Customer Experiences in Branded Metaverse Events: Effects on Brand Equity.

This article investigates how customer experiences in branded metaverse events influence brand equity, defined by brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality, and brand loyalty. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study first identified five key customer experience themes—community, utilitarian digital asset commerce, participation and socializing, hedonic gaming, and information—through topic modeling of 13,481 Discord chat messages related to Adidas, Gucci, and Samsung metaverse events. Subsequent quantitative surveys (N = 688 and N = 1,005) tested how these experiences affect brand equity, brand attitude, and purchase intention, revealing that most experiences positively impact brand equity except that utilitarian digital asset commerce does not influence brand awareness or associations, participation and socializing do not affect perceived quality or loyalty, and hedonic gaming does not boost loyalty. Multigroup analyses showed that these effects vary by brand type (hedonic vs. utilitarian) and industry, highlighting the need for tailored metaverse marketing strategies to effectively enhance brand equity in immersive virtual environments.