Leveraging Social Media to Enable Emerging Consumer Brands to Compete with Established Brands

Abstract

The expansion of social media has fundamentally altered the competitive landscape of consumer markets, enabling emerging brands to challenge the dominance of established firms. Historically, established brands benefited from superior financial resources, strong brand recognition, and control over traditional advertising channels. In contrast, emerging brands faced significant barriers to market entry and visibility. Social media platforms have reduced these barriers by offering accessible, interactive, and cost-efficient channels for brand communication, consumer engagement, and value creation.
This study examines how emerging consumer brands leverage social media to enhance competitiveness through strategic branding, consumer engagement, analytics-driven decision making, and innovation support. By synthesizing existing theoretical and empirical research, the study demonstrates that social media enables direct brand–consumer interaction, facilitates electronic word-of-mouth, and supports the development of online brand communities. These mechanisms allow emerging brands to strengthen brand equity, improve customer relationships, and accelerate brand awareness despite limited resources.
The findings further suggest that the strategic use of social media analytics and influencer collaboration enhances content effectiveness and performance measurement, while social media participation in product development fosters innovation and organizational learning. Overall, the study positions social media as a competitive equalizer that enables emerging consumer brands to adopt agile, data-informed, and engagement-driven strategies to compete with established brands. The research contributes to marketing literature by offering an integrated perspective on how social media reshapes brand competition and strategic brand management in contemporary consumer markets.