Mohammad Ichsan

Influencer marketing and brand community have been popularly used as one powerful marketing strategy to enhance brand awareness. This study aims to find out how and to what extent influencer marketing and brand community affect brand awareness in a context of a growing beauty product brand in Indonesia. Using a quantitative approach and in context of Loreca’s brand, this study measured the role of influencer marketing and the beauty community on brand awareness. The brand equity and brand management theory has been used as the theoretical framework, where further influencer marketing and brand community were considered as the antecedents. This method was implemented using a structured questionnaire addressed to the brand community Loreca Babes, with total population of 385 people and 197 respondents. The data were further analyzed with PLS-SEM using SmartPLS 4.0 software. The research results conclude that influencer marketing and brand community have positively and significantly affect brand awareness, in which influencer marketing exhibits a stronger effect (0.558) compared to brand community (0.276). Based on this finding, it is suggested that Loreca shall evaluate its brand community strategy and enhance its use of influencer marketing. This study provides insight into the importance of influencer marketing and brand community in increasing brand awareness.

Firm performance is a business achievement through pro-growth capabilities and strategies. This paper aims to determine SME internal capabilities that can improve firm performance in Indonesia employing the resource advantage theory of competition. The research sample includes small and medium enterprises from the beauty product, food and beverage, and textile industries, the three primary industries that help Indonesia achieve a green economy. The respondents are managers or business owners who understand and handle overall business activities. Using convenience sampling techniques, 194 respondents were obtained and analyzed via partial least squares (PLS) with SMART PLS Ver 4.0 software. Empirical findings prove that service-dominant and responsive marketing orientations positively affect firm performance. Service-dominant orientation does not affect exploitative operational ambidexterity. However, exploitative operational ambidexterity has a significant positive effect on firm performance. The firm-specific marketing ecosystem does not affect firm performance. However, the firm-specific marketing ecosystem positively affects exploitative operational ambidexterity. Further findings indicate that responsive marketing orientation has a stronger relationship to exploitative operational ambidexterity. This paper offers managerial implications for business owners or managers who must modify service-dominant orientation and firm-specific marketing ecosystem to be more adaptive, innovative, and competitive to achieve superior firm performance.