“…As discussed, brand equity is the core concept of the present research. A firm's advertising and R&D can develop and improve market-based assets (relational market-based assets and intellectual market-based assets), which in turn can be represented by brand equity (Keller, 1998;Kim et al, 2003;Seggie, et al, 2006;Srivastava, et al, 1998;Wang, 2010). Therefore, brand equity can be considered as a surrogate measure of market-based assets for a firm with superior market-based assets is more likely to have superior brand equity and, with brand equity, a firm can generate more values for the firms.…”