Social media communication and higher education brand equity: The mediating role of eWOM

Beyond its ability to enhance the generation of goals and objectives, understanding an organization's brand equity is a key driver in communicating values to consumers and end-users. In a very competitive marketplace, it is high time universities ditched the traditional means of communication and comply with the trending social media communication forms so as to better capture both the virtual as well as the real social space of their students who, in turn, are ambassadors of the institutions. Using data solicited from 317 university students, this study found that universities can better position themselves to compete when they employ both user-generated and firm-generated social media communication in building their brand equity. Our study also validates electronic word of mouth as a mediator of the relationship between social media communication and higher education brand equity. Recommendations for practice were also suggested.