Customer social participation in the social networking services and its impact upon the customer equity of global fashion brands

Those of us who live in the age of information technology are offered the opportunity to engage in multiple-way communication with others, the brand, and the media. Thus, customer participation is the most important in an online environment. Although such constructs correspond in part to the online, they fall short of meeting the unique characteristics of customer participation in social media. This study provides a clarification of the definitions presented by researchers and explores the construct of customer participation within SNS, and seeks to reveal how the relationship among external factors may influence customer participation and how it, in turn, effects customer equity. The main finding is that SNS participation motivation and customer social participation were positively associated. In particular, customer-media participation demonstrated the strongest influence on customer equity. This study contributes to filling this gap by offering analysis of the role of customer participation in SNS on customer equity. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc.