Title: From Engagement to Equity: Building Brands in Content-Commerce Markets

Speaker:Xinyi Sun (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology )

Time: 10:00(Tuesday),October 27th, 2026

Venue: Room1008, Mingde Business Building (Zhongguancun Campus)

Language: Chinese & English

 

Abstract：

Content-commerce platforms make brand activity highly visible, but whether observable engagement reflects durable brand building remains unclear. Using weekly data from 21,727 brands across four countries on TikTok Shop, we extend the sales-based brand equity (SBBE) framework to content-commerce markets by separating persistent brand-specific demand from observable selling conditions. We then link recovered SBBE to two digital brand-building mechanisms: engagement capability and content-embedded strategic signals (differentiation, relevance, esteem, and knowledge). To measure the latter, we develop the Consensus-based Rubric Agentic Framework for Theory-grounded measurement (CRAFT), an agentic LLM architecture that translates abstract construct definitions into evidence-grounded video scores through iterative rubric refinement. We find that SBBE remains a persistent marketplace asset in content-commerce markets. Engagement momentum—the month-over-month change in accumulated engagement capability—rather than contemporaneous engagement volume or past cumulative engagement stock, is most closely associated with SBBE, especially where brand positions appear less entrenched. Strategic content signals operate configurationally: Relevance is not positively associated with SBBE unless paired with sufficient Differentiation. This paper advances brand-equity research by showing how durable marketplace advantage is linked to engagement trajectory and content-embedded strategy in digital commerce.

Short biography：

Xinyi Sun is a PhD student in the Department of Marketing at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology （HKUST）. She previously received a Master's degree in Marketing Analytics and Insights from the National University of Singapore and a Bachelor's degree in Management Science from Renmin University of China. Her research focuses on brand building, visual marketing, generative AI, and digital platforms. She is skilled in causal inference, LLM (multi-agent systems, image and video visual generation, prompt engineering), machine learning, and experimental methods. Currently, several of her papers are under revision at top marketing journals, including Journal of Marketing Research and International Journal of Research in Marketing, and she has presented multiple times at international academic conferences such as the ISMS Marketing Science Conference. She has also received honors including the ISMS Marketing Science Doctoral Consortium Fellow and the Young Scientist Scholarship in HKUST.