Building industrial brand equity by leveraging firm capabilities and co-creating value with customers

Few studies have examined potential impacts of firm's capabilities upon industrial brand equity, and it remains unclear how value co-creation exerts an effect in the capabilities-branding link. This paper reports the findings of an empirical study conducted among 212 Chinese firms regarding the roles of firm's capabilities in value co-creation, customer value and brand equity development in B2B environment. The result indicates that marketing capability and networking capability build up brand equity both directly and indirectly via value co-creation and customer value, while innovation capability positively impacts brand equity indirectly by facilitating value co-creation and improving customer value. The study contributes to literature of industrial branding and value co-creation by probing into capabilities as their determinants. The findings provide managerial implications for building B2B brand equity by leveraging firm's capabilities and co-creating value with customers.