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environment (El-Adly & Eid, 2015). Perceived quality may be described as the customer's impression of a product's or service's
overall quality compared to alternatives for the intended purpose (Panchal et al., 2012). Moreover, perceived quality is
composed of two components: benefits received, and costs incurred (Liu et al., 2015). There are a total of twelve factors that
affect customer's perceived quality, including communication, interactivity, mission marketing, brand equity, service quality,
perceived cost, confidence, strategic consistency, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, planning and evaluation, and
organizational infrastructure (Sivanenthera & Shanmugathas, 2018). Studies such as Christodoulides et al. (2012) investigated
the consumers' views of brands' quality and engagement with brand related UGC. Zheng et al. (2017) examined how inter-
user relationships on a social commerce platform influence users' views of electronic commerce companies' value propositions.

2.5 HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT

2.5.1 Social Media Brand Communication and Brand Awareness
Zailskaite-Jakste and Kuvykaite (2013) found that social media brand communication contributes to brand awareness
and a favorable brand image. In addition, Schivinski and Dabrowski (2015) recognized that a business's firm-created
social media brand communication affects brand awareness and customer perceptions of brand quality. Furthermore,
based on research done by Bolton et al. (2013), social media is adequate to deliver information to Gen Y. According
to Hutter et al. (2013), consumer involvement with a company's fan page on social media their sense of brand
awareness are highly correlated. Similarly, Seo and Park (2018) implied that brand awareness is significant to the
social media content of a company's brand. In addition, Hermanen and Achyar (2018) indicated that evaluating firm-
created content has a favourable and substantial effect on brand association and awareness. Besides, social media
marketing is proven effective in increasing brand awareness of promoting handicraft products in India through the
findings of Guha et al. (2021). Based on the above discussion, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H1a: A positive evaluation of firm-created social media brand communication positively and significantly
influences brand awareness.

In addition, sparking on social media communication via customer involvement in brand development may increase
a company's likeability (Zailskaite-Jakste & Kuvykaitė, 2013). According to Shojaee and Azman (203), UGC
significantly influences brand awareness. Similarly, Alam and Khan (2019) validated that UGC positively impacts
brand awareness. In addition, Malthouse et al. (2015) found that engagement via content elaboration impacts brand
awareness and associations. Moreover, Hutter et al. (2013) indicated that the social media communication of UGC
does affect the purchasing process. Additionally, UGC was found to positively impact perceived credibility and
information quality (Mathur et al., 2021). Moreover, according to Zhou and Xue (2021), rather than perceived
usefulness, reported ease of use and pleasure were significant predictors of attitude and intention for trip planning
using UGC. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H1b: A positive evaluation of user-generated social media brand communication positively and significantly
influences brand awareness.

2.5.2 Social Media Brand Communication and Perceived Quality
According to Huang et al. (2018), social media brand communication will enhance the user's perceived quality of a
brand. Durmaz et al. (2018) found a significant correlation between consumers' perception of a brand image and
perceived brand quality. Cham et al. (2021) also found related evidence that commercials and social media
communication have a remarkable impact on medical tourists' perceptions of hospital corporate image, which
positively affects customers' confidence in the hospital's brand. Likewise, according to Almestarihi et al. (2021),
social media marketing had a noticeable impact on the CBBE characteristics of brand awareness and perceived
quality. In addition, Nisar and Prabhakar (2018) highlighted that consumers' sentiment regarding a firm could
moderately influence perceived quality. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H2a: A positive evaluation of firm-created social media brand communication positively and significantly
influences perceived quality.

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