Assessing Customer-Based Brand Equity of E-Commerce Platform Based on Promotion Benefits

The prosperity of e-commerce in China leads to large amount of businesses venturing into this marketplace. Sales promotion has been widely used to improve their advantage, while platform-based sales promotion has been confirmed more successful. This research examines the impacts of the benefits of sales promotions based on electronic commerce platforms on customer-based brand equity (platform brand awareness and platform brand association) and how their relationships are moderated by the promotion type (pre- and post-purchase promotion). Based on the two functions of sales promotions (stimulation vs. maintaining), we propose a five-benefit framework including exploration, convenience, savings, social bonds and structural bonds. We suggested that both the two types of sales promotion could provide the five benefits of sales promotions and the positive effects of the benefits on consumer-based brand equity might be significant, while the differences between pre- and post-purchase sales promotions could be also significant.