If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.

PurposeThe potential to provide customers with information about experience and credence qualities in advance of purchase has resulted in widespread recognition of the significance of brands in relation to consumer choice in the service sector. Arguably, what is of particular significance in this process is brand equity – the value that the consumer ascribes to the brand. The main objective of this research is to enhance academic understanding of brand equity in the higher education (HE) sector and explore the implications for management practice.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative data collected via a self‐completion survey are used to test a model of brand equity in the context of HE. The empirical setting is Egypt which, following liberalization, has a mixture of public and private provision and an increasingly competitive environment. It provides an example of an emerging market where building brand equity is likely to be an important component of organizational strategy.FindingsThe results provide partial support for the proposed conceptual model, with image‐related determinants of brand equity being far more significant than awareness‐related determinants.Practical implicationsFor those involved in marketing service brands, the asymmetric impact of various determinants of brand equity provides guidance on how and where to focus marketing efforts.Originality/valueThe distinctive contribution of this research arises from the examination of brand equity in the context of an emerging service sector market with a mix of public and private provision.

This study introduces a hybrid approach to segmentation of global markets. It examines an integrated inventory of macro‐ and micro‐bases associated with segmentation of world markets. The paper calls for a universal perspective on market segmentation to aid global marketers in identifying similarities across national boundaries while assessing within‐country differences. The main conclusion of this research is augmentation of the argument that a hybrid/universal market segmentation strategy should serve as the conceptual link and action mechanism that provides substance and rationale to striking a trade‐off between the two indispensable global strategy ends of standardization and adaptation. This balanced relationship can only be created when focus is devoted to building brand equity through emphasizing a global consumer orientation.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to integrate branding and higher education literature to conceptualize, develop, and empirically examine a model of university social augmenters’ brand equity. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on an empirical survey of 401 undergraduate students enrolled in private universities in Egypt, this study model was tested using structural equation modeling. Findings The findings reveal that university social augmenters’ reputation, coach-to-student interactions, and student-to-student interactions influence students’ satisfaction with social augmenters. The results also suggest that students satisfied with university social augmenters are more likely to exhibit outcomes of brand equity – namely, brand identification, willingness to recommend, and willingness to incur an additional premium cost. Practical implications The results offer managerial implications for university administrators in their quest to enrich students’ university experiences and build strong sub-brands within the university setting. University social augmenters are found to have strong brand equity manifestations and may hold the potential to differentiate university brands in an industry dominated by experience and credence. Originality/value This research contributes to the extant literature by filling two gaps in university branding literature. First, previous research has never unified separate streams of literature related to augmented services and brand equity. Second, limited conceptual and empirical research on university branding in general and university social augmentation in particular has been conducted in emerging markets, which has resulted in conceptual ambiguity for the key factors constructing students’ university social experiences.

This article builds on the dynamic capability view of the firm in order to examine the role of marketing innovation in the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and competitive marketing advantage. The mixed-methodology approach was used and data were collected from 70 SMEs that are owned or managed by a female in Egypt. Structural equation modelling was used to test the research framework. The results reveal that both pricing and promotional innovation have a strong and positive association with competitive marketing advantage. The study is cross-sectional in nature. The results may have been different if the study had focused on specific industries. Therefore, extrapolations without proper caution are discouraged. The study provides female entrepreneurs with useful information on how to create and sustain marketing competitive advantage when resources are limited. In particular, it helps them to identify situations in which marketing innovation practices are potentially more useful.The results contribute to the understanding of the drivers of competitive marketing advantage of SMEs owned by female entrepreneurs in the context of an emerging market.

he intangible and inseparable nature of services is generally thought to increase the risk perceived by consumers when making purchase decisions. This higher level of perceived risk arises because, relative to physical goods, services are characterized by higher levels of experience and credence qualities and lower levels of search qualities. Building brand equity for a service is increasingly recognized as a means of mitigating that risk and creating a strong identity for a service in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The service sector chosen for the empirical research was higher education services in Egypt. In essence, higher education is a professional service characterized by a high level of experience qualities which make the purchase risky and means that branding is important as a source of reassurance to students about the quality of what they will receive. The paper begins with a brief overview of relevant literature and then proceeds to outline the components of brand equity providing the conceptual framework which guides the research. Subsequently, the empirical work is presented, focusing on the comparison between experienced and inexperienced consumers to assess the extent to which corporate brands are able to communicate information about key features of a service. Finally, the results of the survey are discussed and the managerial implications are presented.

No abstract

No abstract