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Are social media replacing traditional media in terms of brand equity creation?

Manfred Bruhn, Verena Schoenmueller and Daniela B. Schfer


Paper based on the article mentioned above written by Lisa Hammertinger


Are social media really replacing traditional media when it comes to brand equity creation?
This question is currently widely discussed in the tourism industry and addressed in the research
of Bruhn, Schoenmueller and Schfer published in 2012.

The research in this article is based on three different topics. First of all, it aims to answer the
question if there is a difference between brand-based social media communication and
traditional instruments of marketing concerning their effect on the equity of a brand. Former
research already demonstrates that consumer-to-consumer communication has an impact on the
marketing outcome hardly any research although shows a comparison of these effects to
traditional marketing communication. Secondly, a differentiation is made between social media
communication that is firm-created and context that is user-generated. Furthermore, the
research differentiates between three different industries, namely the tourism industry, the
pharmaceutical industry and the telecommunication industry.

The conceptual framework developed for the research is based on the brand value chain
developed by Keller and Lehmanns in 2003, which mainly focuses on company controlled
marketing communication. Due to the fact that nowadays the company is not the only sender of
information anymore, other communication sources in the framework got adapted. The three
sources that create context are firstly traditional instruments of marketing communication
(advertising), secondly social media communication that is firm-created and thirdly social
media communication that is user-generated. Bruhn, Schoenmueller and Schfer suggest that all
these sources have an impact on the consumers mindset, which means their brand awareness,
functional brand image and hedonic brand image the three creators of brand attitude. This
mindset of a consumer finally has an effect on consumers behavior, more specifically their
purchase intention.

To answer the questions mentioned above, a standardized online-survey with 393 participants
was conducted. The participants were split randomly between the industries tourism,
pharmaceutics and telecommunications. For every industry, 20 different brands that were
recognized recently on social media platforms by the participants were included into the
survey.

The results show that traditional media, assumably due to the fact that companies only
communicate positive context to people, has a positive influence on the brand awareness and
on the brand image. When it comes to social media the survey shows, that firm-created social
media communication also positively influences the brand awareness and the functional brand
image. No significant effect could be detected on the hedonic brand image though. All
together, when comparing social media communication to traditional communication, the latter
has a greater impact on the brand awareness, whereas social media communication has a
bigger effect on the brand image. Due to that fining it is very advisable for a company to
implement both of the forms of communication into their marketing strategy.

Also some differences between the three industries investigated in this research could be
detected. Firstly, the user generated content on social media platforms is highly valued by
consumers in the tourism industry. Probably due to the fact that consumers dont expect other
consumers to have any commercial interest, there opinion seems to be more credible and
authentic to them. A different result can be observed in the pharmaceutical industry, where
consumers rely more on experts in the field and dont get influenced very much by the opinions
of other consumers. Therefore, in this field firm-created context is of higher importance than
user-generated-context. In the telecommunication industry both firm-created and user-created
communication have an impact on the functional brand image. In sum, companies have the
chance to positively influence the brand awareness of consumers by using traditional
communication tools. Social media communication rather influences the image of a brand
firm-created context more the functional brand image and user-generated-context more the
hedonic brand image. Marketers should therefore be aware of the fact, that they cannot
improve their hedonic brand image by firm-created communication on social media platforms.
Luckily, they have still the option to influence the consumer-to-consumer communication in
various ways.

VIENNA TOURISM

The following section discusses some possible implications based on the findings of the article
mentioned above for the Vienna tourism board.

In order to influence both the brand awareness and the brand image positively, Vienna
Tourism is advised to integrate both traditional and social media communication tools into their
marketing strategy. Vienna already installed branded billboards in various other cities and
also created some image clips to raise brand awareness. As a company in the tourism industry,
they dont have a great chance to influence the hedonic brand image of Vienna via firm-
created context on social media. What can be done though is, to push and influence the
consumer-to-consumer communication on their social media platforms. A possibility could be to
ask tourists questions or encourage them to share experiences when posting a picture on
facebook, for example: What are your experiences with the Prater in Vienna? Show us your
funniest pictures, the person with the funniest picture has the possibility to win activities
like that get people to interact with each other and their willingness to communicate on the
social media platform of Vienna can be increased. Another possibility could be to take pictures
at events in Vienna and distribute branded cards with the print: find yourself on facebook at
vienna.info. The pictures on facebook can additionally encourage people to tag themselves.
Concerning the activities on twitter, Vienna Tourism should try to become the object of various
discussions by using hashtags. An example could be to tweet something about the (possibly)
upcoming Eurovision Song Contest next year including hashtags into the post. Topics that the
target group of Vienna is interested in can be included into tweets by the usage of hashtags,
which will help Vienna to appear more often, give people the possibility to communicate about
the city and be the object of discussions. Activities like the ones mentioned above give Vienna
Tourism the possibility to positively influence both their functional and hedonic brand image.



Bruhn, M./Schoenmueller, V./Schfer, D.B. (2012): Are social media replacing traditional
media in terms of brand equity creation? Management Research Review 35(9), pp. 770-790

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