Social-relational capabilities: strategic transformation of brand resources to increase brand equity

As consumers are increasingly online and social, they also increasingly value brands that interact with them and create personalized relationships with them. We propose social-relational capability in marketing as an ability to build and maintain relationships, which generate value for consumer communities on social media and enhance the customer-based brand equity. Prior research has been fragmented and more research focusing on the development of social-relational capability is needed to develop a better understanding of the social networks of brands and consumers. By examining the effects of consumer-level, brand-level, and consumer-brand dyadic level antecedents on the development of the social-relational capability of a brand we advance existing literature on marketing using perspectives from social network theory, resource-based view, and dynamic capabilities theory. The findings have implications for both consumers and managers in maintaining long-lasting beneficial relationships. The results revealed that social-relational capability enables a brand to strengthen brand equity. The integration of different social media and relational resources allows brands to develop three distinct dimensions of social-relational capability, which enhance brand equity.