Brands that do good: insight into social brand equity

Brand equity has been accepted as an important construct as evidenced by the proliferation of models and arguments on the concept. Brand equity has multiple definitions which reflect the commercial intention of brands. Social brands, however, have social intentions. It is therefore plausible that determining the value of social brand equity may be different from determining the value of commercial brand equity. The purpose of this article is to conduct exploratory research to obtain a sense of whether existing brand equity models apply to social brands, and if not, what modifications are needed to help in the measurement of social brands. In-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen experts from four continents. In general, constructs of brand equity were agreed upon as valid and useful in social brand equity. However, the application of two constructs is tempered by ethical and funding issues. This is due to the context of measuring social brand equity, and the unassailable fact that the social sector consists of complexities, over and above those experienced by the commercial sector.