Investigating the Roles of Word of Mouth and Brand Image Between Social Media Marketing Activities and Brand Equity

Drawing on the associative network memory theory (ANMT), this study aims to investigate the impact of social media marketing activities (SMMAs) on brand equity (BE) of luxury brands through the mediating role of brand image (BI) and the moderating role of word of mouth (WOM). This study employs a cross-sectional design to collect data from online adult users of Weibo in China. Data are analyzed in SmartPLS (v. 4.0.8.4) to evaluate the measurement model and the structural model. Findings of this study reveal that SMMAs have a significant positive impact on BI and BE. Besides, BI partially mediates the relationship between SMMAs and BE. Moreover, WOM moderates the association between SMMAs and BE such that the association is more potent at high levels of WOM and vice versa. This is one of the few studies that investigate the role of SMMAs on BE in the context of luxury brands, mediated by BI. Also, this is the first study that explores the moderating role of WOM in the relationship between SMMAs and BE through the mediating role of BI.