equity will become academic and industrial issues of concern.This Thesis focused around two core issues:1) how to define and quantify social media users in the areas of perceived value, the specific dimensions; 2) how these dimensions have an impact on social media brand equity, and what is the mechanism? Current research mainly focused on traditional field in customer value in relation to brand assets and the relevant influential mechanism. Social media users are not traditional customers, so the research on their perception of value is also special. This research began from this basis, and similar to the traditional research method, used SPSS 19.0 and the AMOS 17.0 version for empirical research. Through literature analysis, this Thesis introduced two intermediary variables brand relationship and brand experience for model building. Specific studies are as follows:First, this study summarizes the perceived value of social media users, i.e., users' instrumental value, communication value, entertainment value and emotional value. First through literature analysis method the Thesis discussed the user perception value of analysis principles and the dimensions in other field and Internet field, preliminarily reached above four dimensions, and named them; then, through literature analysis on the above four dimensions, I refined and prepared user value perception questionnaire for interview; on the questionnaire data, explorative factor analysis and validation factor analysis have been conducted to confirmed the reliability of the four dimensions, which are the cornerstone for the next step research.Second, this study clarifies the relationships between user perceived value, brand relationship, and brand experience. It combed through domestic and foreign scholars' research on brands and the relevant literature about brand experience. This study established "brand trust" and "brand satisfaction" as the two dimensions for brand relationship, and studied "brand experience" as a single dimension. In particular:1) in user-perceived value among the four dimensions, affective value is able to influence brand trust and brand experience to the maximum level; 2) communication value has the most important impact on brand satisfaction; 3) instrumental value only has an impact on brand trust, and from a statistical perspective, instrumental values on brand satisfaction and brand experience effects are not significant. Thus, the sentimental value of individuals on is obvious to social media brands.Third, this study constructed a model between user perceived value and brand equity. Results can be seen from the structure equation result. User-perceived value's impact on social media brand asset are mainly realized through brand and brand experience'agency effect, in which entertainment value of brand equity has a significant positive effect on on brand associated value dimensions.Finally, based on the above research study, the Thesis analyzed the prospects for the future research, provided references for China's social media branding strategy making and strategic decision.