Modelling short-and long-term marketing effects in the consumer purchase journey

The role of advertising in consumer demand has received much attention in the marketing literature, where the marketing response model has emerged as a dominant analytical framework. In recent years, the basic model structure has evolved in three directions. Firstly, the incorporation of online paid, owned and earned media to accommodate the off-online path-to-purchase. Secondly, the introduction of consumer mindset metrics to capture the emotional foundations of brand-building. Finally, combinations of both to offer a complete view of the consumer purchase journey. In this paper, we argue that no one development successfully provides a fully holistic representation of the role of advertising. We thus propose a more comprehensive structural approach: one that combines search, paid, owned and earned media with a cointegrating mechanism for brand-building, linking mindset metrics directly to long-term base sales. The result is a practical modelling system for marketing mix practitioners with a rigorous economic and statistical foundation for short and long-term advertising effects. The proposed approach is applied to a global electronics manufacturer in the US market, where results fall into three broad areas. Firstly, we demonstrate how off and online marketing interact in the journey structure, the part played by search, owned and earned media and how specific media types play different roles. Secondly, we illustrate how consumer touchpoint experience is a key element of the process, improving measurement of in-store marketing. Finally, we show how consumer mindset metrics and social media play an important word-of-mouth role, with paid and earned media working together to drive long-term demand evolution.