A Statistical Study on the Relationship between Digital Marketing, Brand Authenticity, and Consumer Loyalty of Chinese Brands

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_43How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Digital Marketing; Brand Authenticity; Consumer Loyalty; Brand Building Philosophy; Structural Equation Model; Bootstrap Mediating Effect

Abstract

Drawing on China’s domestic-brand market, this paper assesses how the quality of digital marketing and a brand’s guiding philosophy are associated with perceived authenticity and consumer loyalty. After the responses were screened, 413 usable questionnaires measured on a 7-point Likert scale remained. The empirical work combined sample profiling and descriptive statistics with reliability analysis, KMO and Bartlett's tests, a common-method-bias check, diagnosis of the authenticity dimensions, correlations, regressions, Bootstrap mediation tests, and a structural equation model estimated in Stata. The SEM estimates indicate a positive path from digital marketing level to perceived brand authenticity (standardized coefficient = 0.223, p < 0.001) and from brand building philosophy to consumer loyalty (standardized coefficient = 0.340, p < 0.001). Neither the direct path from digital marketing level to loyalty nor the path from perceived authenticity to loyalty was significant. Bootstrap confidence intervals likewise offered no evidence that authenticity mediated the effect of digital marketing level or brand building philosophy on loyalty. The results point to a two-stage pattern in Guochao (national trend) markets: digital activity may strengthen an impression of authenticity, yet that judgement alone is insufficient to generate repeat buying, recommendation, or emotional commitment. Loyalty is more closely tied to a stable, recognizable brand philosophy whose cultural position is carried through over time.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Yufei Zhou
AU  - Khunanan Sukpasjaroen
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/30
TI  - A Statistical Study on the Relationship between Digital Marketing, Brand Authenticity, and Consumer Loyalty of Chinese Brands
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 8th International Conference on Economic Management and Cultural Industry (ICEMCI 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 405
EP  - 410
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_43
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-777-4_43
ID  - Zhou2026
ER  -