Page 207 - MARSIUM'21 COMP OF PAPER

SOCIAL MEDIA BRAND COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE BRAND EQUITY OF
TOP ONE TECHNOLOGY SDN. BHD.

FITRI NURLIZA BINTI SYAPRI, THOO AI CHIN

Azman Hashim International Business School, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru

*Corresponding author: fnsyapri@graduate.utm.my

Abstract
Social media is booming massively, and it has become part of billions of people’s daily lives around the world. Hence, many
firms use social media platforms to reach a bigger audience and increase brand equity. In Malaysia, many companies take
the opportunity of leveraging social media communication into their business model. However, some electronics component
retailers rarely use the social media for marketing. Top One Technology Sdn. Bhd., a small company selling electronics parts,
is facing a challenge in promoting its brand to the local and online community. Thus, this study aims to investigate factors to
increase brand equity (brand awareness and perceived quality) via social media brand communication for electronic
component retailers. Using the results of survey, this study designed marketing strategies to enhance the brand equity of Top
One Technology Sdn. Bhd. This study adopted a quantitative research method to investigate the relationships between social
media brand communication, brand awareness, and perceived quality of electronic component retailers. A questionnaire as
the survey instrument was used to gather primary data from respondents online using Google Forms. Purposive sampling was
used to collect data from Facebook users who had liked any social media brand page of electronic components in Malaysia.
The sample size for the study is 150. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software was used for data analysis.
The findings indicated that firm-created content (FCC) and user-generated content (UGC) positively and significantly
influence brand awareness and perceived quality of electronic component retailers. Moreover, brand awareness also has a
positive and significant influence on perceived quality. An intervention was conducted using the results of survey for Top One
Technology Sdn. Bhd. The postings using creative images, videos, and posters related to both FCC and UGC were uploaded
on Facebook page of Top One Technology Sdn. Bhd. The results of intervention showed a positive increase in terms of page
reach, engagement, impression, and followers. Clearly, Top One Technology Sdn. Bhd. and electronic component retailers can
further implement the social media strategy to enhance brand equity using social media brand communication.

Keywords: Social media brand communication, Firm-generated content, User-generated content, Consumer-based brand
equity, Brand equity, Brand awareness, Perceived quality

⬛ 1.0 INTRODUCTION

Retail is not a new concept; retailing begins with a community or neighbourhood activity (Severin et al., 2001),
which involves merchandise selling and purchasing by consumers for household purposes (Kotler & Armstrong, 2017).
Globally, the retailing is one of the most extensive and variegated industry (Dekimpe, 2020). The retailing system has evolved
dramatically from periodic market to tradesperson or retailers to specialization and finally big scale and globalization
(Michelle, 1997). The retailing industry is one of the crucial commercial sectors that contributed to Malaysia's Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) notably (Mui et al., 2003). In 2017, the wholesale and retail trade sub-sector contributed 29.8% to the services
sector's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2019). The prominent retail sub-sector that can be
seen in Malaysia are department stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets, mini-market, convenience stores, and cooperative
(Ganesan, 2021). Over the decades, Malaysia's retail climate has undergone significant changes (Mui et al., 2003), from
entirely physical and offline branding and marketing for their products to start using the internet and online platforms to
drive sales (Lee et al., 2008). Individuals now contribute articles and comments through the Internet's Web 2.0 technology,
and it has become possible to create user accounts across many websites that signifies the birth of social media (Kenton, 2020).
Social media is booming massively, and it has become part of billions of people's daily lives worldwide (Dwivedi
et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2021). Social media includes a diverse range of online, word-of-mouth forums such as blogs, company-
sponsored discussion boards and chat rooms, consumer-to-consumer e-mail, consumer product or service ratings websites and
forums, Internet discussion boards and forums, moblogs (websites that contain digital audio, images, movies, or
photographs), and social networking websites (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). Globally, around 4.66 billion people use the

185