Journal of Business Research 192 (2025) 115273

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Journal of Business Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres

Digital brand equity: The concept, antecedents, measurement, and

future development
Stephen L. France a,* , Nebojsa S. Davcik b , Brett J. Kazandjian c
a
Mississippi State University, Mailstop 9582, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA
b
EM Normandie Business School, Métis Lab, Oxford, UK
c
Towson University, 8000 York Road, Towson, MD 21252, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Measuring brand equity is of vital importance to marketing practitioners and scholars. Academics and practi­
Brand equity tioners have developed a range of tools and metrics for measuring brand equity, but in the fast-paced and
Digital transformational digital era, it may be that current metrics are not sufficient. The authors develop a conceptual
Measurement
understanding of the brand equity paradigm using practitioner and scholarly views. A practitioner-focused
Social media
AI
analysis is given on how companies can best understand and measure brand performance in a digital environ­
ment and take actionable insights, using the share of search, digital brand awareness, and digital brand sentiment
constructs. The authors argue that digital brand equity metrics cannot be based only on social media and current
digital metrics indicators but also must include a human side of the brand and the technology-consumer nuances.
The study proposes a research agenda and highlights important research and policy questions in developing
digital brand equity.

1. The changing brand environment modern consumer omnichannel environment (Bijmolt et al., 2021;
Mirzabeiki & Saghiri, 2020), consumers expect seamless integration
Consumers increasingly interact with brands in an online setting. The between online and offline brand presence. Consumers feel a sense of
average consumer spends over seven hours daily interacting with digital empowerment when they interact with brands at will, and this leads to
media (including multitasking) and consumes 40 % less traditional improved engagement and purchase intent (Mishra et al., 2022). Sec­
media than a decade ago (Lebow, 2022). This explosion in digital media ond, brand power has shifted from the firm to the consumer. The
has happened across channels, with social media usage growing to 5.07 consumer-to-consumer (C2C) or consumer-to-brand (C2B) relationships
billion people or over 60 % of the worldwide population (Chaffery, are more relevant than the firm-to-consumer (F2C) relationship. In
2024) and is paired with increasing digital media consumption. For addition, employee brand engagement on social media is a relatively
example, the YouTube platform has 2.5 billion active users per month, new phenomenon. It makes the relationship between employees and
with quarterly advertising revenue of $8 billion dollars (Dean, 2024), customers more important, and it is hard for a firm to control in the
and streaming services have recently overtaken cable as the leading digital environment. Third, services can be delivered instantaneously;
channel for TV consumption (Nielsen, 2022). tangible goods are easily available due to international trade and
But, how has the increased digital interaction outlined above transport deregulation. Fourth, from a consumer behavior perspective,
changed the relationship between the consumer and the brand in the digital transformation has changed how consumers interact with brands.
digital environment? Digital transformation has enabled cheaper and For example, in a digital environment, consumers often abandon a
more powerful miniaturization of computing technologies, equipment, shopping cart, a situation that rarely occurs in an offline setting. Simi­
and new social patterns (Saarikko et al., 2020), consequently leading to larly, expectations of students in university classes have changed post-
new business practices and innovations. Branding practices and pandemic, with even students in face-to-face courses requiring a high
everyday social reality show that several social and business factors level of technological integration.
drive these changes. First, there are fewer physical boundaries to In this new “digitally transformed” environment, it is paramount that
communicate, place orders, or take follow-up marketing actions. In a marketing managers can understand which metrics to deploy to help

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S.L. France), [email protected] (N.S. Davcik), [email protected] (B.J. Kazandjian).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115273
Received 2 June 2024; Received in revised form 8 February 2025; Accepted 23 February 2025
Available online 11 March 2025
0148-2963/© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
S.L. France et al. Journal of Business Research 192 (2025) 115273

understand the success of a product or brand and to help improve propose an approach to modeling digital brand equity and develop
operational efficiency (Magill & Moorman, 2022). The use of metrics for definitional propositions to link digital brand equity. We discuss broader
measuring brand performance is not new, and survey-based measures of digital brand equity issues and the rapidly changing technological
brand awareness, preference, and purchase intentions have been environment. Our conceptualizations and findings are synthesized into a
developed since the first half of the twentieth century (e.g., Lazarsfeld, series of recommendations for academic researchers and industry
1935), and used in the US in the development of iconic brands in the practitioners and summarized in Table 3.
post-war boom of the 1950 s. Subsequently, a whole host of methods for
measuring brand value and performance have been developed by mar­ 2. Brand equity: A primer
keting researchers and academics. These methods usually come under
the banner of “brand equity” measurement.1 Tools for measuring brand In its simplest form, brand equity can be considered a measure of the
equity include surveys of consumer brand perceptions, sales metrics, “added value” that a brand gives to a product or service (Farquhar,
and financial performance metrics. However, many of these metrics do 1989). For example, consumers will pay more for a branded consumer
not account for the rapidly changing digitally-focused branding envi­ product, such as a shampoo or first aid medicine, than a generic private-
ronment described above. For example, the perceived fluency of online label equivalent, even though the generic product has been formulated
/offline integration (Shen, 2018) and online SEO metrics, such as the with almost identical ingredients. Brand equity can be positive or
share of search, bounce rate, and dwell time are core to consumer negative; for example, if a hotel brand has a large number of poor-
interaction with brands but are not included in traditional brand equity quality hotels, then the subsequent substandard brand image could
metrics. Given this situation, it is important for managers to know which reduce the amount that a hotel of that brand could charge for rooms.
metrics to deploy. For example, could traditional metrics be adapted for
this environment, or are entirely new metrics required? 2.1. Brand equity from an academic standpoint
This conceptual article aims to help answer some of the questions
posed in the previous paragraphs and provide a roadmap for brand eq­ The classic works on brand equity define brand equity using multi­
uity research and practice in the contemporary digital environment. We modal measures. Keller (1993) defined consumer-based brand equity as
critically analyze the current body of brand equity knowledge and “the differential effect of brand knowledge on customer response to the
practice using traditional and digital perspectives, following the ap­ marketing of the brand”. Here, the definition of brand knowledge in­
proaches of Nicholson et al. (2018), Davcik et al. (2015), and MacInnis cludes both brand awareness, consisting of brand recognition and recall,
(2011). In doing so, we have conducted a relating conceptual study and brand image, consisting of brand associations, which can include
through differentiation between traditional and digital perspectives, and attributes, benefits, and attitudes. Consider the example of a premium
integration of practitioners and academic measurement approaches.2 A brand of connected exercise watch, such as the “Tag Heuer Connected”
secondary aim is to help share insights and methods between marketing watch. It will have product attributes, such as accuracy, exercise fea­
academics and practitioners, constituent groups who are not always tures, and robustness; non-product attributes, such as price, appearance,
aligned (e.g., Piercy, 2002). In doing so, a practitioner-focused analysis and usage scenarios; benefits, such as making workouts easier and
is given of the current digital environment, and recommendations are improving self-image and self-efficacy; and a range of consumer brand
made on how companies can best understand and measure brand per­ associations, such as luxury, quality, style, and prestige.
formance in this environment and take actionable insights, using share Aaker (1996) produced a measure of brand equity that overlaps some
of search, digital brand awareness, and digital brand sentiment of the concepts described by Keller and includes measures for loyalty,
constructs. perceived quality/leadership, brand association/differentiation, brand
We predominantly use the terms digital, digital environment, and awareness, and market behavior. A key to the Aaker framework is that
digital brand equity, even though some other terms and synonyms are implementation instructions were given along with the framework,
often used in academic work. The term digital describes tools, processes, including examples of potential survey questions to measure the
and widespread use of computerized technologies to communicate, different measures and sub-measures. For instance, for the loyalty
obtain, and maintain solutions in phygital (physical + digital) human measure and the associated sub-measure of “price premium”, there is a
daily life. Synonyms for “digital” can be the terms electronic, internet, question asking how much less or more a consumer would pay for a
online, e-commerce, i-commerce, and virtual. These terms are used brand over a rival brand. While the overall brand-equity construct is
interchangeably in common communication, scholarly work, mass complex, with five measures, eleven sub-measures, and 31 questions
media, social networks, etc. (measured on different scales), core subsets of constructs have been
The remainder of the article starts with a concise summary of the psychometrically validated on consumers across cultures (Buil et al.,
academic brand equity literature, describing the different conceptuali­ 2008; Yoo & Donthu, 2001) and have been used for predicting
zations of brand equity (consumer, financial, sales, and employee). This willingness-to-pay for brands (Netemeyer et al., 2004). There has been a
is followed by a summary of current commercial brand equity indices multitude of other papers that focus on scale development for consumer-
and a discussion on initial attempts to create digitally focused measures based brand equity, often adding specific constructs for different sce­
of brand equity. To give further commercial insight, a thematic content narios, for example, emotional loyalty (Allaway et al., 2011), brand
analysis is carried out on discussions of brand equity and brand value personality (Pappu et al., 2005), brand reputation and connection
from the business press. The focus of this analysis is to help understand (Veloutsou et al., 2020), and social influence (Alvarado-Karste &
how digital branding measures are used in the industry. Drawing on Guzmán, 2020).
previous research on brand equity and insights from practice, we
2.2. Conceptualizations of brand equity

1
The definitions of brand equity in scholarly work have a consumer or
Scholars and practitioners often use the terms “brand value”, “value of the
organizational focus (e.g., Keller, 1993; Aaker, 1996), or a marketing
brand”, "goodwill" and “brand equity” interchangeably. The authors use these
and financial approach (Davcik et al., 2015). There are other concep­
terms in a similar manner for the simplicity of their argumentation, and in line
with scholarly tradition they use the term brand equity. See Davcik et al. (2015) tualizations of brand equity, including sales-based brand equity (SBBE),
for a more detailed discussion on differences between these terms. finance-based brand equity (FBBE), and employee-based brand equity
2
For a detailed discussion on Relating as a general conceptual goal, and (EBBE). Sales-based brand equity (SBBE) is described in Keller (1998)
specific conceptual goals of Differentiating and Integrating, see MacInnis and can be considered a measure of sales or market share due to the
(2011). brand. It can be operationalized as the brand intercept on a market share

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choice model designed to separate brand effects from other relevant at least two papers that included a concept. Some concepts were merged
factors (Kamakura & Russell, 1993; Datta et al., 2017) or as the incre­ due to overlap; for example, brand word of mouth and brand reputation
mental sales value of the brand (Srinivasan et al., 2005), and can be used are used to measure brand reputation due to consumer feedback and
to measure the health of a brand over time (Sriram et al., 2007). Finance- WOM. For the EBBE papers, the attributes relate to the employees of a
based brand equity (FBBE) is defined as “the additional economic value company or brand rather than to the customers.
a brand offers to a company in its relative potential to generate future The four types of brand equity described above are complementary
earnings or cash flow” (Wang, 2010, p. 335) and has been operation­ and overlap one another. There is a strong concordance between CBBE
alized using Tobin’s Q and decomposition of intangible assets (Simon & and SBBE, though SBBE lacks a few of the consumer perception and
Sullivan, 1993). Research in this area also includes studies on perfor­ marketing mix elements of CBBE (Datta et al., 2017). FBBE is a more
mance outcomes, such as price premium and market share (Sharma macro, finance-focused metric than CBBE, though, in FBBE, brand eq­
et al., 2016), stock return (Mizik & Jacobson, 2008), private label uity can be further decomposed into demand-enhancing performance
strategies (Marques et al., 2020), and stock price (Aaker & Jacobson, outcomes and reduction of marketing cost components for different
1994). factors in the marketing mix (Simon & Sullivan, 1993; Sharma et al.,
A fourth type of brand equity is employee-based brand equity 2016).
(EBBE), which is based on the premise that a brand with more
committed employees is more likely to be successful (e.g., Piehler et al., 3. Brand equity from a practitioner standpoint
2016) and is defined as the effect that brand knowledge has on an em­
ployee’s evaluation on their work environment (King & Grace, 2009). 3.1. Commercial brand equity measures
EBBE covers a range of employee metrics, such as brand commitment,
brand citizenship behavior, employee satisfaction, employee intention A range of commercial measures and rankings have been developed
to stay, positive employee word of mouth (WOM), attitude toward the to measure brand equity. These measures contain aspects of the four
job, and employee involvement and is positively related to firm per­ types of brand equity discussed in the last section, though they tend to be
formance (Poulis & Wisker, 2016). Research by McKinsey (Dewar, 2018) simpler, as for commercial purposes, simplicity and ease of interpreta­
on over 1000 organizations found that companies with top-quartile tion are often more important than the theoretical or psychometric
employee cultures had stock market returns of 200 % more than com­ properties of a measure. Some of the major commercial brand equity
panies in the bottom quartile. From a practical perspective, EBBE may be measures are summarized in Table 2. Here, for each measure, the name
particularly important in high technology and research-focused com­ and internet link are given in column 1, a description is given in column
panies, where human capital drives new products and growth. 2, and cites to academic work where the measure is utilized are given in
Table 1 gives a summary of definitional work in the different areas of column 3. The measures listed have been widely used in academic
brand equity. The papers are given in rows, and the concepts included in research as proxies for brand equity and to help validate academic brand
brand equity are in the columns. The papers are organized by the type of equity indices.
brand equity and then alphabetically. We included typical brand equity The listed brand equity measures are predominantly CBBE measures.
concepts that appear in the literature. To be included, there needed to be Several of the major providers of brand equity measures are consumer

Table 1
Brand Equity Academic Summary.

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Table 2 2021), on building theoretical models that incorporate brand equity, in

Commercial Brand Equity Measures and Rankings. areas such as social marketing (Hjelmar, 2005) and customer satisfac­
Index Description Illustrative academic tion (Mafael et al., 2022), and examining the relationship between brand
references equity and financial and stock market performance (Aaker & Jacobson,
Harris Poll A CBBE focused metric, with Used in research examining 1994; Mizik & Jacobson, 2008).
Equitrend similar constructs to Aaker the role of brand value/
(1996), and based on a equity in models of financial 3.2. A thematic content analysis of practitioner brand equity
consumer survey that and stock performance (
evaluates brands on brand Aaker & Jacobson, 1994).
awareness, quality, and
As noted in the previous section, the relationship between re­
willingness-to-purchase searchers and practitioners working in brand equity is symbiotic, with
dimensions. major marketing research firms incorporating academic frameworks and
Kantar MDF The Kantar (Millward- Used to examine how brand measurement methods and academic researchers utilizing commercially
Brown) Meaningfully equity affects stock risk and
available brand indices and metrics to further advance academic
Different Framework (MDF) return for Latin American
is a CBBE framework with companies (de Oliveira et al., research. However, there is still scope for further understanding of how
measures for meaningful 2018). brand equity is measured and conceptualized by practitioners across a
(high affinity/meets needs), broad range of companies and industries. To do this, a thematic content
different (differentiated analysis was performed on Google News articles mentioning concepts of
products), and salient (top of
mind awareness).
brand equity and value. Content analysis is typically used to order,
Interbrand One of the most widely used Widely used to validate categorize, and gain insight from unstructured data (e.g., Harwood &
brand indices. It has aspects academic measures of brand Gary, 2003), and is increasingly becoming automated using data ana­
of CBBE (the role the brand performance, e.g., web- lytic techniques (e.g., Hopkins et al., 2010). We utilize text analysis and
plays in purchase decisions), search based brand equity
cluster analysis to help understand the different areas in which practi­
SBBE (market share and measure (France et al., 2021),
competitive strength), and and to examine the tioners encounter and manage brand equity issues.
FBBE (financial antecedents of brand value (
performance). Chu & Keh, 2006). 3.2.1. Methodology
Ipsos Brand Value A measure consisting of An examination of how Though, in academic research, the terms “brand value” and “brand
Creator (BVC) attitudinal effects (from brands can be segmented
CBBE submeasures) and with implicit consumer
equity” have subtly different meanings, the initial analysis found little
market effects (e.g., for a attitudes from the Ipsos BVC ( differentiation between mentions of “brand equity” and “brand value” in
retailer, could be strength of Vriens et al., 2017). practitioner articles. Thus, articles including the phrases “brand equity”
distribution network, and “brand value” were selected using a Google News API search. Given
location of stores).
potential business model changes and accelerated digital transformation
TNS/Kantar A CBBE survey measure Utilizes the Conversion
Conversion designed to measure Model to show how social due to the Covid-19 pandemic (Soto-Acosta, 2024), it may be that the
Model consumer commitment and marketing can be used to pre-2020 industry conceptualization of brand equity is already out of
estimate the consumer share improve commitment ( date. Thus, a starting date of 2020 was chosen to balance immediacy and
of wallet for the brand. Hjelmar, 2005). depth of content, and the search was run for the period of 2020 to 2023.
YouGov Brand A CBBE based measure Used in work examining how
Index created from a daily panel brand rating heterogeneity
After the automated search, the data were cleaned and articles with no
survey, with a range of sub- affects firm value (Luo et al., substantive link to brand equity were removed (e.g., the mention of
metrics, including brand 2013) and how brand equity brand equity was on a link to another article). The resulting cleaned
awareness, advertising moderates attempts to dataset contained 1691 news articles.
awareness, purchase intent, manage customer satisfaction
Cluster analysis was utilized to split the news articles into subgroups
and WOM exposure. after product recalls (Mafael
et al., 2022). of homogeneous topics or themes. The articles were clustered using the
Young & A joint academic/ Utilized to explore the links article text. Many articles contained a small section discussing brand
Rubicam’s commercial index containing between CBBE and SBBE ( equity in the context of a “non-brand equity” article. Thus, a window
Brand Asset CBBE measures of brand Datta et al., 2017) and how approach was used, and text was selected from windows of 10 words on
Valuator (BAV) differentiation, relevance, the subcomponents of the
esteem, and knowledge/ BAV index affect stock
each side of a mention of “brand”. Punctuation and low information stop
understanding. market returns (Mizik & words were removed, and the text data were converted into text ×
Jacobson, 2008). feature data, with both words and bigrams (combinations of two words)
taken as features. Including bigrams in addition to words allows for
more complex context and phrases (e.g., Tan et al., 2002), such as
polling/survey firms (e.g., YouGov and Harris Poll), and consumer-
“brand value” and “social media” and can include improved clustering
focused metrics are part of the expertise and value proposition for
performance (Koster & Seutter, 2003). The count data for each feature
these firms. In addition, the analysis of market share and the financial
were multiplied by the feature’s inverse document frequency (idf) to
analysis of intangible assets are key business processes, so most large
give a tf-idf formulation, which gives a measure of how common a term
companies calculate SBBE and FBBE measures, at least implicitly, as part
is relative to the overall document corpus and can be thought of as a
of everyday operations.
measure of topic relevancy (e.g., Stephen, 2004). Several methods of
A key insight from Table 2 is the synergy between academic and
grouping the data were evaluated, including model-based partitioning
practitioner efforts in measuring brand equity. The concept of brand
clustering, hierarchical clustering with cutoffs,3 and Latent Dirichlet
equity, as defined by foundational work in academia (e.g., Aacker, 1996;
Analysis (LDA). Based on initial results, k-medoids clustering was
Keller, 1993), is well established and supported by industry firms,
applied (Harikumar & Surya, 2015). This method is known to be resil­
particularly in the area of consumer brand equity. Conversely, market­
ient to outliers. Stability analysis using holdout validation and the
ing research firms such as YouGov have the resources to gather large-
adjusted Rand index (Hubert & Arabie, 1985) was used to select an
scale brand equity data through consumer panel surveys and by
eight-topic solution. This solution displayed strong coherence of topics
tracking online sentiment analysis and share-of-search metrics from
and good face validity.
online data. These data are utilized by academic researchers who need
data to advance brand equity research. Examples of such research
include research on validating academic brand indices (France et al., 3
See Jaeger & Banks (2023) for a modern overview of these methods.

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Table 3
Research Agenda of Digital Brand Equity.
Constructs Description Indicators Recommended managerial approach Potential research & policy questions

Share of Represents the percentage of A higher share of search shows Marketers should compare the percentage/ Does a brand have a higher performance
search online search queries for a that consumers are proactively share of digital users who are looking for the outcome (sales, market share, price
specific brand compared to other searching for information and brand to the competing brand. premium, ROI, etc.) in market X due to
brands in search queries. its availability. Marketers should ask how the share of the the higher share of search?
search was changing after the recent ad What customers are searching for vs.
campaign in market X. how customers were served?
Is there any difference for a share of
search in an omni-channel approach?
Digital brand Shows the degree to which High brand awareness reflects The development of brand awareness is of What makes the brand strong and
awareness consumers are familiar with a the strength and relevance of a utmost importance for a brand. The recognized in a digital environment?
brand, its reputation, credibility, brand. marketers must maintain reputation and Why is brand x relevant to digital
and values. consistent values over a long period. customers?
The use of AI tools may negatively affect the Why is brand x more valued than brand
brand. y by digital customers?
How to attract, engage, and keep digital
customers?
Digital brand Shows consumers’ overall The tone of brand sentiment can Marketers should be able to distinguish the Why does a brand have a negative tone?
sentiment attitude, experience, and be positive, negative, or neutral. tone of brand sentiment due to the marketing How to change the negative/neutral
perception toward a brand. action or an event in market X and period t. tone to positive?
How does generative AI affect a
sentiment toward a brand x in
comparison to a brand y?

Fig. 1 provides a word cloud visualization of the topics. For each focuses on specific campaigns for major brands, including Burger King,
topic, the top 50 terms are listed based on their occurrence over the Kraft, Heinz, Diego, and Coca-Cola.
baseline rate across all topics to give the “relatively most important” Overall, there is a strong concordance between academic and prac­
terms in each topic cluster. titioner views of brand equity. Practitioners show interest in CCBE as­
pects of brand equity, such as brand identity, awareness, loyalty,
3.2.2. Content analysis themes perceptions, and experiences. There is also a strong focus among prac­
A thematic content analysis was performed by examining the cluster titioners on valuing brands. This relates strongly to global brand indices
summaries and the articles in the clusters. The content analysis can be such as Interbrand and academic work on FBBE. However, when dis­
classed as semi-automated, as the initial analysis was algorithmic, but cussing brand equity, practitioners are often focused on broader ideas of
each cluster was examined for themes. A thematic content analysis can branding and practical considerations, such as specific brand campaigns
include both inductive and deductive elements (Kuckartz & Rädiker, and logo/branding design. Branding is particularly important in “he­
2023, pp. 76-77). In this case, inductive content analysis was used to donic” categories, such as luxury brands, where brand design and aes­
examine patterns and insights from the data, but there was some thetics are important (e.g., Berthon et al., 2009). In such categories,
deductive comparison with theory and domain knowledge from the often underserved by academic research, there is scope for further work
academic brand equity work described in Section 2. A summary of the in understanding how experiential and aesthetic qualities of brands
results is given below. affect brand equity. From a practice standpoint, careful use of existing
The results show some co-occurrence with academic topic clusters, brand metrics, such as those given in Table 2, combined with consumer
but also clusters focused on practitioner interests. In terms of pure brand feedback via focus groups, surveys, and the digital marketing metrics
equity clusters, there is a cluster (C5) focused on CBBE. It shows high described subsequently in this article, should help practitioners under­
concordance with topics from the CBBE papers given in Table 1, with stand how to best improve brand equity.
articles discussing brand awareness, loyalty, perceptions, and experi­
ences, but with a focus on building up these aspects. There is a cluster on 4. Branding in digital marketing practice
brand value (C2), focusing on financial brand value and brand strength
metrics. This indicates a focus on brand “value” and is related to the Sections 2 and 3 outlined a “traditionalist” branding perspective,
FBBE work focused on the valuation and measurement of financial looking at brand equity from both academic and practitioner angles. The
brand value. A cluster (C8) also aligns with the brand value regarding analysis in Section 3 showed a high concordance between the practi­
the commercial brand metrics described in Table 2, which again shows tioner and academic views of brand equity but with a strong focus on
concordance with the FBBE metrics that utilize these measures. CBBE and digital brand metrics (C3) in the practice realm. This analysis
There are several branding-focused clusters. There is a cluster (C4) focuses on the increasing importance of digital branding and digitization
focusing on personal branding topics, particularly with respect to and how this affects brand equity. Accordingly, in this section, we look
entrepreneurship and lifestyle branding, and a cluster (C1) dealing with into the digital brand environment in more depth and look at how
brand identity, which overlaps with the CBBE work that addresses brand practitioners perceive brands and branding in a digital environment.
identity (e.g., Alvarado-Karste & Guzmán, 2020), but with stories Digital marketing is a fast-growing industry, with a global market
focusing on practical aspects of brand design, such as logos, and a cluster size of over $360 million in 2023, which is expected to rise at around 13
(C3) focusing on media and digital advertising branding, with articles % a year from 2024 to 2032 (EMR, 2024). In addition, most traditional
discussing brand metrics (e.g., top/hottest videos) in the digital sphere. marketing functions, such as sales, branding, and advertising, have gone
The remaining three clusters focus on topics where brand equity and through some degree of digital transformation. Marketing practitioners
value are important but are not the overall focus of the articles. There use various metrics to assess a brand’s digital brand value and optimize
are several clusters on specific product areas where branding is impor­ digital marketing strategies. Practitioners must understand diverse
tant, including luxury brands (C7), and a “leisure” branding cluster (C6), metrics that may impact brand reputation, consumer preferences, and
with a focus on non-durable “hedonic” categories such as food and sales.
beverages, sport, and travel. Finally, a marketing strategy cluster (C9) Numerous digital marketing indicators may show the performance

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Fig. 1. Business Press Articles on Brand Equity.

and importance of a brand in the market. Firms may use indicators such metrics and can provide timelier brand equity measurement.
as online engagement (likes, number of comments), social media Marketing practice typically uses the share of search, brand aware­
following, brand sentiment, brand awareness, the share of search, the ness, and brand sentiment as indicators for understanding digital brand
share of voice, mentions on social platforms, time spent on the website, equity. The share of search represents the percentage of the totality of
Search Engine Results Page (SERP) visibility, etc., to assess their brand online search queries for a specific brand compared to other brands in
performance (e.g., Bendle et al., 2020). Individually, these indicators are search queries. It shows the level of consumer (digital user) interest and
not necessarily good predictors of brand value or market performance. demand for the brand, its visibility, and its importance in the market. A
For instance, online engagement through a high number of likes does not high share of search indicates that consumers are proactively searching
indicate better sales or higher brand value due to marketing actions, for information about the brand and its availability, which likely will
such as an advertising campaign. A similar example is the share of voice, increase sales compared to competitors. Practitioners may use SEO tools
which shows the percentage of online conversation about a brand like Google Trends or Semrush to analyze the effectiveness of their
compared to its competitors but says nothing about the brand’s current advertising campaign and competitors’ performance in a given period.
or future market performance, i.e., the brand value. An additional
Practice Insight 1: Marketers should compare the share of users looking
problem is that many indicators can provide only a descriptive view of a
for a brand to the share of users looking for competing brands. For a
brand or consumer actions rather than quantitative and measurable
recent advertising campaign in market Z, marketers should ask how the
performance outcomes. However, when leveraged correctly, those in­
share of search for the advertized brand in market Z changed after the
dicators can complement the lagged data usually used in traditional
campaign and how this change in the share of search impacted sales.
brand equity measurement. Below, we propose several practice insights
and formal research propositions related to digital brand equity, which This practice insight can lead to the following potential research and
should help bridge the gap between traditional measures and digital policy questions: Does a brand have a higher performance outcome

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S.L. France et al. Journal of Business Research 192 (2025) 115273

(sales, market share, price premium, ROI, etc.) in market Z due to a 5. Digital brand equity – Towards a new measurement-based
higher share of search? How strong is the relationship between customer approach
searches and eventual customer purchases? For a retail brand, is there
any difference in share of search when using an omni-channel approach The brand equity metrics described in Section 2 are primarily
vs. a traditional multi-channel approach? derived from consumer surveys (CBBE and conjoint-based SBBE), sales
Brand awareness shows the degree to which consumers are familiar and market share information (SBBE), and aggregate-level financial
with a brand, its reputation, credibility, and values. However, as iden­ information (FBBE). Running surveys can be expensive and unless sur­
tified in the section above, brand power has shifted from firms to con­ veys are run daily, it may be difficult to see rapidly, emerging trends,
sumers, underscoring the importance of brand awareness and such as a “brand meltdown” due to service failure or bad publicity.
illustrating how the perception of a brand in the digital space can Similarly, market share and financial information provide useful mea­
significantly impact its ability to attract and retain customers. Specif­ sures of brand positioning, but these measures are often “lagged” and
ically, high brand awareness reflects the strength and relevance of a may not provide up-to-date information. The concepts of digital brand
brand and provides the ability to attract and retain consumers and measurement described in Section 4 could be used to give accurate,
consequently generate more revenue compared to the competition. A easily updateable measures of digital brand equity. The focus of this
successful example of digital brand awareness is Amazon, which posi­ section is on the development of the concept and associated measures of
tioned itself as an efficient retailer that can sell everything to its cus­ digital brand equity.
tomers, particularly focusing on younger audiences using social media
posts and Twitter (Ziglar, 2016). 5.1. Utilizing digital brand information
Practice Insight 2: Marketers should ask what makes their brand strong
Could freely available digital brand information be utilized to help
and relevant and how they attract and keep their customers. By moni­
give easily gathered, cheap, and up-to-date measures of brand equity? In
toring and adapting to consumer needs and feedback, marketers should be
addition to the search-based metrics described in Section 4, social media
able to develop digital brand awareness and improve customer attraction
monitoring tools, such as Hootsuite and Salesforce Social Studio, have
and retention.
long been used to monitor brand mentions across social platforms and
Potential research and policy questions can address what makes a for reputation management and customer service, as well as for moni­
brand strong and recognized in a digital environment, why brand x is toring brand trends and performance. Social media, open online forums,
relevant to digital customers, why brand x is more valued than brand y and unstructured digital engagement created the phenomenon of user-
by digital customers, and how to attract, engage, and keep digital generated content (UGC), where consumers discuss brands and give
customers. brand feedback. UGC has shifted the brand relationship, recognition,
Brand sentiment shows consumers’ overall attitude, experience, and and power from firm-to-consumer (F2C) to user-to-user (U2U) brand
perception toward a brand. The tone of brand sentiment can be positive, engagement, which is not necessarily a consumer-to-consumer (C2C)
negative, or neutral, and it can be affected by various factors, such as the brand relationship and engagement (Davcik et al., 2022).
consumer’s experience with the brand, advertising campaign, word of The analysis of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) and UGC effects
mouth, public relations, new product development, etc. Consumers may on brand performance and a range of marketing activities has been a
consider a brand trustworthy, appealing, and reliable if brand sentiment mainstay of academic marketing research over the last 20 years (Donthu
is positive. On the contrary, if brand sentiment is negative, consumers et al., 2021). Scholarly work has analyzed a range of different platforms,
may perceive the brand as untrustworthy, risky, and unappealing. The including online review (e.g., Ho-Dac et al., 2013), social media (e.g.,
complexity of brand sentiment analysis is in its descriptive nature and Davcik et al., 2022), online community (e.g., Thompson & Sihna, 2008),
the potential fallacy of attributing quantitative explanations to quali­ and blogging/microblogging (e.g., Culotta & Cutler, 2016) platforms.
tative data. However, by frequently tracking digital brand sentiment, These platforms could provide a rich source of brand value information.
marketers can obtain a more immediate metric compared to traditional In fact, Keller (2016), in a reflective review of progress in CBBE research,
measures, allowing them to observe how specific events or campaigns noted that brands and branding have changed in the digital world and
impact brand attitude. In addition, with AI being increasingly used to stated the need for rigorous research to help understand brand value in
create and manage brands (Gonzalez, 2024), it is hard to foresee today this new digital environment.
how consumers will perceive the relative value and sentiment between
brands if brand x is dominantly generated and managed by AI tools in 5.2. Digital brand equity measurement
comparison to brand y which is not AI reliant.
Academic researchers have begun to look at online data as a poten­
Practice Insight 3: Marketers should be able to distinguish the tone of
tial source of information for tracking brands and monitoring brand
brand sentiment due to the marketing action or an event in market Z and
equity components such as consumer brand sentiment and brand word
period t. Marketers should look to diagnoze underlying problems behind
of mouth, including Google Trends share of search-based measures
why a brand has a negative tone, and strategize how to change the
(France et al., 2021) and measures of Twitter sentiment polarity for
negative/neutral tone to a positive tone. By searching if brand sentiment is
brand reputation and value (Rust et al., 2021). In fact, advances in
positive or negative as the result of a campaign, product issue, or broader
textual analysis, including methods for extracting sentiment emotions
market trends, marketers can more effectively determine the required
(e.g., Hartmann et al., 2023) and topic information from the text (e.g.,
course of action. This would allow brands to implement corrective actions
Tirunillai & Tellis, 2014), have widely been applied in marketing
or capitalize on positive sentiment.
research and could provide an insightful and cost-effective way of
Practice Insight 3 gives strategic guidance for marketers looking to monitoring brand equity.
examine brand sentiment due to some marketing action or due to a As noted in Sections 2 to 4, there is a strong concordance between
negative brand event or shock. Research questions could include the practitioner and academic work in brand equity, with consistency in
following: How effective are different elements of the marketing mix in terminology and with practitioners utilizing foundational academic
changing brand sentiment? How does brand sentiment recover from a measurement approaches and academics using practitioner indices, such
negative event and how can markers best aid this recovery? How do as Interbrand, to ground academic models. Accordingly, in this con­
consumers view AI created and managed brands relative to human ceptual work, we utilize the practitioner-focused share of search, brand
created and managed brands?, and how generative AI affects a senti­ awareness, and brand sentiment metrics, described in section 4 and
ment toward a brand x in comparison to a brand y? summarized in Table 3, and create propositions to relate these metrics to

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brand equity. We then combine these propositions into a single proposed range of factors, including social dynamics (Moe & Trusov, 2011),
model for the measurement of digital brand equity. product category (Yang et al., 2012), reviewer anonymity (Forman
et al., 2008), brand commitment (Chang & Wu, 2014), and the volume
5.2.1. Digital brand equity measurement of online reviews (Dellarocas et al., 2007).
We argue that the consumer search for a brand could be a significant
Proposition 3. Consumer sentiment affects the reputation and image
factor that influences its brand value. Customer information search
of a brand, thereby a positive tone of brand sentiment contributes to
behavior is directly related to individual customer purchases through
improved brand image, and increased sales and brand equity, while
pre-purchase search, so pre-purchase information search should lead to
negative consumer sentiment contributes to decreased brand image, and
higher sales and market share (Keller, 1998), but for general searches, it
decreased sales and brand equity.
is strongly related to brand involvement and attachment (Bloch et al.,
The three propositions listed above describe brand equity as a
1986), which is an indicator of purchases (Park et al., 2010), as well as of
function of the share of search, brand awareness, and brand sentiment.
determinants of brand equity, such as recommendations and positive
From a methodological standpoint, digital brand equity can be
word of mouth (Japutra et al., 2014). In addition, empirical evidence has
expressed as the function of the above-described indicators.
shown that brand searches are positively related to consumer purchases
and are a particularly strong indicator of purchases for consumer du­ Db,t = f{Sb,t , Ab,t , Eb,t } (1)
rables (Jun & Park, 2016). In summary, consumer search leads directly
to consumer purchases and also indirectly to consumer purchases vb,t
Sb,t = ∑ (2)
through increased consumer attachment and word of mouth, leading to c∈C vc,t

Proposition 1. Where, for a brand b at time t, Db,t represents the overall digital brand
Proposition 1. Proactive customer behavior in seeking information equity measured as a function of the share of search (Sb,t), brand
about a brand leads to higher visibility and word of mouth for a brand, awareness (Ab,t), and brand sentiment (Eb,t). The share of search for
thereby a higher share of search shows a higher customer interest in a brand b in a category C can be estimated (Equation (2) as the proportion
brand and improved sales and market share, which will lead to higher of searches in category C for brand b, where vb,t is the number of viewer
∑
brand equity. searches for brand b at time t and c∈C vc,t is the number of viewer
Brand awareness is a necessary condition for consumer purchases of searches in category C at time t if c is an arbitrary brand within the
a product, and consumers cannot choose a brand they are unaware of category. As the share of search Sb,t is calculated on a [0,1] scale, an
and that is not in their consideration set. The link from brand awareness appropriate feature scaling method can be used to scale Ab,t and Eb,t onto
to purchase is mediated by a range of other CBBE factors, including the same scale.
perceived quality, loyalty, and brand associations (Veloutsou et al., The formulas for digital brand equity given in Equations (1) and (2)
2020), and brand awareness shows a positive correlation with overall can used to predict the value of a digital brand and can be thought of as
brand equity (Huang & Sarigöllü, 2012). In addition, high-awareness an empirical generalization (Bass, 1995) of digital brand equity.
brands have several advantages over low-awareness brands. Con­ Empirical generalizations of marketing phenomena go beyond mana­
sumers utilize brand awareness as a choice heuristic (Hoyer & Brown, gerial intuition to allow for the measurement of the magnitude of
1990; Macdonald & Sharp, 2000), choosing brands they know and marketing effects (Hanssens, 2018) and, in this case, could be used to
associating brands they have heard of with higher quality. This can lead examine how changes in the brand environment impact digital brand
to a positive feedback loop for brands with high awareness. equity or help evaluate the marketing mix (e.g., Lassar et al., 1995).
However, these formulas may depend on contextual or situational fac­
Proposition 2. Awareness of a brand is correlated with overall mea­ tors4 and may need future adjustments to reflect an industry-specific
sures of brand equity and increased brand awareness should result in context, data quality, or unique brand situation in a given market and
increased purchase probability and improved sales, which will lead to time.
higher brand equity. Analysis of these equations in different data and marketing scenarios
Consumer sentiment towards brands can be expressed in person or should provide fruitful avenues for future research. For example, as
through a wide range of digital channels, including online reviews, blog noted in the introduction to Section 5.2, the commercial Interbrand
posts, comments on social media, and other user-generated content. index is often used to “ground” and validate academic indices of brand
What brand managers dub “consumer sentiment” or “brand sentiment” equity. One could examine how the share of search, brand awareness,
comes under the banner of WOM (word of mouth) research in academic and brand sentiment data correlate to Interbrand data and if brand
marketing. Marketing has a rich stream of research on WOM and con­ characteristics moderate this relationship. Similarly, one could see how
sumer sentiment from before the internet era, with foundational work digital brand equity relates to existing academic brand equity measures.
showing that satisfied customers lead to positive sentiment (Swan & For example, for FBBE, one could see how digital brand equity impacts
Oliver, 1989) and poor customer experiences and dissatisfied customers intangible asset characteristics, and for CBBE, one could examine how
lead to negative sentiment (Richins, 1983). Dissatisfied customers can the previously discussed CBBE survey-based scales (e.g., Donthu et al.,
be particularly problematic for companies, as dissatisfied consumers are 2021) capture digital brand equity and how they could be adapted to
more likely to provide WOM than satisfied consumers (Anderson, 1998), incorporate recent digital transformation.
and negative WOM sentiment can reduce purchase probabilities (East
et al., 2008), though negative sentiment can be mitigated through strong
6. Discussion
service recovery efforts (Maxham III, 2001). Brand attitude and image is
a function of the ability to generate positive WOM sentiment (Day,
In the previous section, we utilized previous academic work on brand
1971), and positive WOM sentiment will lead to more favorable con­
tracking and consumer behavior, along with insights from practice, to
sumer product perceptions (Bone, 1995), which can lead to improved
develop research propositions on digital brand equity and a proposed
purchase probabilities (East et al., 2008).
WOM research defines sentiment in terms of both volume and
valence, while practitioners will often report aggregate measures of 4
Contextual or situational factors that may affect the value of a digital brand
sentiment valence on a negative to positive scale. There is evidence for a may include but are not limited to, market situations (competition, consumer
positive relationship between WOM valence (from negative to positive) preferences, or inflation), regulatory challenges (in cross-border markets),
and purchases with WOM gathered from digital platforms (e.g., industry-specific context (core differences in service or tangible products),
Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006), and this relationship can be moderated by a unique brand situations due to organizational difficulties, and similar.

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S.L. France et al. Journal of Business Research 192 (2025) 115273

approach for tracking digital brand equity. Any work in digital brand results of aggregated interactions (likes, comments, tags, etc.). For
equity must exist in a dynamic technological environment. From the rise brands, Instagram Insights provides data on engagement, interactions,
and fall of myspace.com in the early 2000 s, a plethora of social media reach, and number of impressions. These data describe in detail the
platforms have vied for user attention. In addition, the rise of generative audience, number of profiles visited, and money spent on specific
AI may revolutionize user interactions with technology, leading to advertising campaigns.
changes in how consumers interact with brands online and how mar­ LinkedIn uses post impressions, followers, profile viewers, and
keters evaluate brand equity in a digital environment. Accordingly, this search appearances as the key performance metrics (LinkedIn, 2024).
discussion section looks at some of the broader issues concerning the Post impressions show how many times content has been displayed on
intersection of digital brand equity with changing technologies, social screen. Followers show the number of people that follow a unique ac­
media platforms, and the rise of generative AI. count, including connections and non-connection followers. Profile
viewers indicate how many people have viewed the account, and search
6.1. Social media and brand equity appearances demonstrate the visibility of a profile in search results.
LinkedIn uses Campaign Manager for brands, which sets advertising
How do practitioners and scholars move forward from the traditional objectives such as awareness, consideration, and conversion.
understanding of brand equity toward digital brand equity? Traditional The sheer range of potential metrics outlined above creates both
brand equity deals with (i) the tangible measurement domain through opportunities and challenges, due to the heterogeneity and complexity
financial reports and goodwill excess of the brand performance, and (ii) of different types of data. Modern “big data” are often characterized in
the intangible measurement domain through surveys and experiments terms of the 4 Vs of volume, variety, veracity, and velocity (e.g., Abbasi
where consumers expressed their subjective views and feelings about the et al., 2016). In the case of digital marketing data, huge volumes of
brand performance. Digital brand equity is focused on intangibles and, social data arriving at high velocity are often distilled into summary
almost always, anonymized likes, shares, and sentiment comments that metrics, for example, for Twitter, the number of tweets and retweets,
are hard to link to specific consumer or market contexts. Today, mar­ though raw textual data can be collected through APIs. Data include
keting scholars and practitioners do not have a simple and unifying numeric data, text data, and even video data from sites such as YouTube
measurement approach to describe digital brand equity. Instead, they and TikTok. These data may vary from key metrics and insights that give
use the basket of indicators and measurement approaches to understand insight into consumer sentiment, to large, noisy data that may be diffi­
the brand value and market performance of brand actions. Marketers cult to analyze without bespoke tools and advanced analytics
will likely use the current generic approach in the coming years, using knowledge.
several anonymized consumer behavior indices with low quantifiable The key metrics on each social media platform may provide
outputs. invaluable data for users, content creators, and brands to set marketing
Another approach is to focus solely on specific social media plat­ goals, benchmark performance, and optimize their strategies. There are
forms, such as TikTok, LinkedIn, or Instagram.5 However, each social stark differences in performance and value creation between platforms –
media platform has its own market, consumer base, and indices that are TikTok emphasizes video engagement, Instagram focuses on branded
not necessarily comparable with other social media or across countries. content and shoppable posts, and LinkedIn highlights the content
A key aspect of social media is the complex interplay between con­ needed to build professional credibility. Marketers can tailor content
sumers, content creators, and brands. On one hand, consumers engage and leverage metrics to maximize impact and resonate with their target
with content generated by creators who often operate independently audiences’ values by understanding each platform’s strengths and per­
from brands, which allows flexible and organic consumer-creator in­ formance outcomes. For instance, one million followers on TikTok may
terconnections. On the other hand, brands try to reach consumers have a different meaning and influencer marketing power than ten
through traditional advertising and paid sponsorships with creators, thousand followers on LinkedIn.
imposing certain limits on brand-consumer relationships. This duality There is no doubt that with a better conceptual understanding of the
creates both opportunities and challenges. While consumers gain more brand equity paradigm in the digital environment and the development
diverse content and exposure to brands on their own terms, brands must of new marketing metrics and big data analysis techniques, marketers
cede some control and risk volatile reactions as consumers and creators will be able to create better brand equity models and develop a unifying
are not bound to the brand. Understanding this nuanced duality is approach to the measurement and conceptualization of the digital brand
crucial for brands seeking to effectively leverage social media while equity phenomenon. For instance, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) tool pro­
maintaining their value, performance, and reputation. vides a better firm-centric, tailored approach and more accurate data on
The most important metrics on TikTok are video views, profile views, ad spending and online users. GA4 provides improved privacy-centric
likes, comment shares, and unique viewers. Video views indicate how data performance, more precise advertising investment measurement,
often a video has been seen, showing the reach and visibility of the and optimized firm media investment with Google Ads, Display & Video
content creators’ followers. Profile views show how many people have 360, and Campaign Manager 360 (Arnold, 2023).
visited the content creator’s profile (account). Likes measure the Lastly, while we provide guidance on how to use current social media
viewers’ likeability of video content. Comment shares reflect active metrics, these are subject to change as social media continues to evolve.
engagement between viewers and the content. The unique viewers show Over the last decade, social media platforms have drastically changed,
the actual number of individuals seeing the videos. For brands, TikTok and while some have adapted, others have either declined or failed
created TikTok For Business and provides performance metrics, audi­ completely. More importantly, some platforms have changed the way
ence insights, and various creative tools to connect with content creators that customers can interact with the brand. For instance, YouTube
and TikTok users. removed the visible count of downvotes to other viewers, impacting the
Key analytical metrics on Instagram are likes, comments, share of way that customers interacted. X (formerly Twitter) went a step further
posts, and followers (Sadowska, 2024). Instagram does not provide by eliminating the downvote feature from the site, removing a valuable
research-based analytics for individual content creators but shows the metric for marketers. This highlights the importance for practitioners
and scholars to adapt and adjust to emerging trends and new social
media platforms. While the current social media platforms seem robust,
5
We provide a description of key metrics from TikTok, LinkedIn and Insta­ past leaders have collapsed and were replaced, and it is likely that the
gram based on publicly available information from these apps and/or websites. current leaders will also get replaced over time to leave a place for new
It’s possible that other social media platforms have similar indicators. We are forms of communication. Despite the evolving nature of brand-
using these three platforms for illustrative purposes. consumer interactions, these interactions continue, and our proposed

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S.L. France et al. Journal of Business Research 192 (2025) 115273

insights can be adapted to fit new communication channels as they arise. artwork, and when a new book used AI to improve the artwork, it
The methods for capturing share of search, digital brand awareness, and resulted in a backlash from consumers, who boycotted the book and
digital brand sentiment may evolve, but will still be valuable tools to posted negative reviews online (Wilde, 2023). Yet, if AI is implemented
measure brand equity more accurately while reducing the lag of the data correctly, the resulting profound change in technology, consumer
relative to traditional indicators. Additionally, it is crucial to anticipate behavior, and brand performance could be an excellent opportunity for
potential future trends. For example, it is still unclear how AI technol­ marketers to provide higher brand values based on algorithmic effi­
ogies will influence firm-consumer and consumer-brand relationships ciency and human, personalized interaction. AI is substituting many
and, consequently, how consumers will perceive and value brand per­ analytical and thinking tasks, and human workers should improve their
formance in the future, i.e., digital brand equity. empathetic and emotional working performance (Huang et al., 2019).
This implies that digital brand equity will not depend only on technol­
6.2. Emerging AI technologies and digital brand equity ogy, digital metrics, and efficient AI algorithms, but premium value and
brand performance will also depend on human engagement and the
Although we have previously witnessed the rise and fall of various quality of social interaction.
social media platforms, the advancement of AI since 2022 has been so The second consequence of shifting the technology-consumer
swift that predicting its capabilities in the next five years, let alone narrative will be decision-making “filtered” through AI algorithms
beyond that, is challenging. The rapid rise of AI technologies (generative that will “serve” the solution for a consumer and create brand value. This
AI tools, industrializing machine learning solutions, immersive reality will create algorithmic, branding, ethical, and legal challenges for
technologies, quantum technologies, etc.) could directly affect con­ marketers. Evaluating the impact of AI on brand value will quickly
sumer–brand relationships and the shift from a firm–consumer brand become a critical component for companies, especially since not all AI
narrative to a technology–consumer brand narrative, which may impact systems are created equal. Their performance, including both successes
consumers perception on brand value, i.e., digital brand equity. This and failures, will likely be perceived as part of the brand, thereby
notion is important because AI technologies automate production and influencing overall brand equity.
business processes, have continuous learning ability, marketing mech­ The algorithmic challenge lies in the risk of algorithmic fallacy in the
anization, and create the intelligence for data-focused analytics and digital environment. AI algorithms can mislead and misuse digital
decision-making (Plangger et al., 2022). According to Goldman Sachs products and services because of mala fide actions, unintentional coding,
Research (Goldman Sachs, 2023a,b), generative AI will result in or input errors (Davcik et al., 2025). For instance, data on consumer
sweeping changes to the global economy, could increase the global GDP preferences and shopping behavior patterns can be misused or incor­
by 7 % (approximately $7 trillion), and will affect 300 million full-time rectly handled, which can vilify an individual without knowing that
jobs in the next ten years. As the digital environment transforms rapidly, their data have been mistreated. A branding challenge is based on a shift
over 90 % of companies are undertaking digital and AI-driven business in power from firm-controlled brands to a consumer- and technology-
changes (Lamarre et al., 2023). Fundamental to this transformation are controlled narrative. Marketers’ tasks in the very near future will not
people, because new human values, technical expertise, marketing ca­ be to convince the consumer about a brand’s advantages but to feed,
pabilities, and operational processes are imperative. Simultaneously, learn, and maintain Large Language Models (LLMs) with information on
consumer mindsets evolve regarding brand expectations and desired brand characteristics, performance, and advantages. An ethical chal­
value propositions. Scholars are exploring the factors that affect lenge for marketers is to ensure the fair use and treatment of consumers
perceived customer value in AI-mediated choice settings (Davenport and to avoid algorithmic fallacy. The problem lies in the blurred border
et al., 2020; Plangger et al., 2022). Thus, digital transformation requires conditions of what is considered acceptable ethical and privacy data
synchronized change on both the company and consumer sides. Brands handling procedures and appropriate corporate behavior in managing
must cultivate digital fluency throughout their organizations to deliver these challenges. A legal challenge for marketers is addressing various
renewed values that align with consumers’ digital-first mentalities and copyright, privacy, market, procurement, data management, and safety
sets of values. risks due to different legal jurisdictions and stakeholder interests
The shift to the technology–consumer brand narrative will have two because of global reach in a digital environment.
profound consequences for firms and consumers. First, all competitors Therefore, the digital brand equity metrics cannot be based only on
will offer service and consumer support solutions based on the most social media and digital metrics indicators but must also include the
efficient technology rather than human interaction and interference or, human side of a brand – such as emotional tone, consumer awareness,
at the very least, some kind of hybrid system that leverages both AI and and individual opinions – as well as the technology-consumer
human interaction. The cornerstone of the marketing strategy will be to ramifications.
embody human–machine interaction as a core feature and strengthen
brand value (Kumar et al., 2024). In some way, we have witnessed this 7. Concluding recommendations for academics and
shift for decades because firms have been automating and standardizing practitioners
their B2B and B2C processes in an eternal quest for efficiency and cost
control. However, with the increased availability of AI tools, these The article discusses how marketing practitioners and scholars use
trends will be exacerbated, and the role of human interaction and various metrics to assess a brand’s digital brand equity performance.
interference – from an operational point of view – will be much less These metrics include online engagement, social media following, brand
important because AI tools will standardize business processes much sentiment, brand awareness, the share of search, the share of voice,
more efficiently and lower the possibility of human error. AI technology mentions on social platforms, time spent on the website, etc. However,
has become a core brand value, and future development and marketing these indicators may not necessarily be good predictors of brand equity,
applications will show how much humans depend on it. We cannot as­ the value of a brand, or market performance due to the lack of adapta­
sume today how future consumers will value these processes – will they tion to the digitally-focused branding environment. Additionally, many
be inherently price sensitive and highly value cheap and efficient indicators can only provide a descriptive view of a brand or consumer
products, or will they be inherently humanly engaged and prefer high actions rather than actionable, quantitative, and measurable perfor­
quality and personalized interactions that cannot be standardized, and mance outcomes.
therefore be prepared to pay a premium price for a “humanized” brand?
Companies that have introduced AI into previously human-centered, 7.1. Implications for practitioners
creative domains, have faced backlash from consumers. For example,
Dungeons and Dragons books are known for their human-created For marketing practitioners, the implications drawn from this article

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S.L. France et al. Journal of Business Research 192 (2025) 115273

are important because they allow them to better navigate the digital measures that can provide deeper insight into a brand’s market perfor­
branding landscape. While metrics, such as online engagement, social mance and value. However, marketers must also consider other factors,
media following, and brand sentiment, are readily available, it is such as consumer behavior, changing market conditions due to the
essential for practitioners to not only rely on those. These metrics, technology (e.g., the use of generative AI tools) or macroeconomic
though informative, may not always serve as reliable predictors of brand volatilities (e.g., hyperinflation in many countries), and shift of con­
equity or market performance within the digitally-focused branding sumer power (such as UGC effects) to develop effective digital marketing
environment. strategies that will optimize brand equity performance.
The key takeaway for practitioners lies in recognizing the need for Future development of the brand equity paradigm must consider
adaptation. Digital brand equity requires a distinct set of tools and evolving market conditions, radical technological innovations, and
strategies tailored to this unique landscape. This means leveraging profound changes in a digital environment and their ramifications for
descriptive views of brand and consumer behavior while seeking out consumers, brands, and organizations.
quantitative and measurable performance outcomes leveraging the
available digital information. In practical terms, marketing practitioners Credit authorship contribution statement
should use not only data-driven but also qualitative indicators. Metrics
like the “share of search” can gauge consumer interest and demand, Conceptualization: Nebojsa Davcik, Stephen France; Methodology:
while “brand awareness” and “brand sentiment” provide a nuanced Stephen France, Nebojsa Davcik, Brett Kazandjian; Formal analysis:
understanding of reputation and consumer perception. Moreover, Stephen France; Writing - original draft preparation: Stephen France,
practitioners should seek to gain a better understanding of digital brand Nebojsa Davcik; Model formulation: Nebojsa Davcik, Stephen France;
measures. By recalibrating their measurement approaches, practitioners Tables: Stephen France (T1, T2), Nebojsa Davcik (T1, T3); Writing -
can effectively leverage the power of these metrics. review and editing: Stephen France, Nebojsa Davcik, Brett Kazandjian;
We also offer a warning for brands that are trying to jump on the Resources [Google data]: Stephen France.
automation wagon without adequately controlling its impact. While AI
has already drastically changed the branding landscape, and its impact
is only accelerating, automating everything with AI could provoke a Declaration of competing interest
negative customer reaction, especially if its impact on brand equity is
not accounted for. For instance, managers should consider legal, ethical, The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
and privacy issues when applying AI across brands and their effects on interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
cross-cultural and cross-border performance. the work reported in this paper.

7.2. Implications for researchers Acknowledgments

The implications for academic researchers are two-fold. First, there is We are grateful to Colin Jevons, Kevin Shanahan, and Sanjoy Ghose
a compelling call for researchers to take charge of developing method­ for their comments on previous versions of the paper. We also thank the
ologies and metrics to measure brand equity in a digital context. These editorial team for their demanding but fair and supportive work.
efforts should leverage the dense literature on brand equity while also
considering the importance of the digitalization of brand equity. Data availability
Second, interdisciplinary collaboration is becoming increasingly
important. The complexities of digital branding necessitate a conver­ Data will be made available on request.
gence of expertise from various domains, including marketing, infor­
mation systems, psychology, and data science. Collaborative efforts that References
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Stephen L. France is an Associate Professor of Business Quantitative Analysis at Mis­
Sadowska, M. (2024, February 26). 12 Key Instagram Metrics You Should Track in 2024.
sissippi State University. He received a BSc in computer science from the University of
https://brand24.com/blog/instagram-metrics/. Accessed August 10, 2024.
Durham, an MSc in statistics and management science from the University of the West of
Sharma, P., Davcik, N., & Pillai, K. G. (2016). Product innovation as a mediator in the
England, and a Ph.D. in quantitative marketing and supply chain management from
impact of R&D expenditure and brand equity on marketing performance. Journal of
Rutgers University. His areas of research include marketing analytics and research
Business Research, 69(12), 5662–5669.
methodology, multidimensional scaling, dimensionality reduction, information visuali­
Shen, X. L., Li, Y. J., Sun, Y., & Wang, N. (2018). Channel integration quality, perceived
zation, and document clustering. His research has been published in a broad range of
fluency and omnichannel service usage: The moderating roles of internal and
business and methodological journals, including Marketing Science, Journal of the Academy
external usage experience. Decision Support Systems, 109, 61–73.
of Marketing Science, Decision Support Systems, Journal of Business Research, and IEEE
Simon, C. J., & Sullivan, M. W. (1993). The measurement and determinants of brand
Transactions in Knowledge and Data Engineering. He is a member of INFORMS, the Classi­
equity: A financial approach. Marketing Science, 12(1), 28–52.
fication Society, and the Psychometric Society.
Soto-Acosta, P. (2024). Navigating uncertainty: Post-pandemic issues on digital
transformation. Information Systems Management, 41(1), 20–26.
Srinivasan, V., Park, C. S., & Chang, D. R. (2005). An approach to the measurement, Nebojsa S. Davcik is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the EM Normandie Business
analysis, and prediction of brand equity and its sources. Management Science, 51(9), School, Oxford, UK. He received his Ph.D. in Economics & Management from the Uni­
1433–1448. versity of Padua, Department of Economic Sciences “Marco Fanno”. Dr. Davcik’s work has
Sriram, S., Balachander, S., & Kalwani, M. U. (2007). Monitoring the dynamics of brand appeared in leading academic journals such as Management Science, Journal of Business
equity using store-level data. Journal of Marketing, 71(2), 61–78. Research, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Product & Brand Management, and Asia
Swan, J. E., & Oliver, R. L. (1989). Postpurchase communications by consumers. Journal Pacific Journal of Management, among others. He also serves as a member of the Editorial
of Retailing, 65(4), 516. Advisory Board of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of
Stephen, R. (2004). Understanding inverse document frequency: On theoretical Business Research, the Italian Journal of Marketing, and the Journal of Product and Brand
arguments for IDF. Journal of Documentation, 60(5), 503–520. Management. Dr. Davcik was the co-guest editor of special issues in the Journal of Business
Tan, C., Wang, Y., & Lee, C. (2002). The use of bigrams to enhance text categorization. Research (2016) and Journal of Product and Brand Management (2019), as well as the
Information Processing & Management, 38(4), 529–546. author of numerous book chapters. He is a member of the American Marketing Association
Thompson, S. A., & Sinha, R. K. (2008). Brand communities and new product adoption: and Academy of Marketing Science.
The influence and limits of oppositional loyalty. Journal of Marketing, 72(6), 65–80.
Tirunillai, S., & Tellis, G. J. (2014). Mining marketing meaning from online chatter:
Brett J. Kazandjian is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Towson University. He
Strategic brand analysis of big data using latent Dirichlet allocation. Journal of
received his Ph.D. in Marketing from Mississippi State University. His research interests
Marketing Research, 51(4), 463–479.
include retailing, branding, consumer behavior, and big data analytics. His work has been
Veloutsou, C., Chatzipanagiotou, K., & Christodoulides, G. (2020). The consumer-based
published in the Journal of Business Research, the Journal of Retailing, and Decision Support
brand equity deconstruction and restoration process: Lessons from unliked brands.
Systems.
Journal of Business Research, 111, 41–51.

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