The Hypersocial Airline: The Perceived Effectiveness of Airphil Express’ Facebook Fan Page on Airline Brand Equity and Purchase Intent

Abstract

Social media has evolved from a means to personally network online to also a channel for brands to communicate with their consumers. Online brand communities embedded in social networking sites, such as Facebook, have served as platforms of participation and interaction as an alternative to mainstream and above-the-line advertising. Little has been understood about the constantly-changing dynamics of social media and brand equity, even more so with purchase intent. In this study, the online brand community page of Airphil Express, a recently rebranded airline that is among the most responsive airlines on social media globally, is hypothesized to influence airline brand equity and purchase intent according to the content perceived by the community members, whether brand- or user-generated. Following the models of brand equity by Aaker in 1991 and Chen and Tseng in 2008, as well as the Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion by Petty and Cacciopo in 1983, the study quantitatively gauged the relationships among three variables, namely involvement to the online brand community (OBCOMM), airline brand equity (BRANDQ) and purchase intent (INTENT). Regression analyses revealed that OBCOMM has moderately low relationships with both BRANDQ and INTENT, suggesting that not all content posted are drivers of brand equity and purchase intent. Therefore, the nature of content must be examined and strategized before communicated to the consumers. Meanwhile, correlating OBCOMM and BRANDQ as predictors of INTENT, a moderately high relationship was observed. This suggests that a complement of involvement to the online brand community and airline brand equity is required to achieve higher purchase intention, which goes against common industry belief that merely investing on social media presence can directly translate to higher purchase tendencies and therefore revenues.