Brand equity and company performance: evidence from a quasi-experiment in an emerging market

PurposeMarketing and brand managers are under more pressure than ever before to demonstrate the impact of the managers' strategies and actions on company value, especially in an emerging market. In this context, the authors investigate the relationship between brand equity and company performance using the rankings of most valued brands from Brand Finance (BF), Brand Analytics (BZ) and Interbrand (IB).Design/methodology/approachThe authors use used a panel from the period between 1990 and 2018 (29 years), consisting of a sample of 689 companies with shares traded in an emerging market representing 7,970 observations with unbalanced data. The authors applied a dynamic Differences-in-Differences Ordinary Last Squares (DID OLS) method.FindingsThe main finding of this study is that brands ranked as valuable significantly increased the brands' companies' intangible assets, return on assets, free cash flow (FCF) and market value.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study helps brand and marketing managers show to chief executive officers (CEOs) and shareholders the importance of brand development. In addition, valuable brand companies of an emerging market may represent an interesting opportunity for market investors.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the marketing literature, addressing the fields of marketing and finance, by analyzing the performance of companies separately over a long period, with different metrics, an unconventional model in the marketing area and different rankings of valuable brand names.