Quantifying the long-term effect of social media

The retail industry is ripe with uncertainties despite making significant strides in the past few years, particularly, since the recent economic downturn. The social media landscape has further complicated the customer connections with retail brands, creating serious challenges for retailers. Marketers are baffled by the constant urgent call by practitioners regarding the social media trend among customers, and they are finding it difficult to determine whether the social media effects can have a long term impact on both the customer perception of a brand and on the long-term trends in brand value. Quantifying the influence of social media in the long-run is essential for the development of branding and marketing strategies that lead to sustained competitive advantage. Empirical assessment includes vector autoregressive econometric modelling to determine whether a brand's value is stable or trending over time and quantify the persistent effect of social media factors using the real-world data available on social media. Further, implications for both marketing theory and practice are outlined.