KOMUNIKACIJOS SOCIALINĖJE ŽINIASKLAIDOJE POVEIKIO PREKĖS ŽENKLO VERTEI MATAVIMAS

Abstract

Believing in opportunities in a virtual environment and having started an intensive communication in social media, companies increasingly pay more attention to the measuring of brand efficiency in social media as one of the means to build up a competitive advantage for a company and its impact on brand equity.
Social media has changed the communication between brands and consumers: consumers, not brands, become the main message recipients as well as senders. Consumers gain more power to influence brand expression, contribute to its creation, dissemination, promotion and representation. A consumer can interpret messages sent by a brand in his or her own way and communicate his or her interpretation to others. It becomes difficult to assess the impact of messages on brand equity spreading among consumers as it can be affected by both positive and negative information spreading as a word-of-mouth.
Traditional Internet tools for evaluation of financial and non-financial efficiency of communication in social media and primary research on brand equity can be used in evaluation of the impact of communication in social media on brand equity.
Return on investment is calculated when financial efficiency of communication in social media is measured. In evaluation of non-financial (or consumer behavior) results of communication in social media it is recommended to apply quantitative and qualitative methods, which help to measure consumer generated content, the number of brand fans, their positive and negative comments, their statements, the number of subscribers, the number of video views. There are a lot of free and paid Internet (Google News Search, Google Blogs Seach, Board Reader, Twitter Advanced Search, Social Mention, Addict-o-matic, Veidaknyge.lt and etc), which tools can be helpful in the analysis of reports. So far the efficiency of communication in social media is assessed from a short-term perspective, therefore, it remains unclear what kind of long-term return communication in social media brings.
Companies should measure not only the separate efficiency indicators of communication in social media, but also their interplay and impact on brand equity. The existing measuring indicators of communication in social media efficiency and evaluation methodology are rather fragmented and do not show the impact of communication in social media on brand equity yet.
Companies striving to evaluate the impact of social media on brand equity should note the following aspects:

• In achieving the objective results of assessment of brand communication in social media both financial (short-term perspective) and non-financial (long-term perspective) measuring of the efficiency of brand communication in social media should be performed.
• Companies should measure not only the separate efficiency indicators of brand communication in social media, but also their interplay and impact on brand equity.
• Research on primary brand equity (awareness, image, perceived quality, consumer loyalty to brand) should be done prior and after the implementation of communication campaign in order to determine the link of efficiency results of brand communication in social media and brand equity.
• The impact of communication in social media on brand equity should be evaluated from a short-term and a long-term perspective.
• Companies seeking to get comprehensive indicators for measuring the brand equity in social media have to set measurable brand equity objectives and compare the obtained results with the established objectives.

The purpose of the research is to identify indicators for measuring the efficiency of communication in social media allowing to measure the impact of communication in social media on brand equity, by introducing the measurement methods of indicators.
The object of the research is the efficiency of communication in social media measurement. Research is formed by a systematic and comparative analysis and summary of scientific literature.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.em.17.2.2198