EXPRESS: real-time brand reputation tracking using social media

Journal article

How can we know what stakeholders think and feel about brands in real-time and over time? Most brand reputation measures are at the aggregate level (e.g., the Interbrand “Best Global Brands” list) or rely on customer brand perception surveys on a periodical basis (e.g., the Y&R Brand Asset Valuator). To answer this question, brand reputation measures must capture the voice of the stakeholders (not just ratings on brand attributes), must reflect important brand events in real-time, and must connect to a brand’s financial value to the firm. This paper develops a new social media-based brand reputation tracker by mining Twitter comments for the world’s top 100 brands using Rust-Zeithaml-Lemon’s value-brand-relationship framework, on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. The paper demonstrates that brand reputation can be monitored in real-time and longitudinally, managed by leveraging the reciprocal and virtuous relationships between the drivers, and connected to firm financial performance. The resulting measures are housed in an online longitudinal database and may be accessed by brand reputation researchers.

Authors: Rust, RT; Rand, W; Huang, M-H; Stephen, A; Brooks, G

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Journal: Journal of Marketing
• Volume: 85
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 21-43
• Publication date: 2021-02-01
• Acceptance date: 2021-01-25
• DOI: 10.1177/0022242921995173
• EISSN: 1547-7185
• ISSN: 0022-2429
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR; relationship driver; corporate reputation; abnormal return; twitter; value driver; brand reputation tracker; brand driver; social media mining; customer equity