Does Successful Social Media Marketing Affect Brand Value?: An Empirical Investigation

Introduction

Brand is no longer simply a symbol of the product and brand management has been moving towards making use of multiple channels in order to engage customers and sustain a more intense experience around the brand instead of depending merely on advertising (Arvidsson, 2006). This paper will investigate the effectiveness of social media marketing activities on brand value through comparison of brand value rankings with brand engagement scores, determined by social media marketing activities. Quite often it is assumed that these two constructs are related, but no study has so far shown or analyzed this relationship. The paper begins with brief definitions of social media, brand engagement and brand value concepts, followed by a literature review on social media marketing and measures of effectiveness. Related data from a list of chosen companies is collected and evaluated, and the paper concludes with a discussion of findings.