Building industrial brand equity by leveraging firm capabilities and co-creating value with customers

Abstract

Few studies have examined potential impacts of firm's capabilities upon industrial brand equity, and it remains unclear how value co-creation exerts an effect in the capabilities–branding link. This paper reports the findings of an empirical study conducted among 212 Chinese firms regarding the roles of firm's capabilities in value co-creation, customer value and brand equity development in B2B environment. The result indicates that marketing capability and networking capability build up brand equity both directly and indirectly via value co-creation and customer value, while innovation capability positively impacts brand equity indirectly by facilitating value co-creation and improving customer value. The study contributes to literature of industrial branding and value co-creation by probing into capabilities as their determinants. The findings provide managerial implications for building B2B brand equity by leveraging firm's capabilities and co-creating value with customers.