Entering B2B brands' living rooms: How brand worlds can help build brand equity

Brand worlds are powerful tools for branding and for creating extraordinary customer experiences in B2C markets, and they are increasingly applied in B2B contexts as well. However, the specific characteristics of industrial marketing raise the question of whether brand worlds function similarly in this setting. This study examines how visiting a brand world is related to brand experience and brand equity in industrial marketing. Drawing on data from 218 business visitors, we employed a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design combined with structural equation modeling. The findings reveal that brand world visits are associated with higher levels of brand experience and brand equity through the multidimensional concept of brand world experience, a higher-order formative construct. Brand world experience mediates the link between pre- and post-visit brand experience, but is not associated with pre-visit brand equity. Post-visit brand equity is related both directly to the brand world experience and indirectly to post-visit brand experience. These findings demonstrate that, when embedded in experiential marketing strategies, brand worlds function as instruments for enhancing brand experience and brand equity in industrial marketing, thereby underscoring their role as the metaphorical “living room of the brand.”