The Application of Customer Equity Concepts in Cellular Phone: Antecedents, Constructs, and Consequences

Generally, higher brand equity ends up with higher market share and higher profitability. However, superior brand equity does not guarantee the success in the market. That is, consumer choice is closely related to brand equity but we need more than brand equity to explain this complex phenomenon. We adopt the customer equity concepts: value equity, brand equity, and retention equity. By incorporating value equity and retention equity into customer equity, it is possible to avoid the problems of using the brand equity only. In the paper, we apply this customer equity concepts to cellular phone and investigate the effects of antecedent variables such as exposure, knowledge, positive experience and negative experience on the components of customer equity. In addition, as surrogate measure of customer lifetime value, the weighted measure of purchase intention, consideration set inclusion, and next purchase is used as dependent variable. We estimate the effects of components of customer equity at the brand level and aggregate level using SURE model. Estimation results show that Apple has currently low market share but has high future potentials and Korean firms have currently high market share but has rather low future potentials.