Mona Yaghoobi Zanjani - PhD Candidate of Business Administration- Marketing - Islamic Azad University, south Tehranbranch, Tehran, Iran.

Brand equity has received much attention from marketing academics and practitioners due to its significant role as a key intangible firm asset (Aaker, ۱۹۹۱; Keller, ۱۹۹۸). Brand equity is considered one of the major drivers of customer equity, which is defined as the total combined customer lifetime value of all of a company’s customers (Rust et al., ۲۰۰۴). Keller and Lehmann (۲۰۰۶) asserted that brands simplify customer choices, promise a particular level of quality, engender trust, and reduce risk. They also noted that brands play an important role in influencing the effectiveness of marketing efforts, such as advertising and channel placement. The accrued value from these benefits is called brand equity. Using a customer-based approach, brand equity is defined as “the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand”. Throughout this article, firm-created and user-generated social media communications are considered to be independent variables and are expected to positively influence brand equity metrics. The result shows that, this study examined the role of brand equity and branding strategy. Although high brand equity customers showed higher intentions to visit the restaurant under normal conditions, crisis situations were found to drive high brand equity customers to reduce their intention to visit the restaurant more sharply.

Brand equity, Customer, Brand