How has the internet changed consumers over the past 10 years and how can brands make the most of it for their image? Part 1

November 13, 2014

Written by Yasmine Najjar

    The last decade has definitely changed the world we live in. Internet tremendously impacted our daily life and changed our behavior as consumers, the brand-sphere, its marketing strategies and operations consequently had to adapt dramatically. We were able to notice every year the shifting in power from companies towards consumers especially thanks to the emergence of web 2.0. Now, people don’t just read information but interact and share experiences about products and brands notably. In the virtual world, perception of brands personality is influenced by many factors, brands are not anymore in control. Companies have understood this reality for a while now and, like consumers and customers, use the broad range of tools that internet offers in order to face it. But there is quite a difference between doing something and be good at what you do. As consumers, we have all experienced the difficulties brands sometimes face to manage their image. Everyone said to himself one day “Ouch, this is an unacceptable response” while reading the brand’s response to a complaint on their Facebook page. Being on the internet is very demanding for brands, it does not take much (a negative story one day) for a company or brand to see its image damaged. On the other hand, internet offers lots of opportunities for a company to grow its brand, to build a unique personality, to create a “real” bond with its customers. But first of all, they need to understand the major change in consumer behaviors and to leverage new technologies. What is internet about today? What portrait can we produce for 2014 consumers? What are the opportunities and risks brands have to deal with to manage their image? How to make the most of the internet to protect and build brand image? Many questions we’ll try to answer in this paper.

      We are now 2.4 billion internet users around the world, and this figure doesn’t stop growing. The first version of internet, Web 1.0, was mostly about websites where people were limited to passive viewing content. The current version of internet has nothing to do with this anymore: it’s about learning in a very active way, interact and collaborate with each other.

     Every moment of our lives ends up on the internet: we picture, video, click, share thanks to social medias. In 2010, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations defined social media as the term commonly given to websites, online tools, and other interactive communication technologies which allow users to interact with each other in some way, either by sharing information, opinions, knowledge, or interests (Papasolomou & Melanthiou, 2013). In daily life, we usually use the term “social media” to speak about social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These are also called consumer-generated media (CSM) e.g new sources of online information that are created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers (Blackshaw & Nazzaro, 2004 in Papasolomou & Melanthiou, 2013 ).

     Blogs are also considered as CSM: more and more consumers write about their opinion about brands and theirs products on their own dedicated space. They share experiences; give feedbacks to other consumers, usually in a “specialized” field that they have a strong interest in. These blogs have become a phenomenon especially in the fashion or cosmetic field which even got a name: the beauty-sphere. It is quite hard to know the audience of each blog, but it can be thousands and more people following the same blog every month. Blogs audience keeps growing but more importantly their influence has become substantial. According to Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influence Report, blogs would even outrank social networks for consumer influence (31,1% for blogs vs 30,8% for networks are most likely to influence a purchase).

    What is the place of brands in this virtual world? In the old days, brands would build their image through advertising campaigns and consumers experience of their products and shops. Internet has been an “important communications revolution” for brands (Scott 2011), that offers a wide range of tools to communicate on their image and identity. Moreover, with the emergence of social media, companies are now going beyond simply maintaining a website for basic transactional purposes and traditional promotion. They are rather finding new ways to interact with customers, in search of a more long term relationship rather than a one-way communication which most websites are confined to (Papasolomou & Melanthiou, 2013). One specific way to foster relationships with customers is to create brand fan pages on social networking sites. Companies place brand posts (containing videos, messages, and other material) on these pages. Customers become fans of these brand fan pages, and subsequently indicate that they like the brand post or comment on it. This liking and commenting on brand posts reflects brand post popularity (Vries, Gensler and Leeflang, 2012). and are a good way to see if people adhere to a brand identity and what it reflects. Building relationships with bloggers, who are customers but with influence, also starts to be important for brands image. Combined with good products, these relationships usually built on trust, human and partnerships are always a great booster for brand image.

        As Christoloudides pointed out in 2009, the internet and its related e-technologies have to a large extent upset the asymmetry of information that for so many years worked in favor of brand managers. In effect, with the diminishing information cost and the large number of information you can find on internet nowadays, consumers are better informed. Internet allows them to get the information from multiple sources, particularly in the web 2.0, whereas in pre-internet era brands were the principle source. Today, people actually exhibit a preference for consumer-generated content in online communities relative to other online sources that are viewed as being directly controlled by a firm (e.g., a firm's website providing product-related information) (Varadarajan & Yadav,2009). Brands must realize that consumers are turning away from traditional elements of the promotion mix, by reducing the reliance on advertising as a source of information (Papasolomou & Melanthiou, 2013). It not only enables them to express their identity and reinforce their individuality, it also allows them to satisfy their social needs through sharing of consumption related experiences (Christoloudides, 2009). Suspicious of brands honesty, consumers seek for one another opinion when they want to make up their mind on a brand’s identity or product. This behavior is further shifting the balance of power from firm to consumer (Bernoff & Li 2008, in Christoloudides 2009). An illustration of this customer empowerment is that more and more brands involve the consumer in fundamental stages of the brand building process which shows that companies are aware of the change.

      The monologue that many firms were used to practice towards consumers has been replaced by a many-to-many communication where consumers not only interact with the firm but also with other consumers (Hoffman and Novak 1996 in Christolidoudes 2009). The consumer empowerment doesn’t come that much from the multiple sources of information but much more from the e-WOM, word-of-mouth on internet. Word of mouth, or WOM, is the influence of someone’s informal opinion about products and brands derived from consumption experiences (Sen and Lerman 2007 in Sandes and Urdan (2013)). Internet is great to share your insight as it offers many tools to do it: social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter…), forums and blogs. As Levine et al (2001) said ‘There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone”. The web gives the floor to consumers, the liberty to give their opinion without any fear of judgment as they are behind a computer, so in a very honest and easy way. This e-WOM can be a great opportunity for brand image but also a high risk that they need to address.

    In the context of Internet, consumers are very busy and solicited therefore more demanding towards brands. They expect brands and their companies to engage with customers and their fans (Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2013). They expect “more and different”. As a brand,  it is necessary to stand out to attract them and then make a great amount of efforts to build this strong bond that will create engagement and loyalty on their part. They need a good reason to go on your Facebook page and a much better reason to stay on it. They need innovation, unusual, entertainment to be attracted. They also embrace a visual culture, where pictures and videos have sometimes much more influence than words. But the most important thing to know about those customers: they want human. Internet is definitely the place where brand needs to be personified. People need to know the people working behind these brands; brand identity, positioning, brand messages need to be strong and honest so that people can bond with the brand. Furthermore, they expect true exchange and not a one-way communication (brand towards customer).

    Internet is full of great tools to communicate on brand identity and build relationship with customer. Brands don’t always realize the opportunities it offers but also the damage it can be for their image. When they do realize it, lots of them don’t know how to make the most of it. We will address this matter in the second part of this paper: between risk and opportunity, how to make the most of internet for your brand image?

Interactive Consumer Engagement: how the internet has changed consumer engagement over the past 10 years, and how marketers can best adapt

November 10, 2014

Written by Amy Mulcahy 

Purpose of the article

The purpose of this paper is to identify how the changing online environment has affected interactive consumer engagement with the medium over the past ten years. The paper will examine the evolution of consumer behaviour from the beginnings of Web 2.0 to present day, providing a case studies and a discussion of the implications for marketers and the means by which they can accommodate, utilise and ultimately benefit from such emerging behaviours. The paper will conclude with a summary of findings and recommendations for marketing practitioners.

Theoretical Framework

The transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 is epitomised by developed Internet technologies, user-generated content, and greater cooperation amongst internet users; it has changed both what the Web contains, and the way it works (Akar and Topcu, 2011). Whereas the audience once used the internet to expend content, today, these factors are considered “hygiene,” i.e. they have to be there. Instead, Web 2.0 is concerned with a whole host of factors outside a brand’s control, and it is these facets of Web 2.0 that interactive consumers are increasingly engaging with (Christodoulides, 2009.)

Over the past ten years, we have witnessed a divergence from the Web 1.0 user, to a user of more purposeful intent when using the internet; indeed, interactive consumer engagement has emerged. Deighton and Kornfeld (2009) distinguish five emerging marketing paradigms in response to the growing power of the consumer in the new media environment. They use the term “person” to describe the roles the individual assumes when partaking in: thought-tracing, activity-tracing, property exchanges, social exchanges and cultural exchanges. These cornerstones of interaction set the foundations for the more specific category with which we are concerned: the social consumer.  

With the development of the Internet, peer-to-peer tools have enabled interactive consumers to talk back and talk to one another. As an extension of Schultz’s Social Media Ecosystem (2007), Li and Bernoff (2008) segment participants according to five different types of social behaviour: creators, critics, collectors, joiners and spectators (Hanna et al., 2011). With the rise of social media, these participants are driven to structure their daily lives around interactive technology in the pursuit of constant connectivity, motivated by connections, creating, consuming and controlling (www.forbes.com; Hoffman and Fodor, 2010). As a response to the diminution of traditional communication channels relative to the utility of applications, interactive consumers are seeking engagement with one another through new media platforms such as blogs, content sharing sites, wikis and social networking. It is abundantly clear we have witnessed a shift from the passive consumer, to a consumer empowered through greater information access, instant publishing power and a participatory audience; an environment in which it is paramount firms adapt (Krishnamurthy and Kucuk, 2009). 

Analysis

In recent years, companies have started going beyond simply maintaining a website for transactional purposes; instead, they are accommodating the socialising aspect consumer’s desire from their online experience and are finding new ways to instigate interactive customer engagement  (Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2013). This has proven both beneficial to firms that have engaged successfully with their markets. 

CouchSurfing, the hospitality exchange and social networking site for example, has positioned itself as a tool for consumers interested in travelling and connecting with other users to foster a “cultural exchange” (www.couchsurfing.org). The service relies upon users creating detailed and accurate profiles of themselves online. The website encourages interactive consumer engagement by requesting users to leave feedback so other users can decide whether they think the member would be a suitable host or surfer; doing so provides the starting point for opening a discussion with a fellow surfer, helping members determine whether they want to instigate contact offline and arrange a CouchSurfing experience; introductory videos interactively educate the consumer and can be watched here. Forums and discussion boards further aid members to arrange events and cultural exchanges creating both an online and offline community of CouchSurfers. 

Harnessing an online community means Couchsurfing facilitates interactive consumer engagement people feel within their real groups; these users are sharing information because they trust one another (Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2013). Through offering a platform to interact and share information, the service has effectively disrupted the boundaries of the hospitality industry and provided the consumer with the power and control to collaborate with fellow users to satisfy their travelling needs. 

Though CouchSurfing is exclusively concerned with the sharing of experiences amongst their users, other companies have followed suit by facilitating the users desire to construct interactive consumer engagement with other consumers. Amazon for example, the largest online retailer has successfully engaged their market by offering tools that enable consumers to create their own content in the form of wish lists and reviews (amazon.co.uk). Fellow users are not only more likely to read the consumer generated content rather than relying on summary statistics, but they also perceive recommendations and interactive consumer’s opinions as trustworthy; they are more likely to believe the opinions of engaging interactive consumers than a company representative (Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006; Sandes and Urdan, 2013; Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2013). Ultimately, these tools enable users to supplement information provided by electronic storefronts such as product descriptions and reviews by experts, aiding the decision making process of purchasing a good (Mudambi and Schuff, 2010). 

Finally, engagement can be elevated through social media platforms in various ways, and doing so can bring about positive results for a brand when executed successfully. In an effort to achieve interactive consumer engagement, football team Tottenham Hotspur collaborated with their supplier Under Armour to create an interactive social media campaign that invited fans to submit images of themselves in the new Under Armour football kit (tottenhamhotspur.com). 

Understanding how to reach their consumers and the best channels to do so enabled the brand to customize their interactive user engagement. Promoting the campaign through a microsite, video and social networking platforms, the campaign promised 2,500 recipients images would be displayed in White Hart Lane tunnel and seen by the players at every home game for the rest of the season. Understanding the importance of the teams’ history to fans ensured the tagline “earn your place in history” pulled at the heartstrings of customers resulting in a hugely successful interactive campaign. Once the spaces had been taken, a digital version of the mural was made available through the microsite, viewable here. As a result of the campaign, the football team created interactive consumer engagement with its fans, successfully targeted its customer base and raised awareness more broadly.

How can marketers’ best adapt? 
In respect of the increasingly interactive marketplace, marketers must learn the power of harnessing their resources to substantiate a relationship of interactive consumer engagement that encourages two-way conversation. It is no longer appropriate for marketers to interrupt consumers with promotional material; instead customers want firms to listen (Kietzmann et al., 2011). Netnography in terms of monitoring forums, feedback and customer reviews is a good starting point for firms to understand the current needs and expectations of consumers (Elliott and Elliott, 2003). It is through these observations that marketers will learn that value creating activities develop even in the absence of marketer efforts. 

Interactive consumer engagement has become the main drivers of conversations; the task for the marketer is to establish credible and durable ways to foster this value creation through interaction and engagement with their audience (Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2013).  It is therefore crucial that marketers understand the whole Social Media Ecosystem and learn to navigate and integrate these multiple platforms; they have to understand the different types of social behaviour exhibited by users and learn how to influence and  create interactive consumer engagement (Hanna et al., 2011). Identifying the company’s targeted segment of the online market and understanding their underlying motivations for interactivity will enable marketers to tailor their promotional campaigns to achieve maximum exposure (Aljukhadar and Senecal, 2011). 

With greater understanding of consumer requirements, marketers can instigate collaboration through their communities. Doing so can bring about new product ideas, improvements in functionality of their service offering and greater customer loyalty. Equally, as in the case of CouchSurfing, online communities can facilitate offline interaction and brand exposure. However, whilst facilitating interactive consumer engagement online can promote brand awareness, it is important to consider that although satisfied consumers are likely to spread their satisfaction to other consumers, they are equally likely to use this channel as a means of expressing their dissatisfaction (Sandes and Urdan, 2013). This has important implications for companies facilitating interactive consumer engagement online; if the product or service is deemed inadequate, electronic word-of-mouth facilitates the user to make it publicly known. 

Conclusions and Recommendations
In conclusion, it has been observed that through the development of the Internet, the consumer has evolved from the role of passive listener, to interactive consumer engager, collaborator and creator of user generated content. The theoretical underpinnings demonstrate the multiple roles of user interactivity, from property exchanges to social and cultural exchanges. In response to the diminution of traditional communication channels relative to the utility of applications, users are seeking engagement with one another through new media platforms such as blogs, content sharing sites, wikis and social networking. In effect, new communication channels have ended the interruption techniques of old marketing; it is the task of the marketer to identify who and what their interactive consumer segment is online, and how best to address their needs through observing, interacting and listening to interactive consumer engagement through the multiple social media platforms that have evolved through the digital era; the recommendations are as follows:

•    Marketers should understand their media landscape, their objectives and determine how best to engage their segmented market
•    Firms should be aware of the Social Media Ecosystem and accommodate their strategy accordingly to the five different types of social behaviours: creators, critics, collectors, joiners and spectators
•    Marketers should provide interactive opportunities for consumers, as in the case of Tottenham Hotspur, to build brand awareness
•    Providing a platform for consumers to interact with one another will facilitate online communities and build trust amongst consumers
•    Marketers should be aware of the implications of facilitating customer feedback and reviews; this will not always be positive and firms should be prepared to listen and respond timely and effectively
•    Firms need to be patient when building online relationships; ROI is not always immediate but will be demonstrated through brand loyalty 

References

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Aljukhadar, M and Senecal, S. (2011). Segmenting the online consumer market. Marketing Intelligence and Planning. 29 (4), p421-435.
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CouchSurfing. (2014). Getting Started - How it works. Available: https://www.couchsurfing.org/n/how-it-works. Last accessed 12th February 2014.
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Elliott, R. and Elliott, N.J. (2003). Using ethnography in strategic consumer research. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal. 6 (4), p215-223.
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Hoffman, D, L and Fodor, M. (2010). Can You Measure the ROI of Your Social Media Marketing?. MIT Sloan Management Review. 52 (1), p40-49.
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Tottenham Hotspur. (2013). Earn a spot in the tunnel at White Hart Lane!. Available: http://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/news/earn-a-spot-in-the-tunnel-at-white-hart-lane-130913/. Last accessed 12th February 2014.

The Rise of the Weeknd – Mystery and Online Marketing

November 6, 2014

Written by Paul Monno

The progression from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 has opened a whole new playing field for brands and marketers, the new rules of the game dictate that brands need to be open and interact with their community much more than traditionally (Wind, 2008; Winter, 2009). However, what happens when brands ignore these rules? Is it possible to generate buzz and community engagement online with the minimum of communication and information? What are the roles of mystery and anonymity in marketing in the Web 2.0 environment?

On December 12th 2010, a blog run by R&B singer Drake released a mysterious song by an unknown and unsigned singer. The only information given was the name of the artist and song, ‘The Weeknd - Loft Music’. The post created a lot of buzz and confusion with members of the blog who liked the song, but had no idea who they were listening to. Two months later, on 24th of February 2011, a YouTube channel called xoxxxoooxo released a video of a new song by the the Weeknd called ‘What You Need’. The video contained just a black and white image of a woman’s legs with the song playing in the background. This video was followed up by another video 2 weeks later called ‘Wicked Games’. This new video was just as mysterious as the last, containing only the blacked out face of a man (fig. 1). By now the buzz surrounding the Weeknd had exploded online.

Wicked Games video

Figure 1: The accompanying image for the ‘Wicked Games’ video (xoxxxoooxo, 2011)

Moving forward to 2013 and the identity of the Weeknd has been revealed as 20-year-old Canadian rapper Abel Tesfaye. His rise to success in the music industry since 2010 has been astonishing, but even more so is how this success was achieved. Abel was able to create his own image and grab the attention of major record labels through the use of social network sites and word of mouth; however, the story of the Weeknd’s rise to success is not one of someone playing by the rules of online marketing and winning, but rather someone who bent the rules of the game to still come out on top.

Online Presence – Don’t Tell Anyone Anything

Finding the Weeknd online in the early days was difficult, since the misspelling of their name didn’t lend itself to productive SEO, with search engines autocorrecting the search term and directing users to results for Canadian 90s pop-rock band The Weekend. Yet, setting aside their disregard for SEO, the Weeknd understood the importance that existing on social media sites had when trying to engage consumers and create awareness for their group (Armelini & Villanueva, 2009; Hoffman & Fodor, 2010). YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr were all utilized to promote the Weeknd; YouTube allowed them to upload their music, Twitter to release ambiguous lyrics from their upcoming mixtape and their Tumblr blog helped develop their visual aesthetic. During the peak of their early hype, one music journalist labeled the Weeknd’s marketing campaign as being “to be on every social networking site, but not to reveal basic facts about himself” (Ahmed, 2011). Mystery marketing was used to a great extent by the Weeknd, to give consumers constant access to the group, whilst also giving them no opportunity to learn or get close to them.

The Weeknd’s choice to remain anonymous online and follow the route of mystery marketing played two key roles in generating online buzz; it allowed for differentiation whilst also helping to develop their authentic image. At a time when many artists and brands are embracing the transparent capabilities of the internet and implementing a campaign of “the-more-they-know-us-the-more-they’ll-like us” (Fournier & Avery, 2011), the Weeknd stood out, by using the internet to release cryptic messages to confuse and shock their consumers. When their debut mixtape was released, the only online promotion used by the Weeknd was a single photo on twitter (Fig. 2).

House of Balloons tweet

Figure 2: Tweet to promote the release of debut mixtape (@theweeknd, 2011)

Furthermore, their anonymity online also played another major part with creating an authentic image of the group. In an industry where having an authentic image is paramount to an artist’s success, hip-hop artists constantly try to secure their authenticity with their listeners. For a new 20 year old rapper who wanted to create a persona of partying, excess drinking, drug-taking and womanizing, efforts had to be a made to ensure that his private life and professional life remained separate to make certain no contradictory information could be leaked. No awkward high school photos on tumblr, and no tweets about staying home and eating pizza on a Friday night could be released as to break this authentic image. However, the separation of personal and professional personas on the blogosphere can be difficult, and members often resort to blurring the line between each (Pihl, 2013). Yet, by ensuring that their identity was kept a mystery online, and that their tweets and tumblr posts remained focused on the music, users were not able to doubt the authenticity of their art. The band’s Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube posts didn’t reveal anything that would take attention away from their music, or contradict anything they rapped about in their songs.

Community Building – Don’t Listen To Anyone While They Talk

Mentioned by Hanna, Rohm & Crittenden (2011) the aim of online marketing is not just to reach your audience through social media, but to also engage them. And through the use of mystery marketing the Weeknd were able to engage their audience by creating constant speculation and conversations about the group amongst the online music community (Christodoulides, 2009; Singh & Sonnenburg, 2012). Members were able to create their own stories based on the group and their music, the mystery around the group allowed members to debate without ever being able to reach a consensus. In addition to debating this group’s background, community members also used their “expert” knowledge to analyze the production of their music and speculate which famous producers the Weeknd were working with. All this time when conversations and debates were happening in online forums, the Weeknd never took to twitter to clear up any questions their users had.

Following the rules of online marketing once more, the Weeknd utilized the power online community members have in creating cultural value and attracting new members to their music (Cova & Dalli, 2009; Muniz & Schau, 2011). Although the group would go on to receive praise and awards for their music; it was the initial enthusiasm and effort of the music community that got the group attention. By releasing their music for free and relying on word of mouth to spread their name, the Weeknd took a major risk. They could not be in control of what the community would be saying about the mixtape, and the community might have quite easily killed their young career by spreading negative reviews about their debut project online and refusing to share download links with other members (Armelini & Villanueva, 2009; Hoffman & Fodor, 2010; Akar & Topcu, 2013).

Although in some aspects the Weeknd’s use of social marketing was conventional, in other areas they appeared to be following a very traditional perspective on marketing their brand. Aside from their emphasis on keeping a mysterious online presence, there was also a lack of co-creation and dialogue between the group and the consumers. The group refused to take the recommended route of engaging with their audience; listening to what was being said by the community, gaining insight to what they wanted and possibly co-creating with other unsigned talent (Barwise & Meehan, 2010; Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy & Silvestre, 2011; Fournier & Avery, 2011; Singh & Sonnenburg, 2012). Rather their approach was much more pushed based, almost leveraging their brand (Fournier & Avery, 2011), the group had their theme of mystery, drugs, sex and partying and were pushing it onto the community. Through their tweets, their music and the images they posted on Tumblr, it was clear from the offset that the Weeknd had designed their group around a certain lifestyle and were going forward with that image. The risk here was that the community was not going to buy into this life style, and forcing an unwanted message onto an online community can be a failure for many brands. However due to the mystery surrounding the Weeknd and their relationship with the music industry, pushing their image onto to the community only helped to further increase the buzz and perception of authenticity surrounding the group.

Relationship with the Industry – Just Say No

For almost two years the Weeknd remained unsigned and were seen as being independent and outside of the corporate machine, this is turn greatly helped to generate buzz and gained them credibility within the community. Consumers are attracted to brands which give them a sense of discovery, and allow them to feel as though they have made the brand; by remaining unsigned and giving away their music for free to their fans to share, the Weeknd was able to position themselves as being part of the tribal culture (Cova & Dalli, 2009).

As noted by several authors on social media marketing, corporations find it extremely difficult to enter into conversations online without seeming intrusive, their participation can often be seen as inauthentic and pushing a product (Fournier & Avery, 2011; Papasolomou & Melanthiou, 2012). However, by remaining an independent artist who was releasing their music to the community for free, consumers got to discuss the Weeknd in an organic manner and had the feeling that the music they were listening to and talking about was cultural property that belonged to everyone, instead of to a private individual (Cova & Dalli, 2009). In fact, being without a label was so beneficial to the Weeknd, that they released three free mixtapes online in one year. When asked about this campaign in 2014, the Weeknd’s managers announced that “The music industry seems to run a lot on hype. Abel [The Weeknd] wanted to see where things would go with his songs living on their own merits” (Ugwu, 2013).

In 2012, after having signed a record contract with Republic Records, the Weeknd released an apology letter to their fans via their website, explaining why they chose to sign to a major label and how he is struggling with moving into the mainstream (Tesfaye, 2012). The risk of signing to a major label and becoming corporate was clear to the group, their brand was built by being independent, being unknown and belonging to the online community. By signing to a major label, the Weeknd had already begun to lose many characteristic that had helped in their rise. Their music was no longer released for free, and the mystery and discussion surrounding their identity had ended. The worry was, by creating this mysterious, unreachable online identity and refusing to play by the rules of social marketing had the Weeknd created a short-term brand (Fournier & Avery, 2011). Did they have the staying power to exist in an offline setting? Although still in the early stages, signs look good, when Abel released his debut album ‘Kissland’ in September of 2013, the album sold more than 96,000 copies in its first week and reached number 2 on the Billboard Charts, just behind established country singer Keith Urban with 98,000 copies (Morris, 2013).

Conclusion

What the rise of the Weeknd shows us is how young brands, whether they are corporations or artists don’t necessarily have to play by online marketing rules to succeed. By being independent and offering his music for free, Abel did not need to be transparent, since users had no reason to distrust him and were risking nothing by consuming his music. Furthermore, by using mystery as a marketing strategy Abel was able to engage his audience and push his own image. The community had enough to talk about and the harder it was to create a dialogue with Abel the more the discussions increased. Moreover, by remaining anonymous he was able to remain undeniably authentic, nobody knew any information that could detract from his core offering, all the community had was his music to discuss and create stories around.

The future discussion is how sustainable is mystery marketing in the long term once the brand becomes successful and moves into an offline setting. Pihl (2013) stated that the characteristics that are attached to a personality when they first emerge online usually remain with them throughout their career. It would be interesting to see how the Weeknd are able to continue to market themselves as being mysterious and unreachable now that they are no longer unknown and independent to the market.

REFERENCES

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Armelini, M. and Villanueva, J. 2009. The Power of Word of Mouth: Adding Social Media to the Marketing Mix. IESEinsight  Issue 9 Second Quarter 2011, pp. 29-36

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How are social media used to handle crisis situation? The example of Heathrow Airport.

November 3, 2014

Written by Niklas Milesi

Snow storm at Heathrow airport (Source: Daily mail)

URL Source: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/12/19/article-1339937-0C86FCCE000005DC-716_634x438.jpg

Snow storm at Heathrow airport (Source: Daily Mail Website)

Snowstorm (Urquhart, 2013), flooding, technical problems, strikes or terrorist threats are some examples of the danger airports are exposed to on a regular basis. Heathrow airport in London (United Kingdom) has on average more than 190.000 daily passenger (Heathrow Airport, 2014a) travelling to and from the airport relying on the operator (Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited, formerly BAA) to experience a smooth and comfortable journey.  This impressive amount of traveller means that if any problem occurs, the risk of a snow-ball effect paralysing traffic is huge and needs to be handled the best possible way.

The aim of this paper is to analyse how companies are using social media platform in crisis situation by taking the example of Heathrow Airport. We will first start by analysing how the development of internet have allowed the emergence of a new form of communication with consumers and how airport operators such as Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited have evolved to better respond to those changes. We will then, with the help of concrete example taken from social media platforms, analyse how the operator has applied some of the theoretical principles toward providing a better response in crisis situation with the help of social media.  

From brochure website to online dialogue

The evolution of the role the Internet has played for airport operators has developed in a parallel way to what has been described by academics publications. At first the Internet was used to create a “brochure ware” website (de Chernatony, 2001). In the case of airports that meant providing standard information such as live information on flights, transport to and from the airport or shops and activities available on site for example. This form of information, often referred to as “Web 1.0” (Chrisodoulides, 2009) has created an asymmetry of information in favour of companies as opposed to consumer allowing them control of any critics (Mitchell, 2001 in Chrisodoulides, 2009). Here the one way flow is very similar to the one used by traditional mass-media.

But the emergence of social media, and thus of a post-internet branding era, has led to a shift in balance in favour of consumer (Chrisodoulides, 2009). With the help of social media consumer can share their opinion and build their own free opinion of a brand or a company based on informations coming from other consumer.

This is particularly true in the airline and airport industry where companies have reacted in two very opposite way to those changes.  On one side companies such as Virgin Atlantic are often praised as examples for their active and innovative approach to using social media platform to communicate and attract consumers (Barwise and Meehan, 2010). On the other end of the scope a company such as Ryanair, the leading low-cost European airline with more than 81 million passenger transported in 2013 (Lundgren, 2014) has no official presence on social media platform. The only presence are from “anti-branding” (Krishnamurthy and Kucuk, 2009) groups such as “Ryanair Sucks!” (Facebook, 2014a) a Facebook page regrouping nearly 3.000 angry consumer actively posting and sharing any critics or bad news concerning the Irish low cost company.

However this strategy of avoiding any official presence on any social networks platform is becoming a more and more isolated case among big international brands (Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2013). A growing number of them are realizing not just the importance of taking part in the conversation with their consumer but also the potential those interaction represents. Through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest concept such as “collaborative creation” (also called “co-creation”), that is the working with consumers to improve or even create a new product, can be taken to a much broader scale as the example of Lego shows (Antorini, Muniz and Askildsen, 2012). In the case of airport operators the focus is more on the idea of creating and taking part in an interaction with their user. Here the view is that “in social media marketing, the focus is on conversation" (Armelli and Villanueva, 2011) creating a real dialogue with the consumer.

So how does a company manage to adapt to all the changes social media is creating without “losing sight of the fundamentals” (Barwise and Meehan, 2010, p.80)? The two authors answer this question by recommending to rely on four qualities that need to be present in the ‘marketing playbook’ for social media platform (Barwise and Meehan, 2010, p.83):

- Communicate a clear, relevant customer promise

- Build trust by delivering on that promise

- Drive the market by continually improving the promise.

- Seek further advantage by innovating beyond the familiar.

Those four recommendations are of course just some of the aspect that are key when it comes to social media platform. They are however build on two very relevant business examples: Virgin Atlantic Airline as a model of good social media use and Toyota for their great handling of the recall crisis using social media platform. Finally the recommendations offers the advantage of providing a solid foundation on which to start analysing the strategy used by Heathrow airport on their social media platforms in crisis situation.

Heathrow Airport creates online dialogue

The choice of Heathrow Airport was made as it is the world third and Europe biggest airport with more than 72 million passenger in 2013 flying to or from one of the 184 existing destinations (Heathrow website, 2014b).  Its social media strategy is mainly focusing on two platforms, Facebook and Twitter but the organization is also present on Foursquare, Instagram or LinkedIn for example. The four person strong team in charge of the different social media platforms has been created following a change in communication strategy but mostly following important crisis situation for the operator such as the snow storm in December 2010 and 2011 (Thomson, 2013). 

It is in this kind of situation, crisis situation, that social media platform have the best impact as they offer a very quick and direct way to reach a very broad audience. As already mentioned, airport such as Heathrow are often facing a situation of crisis creating a form of near ‘permanent crisis’. This could be coming from harsh weather conditions (snow, wind, fog for e.g.), strikes from the personnel or problem with public transport for example.

Using the four recommendations by Barwise and Meehan (2010) seen earlier, the social media approach of Heathrow airport is going to be analysed:

- Communicate a clear, relevant customer promise

When going to Heathrow airport Facebook page the customer promise is clearly defined: “More than just an airport, here at Heathrow we aim to make your journey better, while also invite education and discussion about the future of the UK’S only international hub” (Facebook, 2014b). 

Both the Facebook page as well as the Twitter feed (Twitter, 2014) account are mainly used to help answer passenger questions as well as inform them as quickly as possible on any potential problems. The use of a clear logo, identic on all platform as well as similar colours is also a good strategy to great a stronger brand image (Park, Eisingerich and Pol, 2013).

- Build trust by delivering on that promise

This is where the role of social media platform such as Facebook and Twitter has the best impact. Those two platforms provide live and easily updated informations to a very broad number of consumer. The Heathrow airport Facebook page is for example updating travellers as soon as a disruption such as a strike or flight cancelation occurs. The Twitter account respond to a lot of information asked by travellers.

- Drive the market by continually improving the promise.

Using social media offers the chance to establish a form of dialogue with the consumer in this case travellers. By asking about their opinion on different aspect, the airport operator can get informations to help make strategic decision. Here the best example is the debate regarding building a third runway for Heathrow Airport (Parker, 2014). The Facebook page is regularly updating its reader on the subject.  

- Seek further advantage by innovating beyond the familiar.

It is also very important for a company to not just use social media platform as a one-way stream just informing the user but also to regularly surprise them in order to keep them active around the brand. This is of course much harder in crisis situation but very much encouraged in more ‘smooth’ periods. Here the recently formed social media team for the Airport Heathrow seems to be doing well as they finished second in the category “Best Airport on Social Media” of the “SimpliFlying Awards for Excellence in Social Media 2013” (SimplyFlying, 2013). Another travelling website cited the airport as an example when it came showing “personality” on social media platforms, citing some example for their Twitter feed (Shankman, 2013).

Furthermore the operator is also applying the right choices in terms of content in order to expand the reach of its message by: encouraging discussion through direct question, choosing more popular form of posting such as video and pictures and by providing informations that reader wants to share (Vries, Gensler and Leeflang, 2012). It is also increasingly trying to favour consumer generated content (CGC) through photo competition for example creating a more solid bound with travellers (Muniz and Schau, 2011).

Future development of Heathrow airport social media strategy?

Heathrow Airport has, like many international brands, incorporated social media platform in its overall marketing and communication strategy. They have perfectly understood the shift from company driven message to a two way discussion led by the consumer being “empowered” (Deighton and Kornfeld, 2009) by social media.

However, a number of question remains. The first one concerns the development and the growing use of social networks on the go. As Kaplan (2011) already underlined 3 years ago this is a deep and solidly developing trend. What impact will this have for airport operators? How can this best be used to provide a better and more personalized service to travellers?

Secondly the horizon is not all blue sky for the airport and its social media platform strategy. Heathrow airport has recently seen the development of a very broad and strong “anti-branding” movement (Krishnamurthy and Kucuk, 2009). This opposition to the operator has been fuelled by the plan to build a third runway for the airport raising massive protest from local resident, environmentalist and opposition parties. Website from the “No Third Runway Action Group (NOTRAG)”, “Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise (HACAN)” or online petition such as the one offered by the “No 3rd Runway” are having an overall negative impact on the ‘Heathrow brand’. The supporter of those opposition groups are also very active on social media platforms through their own YouTube channel or Facebook page but also by reacting to post by the different social media channels for Heathrow Airport. The opening of the official “Community Consultation” on the subject is likely to attract a lot of reaction and heated debate on social media platforms. How will they manage those critics while remaining open to a real debate? Is there a risk of seeing strong anti-branding page developing in the same way they have for Ryanair for example?

 Paper reference list:

Antorini, Y.M., Muniz, A.M., Askildsen, T. (2012), ‘Collaborating with customer communities. Lessons from Lego Group’, MIT Sloan Management Review, 53(3), 73-79.

Armelli, G. and Villanueva, J. (2011), ‘Adding social media to the marketing mix’, IESE insight, 9.

Barwise, P. and Meehan, S. (2010), ‘The one thing you must get right when building a brand’, Harvard Business Review, December, 80-84.

Chrisodoulides, G. (2009), ‘Branding in the post-internet era’, Marketing Theory, 9, 141-144.

de Chernatony, L. (2001), ‘Succeeding with Brands on the Internet’, Journal of Brand Management 8(3), 186–95.

Deighton, J. and Kornfeld, L. (2009), ‘Interactivity's Unanticipated Consequences for Marketers and Marketing’, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 23, p. 4-10.

Facebook (2014a), ‘Ryanair Sucks!’, Facebook [Social media group]. Available at: < https://www.facebook.com/ryanairsux > [Accessed 12th of February 2014].

Facebook (2014a), ‘Heathrow Airport - About’, Facebook [Social media group]. Available at: < https://www.facebook.com/HeathrowAirport/info > [Accessed 12th of February 2014].

Heathrow Airport (2014a), “About Heathrow Airport – Facts and figures”, Heathrow Airport [Internet], Available at: < http://www.heathrowairport.com/about-us/company-news-and-information/company-information/facts-and-figures > [Accessed 10th of February 2014].

Heathrow Airport (2014b), “Heathrow traffic and business commentary December 2013”, Heathrow Airport [Internet], Available at: < https://mediacentre.heathrowairport.com/Press-releases/Heathrow-traffic-and-business-commentary-December-2013-7a5.aspx > [Accessed 09th of February 2014].

Kaplan, A.M. (2011), ‘If you love something, let it go mobile: mobile marketing and mobile social media 4X4’, Business Horizons, 54, 129-139.

Krishnamurthy, S. and Kucuk, S.U. (2009), ‘Anti-branding on the internet’, Journal of Business Research, 62, 1919-1126.

Lundgren, K. (2014), ‘EasyJet Narrows Gap With Ryanair in Passenger Numbers’, Bloomberg [Internet]. Available at: < http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-07/easyjet-narrows-gap-with-ryanair-in-passenger-numbergs.html > [Accessed 10th of February 2014].

Muniz, A.M. and Schau, H.J. (2011), ‘How to inspire value-laden collaborative consumer-generated content’, Business Horizons, 54, 209-217.

Papasolomou, I.  & Melanthiou, Y. (2013), ‘Social Media: Marketing Public Relations ‘New Best Friend’, Journal of Promotion Management, 18(3), 319-328.

Park, C.W., Eisingerich, A.B. and Pol, G. (2013), ‘The power of a good logo’, MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter, 55(2).

Parker, A. (2014), ‘Heathrow to examine alternative plan to third runway’, Financial Times [Online]. Available at: < http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4ec78b98-7304-11e3-8e87-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2tQVsDFd2 > [Accessed 15th of February 2014].

Shankman, S. (2013), ‘How UK airports use Twitter to better communicate with travellers’, Skift [Online]. Available at: < http://skift.com/2013/04/04/skiftsocial-what-are-flyers-talking-to-airports-about-on-twitter/ > [Accessed 08th of February 2014].

SimpliFlying (2013), ‘Announcing Airline & Airport Finalists for SimpliFlying Awards’ 13’, SimpliFlying [Online]. Available at: < http://simpliflying.com/2013/announcing-airline-airport-finalists-simpliflying-awards-sfawards13/?src=homepage > [Accessed 08th of February 2014].

Thomson, S. (2013), ‘Social Media: Q&A with Heathrow's head of passenger communications’, Routes News [Online]. Available at: < http://www.routes-news.com/news/1-news/1089-social-media-qa-with-heathrows-head-of-passenger-communications-part-1 > [Accessed 08th of February 2014].

Twitter (2014), ‘Heathrow Airport’, Twitter [Social media platform]. Available at: < https://twitter.com/HeathrowAirport > [Accessed 15th of February 2014].

Urquhart, C. (2013), ‘Heathrow cancels 100 more flights as snow leaves hundreds stranded’, The Guardian [Online]. Available at: < http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/19/heathrow-cancels-flights-snow > [Accessed 10th of February 2014].

Vries, L. & S. Gensler & P. S.H. Leeflang, (2012), ‘Popularity of Brand Posts on Brand Fan Pages: An Investigation of the Effects of Social Media Marketing’, Journal of Interactive Marketing 26, 83–91.

The effect of Social Media – Should companies abandon Traditional Advertisement? Part 2

October 30, 2014

Written by  Elisabeth Matsson

Part 2- Social Media versus Traditional Advertisement

The benefits of social media

The massive rise of social media has been a phenomenal sensation and has affected our everyday lives (Powers et al., 2012). As mentioned before, social media has not only effected consumers’ way to act but it has also increased the companies’ possibility to gain valuable information about their customers (Brawise & Meehan, 2010). Social media encourage people to share their thoughts and feelings online, which is consider being both positive and negative for the (Tuten & Angermeier, 2013). This has resulted in that transparency and authenticity of companies has become even more vital due to the arena of social media and this must be a priory for every participating company (Scott, 2008). When a customer feels deceived by a dishonest company and spreads the word, there can be devastating consequences for the company which indicates the importance for companies to be honest (Scott, 2008; Vázquez-Casielles et al., 2013). The effect of social media cannot be denied but whether it is the number one marketing activity for companies of today still remains uncertain.

What about traditional advertisements?

As stated before, social media has made it possible for word of mouth to reach a larger audience and is now considered to be one of the most effective communication tools for companies (Vázquez-Casielles et al., 2013). It has also been proven that positive word of mouth has a positive impact on brand-purchase probability (Vázquez-Casielles et al., 2013). Since social media encourage word of mouth, and word of mouth has an impact on increasing sales, should companies then focus more on social media than traditional advertisement?   

Traditional advertisement can be defined as one-way communication where there is no interaction between the company and consumer (Varisha & Vaish, 2013). Communication through social media invites the consumers to discuss, request and share their opinions with both the company and other consumers as well. Social media has the advantage of being accessible for interactions and providing the company with consumer insights and encourage word of mouth (Brawise & Meehan, 2010). However, traditional advertisement has its advantages as well which cannot be ignored. Traditional marketing allows the company to keep control over the message they wish to communicate and it is also easier to measure the outcome of traditional advertising compared to social media (Armelini & Villanueva, 2011).

Traction or just interaction?

There are many ways of how companies can interact with their customers through social media, for instance by creating Facebook pages, blogs et cetera. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the real effect by using these interacting channels. Having a Twitter account, a Facebook page et cetera should not be considered as a billboard, it should rather be viewed as a café where people do not just receive messages from the company, instead they interact with each other and obtain information from others (Armelini & Villanueva, 2011). If a company instead chose to use an advertising banner on a webpage, it works just like a billboard and this is categorized as traditional advertisement since it is one-way communication.

It is important to distinguish what traditional advertisement is in relation to social media since they can both occur on the same arena but in two completely different ways.  Social media does not focus on a specific sales offer, it focus is on creating an engagement with the consumers and encourage them to buy their products when there is an arising need (Trends Magazine, 2012). Traditional advertisement is however famous for targeting a specific segment for a specific product or service offer (Kotler & Keller, 2011).

Social media versus traditional advertisement

To communicate through social media is relatively inexpensive since companies do not have to pay a huge amount for the marketing space (Swilley et al., 2013).  However, it is easy to be fooled to believe that the use of social media in total is a low-cost alternative towards traditional marketing activities. This is only true to some extent. To establish a presence in social media costs relatively little but to generate content can be very costly since it requires time, creativity and qualified talent (Armelini & Villanueva, 2011).

Regardless of the  evidence of social media functioning as a success-maker for companies, Armelini and Villanueva (2011) and Barwise and Meehan (2010) both states that social media should be viewed as a complement to traditional advertisement. It should not be used as a company’s only communication tool. Pepsi learned this the hard way when they put almost their entire marketing budget into social media. The campaign was successful in terms of followers, fans and votes, but in terms of sales, Pepsi fell down from a second place to a third in the US (Armelini & Villanueva, 2011). According to Powers et al. (2012) offline advertising and brand perception are very important components to the media mix which means that without it, social media would not be a success for companies. Further, Barwise & Meehan (2010) argues that it is because of social media that it has become even more vital than ever before for companies to get their basics right and focus on traditional marketing activities. If they do not, the social media will only create buzz, not sales.

Picture: http://www.bet.com/news/fashion-and-beauty/2012/12/10/beyonc-s-beautiful-face-lands-on-pepsi.html

Even though social media is being rewarded for encouraging word of mouth and increasing the possibility to reach a large audience, not all word of mouth happens online. In fact, according to Keller and Fay (2012), most of the word of mouth happens face to face. A company cannot rely on social media to drive conversations, other tools are needed as well. Both online word of mouth as well as offline word of mouth has been proven to increase sales. However it has also been proven that it is the traditional advertisement that actually triggers word of mouth (Keller & Fay, 2012). If companies disregard traditional media, it will simply result in a lack of word of mouth. Keller and Fay (2012) states that companies should focus on the social consumers instead of social media and that the most effective way to increase sales is to use traditional advertising which gets people to start talking about it. Unfortunately, there is no magical solution for how a company should balance social media and traditional advertisement, it has to be judged in every specific situation (Armelini & Villanueva, 2011). The formula that will be ideal for one company will not give the same outcome in another.

So, what does this mean?

Social media and traditional advertisement are two very different things, but still very related. They are both connected to each other and have a mutual effect on each other’s outcome. Traditional advertisement gets people to start talking and by using social media, their thoughts can reach a larger audience. With this said, it is vital for companies to understand the importance of keeping their doors open for both social media and traditional advertisement. Social media is simply depending on traditional advertisement and the effect of traditional advisement is simply depending on social media as well. There is no magical solution on how to balance this in terms of percentages, it all depends on what effect the advertisement should have, the specific brand as well as the consumers the company wants to target.

To sum up, I would strongly recommend managers to participate in the social arena to boost their brand awareness and engaging customers to spread the word. This will be seen as a complement to their traditional marketing activities that should not be ignored. The combination of these two will generate a better outcome and provide the consumers with both the possibility to express their opinions through social media as well the opportunity to receive controlled message from the company’s traditional advertisement. If this is managed in the correct way, it will increase sales and generate a more profitable outcome.

References

Armelini, G. &Villanueva, J. (2011). Adding social media to the marketing mix. IESE insight, no. 9, pp. 29-36

Barwise, P. & Meehan, S. (2010). The one thing you must get right when building a brand. Harvard Business Review, vol. 88, no. 12, pp. 80-84

Bolton, R.N., Parasurman, A., Hoefnagels, A., Migchels, N., Kabadayi, S., Gruber, T., Lourerio, Y.K. & Solnet, D. (2013). Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda. Journal of Service Management, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 245-269              

Dahlén, M. & Lange, F. (2009). Optimal marknadskommunikation, vol. 2, Liber

Deighton, J. & Kornfeld, L. (2009). Interactivity’s Unanticipated Consequences for Marketers and Marketing. Journal of Interactive Marketing, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 4-10

Keller, E. & Fay, B. (2012). Word-of-Mouth Advocacy: A New Key to Advertising Effectiveness. Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 459-464

Kotler, P. & Keller, K. (2011). Marketing Management-Global edition, 14th edition, Harlow: Pearson Education

Persson, N. (2010). An exploratory investigation of the elements of B2B brand image and its relationship to price premium. Industrial Marketing Management. vol. 39, no. 8, pp. 1269–1277

Powers, T., Advincula, D., Austin, M., Graiko, S. & Snyder, J. (2012). Digital and Social Media in the Purchase Decision Process: A Special Report from the Advertising Research Foundation. Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 479-489

Scott, D.M. (2008). The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly: John Wiley Sons

Singh, S. & Sonnenburg, S. (2012). Brand Performance in Social Media. Journal of Interactive Marketing, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 189-197

Swani, K., Milne, G. & Brown, B. (2013). Spreading the word through likes on Facebook: Evaluating the message strategy of Fortune 500 companies. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 269-294

Swilley, E., Hill, P. & Hampton, A. (2013). Blog, Pin and Online Review Effects on Advertising Attitudes and Purchase Intensions. Society for Marketing Advances Proceedings, vol. 25, pp. 174-175

Thomsen, D. (2013). Det måste vara nolltolerans. Dagens Media, Available online: http://www.dagensmedia.se/nyheter/dig/article3633541.ece [Accessed 4 February 2014]

Trends Magazine. (2012). Putting Social Media Advertising to the Test. Trends Magazine, no. 116, pp. 22-26

Tuten, T. & Angermeier, W. (2013). Before and Beyond Social Moment of Engagement: Perspectives on the Negative Utilities of Social Media Marketing. Gestion 2000, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 69-76

Varisha, R. & Vaish, A. (2013). Content Fusion in Traditional and New Media: A conceptual Study. Journal of Internet Commerce, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 225-245

Vázquez-Casielles, R., Suárez-Álvarez, L. & del Río-Lanza, A.B. (2013). The Word of Mouth Dynamic: How Positive (and Negative) WOM Drives Purchase Probability: An Analysis of Interpersonal and Non-Interpersonal Factors. Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 43-60

The effect of Social Media – Should companies abandon Traditional Advertisement? Part 1

October 27, 2014

Written by Elisabeth Matsson

Part 1 – The effect of Social Media

Introduction

Having a strong brand that generates positive associations and that differentiate the brand from competitors is a crucial factor for successful marketing (Dahlén & Lange, 2009). According to Dahlén and Lange (2009), the quality of the product is not the evident factor when it comes to purchasing a product, the deciding factor depends on how the brand is perceived. This demonstrates the important role of the brand and that a good reputation can increase sales (Persson, 2010). But, how can a company of today increase a good reputation and what are the risks of doing so?

Until recently, companies used to launch an advertising campaign in traditional media when they wanted to reach the public audience. Today, according to Armelini and Villanueva (2011) you do not exist in the consumers‘ mind unless you communicate with them through social media. Social media has become a powerful arena for consumers to share their thoughts and opinions about a company’s brand and products. Companies all over the world have started to take part in this increasing trend hoping to become even more successful. However, is social media really effective when it comes to increasing sales and if so, should companies put all their efforts into the arena of social media? – The answer to this question will be discussed further in these two posts.

The rise of social media

Social media is not as new as people may think but it was not until ten years ago that it was widely adopted (Bolton et al., 2013). Social media can be defined in many different ways but it will here be defined as ”any online service through which users can create and share a variety of content” (Bolton et al, 2013, p. 248).  It includes blogs, discussion forums, social platforms, news-, photo-, and video-sharing sites that provide networks, interactions and relations, and it is up to every company to decide on what social media forum to use (Singh & Sonnenburg, 2012). Social media has made it very easy for word of mouth to travel and for example, just liking or sharing a post on Facebook increases the audience size tremendously (Swani et al., 2013). This indicates that social media can increase the awareness for companies as well as the brand.

There is no doubt that social media is powerful and that it influence consumers in their everyday life, and, as a matter of fact, many researchers have praised social media for benefiting companies and strengthening their brand qualities (Brawise & Meehan, 2010; Powers et al., 2012). The explosion has been massive and has captured the attention among all kinds of companies and consumers which has led to a change in consumption habits (Armelini & Villanueva, 2011). However, there are differences in opinions on what social media really brings to the table and whether a company should focus more on either social media or traditional advertisement. So the question arises, can social media really benefit a company by increasing sales?

There are many advantages of social media, it can for instance increase the brand awareness, reputation et cetera. Nevertheless, social media does not only generate knowledge about the company to the consumers, the companies can also get valuable insights about the consumers (Brawise & Meehan, 2010). Deighton and Kornfeld (2009) argues that social media has increased the power of the consumers instead of the marketers, which can also be very dangerous. Consumers like to share their joy when making a good purchase, but they are also eager to share their negative experience of a product or brand (Powers et al., 2012).

The danger in use of social media

Social media encourage people to spread their thoughts and experiences, but just as quickly as positive word of mouth can spread, negative has the same speed (Tuten & Angermeier, 2013).  Consumers enjoy ventilating their opinions about the company and those opinions are not always too optimistic. Social media has made it possible for word of mouth to travel faster and reach a larger audience than ever before. This emphasize how important it has become for a company and its brand to be authentic and transparent (Scott, 2008). A company or brand should never pretend to be something they are not. If it fails to accomplish this criterion the consequences can be very harmful once it has been exposed and an unhappy consumer spreads his/hers dissatisfaction virtually (Scott, 2008).

The social arena is becoming problematic to handle and consumers of today demand a lot. It is not only important for a company to take responsibility for the content they are providing on their digital networks. They also must take responsibility for what others do that can be associated with the company. The Swedish fashion company H&M learned this the hard way when they didn’t take actions against the online expression of hatred that one writer had to suffer when sending a comment to H&Ms Facebook page. The critics against H&M were massive and everyone agreed that it was H&Ms responsibility to maintain a respectful tone in the comment section on their Facebook page (Thomsen, 2013).

Critic against H&M for not maintaining a respectful tone on their Facebook page”

Picture: http://nyheter24.se/nyheter/inrikes/738173-kunder-rasar-mot-hm-pa-facebook

Social media as a sales increaser?

Social media has been acknowledged for being both a success as well as a danger for a company today. Nevertheless, according to Vázquez-Casielles et al. (2013) word of mouth has been recognized to be one of the most effective communication channels today. Vázquez-Casielles et al. (2013) conducted a study to investigate whether word of mouth has an impact on the probability to make a purchase or not. The study showed that word of mouth in fact does influence brand-purchase probability. It also proved that a positive word of mouth has a larger impact on a positive brand-purchase probability, than a negative word of mouth has on a negative brand-purchase probability (Vázquez-Casielles et al., 2013). This indicates that the benefits outweigh the risks of using social media since the result imply that the positive effects are much stronger than the negative effects.

To conclude, social media facilitate word of mouth since it is an arena for sharing thoughts, expression and opinions. It has been shown that positive word of mouth has a strong connection to brand-purchase probability which means that social media is effective to increase sales. With this said, there is no doubt that social media is attractive for companies since the benefits by being a part of the social arena is evident. However one question still arises, since it has been established that social media is a successful arena for companies to take part in, should companies simply concentrate on social media activities or should they balance this with traditional advertisement? – The answer to this question will be discussed further in part two “Social Media versus Traditional Advertisement”.

LUXURY BRANDS CHOOSE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING -- A WISE CHOICE OR NOT?

October 23, 2014

Written by  Liu Xue Fei

Introduction

Before the appearance of Web, business organizations always attracted their customers in two traditional rules: pay a lot of money on advertising or cooperate with a third-party from the media (Scott, 2013). With the development of Internet, communication became more easy and convenient. Some marketers also found their new opportunities and broke the traditional rules. The Internet and electronic commerce turned into a strategic necessity for business organizations (Al-Mashari). As Bemard Martin stated, 'traditional marketing involves talking at someone. Social media marketing involves talking with someone' (Atkinson, 2013).A one-way interruption marketing could not adapt current market conditions and understand customers' need, so some firms start to choose social media marketing instead. According to Akar and Topsu (2013), social media marketing could be defined as a company use social media channels in order to promote itself; the social media channels include social networking sites, cooperative projects, blogs, content communities, virtual social worlds, virtual game worlds and microblogging. If companies ignore social media as their online marketing strategy, they may lose an opportunity to reach potential customers (Kim and Ko, 2012). However, it is hard say that the social media marketing suit for every kind of industries or companies.

Luxury brand industry's product or service is different with commodity or normal industry, luxury Brand also could be seen as a symbolic, imaginary or social added value (Geerts, 2013). Nueno and Quelch (1998) defined luxury brand as that being at the top of the pyramid, which depends on products functional utility, price and the socio-demographic characteristics. In addition, luxury brands have specific features: uniqueness and exclusivity (Jin, 2012). While luxury brands choose social media marketing, their managers will face 'a dialectical tension between the need to keep up with the social media trend and the need to maintain their brand integrity and exclusive reputation'(Jin, 2012). Hence, the luxury brands managers need to consider a lot to decided in order to avoid or decrease the tension. This paper aims to find out whether social media marketing fit for the luxury brands.

Theoretical Framework

Social Media Marketing and Social media

Social media marketing is a process that companies present their own products or services through online social media channels, in order to communicate in a wide community (Akar and Topsu, 2013). Comparing with brand generated traditional marketing, social media marketing consist of three characteristics: multidirectional dialogs, participatory and user generated. Conversation is one of the core views in social media marketing, customers could generate, edit and share online information about company, and also create online communities and networks through social media platforms (Akar and Topsu, 2013), in another word, companies could communicate with customers or buyers directly (Scott, 2013).

Social media is the tool that social media marketing used to increase companies' visibility on the Internet, and social media conducive to establish social networks and information exchanging (Ontario 2008). In addition, using social media of brands also reduced misunderstanding and prejudice toward brands, and elevate brands value, because of the more directly communication between brands and customers(Kim and Ko, 2012). Kim and Ko (2012) mentioned that social media aims to facilitate interaction, collaboration and sharing of content, and it has different forms, for example: social blog, wikis, podcast, picture, video, social bookmarking and etc. Corcoran (2009) divided the ecosystem into three media types: owned media, paid media and earned media. Owned media is the one that could be controlled by companies; paid media is the one that companies need to buy from others; the media that companies cannot control or buy is earned media.

Online groups or virtual groups are formed by social media or social network. In this on-line groups, people share information and trust each others, word-of-mouth principles are stronger in this virtual world than real world (Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2013). As the statistics (DEI Worldwide, 2008) offered, almost half of customer searched for information via social media sites engaged in word-of-mouth. word-of-mouth is quite important in social media marketing, because the social media could affect brand's reputation(Kim and Ko, 2012).

Social Media and Luxury Brand

Although luxury brand industry was already success in 2010, it still need a growing necessity to ensure supplement income sources: combining luxury and the Internet (Geerts, 2013). Most luxury brands have its social media sites today, such as: Facebook and Twitter(Phan,2011). While luxury brands using social media to directly contact with its customers, they could create new products, service, business model and values together. Luxury brands also can gain more information and strengthen relationship with customers at the same time (Kim and Ko, 2012). However, customer also could use social media as a complaint forum to express negative or unsatisfactory comments (Jin, 2012).

'Young' is the word which belongs to both luxury brand and social media. Depending on Phan's (2011) survey, he found out that 'social media is extremely popular especially among the young adults who have actually grown up with the new communication technologies that are also progressively very intuitive and user-friendly which in turn increases their popularity'. Young customers are also the fastest growing segment of the luxury market who always desired fashion-driven products (Juggessur and Cohen, 2009). Hence, social media and luxury brands have quite similar target customers.

Functional and economic value of products or services are the factors that customers always consider about, but a luxury brand is 'a premium priced brand purchased by consumers for their psychological values' (Nueno and Quelch, 1998), it owns hedonic and symbolic goods. According to Dellarocas et al. (2007) and Smith et al. (2005) research, consumers prefer recommendations from other consumers rather than critics from professional reviews, especially for hedonic goods.

Cases and Discussion

The luxury brand Burberry was founded by a 21 years old dressmaker Thomas Burberry in 1856. The target customers of Burberry are the high-incomes young people, the average age is 18-35. Burberry is one of the earliest luxury brand choose social media marketing, it has accounts on mass popular social network website, for example: Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Youtube and etc (Austin Powe,2013) . Now, Burberry has over 16million Likes on Facebook and continually increased. In November 2009, Burberry launched an on-line project with Facebook called 'Art of the Trench'. This project launched as a Trench coat photo-sharing website, everyone who has a Facebook account could share the wearing Trench photo on 'Artofthetrench.com'. Besides, users also free to make comments or add Likes on other one's photo (Ortved, 2011). Trench project aimed to elicit admiration for the design of their trench coats and create more Burberry fans (Samsung Design Net, 2009). After this project, Burberry's online sales increased, it also earned more fans and good reputation. In 2012, Burberry decided to publish their new product on Twitter and Instagram in advanced, and also put its new conference Live on Youtube. After this promotion through social network, the amount of 'Likes' on these three social website rapidly increased (Xiao, 2012). Burberry's profit also increased, after it working through the mass social media marketing. Combining the Burberry case with theories, it is easy to find out that Burberry is well communicated with its customers through the Trench project. Burberry could observe or directly communicate with its customers in order to know their needs. No matter positive or negative comments that customers made, Burberry could discover them in time and made suitable changes. In addition, Burberry's target customers test ' young' theory again. Both social media and luxury brands target customers are young adult, Burberry's target customer is 18-35 which just fit to the theory. Moreover, according to Dellarocas et al. (2007) and Smith et al. (2005) research, consumers prefer recommendations from other consumers rather than critics from professional reviews. Burberry build the social media site provide a public place to customers, customer could gather in to on-line group by themselves. The recommendation of others will affect customer's decision making which is more convincing.

Conclusion

When other luxury brands still insist of using the traditional marketing, Burberry taken a courage step. Social media marketing helped Burberry to earn more customer and good reputation. The conditions provided by social media marketing which just satisfied luxury brand's promotion needs and motivated luxury brand's development. The social media marketing is fit for the luxury brands. However, luxury brands is still a high-ended and expensive brand, even though it promoted through social media network to common, how many customers could carry the price? And how to keep the luxury brand uniqueness and exclusivity while promoted it too popularization and frequently?

Reference List:

 Akar, B, Topsu, 2013. An examination of factors influencing consumers’ choice of social media marketing, Journal of Internet Commerce, 101 (1), pp. 35-67. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Al-Mashari, M., 2002. Electronic commerce: A comparative study of organizational experience. Benchmarking: An International Journal, 9 (2), pp. 182-189. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Atkinson, W., 2013. Adding Social Media Mariceting to tiia IViix, Distributor Focus. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Austin Powe, 2013. Burberry Case Study. [online] Available at: <http://austinpowe.com/Burberry-Case-Study> [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Corcoran, S., 2009. Defining owned, earned, and paid media. [online] Available at: <http://blogs.forrester.com/interactive_marketing/2009/12/defining-earned-owned-and-paid-media.html> [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

DEI Worldwide. The impact of social media on purchasing behavior. [Online] Available at: <http://www.deiworldwide.com/files/DEIStudy-Engaging%

20ConsumersOnline-Summary.pdf> [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Dellarocas, C., Zhang, X.M. and Awad, N.F., 2007. Exploring the value of online product reviews in forecasting sales: the case of motion pictures. Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp.23-45. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Jin, S. A., 2012. The potential of social media for luxury brand management, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 30(7), pp. 687-699. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

John, O., 2011. Is Digital Killing Luxury Brand? Business Source Complete, 52(31), pp. 54-57. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Juggessur, J. and Cohen, G., 2009. Is fashion promoting counterfeit brands? Journal of Brand Management, 16(5/6), pp. 383-394. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Nueno, J.L. and Quelch, J.A., 1998. The mass marketing of luxury. Business Horizons, 41(6), pp. 61-8. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Geerts, A., 2013. CLUSTER ANALYSIS OF LUXURY BRANDS ON THE INTERNET. International Journal of Management and Marketing Research, 6(2), pp. 79-92. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Guoke, 2012. [online] Available at:<http://www.guokr.com/article/124373/> [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Kim, A. J. and Ko, E., 2012. Do social media marketing activities enhance customer equity? An empirical study of luxury fashion brand. Journal of Business Research, 65 (2012), pp. 1480-1486. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Ontario. Social media marketing: Introduction to social media marketing. [Online] Available at: http://www.bruce.on.ca/tools/Social_Media_Marketing.pdf [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Papasolomou, I. and Melanthiou, Y., 2013. Social Media: Marketing Public Relations ‘New Best Friend. Journal of Promotion Management, 18(3), 319-328. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Samsung Design Net, 2009. Luxury fashion business using technology. [online] Available at: <http://www.samsungdesign.net/Report/Report/content.asp?an=589> [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Smith, D., Menon, S. and Sivakumar, K., 2005. Online peer and editorial recommendations, trust, and choice in virtual markets. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 19(3), pp. 15-37. [Accessed 14 Feb 2014]

Scott, D. M., 2013. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases. Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly. 4th ed. New Jersey: Hoboken.

How has the internet changed consumers over the past 10 years and how can companies’ best adapt? Part 2

October 20, 2014

Written by  Liu Fan

Analysis and Apply

The importance of internet

Many company and organization think that there is no necessary delivery their new productions or services through the internet on blog, twitter or whatever. But it is wrong to think by Barwise & Meehan (2010) we are entering a world in which traditional marketing activities, and brand themselves, will become irrelevant. If the company use the internet causes the customer disappointing, but today the scale and speed of social media can make falling short instantly painful (Barwise & Meehan 2010). It is better rather than the company falling down or bankrupt.

More and more company have an awareness of using internet is important for their future development. As Barwise & Meehan (2010) mentioned social media can also boost brand awareness, trial, and ultimately sales, especially when a campaign goes viral. The internet is suitable most of the companies that could use website. Internet brands adopt a more relaxed stance on brand management, which involves the consumer in fundamental stages of the brand building process (Chritodoulides, 2009). There is no need worried about you are in the stage of the beginner or you are a big company which has thousands of employees.

Target groups

The big company maybe suits the most of the customers for their products. There is no need to divide into several in order to get the attractive or purchases. But the products and services comparably not popular is still needed by a small group of people actually. Breuer and Brettel (2012) said that advertising should be target group specific in order to achieve the highest impact. Aljukhadar and Senecal (2011) has asserted that four primary underlying motives drive internet use: acquisition of information (searching), communication, exploration (general browsing), and acquisition of goods (shopping). Different customers have different interest for reasoning internet. Otherwise the company should take account into different target groups in compliance with those various aspects of internet use. However, the company might think a small group of the customers is not enough for their desire. They want to gain a large part of the market shares. In fact, the potential benefits to be gained far outweigh the resource implications required to implement a successful segment approach (Aljukhadar and Senecal, 2011). Aljukhadar and Senecal (2011) suggest that consumers who shop online behave differently from consumers who use the traditional shopping channel. The consumers behave has changes by the timing passed, it is becoming various now in the internet era. Aljukhadar and Senecal (2011) has found that age, gender, and income have a significant influence on online shopping intent.

Focusing on contents

Many companies are working so hard that introducing their products and services in order to deal with the consumers’ problem. Indeed, the company do not solve the problem which customer searching for. The organizations or company always do the useless of which they are focusing on their own things, because that are not starting to think as what customer think about it that should be consider it. Barwise & Meehan (2010) have found that market research was product-rather than customer centric: Marketers asked questions about attitudes and behaviors relevant to their brands. However, the company or organization can change the position as a customer. They can think what I offer which is matters of customer. What problems might be giving a solution for people? What are the customer focusing on? What do the customers really care about? Moreover, Deighton and Kornfeld (2009) said that the technology underlying each of these phenomenons enables easy interaction with the content and among viewers. Under the internet with using blog, twitter, or facebook, the company has a chance to exchange the information from the customers to company it selves.

Building your brand

Large amount of companies spend the millions of money to search advertising agencies for their advertisement’s innovation, unique ideas. But the return of the investment is so low that cannot make sense for most of them. However, the website can build for your companies or organizations with blog, twitter, or facebook. And the most important thing is that you can save your money totally, it cost little. Cova and Pace (2006) said that the advent of the internet subsequently advanced the idea that brands can create consumer communities revolving around their web sites. Cova and Pace (2006) have found the possibilities for developing communities around the brands that can supply our basic products. Websites do real significant position on building a brand for customer. If the companies have many of brands on products and services, they can have different websites on each brand, such as P&G. When they are doing the websites, they need carefully about that on target groups. Separate the brands are needs to develop strong identities for products, but if customers need more than one product, they have to do their own integration of brands---often with the same company (Wind, 2008).

Just do it

We talk about the importance of internet, target groups, focus on content, and build your brand. Now it is time to do so. Some of the companies afraid of doing in the wrong way because of them are the first time. Some of the companies are afraid of which platform is suit for them that can attract large of the visitors to come see their web pages. Also there is some of company afraid of what time is the good decision for launching the new products or services. But the point is that there is no need to care about the worries above. If it is necessary for the future development, the employees can set up a blog or twitter for the company. There is a point should be carefully, the company have do build the standard rules for security of company to avoid private information and commercial secrets be captured. Many evidences proved that whether you are using  social media to communicate with consumers, or to influences others to carry a message related brand, effective use of social media can benefit greatly  from a personal touch that is related oriented (Weinberg & Pehlivan, 2011).

Conclusion

The internet has changed people behaviors, such as blog, twitter, facebook, etc. People and customer search information of solution through the websites. However, the company, organization or private can offer the information or solution to customers or people. When the company set up a new website, they might focus on target groups, managing the contents, building your brands and do it as soon as possible. Moreover, the employees can promote the company and give information and solution also. But the company should set a standard principle in order to avoid lose private information and commercial secrets.

The advent of internet cannot live without the people, company, and society. Although the internet is so important that we need them in this era. But the mass media (newspaper, TV, radio and magazine) also has the same position. The best way to coordinate the internet and mass media is that choose your best tools that can promote your company and delivery the information and solution for the customers.   

Reference 

Aljukhadar, M. & Senecal, S. (2011) Segmenting the online consumer market, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 29(4), 421-435.

Akar, E. & Topcu, B. (2011) An examination of factors influencing consumers’ attitudes toward social media marketing, Journal of Internet Commerce. 10(1), 35-67.

Atkinson, W. (2013) Distributor Focus: Adding Social Media Marketing to Mix

Barwese, P. & Meehan S. (2010) Spotlight: The One Thing You Must Get Right When Building a Brand.

Breuer, R. & Brettel, M. (2012) Short- and Long-term Effects of Online Advertising: Differences between New and Existing Customers, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26, 155–166.

Christodoulides, G. (2009) Marketing Theory: Branding in the post-internet era. Volume 9(1): 141-144Harvard Business Review,December. Sage. DOI: 10.1177/1470593108100071

Cova, B. & Pace, S. (2006) European Marketing: Brand community of convenience products: new forms of customer empowerment- the case” my Nutella The Community”. Vol.40 No.9/10, Emeralds Group Publishing Limited.

Deighton, J. & Kornfeld, L. (2009) Interactivity’s Unanticipated Consequences for Marketers and Marketing. Journal of interactivive marketing. Boston: Harvard Business School.

Scott, M.D. (2010) The new rules of marketing & PR. Wiley, Third edition.

Wind, J.Y. (2008) MIT Sloan Management Review: A Plan to Invent the Marketing We Need Today. Vol.49 No.4

Weinberg, D.B. & Pehlivan, E. (2011) Social spending: Managing the social media mix. Kelley school of Business, Indiana University. Business Horizon, pp 275-28

How has the internet changed consumers over the past 10 years and how can companies’ best adapt? Part 1

October 16, 2014

Written by Liu Fan

Introduction 

Long time ago, the people can only receive the information of production and service through the mass media. The companies are often using the one-way interruption advertisement to attract the people who are watching the TV or news in order to gain the attention no matter they like or not. But now it is an advertisement explosion era that you can see the commercial information everywhere, no matter what you are in the public or you are at home. As Akar and Topcu (2011) said that the internet has changed the way people work, communicate, and live. It has changed the human behavior largely. People can listen to music in whatever you want---even you are not in your home country. People can get the news on their smart phone---sport news, product promotion, etc. people can watch the movie in the publication or at school. The relationships are getting closer between the people or customer and company through the internet. People not only have mass media that involves television, radio, newspaper and magazine also has the internet which influences the customer or company. The people search the production and services information that they like or they need on the website.

The old marketing rules are more active and positive in the past few years. The advertisements are seemed to be an important component of marketing. It becomes a best way to distribute the information about the company. Moreover, the creativity is taking a large part of the position in the advertisement. The companies are trying to use interruption marketing for making the customer get an attention. And the advertisement and public relations are different activity. They have different goals, standards, and strategies running by two departments. The old public relations are determined to send the messages through the media. Company only can communicate with the journalist across the press releases. And there is nobody can see the actually press unless you are editor. In addition, the companies try to make top news in order to let the journalist write the new production or services via release. If the customer wants to know the news immediately, they merely accept the news from the reporter.

However, the internet has changed the rules of marketing and public relations. Traditional marketing involves talking at someone; social media marketing involves talking with someone (Atkinson, 2013). Which means it targets particular groups, maybe it is large or it is small. Moreover, Atkinson (2013) said that if you are not involved in B2B social media marketing, you are missing out on a huge opportunity, especially as it relates to attracting younger generation customers. Marketing is no only about the popular products and services, but also the things that face a small share of markets. The theory of long tail is telling us the marketing shift is changing from the popular markets to comparably smaller market share; it works such as the online shopping of Amazon. The new rules of marketing and public relations are means, for instance, the marketing is not 4P---product, place, price and promotion, the marketing is not advertising, etc. the company could have their own blog, twitter, podcast or website. And their employees could also have the blog or twitter to introduce the new products or services, too. But for the security aspect, company should make principles. However, the people could get the information or solution via company or employees’ blog or twitter. Comparably investing a huge of amount money in advertisement on television, the website is a smart choice, especially for the beginner of the entrepreneurships.

Purpose 

For the research of this report, we are discussing the significant of internet for the company using such as blog, twitter, website, podcast, etc. Many evidences prove that the company may face the internet media before that have action for the branding or others to compete with rivals. Furthermore, we are aiming to help the organization or company out with the target group, content management, building a relationship with customer. Is it the internet has an effect on branding or not? The question s that how does the company uses the internet on order to get involved in the new era for the future? 

How Social Media Investments Can Increase Purchase Intentions among Consumers – A Four Step Approach Addressed Brand Managers in the Fashion Industry Part 2

October 13, 2014

Written by  Masters Student at Lund University 

PART II

DIFFERENT SOCIAL MEDIA FORUMS

 Facebook

facebook_purchaseintentions_socialmedia_fashion

In 2011, almost 83 % of 500 successful companies tried to reach out to their target customers through some kind of social media (Naylor et al., 2012). This, probably because customers today increasingly search for information about unknown brands in different social media channels with an increased reliance (Naylor et al., 2012).  One of the most common channels used is Facebook and the Facebook fan page (Hutter et al., 2013).  Using a Facebook fan page is a good tool to use in the quest to increase brand awareness, intensify the traffic of e-WOM and most importantly to increase purchase intentions. Even though the fan page initially seems like a good plan, a company needs to be aware of the negative consequences it might generate (Hutter et al., 2013). An overload of invitations and activities from the fan page can annoy the followers and consequently lead to negative effects such decreased participation, negatively changed commitment to the fan page and less or undesirable e-WOM (Hutter et al., 2013). An intense release of new posts can create a feeling that the customer is caught instead of feeling liberated and inspired, and thereby damage the perception of the product and the brand (Powers et al. 2012).

Blogs and online magazines

blog_purchaseintentions_socialmedia_fashion

Blogs are another frequently used tool in the search for information on the internet about products one aims to purchase (Anant, 2011). Particularly in the fashion industry, blogs are playing a significant role when it comes to marketing (Colliander & Dahlen, 2011). This social media forum works as a marketing channel and have proven to be more efficient than online magazines when it comes to build good brand attitudes and purchase intentions (Collinder & Dahlen, 2011). To promote fashion brands and products through blogs is very effective. Since the blogger after a while often is portrayed as an idol to the consumer and a relation between them is created, the consumer will automatically like or buy many of the brands and products that the blogger promotes in the blog (Colliner & Dahlen, 2011. The blogs are therefore something that marketers in the fashion industry cannot ignore (Colliner & Dahlen, 2011). The more admired the blogger is, the more affected becomes the reader and it gets more attached to the brands that is exposed on the blog (Colliner & Dahlen, 2011). It is further important for fashion brands to notice that the relationship between the blogger and the brand must be transparent and genuine with no visible sponsorship involved. Hereby, the fashion brands should start target the bloggers in a genuine way, build trust and liking from scratch. Not until this moment is done consummately, the fashion brands can create a big loyal audience through the blogs (Colliner & Dahlen, 2011).

Using bloggers is also a great way to reach out to the right customers in a sincere way. During fashion shows many fashion brands places popular bloggers in good seats from where they can upload posts on their blogs and their other social media accounts.  By doing this, the purchase intentions of the desired consumers are created the right way, with no obvious manipulation or impact from merchandisers or editors (Kim & Ko, 2012).

Instagram, Youtube and Pins

instagram_purchaseintentions_socialmedia_fashion

youtube_purchaseintentions_socialmedia_fashion

pins_purchaseintentions_socialmedia_fashion

Pictures, videos and movie clips have been a common way in the fashion industry to promote fashion brands / products, activities and new collections (Caro et al., 2012). Often during a fashion show or events, fashion designers have a team working with taping and creating pictures and movies with backstage material to spread to “followers” in different social media forums (Coro et al., 2012). Other common activities using pictures related forums are by creating competitions where the customer is asked to take a picture of him/herself together with a certain brand specific product or tag (Caro et al., 2012). All of those marketing social media activities are created in the quest to interact and to attract new potential customers and it is to be considered as a powerful tool to spread messages and news in the fashion industry (Caro et al., 2012). Usually, the posts on Youtube, Pinterest or Instagram are often additionally shared on larger social media forums like Facebook, which generates a larger total spread which also can generate a better e-WOM (Caro et al., 2012). An additional good thing with the picture channels is that they tend to attract a like-minded audience. It is thereby easy for marketers to reach out to the desired audience and target groups (Caro et al., 2012). Using different kinds of picture-related social media activities is therefore to be considered to be a rather fast, cheap and easy way to market brands and increase purchase intentions within the fashion industry (Caro et al., 2012).

Recommendation #3: Reach out to the right customers in the right way

All of the chosen social media forums examined above have a proven effect on the purchase intention. Therefore, I would recommend fashion brands to investment in all of them, but having different strategies with each forum since they have different impact and effect. To start with Facebook, I would use it to create awareness, to spread messages and to create e-WOM.  I believe that it is important to be present at Facebook, but when it comes to fashion brands, I rely more on other channels who I would recommend fashion businesses to invest more time and effort on because of their spread and establishment. Blogs is probably the forum I would choose to create personal bonds to consumers and to create that desired familiar feeling. It is a good way to create deep trust and liking from scratch, and could therefore be a good starting point and first step, since the liking of a brand has been proven to have a crucial effect on the purchase intention and the future of the brands success. I also experience myself, that different picture-related social media forums get a larger share when it comes to promoting new products in the fashion industry. I have seen that forums like Instagram are taking over from blogs and online magazines, probably due to Instagram’s easiness and convenience for customers who constantly wants to be updated. Many bloggers also have an official Instagram account where they are uploading their daily outfits and purchases. I think a product placement in those pictures, in complement with the blogs, will be an appreciated approach for fashion brands to use in the near future.

GENERAL IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA INVESTMENTS

The usage of the social media is highly recommended to practice in order to be a successful marketer (Winer, 2009). Even though, it is irrational to believe that the movement from the old to the new era is easy. One crucial thing a marketer needs to remember is to use the right kind of measurements and metrics. As every other marketing activity, an investment needs to be able to track in order to see if the investment has been profitable or not (Winer, 2009). Managers need to investigate how their social media activities are being perceived by the customers since it is desirable that the investments generate a better brand opinion and/ or increase the purchase intentions with consumers. The directors must therefore be aware of their actions and not lose the control of the brand (Winer, 2009). Other valuable insights and recommendations to remember is that the social media activities must be a long term strategy, clear goals must be set up and the investments really have to be well thought through and processed before any actions are made (Phan, 2011).

 Recommendation #4: Track and measure the investments

In order to see if the investments have been that successful and rewarding as you have imagined, it is crucial to be able to track and measure the investments (Winer, 2009). My advice would be to create a customer survey, where the brand managers measure different key indicators in order to see the long term development. It is helpful to compare the customer evaluations from the survey they did in the beginning ( See recommendation #1) with how the brand is being perceived after the social media investments. Indicators such as the image of the brand, if the sales have been improved and if they have managed to deliver that desired added value to the customer are all measures significant to consider. Another good advice would be to track different e-WOMs and to read customer reviews in order to make sure that the perception of the brand is constantly positive or if some adjustments needs to be considered. 

CONCLUSION

After have gone through the impact of the different social media forums above, one could conclude that there is main consensus in the research field, that the use of social media has a positive impact on the consumer’s purchase intentions. Even though it seems easy and fast for fashion brands to create a blog, an account on Facebook or Instagram, they still need to rethink the actions as well as measure and track the investments in a cautious way. The usage of the different media channels have proven to simplify the decision in the purchase process for consumers, even if many other fundamental characteristics must be filled up before a brand can rely on a positive e-WOM and a spread of good reputations. By following the theoretical based recommendations stated above, I am convinced that fashion managers in the future will be successful in social media forums and that they will be pleased that they took the decision to invest in social media activities.

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