Effects of Traditional Advertising and Social Messages on Brand-Building Metrics and Customer Acquisition

de Vries Lisette, Gensler Sonja, Leeflang Peter S.H.


Abstract
This study examines the relative effectiveness of traditional advertising, impressionsgenerated through firm-to-consumer (F2C) messages on Facebook, and the volume andvalence of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) messages on Twitter and forums for brand-buildingand customer acquisition efforts. To a unique data set from a European telecom firm, theauthors apply vector autoregressive modeling. This modelling approach allows consideringthe interrelations among traditional advertising, F2C impressions, volume and valence ofC2C social messages. The results show that traditional advertising is most effective for bothbrand building and customer acquisition. Impressions generated through F2C social messagescomplement traditional advertising efforts. Thus, thoroughly orchestrating traditionaladvertising and a firm's social media activities may improve a firm's performance withrespect to building the brand and enabling customer acquisition. Moreover, firms canstimulate the volume and valence of messages among consumers through traditionaladvertising that in turn affect brand building and acquisition. These findings help managers toleverage the different types of messages more adequately.

Keywords
traditional advertising; social media; brand building; customer acquisition; vector; autoregressive modeling



Publication type
Research article (journal)

Peer reviewed
Yes

Publication status
Published

Year
2017

Journal
Journal of Marketing

Volume
81

Issue
5

Start page
1

End page
15

Language
English

ISSN
0022-2429

DOI

Full text