5. Discussion and conclusion
The present study investigated how the two gender dimensions of brand personality influence CBBE on Facebook. Moreover, the study demonstrates the role of BL and CBE as mediating variables in these relationships. In the following sections, we discuss the theoretical contributions and managerial implications of our study.
5.1. Theoretical contributions
Previous research (Lieven et al., 2015; van Tilburg et al., 2015) has suggested that MBP and FBP have a direct effect on brand equity, such that more masculine and more feminine brands elicit higher brand equity. The first finding of this research advances prior work by showing a full mediation impact of brand gender on CBBE through BL and CBE: our model explains 31.8% of the total variance of CBBE, whereas the model without the mediators explains only 6.3% of the total variance of CBBE. Hence, this research contributes to a better theoretical understanding of the impact of brand gender on CBBE, which adds to the brand gender literature (Grohmann, 2009; Lieven et al., 2015; van Tilburg et al., 2015). This first result explains the underlying process regarding the development of CBBE.
