stijn poffé - the use of social media for a marketing manager
TRANSCRIPT
The use of Social Media for a Marketing Manager
Hypothesis Generation
Stijn Poffé
Applied Economics
Promoter: Prof. dr. P. François
Work Leader: Bart Claus
2009-2010
FACULTEIT ECONOMIE EN BEDRIJFSWETENSCHAPPEN
KATHOLIEKE
UNIVERSITEIT
LEUVEN
Table of content
1 Introduction 1
2 Types of Social Media 3 2.1 Social network sites 3
2.1.1 Pure socially 3
2.1.2 Professional 3
2.1.3 Microblogging 4
2.2 Video sharing 4
2.3 Photo sharing 5
2.4 Social bookmarking 5
2.5 Blogs 5
2.6 Forums 5
2.7 User generated content/ wiki’s 6
2.8 New ones? 6
3 Drivers and Power 7
3.1 Word of mouth 8
3.1.1 Viral marketing 8
3.1.2 Promoters 8
3.2 Weak ties 9
4 Useful for companies? 10 4.1 Positive 10
4.1.1 Brand Awareness: The Fiesta Movement 10
4.1.2 Financial Performance: The engagement report 11
4.1.3 Effect on sales: Will it blend? 12
4.2 Negative 13
4.2.1 KFC 13
4.2.2 Relationship Improvement: Dell 13
4.3 Conclusions 14
5 What does the consumer think? 15 5.1 Facebook 15
5.1.1 Fanpages 15
5.1.2 Sharing 16
5.1.3 Complaints and interaction with companies 16
5.1.4 Not done 16
5.2 Blogs 16
5.3 Video sharing sites 17
5.4 Twitter, forums and other Social Media 17
6 Research 18 6.1 Why Facebook Fanpages? 18
6.2 Why automotive? 19
6.3 Actual research 21
6.4 Key Findings 21
6.4.1 Who are the fans and how do they behave? 21
6.4.2 Evaluation of the Fanpages 26
7 Conclusions 33
8 Discussion and Further Research 35 Appendix 1: Forums
Appendix 2: Survey Questions
Bibliography
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1. Introduction
“Social Media” is a hot term lately. Advertisers should be present… Companies should
engage the conversation with their customers… Businesspeople should network online…
The amount of workshops, lectures and articles about Social Media is countless. However,
despite all these rumours, little scientific research has been conducted. A lot of people shout,
but few really have grounded arguments. With this paper I try to contribute a little to the
second group.
I have written most of this paper at the end of 2009. Now, at the beginning of 2010, it is
amazing to notice how fast the amount of reliable research is increasing. In October 2009,
when I started looking for basic information, scientific research or books, I found very little. It
goes without saying there were hundreds of pages of so called “experts” shouting about the
importance for companies to engage in this new way of communication and advertising:
“Social Media”. The world was changing and according to these guru’s, all the old knowledge
had become redundant. Some of them probably had a point, but just a few of them justified
their statements with numbers or real research.
Nowadays, there is an overload of articles from consultancy bureaus about Social Media.
Almost all of these papers cover the size of the phenomenon and explain why you, as a
company, should be engaged in it. But a lot of these papers, articles and books are already
completely outdated (like this paper probably will be when you read it). Nevertheless it
remains interesting to read them and to compare their results or thoughts to the present
situation. A striking example of such a difference is the evolution of Facebook members. In
“The Facebook Era”, a book published in 2009, the author writes about 150 million users
while the actual number of users already exceeds 400 million today (Shih, 2009).
What is the definition of “Social Media”? Charlene Li wrote in her book about “the
Groundswell”, which she defines as “A social trend in which people use technologies to get
the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like
corporations” (Charlene Li, 2008). In his book “De Conversation Manager”, Steven Van
Belleghem regards the “Social Web” as “the tool that connects consumers with each other”
(Belleghem, 2010).
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I would like to suggest a broader definition. Where traditional media offered content without
the possibility of interaction, I describe ‘Social Media’ in this paper as “all online media
where people have the power to contribute and react with and to (the) content.” Unlike
Charlene Li and Steven Van Belleghem I prefer not to refer to Social Media as a connection
between consumers alone. In my opinion, it is a connection of consumers and companies
with on one hand interaction within each one of these groups and on the other hand
interaction between both groups..
In the following chapters, I will try to unveil a part of the mystery around Social Media. More
specifically, I will emphasize some of the expectations consumers have towards the
involvement of companies in Social Media.
Since this subject is rather new, I will start the first chapters with a brief summary of the
different types of Social Media and with the importance, the drivers and the magnitude of the
phenomenon. The last 2 chapters will cover the actual research I conducted. This research
consists of:
• a qualitative research in the form of a forum with active Social Media users;
• a more quantitative research via an online survey. This survey handled the use and
evaluation of automotive fanpages on Facebook by the users, or so called ‘fans’.
The concept “Social Media” is brand new. So far little scientific research has been conducted.
Therefore, this paper should be read as a starting point for further research. The scope of it
can be seen as “generating hypotheses about this new way of communicating”.
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2. Types of Social Media
Social Media forms a rather new concept, especially for the more conservative managers.
Therefore, I prefer to start with a brief overview of what Social Media consists of. It is not my
intention to give you an all-embracing overview of all types of social media: I will only note 7
major types with their current (2010) market leader.
2.1. Social Network Sites
The name says it all: Social network sites are online communities of people. According to a
research conducted by Insites Consulting, 90% of their respondents (more than 2800 people
from 7 regions worldwide) knew at least 1 social network site and 72% were member of at
least 1 social network site (Insites, 2010).
3 large groups of social network sites can be distinguished.
2.1.1. Pure socially: Leader = Facebook
Founded in 2004 and with more than 400 million active users (Facebook, 2010), Facebook is
the unquestioned leader of the social network sites. The following statistics might give you an
idea of the size of this network:
1. 50% of their active users log on to Facebook in any given day.
2. More than 35 million users update their status each day.
3. More than 60 million status updates posted each day.
4. More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month.
5. More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo
albums, etc.) shared each week.
6. More than 3.5 million events created each month.
7. More than 3 million active pages on Facebook.
8. More than 1.5 million local businesses have active pages on Facebook.
9. More than 20 million people become fans of pages each day.
(Facebook, 2010)
2.1.2. Professional: Linked In
Linked In started in 2002 and could be described as “Facebook for professional purposes”. On
this website, you can find more than 65 million people willing to network for business
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purposes (LinkedIn, 2010). Staying in touch with ex-colleagues, finding a new job, looking
for a partner to do business with,… are just a few reasons why people join Linked In.
2.1.3. Microblogging: Twitter
Twitter it is a phenomenon on his own. On the web, Twitter describes itself as follows:
“Twitter is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets
you share and discover what’s happening now. Twitter asks “what’s happening” and makes
the answer spread across the globe to millions, immediately” (Twitter, 2010).
The idea is to put the information you want to share with the world in a 140 character
message and press the “share” button. Sounds too simple and not very useful? Not at all.
Official numbers of the amount of users are hard to find, but some sources mention
approximately 58 million accounts at the end of 2009 (Adnerds, 2010) to even 75 million
(RJmetrics, 2010). At the Chirp-conference on April 14, the developers of Twitter announced
they had reached the cape of the 100 million registered users (Deckmyn, Twitter rondt kaap
van honderd miljoen gebruikers, 2010). Another remarkable statistic is the fact that every day
an estimated 1.111.991.000 messages are shared through Twitter (Belleghem, De
Conversation Manager, 2010).
A new feature, also announced at the Chirp conference, and very interesting for marketing
managers are the “promoted tweets”. These tweets are better visible than ordinary tweets. In
future, companies will have the opportunity to buy them (Twitter, 2010).
2.2. Video sharing websites: YouTube
Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the leader in online video sharing website. YouTube
allows people to easily upload, share and watch videos. Some staggering statistics:
• 13 hours of video material is uploaded every minute;
• If you would like to see every video on YouTube, you would be watching 412 years non-
stop, assuming of course there are no new videos uploaded.
(Belleghem, De Conversation Manager, 2010)
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2.3. Photo sharing: Flickr
Photo sharing websites like Flickr offer the opportunity to share photos and are quite similar
to video sharing websites.
2.4. Social bookmarking: Digg
Bookmarking is the practice of saving the address of a website you wish to visit in the future
on your computer. Social bookmarking goes even further. It is the practice of saving
bookmarks to a public website and “tagging” them with keywords (Educause- Learning
Initiative, 2005). These are often starting points where stories, funny/interesting commercials,
special offers,… are picked up and become a buzz.
2.5. Blogs
A blog is a personal journal of entries containing written thoughts, links, and often pictures.
The authors of blogs read and comment on others’ blogs. They also quote each other, adding
links to other blogs from their own posts. This interlinking creates relationships between the
blogs and their authors and forms the so called ‘blogosphere’ (Charlene Li, 2008).
Every 24 hours, 900.000 blog-messages are written. In total, there are 133 billion blogs
counted online (Downs, 2010).
First of all, blogs can be used by companies to listen: a marketing manager can read blogs to
find out what people are saying about his/her company. But companies can also participate in
the blogosphere by commenting on blogs or even by starting a company-blog. A company
might start a blog to communicate with fans and customers. In the United States, several
companies have their company blog: IBM, Google, General Motors,… Today, Belgian
companies are still running behind (Vacature, 2010).
2.6. Forums
Once people become member of a Forum, they can log in and post any question or comment,
or they can respond to questions and comments posted by others (Charlene Li, 2008).
Forums can be completely user generated or can be a part of a company’s official website.
There already exist support forums where customers and employees can help each other with
common problems with certain products of a company. An example are the Dell support
forums, where both ordinary users as well as Dell employees try to answer questions and to
solve problems posted by Dell’s customers (Dell, 2008).
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2.7. User generated content/Wikis: Wikipedia
Wikis are websites that support multiple contributors with a shared responsibility for creating
and maintaining content, typically focused around text and pictures. Anyone can edit wikis,
which you would think would result in chaos and a lot of deceptions. But a research
conducted by Nature in 2005 showed that Wikipedia has become even more accurate than the
Encyclopaedia Britannica (Qualman, 2009).
2.8. New ones?
You might wonder whether there is still room for new initiatives in the Social Media
environment. Or is the market already saturated? I have my reasons to go for the “saturation”
statement. At least for these initiatives that are not completely new-to-the-world. And I have 3
arguments to support my opinion.
The recent failure from Google entering the Social Media world with Google Wave and Buzz
speaks for itself (Deckmyn, 2010). When a new Social Media initiative wants to succeed, it
will have to offer something completely new and not a cocktail of already existing networks.
Another reason why a similar network will have difficulties succeeding is the high switching
cost (Jonghe, 2010). A network takes time and effort to build. Why would you switch to
another website where you have to start from zero to rebuild your network? Because it has
some new features?
A last argument to ground my statement can be found in a research conducted by Insites
Consulting. They cite three statistics to found their saturation statement:
• 75% of Social Network users have no intention to stop one of their memberships,
• 43% say they are not interested in expanding to other networks,
• only12 to 29 % (depending on the network currently used) say they would switch if there
was a new and better network available.
(Insites, 2010)
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3. Drivers and power
Do different types of Social Media have something in common? Are there shared drivers
behind the success of all these initiatives? I believe so! In the following chapter I will write
about Word Of Mouth, Viral Marketing, promoters and the power of weak ties.
3.1. Word Of Mouth (WOM)
Word Of Mouth, or WOM, is not new and is especially not exclusively internet based. WOM
probably exists as long as humans can communicate. People influence each other by talking
about products and services. Already in 1944, Word-Of-Mouth was mentioned in academic
research conducted by Lazarsfeld (Angela R. Dobele, 2002). The most important
characteristic of Word-Of-Mouth conversations, for a marketing manager, is that they are
perceived more trustworthy than firm-initiated communications (Jo Brown, 2007).
The power of WOM is still doubted by some. However, research proved the power of it. A
research conducted by Insites Consulting and Boondoggle showed that in Belgium 25 million
conversations about brands are held every week. But more important is the fact that 3 out of
10 of these conversations changed the opinion of the customer involved in the discussion
(Insites Consulting).
Today 80% to 90% of the conversations about brands are still held offline. However,
concluding that the online WOM is not important, is a wrong assumption.
In the offline world, only the people who joined the conversation (and perhaps some
bystanders) heard the things being said. In the online world thousands of people can follow
the discussion. What’s more, online conversations can stay on the Internet for ever, while an
offline conversation is volatile (Belleghem, De Conversation Manager, 2010).
Thanks to Facebook a new kind of WOM arose: the Passive Word of Mouth (Shih C. , 2009).
When you for example become a fan of a brand on Facebook, this will show up in the news
feed of the people in your network. This means consumers do not even have to talk about a
product or brand anymore to create WOM on Social Media.
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3.1.1. Viral marketing
It is clear that both consumers as well as companies have a new and powerful tool to engage
in WOM: Social Media. Never before it was so easy to talk to people with the same interests
around the world, to find information about products and to offer content to a lot of people.
Wilson defines Viral Marketing as follows: “Viral Marketing describes any strategy that
encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for
exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence” (Wilson, 2000).
It is clear that Viral Marketing, for a marketing manager, can be one of the major powers of
Social Media. Lots of research has been performed about the use of WOM and Viral
Marketing. The details of these studies are beyond the scope of this paper.
3.1.2. Promoters
According to Frederik F. Reichheld, a promoter is a customer with the highest rates of
repurchase and referral. He distinguished this group by asking the question: “How likely is it
that you would recommend (company x) to a friend or colleague?”. People could answer on a
scale from 1 to 10. The respondents who answered 9 or 10, were considered as “promoters”
by Reichheld (Reichheld, 2003).
Personally, I believe that Social Media is the easiest way to reach these promoters or even to
convert ‘normal’ customers into promoters. In my opinion it are exactly these customers who
become a fan of your brand on Facebook and who are active on the page. It are these people
who will follow you on Twitter and retweet your messages, these people who will answer
questions from other customers on your customer support forums, …
In Social Media, loyal customers will find you, what you need to do is engage them. Give
them “news” to talk about, give them the feeling their opinion matters to the company,… or
like Reichheld mentioned, try to convert your loyal customers into a marketing department. I
would even add “and into a customer support department”.
Of course you can use these promoters to perform studies about customer satisfaction like
Reichheld proposes in his paper. Although, in my and other researchers’ opinion, it should not
be your only study (Timothy L. Keiningham, 2007).
I also believe that every product and every brand in every sector can have fans or promoters.
If not, the product or company is going to die anyway. Or like Seth Godin once said: “you
need at least 20 fans or you can better stop”.
If customers are not a fan of your company or brand for your superior quality, it might be for
the way you are working, for your prices, your design,… Companies and marketing
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managers just have to learn how important (the loyalty of) existing customers can be.
Nowadays, marketing managers still allocate almost all of their resources to attract new
customers while forgetting about the ones they already “pulled in”. I am a strong believer of
customer retention and engaging your loyal customers to bring in new ones. Although he is a
real marketing guru and rarely founds his statements with scientific research, I love the
visualization of Seth Godin. He suggests to flip the marketing funnel from a funnel where you
put all your money in the top to reach a few, to a megaphone where you concentrate on a few
real enthusiastic people to reach the mass.
I hope I already showed you that Social Media can play an important role in all this. If not, I
certainly hope you will be convinced at the end of this paper.
3.2. Weak ties
If you were wondering whether there exists an important difference between online and
offline networks, I can respond positively. In my opinion, one of the great differences
between online and offline networks is the power of weak ties. In an offline environment, a
lot of power is offered by strong ties, like family, close friends,… The online networks offer
you the possibility to tap into the network of your weak ties as well. Weak ties include people
you have just met, people you met only a few times, people you used to know, and friends of
friends (Shih C. , 2009). In the offline world, you would have a hard time to maintain all these
relationships. According to Mark Granovetter, a sociologist, it are precisely our weak ties that
carry the greatest amount of social capital (Granovetter, 1973). This is where Social Media
comes in. It is much easier to profit from network effects in the online than in the offline
world. It is, for example, much easier to ask a favour on a social network site than it would be
in real life (Shih C. , 2009).
Let’s look at an example: John is having a problem with his computer. In real life, he would
look for help with a few friends or family members of whom he knows they might come up
with a solution. But he could also post it on Facebook, where the 300 persons from his
network could read about his problem. It is far more likely that a solution would be brought
up by one of these 300 than from, let’s say, 10 friends John asked in real life.
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4. Useful for companies?
Social Media is huge. That is the least we can say. But can it also be useful for companies?
The alert reader will already have discovered some interesting uses of Social Media. To
support this, I will give you some examples where Social Media had a positive influence on
the performance of a company, but also some examples of the opposite.
4.1. Positive
4.1.1. Brand Awareness: The Fiesta-Movement
In the first months of 2009, Ford US gave 100 people a chance to drive in the new Ford Fiesta
for a period of 6 months and with all possible costs on Ford’s expense. It is important to
notice that this model did not even exist in the United States at the start of this campaign.
People could apply to the contest by posting a 2-5 minute video on YouTube defending why
they should be the ones selected. The most popular videos were chosen to become the “Fiesta-
ambassadors”. Ford asked these contestants to complete one mission a month. At the same
time, they were encouraged to share as much stories, videos, photos, etc on Social Media,
using everything they wanted: Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, Flickr, ...
The results were astonishing: with 0 dollars in ad budget and only a fraction of the usual
marketing costs, Ford succeeded to:
• draw 6,5 million YouTube views, 600.000 Flickr views and 3,2 million Twitter
expressions;
• achieve that 37 % of generation Y were aware of the Ford Fiesta via social media before
its launch in the US;
• get 50.000 people asking for information about the car, of which 97% did not drive a Ford
at the time;
• sell 10.000 cars in the first six days of the sales;
• create a brand awareness for the Fiesta (which was not launched yet!) which reached the
equivalent of models that have been on the market for 2-3 years.
(AdNerds, 2009; McCracken, 2010)
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4.1.2. Financial performance: The engagement report
In 2009, The Altimeter Group and Wetpaint did a combined research looking for a correlation
between financial performance and engagement in Social Media. They took the 100 world’s
most valuable brands (as measured by BusinessWeek/ Interbrand “best global brands 2008”),
looked at their engagement in Social Media and compared the results to several financial
metrics (The Altimeter Group, Wetpaint, 2009). In their report, the researchers ordered the
companies in a quadrant. As shown in figure 1, this quadrant shows four possible engagement
profiles: Selectives, Wallflowers, Butterflies and Mavens.
FIGURE 1: ENGAGEMENT PROFILES
(The Altimeter Group, Wetpaint, 2009)
When comparing these companies’ financial performances, the researchers from The
Altimeter Group and Wetpaint discovered some remarkable correlations shown in figure 2.
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FIGURE 2: CORRELATION WITH FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE
(The Altimeter Group, Wetpaint, 2009)
It is clear that the Mavens outperform the Wallflowers on every financial metric. However,
nothing is said about the causality. There is no doubt that there is a correlation between the
engagement profile and the financial performance of these companies. But are they
performing better because they are more engaged or are they more engaged because they have
more financial possibilities? That is what future research will have to find out.
In addition to this remark about causality, I would like to add another critical note. This
research has been conducted by a consultancy bureau trying to sell Social Media advice.
Therefore, I ask you to be careful when interpreting the results.
4.1.3. Effect on sales: will it blend?
A remarkable story of increased sales through the use of Social Media is about a company
selling blenders. The company Blendtec started uploading videos on YouTube of a guy in a
lab blending almost everything you can imagine, from hockey pucks to an Apple Iphone.
These videos became a huge success in the Social Media world and influenced the sales
figures of Blendtec. Although the blender is relatively expensive, costing 399 dollars, sales
went up 20% since they started with the “Will it blend?” videos (Charlene Li, 2008).
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4.2. Negative
4.2.1. KFC
There is also a downside to Social Media: negative news about a company may even spread
faster than positive news. Take for example Kentucky Fried Chicken. On February the 23rd
2007, some people went lunching in a KFC-restaurant. They were staggered when they saw
some rats running around in the restaurant. These customers immediately took their mobile
phones and started filming the whole scene. They uploaded their movies on YouTube that
same day. And only a few hours later, the movies were already picked up by CNN. In the
week after the incident KFC’s stocks went down with 20% (Belleghem, De Conversation
Manager, 2010).
I am not saying KFC could have avoided this news with being active on Social Media, but it
might have helped to know what people were saying about the company. They also could
have reacted to the story.
Recent research delivered rather conflicting results on this matter. Some did not find any
positive effects when a company reacted to negative stories (with for example an apology)
and others did (Peter Kerkhof, 2010).
4.2.2. Relationship Improvement: Dell
The last example is a story about a company that started listening and interacting with their
customers after a real Social Media crisis: the story of Dell.
It all started with a simple blog with the title: “Dell lies. Dell sucks”. Dell ignored this
customer at first, but other bloggers and consumers started picking up the story and adding
their own negative experiences to it. Dell’s customer satisfaction declined dramatically and
customers were shouting on the web that Dell should start listening. That is what they did:
• Dell was one of the first companies who started monitoring blogs.
• Dell started its own company-blog.
• Dell started a Dell-community where 42 people spend their time discussing several topics
with Dell customers.
• Dell is besides these blogs and community active on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and
several other Social Media platforms.
• In 2007, they started Ideastorm, a place where customers can vote on ideas about Dell
products. The best ideas are taken into production.
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As a result of all this, Dell’s reputation increased and bloggers even changed their original
articles from “Dell sucks” to “Dell used to suck” (Charlene Li, 2008; Derksen, 2009).
4.3. Conclusions
These examples are just a small grab out of the large amount of stories about the use of Social
Media by marketing managers. I wanted to share them with the reader of this paper to
demonstrate the effects Social Media can have on brand awareness, improvement of brand
relationships and even sales. However, Social Media, and more especially, the use of Social
Media for marketing purposes is too new-to-the-world to conclude that these effects are
permanent and not just ‘lucky shots’. Future research will have to point it out, but this can
only be done when studying several companies and strategies over a longer period of time.
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5. What does the consumer think?
Up till now, we have seen how huge Social Media is, what the drivers behind the boom might
be and what their use for companies can mean. In this chapter, you will find an overview of
what consumers think about Social Media and how they expect companies to behave on this
new medium.
In cooperation with Keystone Network, I organized an online forum with four groups of
consumers to talk about their activities and expectations on Social Media. For more details on
the formation of the groups and the questions asked, I refer to appendix 1. When reading and
analyzing the answers of our respondents, you have to bear in mind that all these people were
Belgians and that results and attitudes can differ between countries.
5.1. Facebook
The first two days of our online forum were spent on Facebook. When analyzing the different
profile pages of the participants, it immediately became clear that most of the conversations or
things shared were private and had nothing to do with brands or companies. Almost all of the
respondents were members of groups and fanpages and some of them occasionally shared or
received some funny commercials. As a matter of fact, all participants were rather positive
towards the presence of brands on Facebook, mainly because as a user you have the decision
power to allow them in your network or not.
5.1.1. Fanpages
There were three main reasons why people became members of a group or fanpage:
• they wanted to express themselves;
• there was a contest ;
• they wanted to keep in touch with the newest developments of the product/brand.
Remarkable was the fact that people who joined for the second and the last reason expected
more information and action from the companies than the people who joined to express
themselves. An anecdote: Almost all the participants mentioned they had become a fan of a
brand but never went back to the page because there was no incentive to do so. They never
got a mail, update in the life feed, … and never (or only occasionally) went back.
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5.1.2. Sharing
When asking about their sharing history, a striking difference between men and women arose.
Men shared (for example a commercial) because the content was funny or impressive, even if
they did not associate themselves with the brand. They would share a funny commercial from
Heineken and meanwhile never buy Heineken or even ‘hate’ the product. Women, on the
other hand, would not share things of brands they did not buy. They needed to like the brand
before sharing anything about it with their network.
5.1.3. Complaints and interaction with companies
Almost all of the respondents explicitly mentioned that Facebook fanpages are not the place
for complaints. Facebook was, for them, all about fun, contests, news, and conversations with
each other. None of them thought that companies would react on questions or complaints
through Facebook. A popular suggestion towards Facebook was that there should be a clear
distinction between fanpages made by fans and official pages made by companies. (which is
announced by Facebook as a future update, but more on that later in this paper)
5.1.4. Not done
The fact that pop-ups and aggressive marketing were the most rejected way of marketing
according to our respondents will probably not be surprising and has already been verified in
previous research (Paul E. Ketelaar, 2009).
I love the quote from a presentation of Michael Kogeler about this: “If you talked to people
the way advertising talked to people, they’de punch you in the face” (Kogeler, 2010).
A last remarkable observation marketing managers should be aware of is the fact that
(especially) men share and watch videos without knowing for which brand the video is made.
For example, almost everyone knew, had seen and had even shared the Terry Tate videos
(Reebok, 2006) but only one person knew it was a commercial for Reebok.
5.2. Blogs
Blogs were well known and the participants of the survey did follow some. But since they
used Facebook, personal blogs became less popular. People consider the status updates from
Facebook as ‘mini-blogs’. The female participants did however still search on blogs for
shopping tips. It has to be noticed that the blogs they read for information about products,
were more “professional”-blogs. (For example, blogs written by nutritionists. )
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5.3. Video sharing sites
The videos most shared and watched were:
• Videos from friends
• Music videos
• Movie trailers
• Funny commercials
• Product reviews
• Instruction videos
Especially the last one was a common answer and at the same time a surprising one. During
the online conversations it became clear that there is a huge market for instruction videos. For
example (mentioned in the female group): instruction videos for make-up, sponsored or made
by L’Oréal.
5.4. Twitter, Forums, other Social Media
Twitter was not much used by our respondents. The main reason for their absence was that
they did not know any of their friends using it. Forums, on the other hand, were much read.
Especially when looking for product information through Google.
An initiative they all loved and that was mentioned in every group was a concept like “the
Insiders” where consumers get the chance to try new products for free in exchange for their
opinion. The companies encourage consumers to talk about the new products on Social Media
and make reports of the conversations.
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6. Research
After this broad research with a limited group of Belgian consumers, I wanted to specify the
research a little further. Therefore I conducted a survey on the use and the evaluation of
automotive fanpages on Facebook. The main idea behind almost all of the questions was:
“What does the consumer expect from a company on such a fanpage?”
6.1. Why Facebook fanpages?
As I mentioned before, Facebook is the largest social network site at this moment. With more
than 400 million active users around the world, Facebook is the undoubted leader in Social
Media. In March 2010, Facebook even surpassed Google in weekly US hits (Childs,
2010).Besides the huge amount of active users, Facebook is also the best known social
network all over the world. 83% of the worldwide internet population knows Facebook
(Insites, 2010). The Facebook users are not only geographically well spread, their
demographic distribution is also spread. This might come as a surprise to non-believers of
Social Media. They often come up with the argument that Social Media is a youth
phenomenon only, but the following graph demonstrates the opposite.
FIGURE 3: FACEBOOK DEMOGRAPHICS
(InsideFacebook, 2009)
19
6.2. Why automotive?
For my research, I was looking for a sector with more than two or three famous brands. A
product category with people that really love or hate specific brands, with products sold
and/or known all over the world and last but not least, with existing Facebook fanpages of the
most important brands. The automotive sector offered me all these objectives and when I read
in “De Conversation Manager” that cars are the product-category most mentioned in
conversations between customers (both offline as online), I decided to go for it (Belleghem,
De Conversation Manager, 2010).
FIGURE 4: FANPAGES BY NUMBER OF FANS
(Baccus, 2010)
As showed in figure 4, the top-7 of fanpages in the automotive sector (measured by
number of fans) are Porsche, BMW, Audi, Jeep, VW, Honda and Mercedes-Benz.
20
This ranking holds 2 important remarks:
1. Compared to the top-7 of Best Global Brands (a research conducted by Interbrand and
shown in Table 1), I noticed some differences. First of all the absence of the number one
of 2009, Toyota, in the top-7 of Facebook fans was remarkable. Of course, the recent
events, like the recalls, may have influenced this. The presence of Porsche, on the other
hand, did not surprise me. The brand is well known all over the world and speaks to the
imagination. The presence of Jeep was more striking. Comparing their annual sales
number of approximately 60.000 cars a year (Chrysler Group, 2010) to Toyota’s more
than 8 million (Marr, 2009) points out that the number of real life users is not always in
proportion to the success in Social Media.
TABLE 1: TOP 7 – BEST GLOBAL BRANDS
BRAND VALUE (US dollars, billion)
1 Toyota 31,3
2 Mercedes-Benz 23,9
3 BMW 21,7
4 Honda 17,8
5 Ford 7,0
6 Volkswagen 6,5
7 Audi 5,0
Self made table from information withdrew from the Interbrand list (Interbrand, 2010).
2. A second remark regards the differences in strategy I noticed when studying these
fanpages. BMW for example posts very little themselves and does not react on posts from
fans. The company’s posts are also lost between the hundreds of daily fanposts. This is
due to the fact that they don’t have tabs to order the posts in categories like “company
only”, “fans only” and “combined”. Mercedes, for example, does have this distinction and
although they do not post more than BMW, it seems more. Also the number of people
reacting to their questions or news facts is much higher compared to BMW. Jeep, finally,
is again the special one. The company does not post at all and I even doubt if their fanpage
is an official one. However, the activity on this page is stunning.
21
6.3. Actual Research
The actual research can be divided into two main parts:
• Who are the fans and how do they behave?
• Evaluation of the Facebook fanpages
I posted an online survey (which can be found in appendix 2) on several Facebook fanpages
from car brands. Some were clearly official fanpages, others were more vague about their
origin. 296 people filled out the survey. I removed six of them from the research because they
only completed less than 50 percent of the questions. The respondents were mainly men
(77,93%) and almost all car owners (91,38%). Almost 90% of the ‘fans’ used Internet several
times a day and more than 70% of them logged into Facebook several times a day.
6.4. Key Findings
6.4.1. Who are the fans and how do they behave?
The average age of the respondents was 30,23 years. In table 2, you can see that the three
most important nationality groups were Americans, Australians and Europeans.
TABLE 2: NATIONALITIES
African < 1%
American 42,4%
Asian 3,4%
Australian 29,3%
European 24,1%
I dare to conclude that most of the respondents where rather loyal to the brand they currently
owned. The average number of years they drove a particular brand was 8,30 years.
Considering the average age of 30, the minimum age of driving in the US (16) and in
Australia and Europe (16 to 18), these people drove more than half of the years they were
allowed to with the car brand they currently own. Another argument for the loyalty of most
respondents can be found in the answers given to the question:
“How would you describe the relation with the brand you currently own?
• Very good = They know me well and I know what to expect from them. I would probably
buy this brand again and recommend it to friends and family.
• Very poor = They don't know me at all, I don't have a relationship with this brand. I
would probably not buy this brand again.”
22
The fans could answer this question, which can be perceived as a variation on Reichheld’s
question, on a scale from 1 to 7 (with 1 being “very good”). The average answer was 2,26.
Also, almost 85% of the respondents were a Facebook fan of the brand they owned. Most of
the respondents who were not a fan of the brand they owned, saw the link of my survey on a
fanpage of a car brand which spoke to their imagination. A last remarkable note is the fact
that most (61%) of the respondents who were a Facebook fan of the brand they owned, were
not a fan of any other brand on Facebook.
In table 3, you find an overview of the kind of users there are, grouped by their activity on the
fanpage. The largest group is the one who just reads and watches posts from other fans or the
company.
TABLE 3: ACTIVITY BY RESPONDENTS
Only read and watch 56%
Read and react on other posts 22%
Read and post 5%
Read, react and post 15%
nothing 2%
I also analyzed the differences in responses between nationalities. I grouped all the Americans
(including Canada), all the Europeans, Africans, Asians and Australians. Since there were
only 2 African and 10 Asian respondents I excluded them from the dataset for the analysis.
You also need to know the respondents could give multiple answers.
When you take a look at table 4, you will notice that the most important differences can be
found between the Americans and the Europeans. American respondents will react and post
much more than European ones. The Australian respondents are somewhere in between these
two extremes. These differences can have multiple backgrounds: cultural differences (for
example: think about the Hofstede scores (Hofstede)), the language used on the fanpages, the
fact that Facebook is already better integrated in America, …
23
TABLE 4: ACTIVITY ON FANPAGE BY NATIONALITY
17.1 What do you do on this
fanpage?
17.2 What do you do on this
fanpage?
17.3 What do you do on this
fanpage?
don't read and
watch
read and
watch don't react react don't post post
Row N % Row N % Row N % Row N % Row N % Row N %
Nationality
American 15,4% 84,6% 54,5% 45,5% 71,5% 28,5%
Australian 15,3% 84,7% 65,9% 34,1% 83,5% 16,5%
European 5,7% 94,3% 74,3% 25,7% 87,1% 12,9%
After verifying these national differences, I was wondering whether I could find remarkable
differences upon comparing the results grouped by gender. In table 5 you will see that there
are not any differences in the percentages for reading and reacting. But when looking at the
column “posting” there is a remarkable difference: 23,6% of the male respondents ticked off
“post” to the question, while only 12,3% of the female respondents did the same.
TABLE 5: ACTIVITY ON FANPAGE BY GENDER
17.1 What do you do on this
fanpage?
17.2 What do you do on this
fanpage?
17.3 What do you do on this
fanpage?
don't read and
watch
read and
watch don't react react don't post post
Row N % Row N % Row N % Row N % Row N % Row N %
Gender
Female 12,3% 87,7% 63,1% 36,9% 87,7% 12,3%
Male
12,9%
87,1%
62,7%
37,3%
76,4%
23,6%
After analyzing the results from my qualitative research, discussed earlier in this paper, I was
wondering if the statement from the Belgian respondents: “Facebook is not the place for
serious conversations like complaints” could also be found in the results of this more
internationally oriented research.
To the question: “Assume if it does not apply to you at the moment: You have a
complaint about your car or car dealer. Would you put this complaint on a fanpage on
24
Facebook?”, 42% of the respondents said: “No, Facebook is not the place for such things”.
But maybe more important was that almost 40% replied: “Maybe, if I tried to reach the
company through other channels (mail, telephone,…) and the problem was not solved”. 18 %
just answered: “yes”.
When informing about their intention of posting a complaint the two main reasons were:
• I want other fans/users to read it and know about the problem
• I want the company to react on it
The difference with the qualitative research, where most of the respondents did not expect the
company to react on complaints through Facebook, is remarkable. In this survey 67% of the
respondents who answered “yes” or “maybe” were expecting the company would react.
Although they were expecting the company to react on questions and/or complaints, most of
the questions posted on the wall or the forum of the fanpages were questions to other fans.
This also reflects in the answers given on the question: “What do you expect from the
fanpage?”, showed in table 6 (multiple answers were possible):
TABLE 6: EXPECTATIONS
Just for fun: games, contests, funny videos,... 38,88%
Place where the company shares news with the fans 78,64%
Place where fans can talk to each other 70,17%
Place to talk with the company 42,03%
As I did with the “activity”-answers, I also looked for differences due to nationality and
gender in these responses.
TABLE 7: EXPECTATIONS BY NATIONALITY
What do you expect from this fanpage?
Just for fun Place where the
company shares
news with the
fans
Place where fans
can talk to each
other
Place to talk
with the
company
American 31,7% 77,2% 74% 58,5%
Australian 28,2% 84,7% 56,5% 36,5%
European 41,4% 72,9% 77,1% 44,3%
25
The observation that the Australians often ticked off “place where the company shares news
with the fans” and the Americans and Europeans did not, might be due to the fact that most of
the Australians in my dataset where Holden fans. The Holden page only offered the
opportunity to react on company post, the fans themselves could not post anything on the
wall. That being said, I think the most remarkable difference can be found in the column
“place to talk with the company”. The American respondents chose this answer much more
than the Australians and the Europeans.
After observing these differences in both behaviour and expectations, I wonder if it might not
be a good idea to create a fanpage per country. This way, a company might be able to service
the needs of its fans better, speak in their own language and answer more correctly to
questions.
Comparing the expectations-results grouped by gender, no remarkable differences were
found.
My earlier statement that promoters/fans would find you by their self on Social Media was
confirmed by the respondents of my survey. To the question “How did you find the
fanpage?”, almost 73% answered: “I looked for it myself” and 20% responded: “A friend
became a fan and this showed up in my live feed.”
26
6.4.2. Evaluation of the fanpages
A. By me
Before asking the respondents what they liked and disliked about the fanpages, I observed
them myself and made 2 tables. Table 8 gives you an overview of the official fanpages and
mentions whether there was a tab present to order the posts and a distinction between
company’s posts and fanposts. The last two columns of this table show which fanpages had a
forum and which did not.
TABLE 8: EVALUATION OF FANPAGES
Official
fanpage
Not clear if
official
fanpage
Tabs to order
posts are
present
Tabs are not
present
Forum No forum
Acura
Audi
BMW
Cadillac
Chevrolet
Chrysler
Citroën
Dodge
Fiat
GMC
Holden
Honda
Hyundai
Jeep
Lancia
Lexus
Mazda
Mercedes
Mini
Mitsubishi
Nissan
Porsche
Renault
Saab
Suzuki
Volvo
Alfa Romeo
Hummer
Land Rover
Peugeot
Pontiac
Saturn
Seat
Skoda
Subaru
Volkswagen
Cadillac
Citroën
Hyundai
Mercedes
Nissan
Porsche
Renault
Acura
Audi
BMW
Chevrolet
Chrysler
Dodge
Fiat
GMC
Honda
Jeep
Lancia
Lexus
Mazda
Mini
Mitsubishi
Saab
Suzuki
Volvo
Audi
BMW
Cadillac
Chrysler
Dodge
Fiat
GMC
Holden
Honda
Jeep
Lancia
Mitsubishi
Renault
Saab
Volvo
Acura
Chevrolet
Citroën
Hyundai
Lexus
Mazda
Mercedes
Mini
Nissan
Porsche
suzuki
I was a bit surprised that some (big) brands did not have an official fanpage yet. Or at least, it
was not clear that the page was supported by the company. Most of the companies did not
have a tab to order the posts which led to the fact you really had to search for company posts,
even if they posted a message several times a week. As I stated before, when a tab for
company posts is present, you get the feeling the company is far more active than on pages
without this tab. Before moving on, there are a few remarks I want to make.
27
• I wrote before that I was not sure whether Jeep’s page was an official one. This changed
during my research. Today the Jeep page is clearly stated as the official fanpage.
• On the pages of Fiat and Lancia, several conversations with the company were held in
Italian. Due to my lack of knowledge of that language, I could not determine the nature of
these conversations.
• From Volkswagen I only found an official page from VW Canada and not from the group
or other countries.
• Holden did not offer the opportunity to the fans to post something on the wall, they could
only react to company’s posts or post something on the forum.
• Some companies, like Nissan, state in their “page rules” that complaints or problems are
not handled on the Facebook fanpage.
• It was not easy to determine to which extent negative reviews or complaints were deleted
by the companies.
The next table gives you an overview of the companies’ behaviour on their fanpage. When
looking at the “posting”-column, the four levels of activity are: several times a week, once a
week, once a month and less than once a month. Almost all companies posted several
messages a week and none of the examined companies posted less than once a month.
For the reacting column, I checked when the company reacted to posts from the fans (both on
the wall and the forum). The first group reacted on almost everything: pictures posted,
complaints, questions,… The last group did not react at all, or rarely.
The maintaining column speaks for itself. Most fanpages are well maintained and little or no
spam was found. Some companies however did not seem to maintain the fanposts at all.
Finally, the advertising column. To determine this column, I looked at the different initiatives
the companies took on their fanpage: did they link to the official site, was there a line-up from
the vehicles, was there an application where you could configure your perfect car, did they
post their commercials,… None of the companies made the “mistake” of using aggressive
advertising on their fanpages. If there was any advertising, it was limited to fun commercials
or car line-ups.
28
TABLE 9: ACTIVITY ON FANPAGES BY THE COMPANIES
Posting Reacting Maintaining/ no
spam
Advertising
Very active Acura
Audi
BMW
Cadillac
Chevrolet
Chrysler
Citroën
Dodge
Fiat
Ford
GMC
Hyundai
Lancia
Lexus
Mazda
Mercedes
Mitsubishi
Nissan
Porsche
Renault
Suzuki
Cadillac
Fiat
GMC
Mitsubishi
Renault
Suzuki
Toyota
Acura
Audi
BMW
Cadillac
Chrysler
Citroën
Fiat
Ford
GMC
Holden
Jeep
Lancia
Lexus
Mitsubishi
Nissan
Renault
Saab
Suzuki
Toyota
Volvo
Rather active Holden
Honda
Saab
Toyota
Chevrolet
Chrysler
Citroën
Ford
Holden
Lancia
Chevrolet
Dodge
Mazda
Mini
Chevrolet
Fiat
Hyundai
Nissan
Renault
Less active Jeep
Mini
Volvo
Honda
Mercedes
Acura
Audi
BMW
Citroën
Ford
GMC
Holden
Honda
Lancia
Mazda
Mini
Mitsubishi
Porsche
Saab
Suzuki
Toyota
Volvo
Almost not
active
Acura
Audi
BMW
Hyundai
Porsche
Cadillac
Chrysler
Dodge
29
Dodge
Honda
Hyundai
Jeep
Lexus
Mazda
Mercedes
Mini
Nissan
Porsche
Saab
Volvo
Jeep
Lexus
Mercedes
B. By the users
The first conclusion holds an advice towards both Facebook and companies: More than 86%
of the respondents answered “yes” to the question: Do you think there should be a clear
distinction between “official fanpages” and pages made by fans?
Facebook did announce this clear distinction as a future update (Baccus, 2010).
96% of the fanpages cited by the respondents were written in English. Therefore, I wondered
if the language used had an effect on the behaviour of the fans. I asked the respondents of
whom the language on the fanpage was not their native language whether they would post
more if the fanpage would be in their mother tongue. Only 25% of those respondents said they
would be more active. But since my survey was in English and the people who were not
comfortable with that language would not have filled out the survey, this result can be
deceptive.
Due to the large spread of respondents over the different fanpages, it was difficult to perform
a significant statistical analysis for each fanpage. Therefore I studied the fanpages within the
groups showed in table 9. For example: I analyzed the answers of the fans from the group
“less active – posts”: Jeep, Mini and Volvo together.
Let us start with the “posting column”. The respondents were asked to answer: “Do you feel
the company puts enough posts online?”. They could respond on a scale from 1 to 7, where
1 was “too many posts” and 7 “not enough posts”.
30
TABLE 10: DESCRIPTIVES
35 Do you feel the company puts enough posts online? ( 4 = the amount of posts is perfect at the moment)
N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error
95% Confidence Interval for Mean
Min Max Lower Bound Upper Bound
very active posting 137 4,25 1,097 ,094 4,06 4,43 1 7
rather active posting 98 4,23 1,033 ,104 4,03 4,44 1 7
less active posting 21 4,86 1,195 ,261 4,31 5,40 4 7
others 34 5,12 1,409 ,242 4,63 5,61 3 7
Total 290 4,39 1,160 ,068 4,26 4,52 1 7
* First Column = Activity by the company, evaluated by me - mean = answers from respondents
Analyzing this table, you can notice that the fans did evaluate rather positive for all groups.
Only the group “others” stands out a little. Knowing that this is the group with the non-official
fanpages it is not a surprise.
After performing a one-way Anova, we can see that there is a significant difference between
the groups.
TABLE 11: ANOVA
35 Do you feel the company puts enough posts online? (on the wall) ( 4 = the amount of posts
is perfect at the moment)
Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Between Groups 27,704 3 9,235 7,311 ,000
Within Groups 361,265 286 1,263
Total 388,969 289
However this is only caused by the significant difference between the group “others” and the rest.
TABLE 12: MULTIPLE COMPARISONS
35 Do you feel the company puts enough posts online? ( 4 = the amount of posts is perfect at the moment)
(I) fanpage evaluated (J) fanpage evaluated
Mean Difference
(I-J) Std. Error Sig.
95% Confidence Interval
Lower Bound Upper Bound
very active posting rather active posting ,013 ,149 1,000 -,40 ,43
less active posting -,609 ,263 ,151 -1,35 ,13
others -,869* ,215 ,001 -1,48 -,26
31
rather active posting very active posting -,013 ,149 1,000 -,43 ,40
less active posting -,622 ,270 ,153 -1,38 ,14
others -,883* ,224 ,002 -1,51 -,25
less active posting very active posting ,609 ,263 ,151 -,13 1,35
rather active posting ,622 ,270 ,153 -,14 1,38
others -,261 ,312 ,874 -1,14 ,62
others very active posting ,869* ,215 ,001 ,26 1,48
rather active posting ,883* ,224 ,002 ,25 1,51
less active posting ,261 ,312 ,874 -,62 1,14
* The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.
From the tables above you can learn there is no significant difference in evaluation between
the groups that posted several times a week, once a week or once a month. There was
however quite some difference within the groups. That shows it might be possible fans from a
particular brand expect less posts than others. This is a possible hypothesis for further
research which I cannot prove here because of the wide spread of brands.
People were also asked their opinion on the amount of reactions the company gave to posts
and/or questions from fans. Again they could answer on a scale from 1 to 7, going from “they
try to react on almost every relevant post/question” to “they don’t react at all”.
Looking at the column “reacting”, I again found there is a significant difference between the
groups. This time it was not only between the group “others” and the rest, but also between
the groups “very active” and “almost non active” and between “rather active” and “almost
non active”. The fans from the fanpages grouped in “very active” and “rather active”
responded more positively to the level of responding than the fans from the pages ordered in
the group “almost non active”. A conclusion might be that fans expect the company to react
on relevant posts and/or questions. This is conform to the previously mentioned result about
the expectation of the respondents to react on a complaint.
32
TABLE 13: DESCRIPTIVES
39 Does the company react on wallposts of fans?
N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error
95% Confidence Interval for Mean
Min Max Lower Bound Upper Bound
very active reacting 45 3,31 1,819 ,271 2,76 3,86 1 7
rather active reacting 118 3,69 1,707 ,157 3,38 4,01 1 7
almost non active
reacting
93 4,48 1,742 ,181 4,13 4,84 1 7
others 34 5,29 1,508 ,259 4,77 5,82 2 7
Total 290 4,08 1,813 ,106 3,87 4,29 1 7
* First column = activity by the company, evaluated by me - mean = evaluation by respondents
For the “maintaining” column, only a significant difference was found between the group
“others” and the rest. The differences in evaluation for the advertising column were not
significant at all. What I can say about these two columns however, is the fact that the
companies examined are doing rather good on these criteria. The average answer on the 1 to 7
scale to the question: “Do you think the page is well maintained?” was 2,5. Considering
that 1 meant “very well maintained”, we can conclude that the companies are doing a good
job.
The average answer to the question: “Do you feel there is too much advertisement on this
page?”, was 4,33. The answer “too much advertisement” corresponded to 1 and the answer
“too little advertisement” corresponded to 7. Again car companies are doing rather fine. As I
already mentioned in the evaluation of the posting rates, lots of variation was found within
groups for all four Anova’s. This could mean there are significant differences between the
different brands and the expectations of the fans, but unfortunately I don’t have enough
respondents from each brand in particular to draw any conclusions in this direction.
To conclude this section about the fanpages, I want to share some reasons the respondents
gave to the question why they became fan of the page:
“I may only be 16 years, but my family has had Audi’s for years. They are my passion.”
“As a Mitsubishi loyalist and fan it is a pleasure to hear and see the latest news directly from
the company”
“Because Jeeps are a culture as much as a brand”
“I became a fan, to get news and see what people think about the next car I will buy.”
And the last one, from a real promoter: “I love Alfa Romeo cars and would like to find out
more about them as well as spread awareness in North America and among my friends.”
33
7. Conclusions
Social Media is huge…
Social Media is fast growing…
Social Media can be useful for marketing…
There are three possible ways of looking at Social Media as a marketing manager.
1) As a hype that will blow over
2) As a new, extra medium to distribute your message
3) As a revolution
With a revolution I mean that Social Media is, and will be, turning all marketing principles
upside down.
I am more inclined to go for the third view. I believe the buying process has changed and will
change even further. People are looking for information through Google, in their networks on
Facebook, Twitter,… They don’t care about the sales pitch salespeople have prepared. These
days a lot of consumers know more about the product or service they want to purchase than
the salespeople do (Gerry McGovern, 2010).
The time where you could shout at your customers with (false) promises is over. Consumers
expect, more than ever, that companies listen and react to their concerns and needs.
The first recommendation I would like to give to companies or marketing managers all over
the world is this: Even if you do not (yet) believe in the power of Social Media, start with
listening what consumers are saying about your product, service or company online. It is a
wealth of information!
What can be done with all this information depends on the nature and content of the
conversations and on the objectives you want to reach using Social Media.
In my opinion, it is very important that you define a clear strategy before you start acting on
Social Media. And just being there is not one. Strategy should come before tactics. What do
you want to achieve? Brand awareness, improvement of relationships, more sales, … Think
before you act. But whatever you do, be honest. Lies will be discovered and shared faster
than ever before.
The following figure, which I got from a presentation from Tim Ho, gives you an example of
how an “ideal” social media model should look like in my opinion:
34
FIGURE 5
(Ho, 2010)
93% of social media users believe a company should be present in Social Media to support
customers (Downs, 2010). Marketing managers should become more aware that not only new
customers are important. Deepening the relations with existing customers and creating
promoters is at least -if not more- that important! Therefore I believe Social Media is a
process, and I quote Tim Ho: “companies shouldn’t invest in social media for quick results,
it’s a process to build relationship with potential clients, and maintain good relationship with
existing customers” (Ho, 2010).
During my research on Social Media in the past months, I noticed most of the complaints are
not about the product itself (of course a complaint always starts with a malfunction of the
product). Most of them handled about bad customer service and the fact that companies were
not listening to their customers. After writing this thesis, I became a believer of the Service-
Dominant logic. I quote the authors, Lusch and Vargo: “All of marketing needs to break free
from the goods and manufacturing-based model—that is, goods-dominant (G-D) logic. S-D
logic embraces concepts of the value-in-use and co-creation of value rather than the value-in-
exchange and embedded-value concepts of G-D logic. Thus, instead of firms being informed
to market to customers, they are instructed to market with customers, as well as other value-
creation partners in the firm’s value network” (Robert F. Lusch).
35
8. Discussion and Further Research
Most of the literature described in this paper is written and published by consultancy bureaus.
It is therefore recommended to look at these numbers and/or statements in a critical way. I
tried to do this as much as possible, but it is of course not unthinkable that some exaggerated
facts have sneaked in. I also want to point out that the forum was conducted with Belgian
respondents only. The results may differ from country to country. And finally, I want to make
a remark on the results of the survey. Mitsubishi and Holden reposted the link to my survey
on their wall. This may have reflected in the number of respondents coming from these two
fanpages.
Social Media is a fascinating world for further research. A lot of processes and drivers are still
unknown and ready to be discovered. In this paper I already mentioned some leads for further
research. For example: The causality between financial performance and the engagement in
Social Media by studying multiple companies over a longer period of time. Also the effect on
brand relationships can be an interesting approach.
From my qualitative research I withdraw the question whether shared videos, of which people
state that they do not know the company behind it, can have any influence on brand awareness
or sales. Another interesting observation which can be verified in the future is the difference
in sharing behaviour between men and women.
Both the qualitative and the quantitative research demonstrated that consumers expect
companies to listen and react. Which effects these reactions have and how a company should
react, however, are still unknown and can be appealing to examine.
A last suggestion I want to make towards further research are the expectation differences
between brands and sectors. For example: Does an Audi fan has other expectations from the
company than a BMW fan?
APPENDIX 1: FORUMS
In the figure below you can see how the forums were formed. All respondents were very active Social
Media users. There were both French and Dutch speaking forums.
This second figure gives you an idea which questions were asked and how the week was organized.
Of course there were asked more questions than showed here, this is just to give you an idea of the
subjects.
APPENDIX 2: SURVEY QUESTIONS
1 : What is your age?
2 : Gender
3 : Nationality
4 : Is English your native language?
5 : Do you own a car?
6 : Which brand? (If you own more than one car => the one you are driving the most)
7 : How many years do you drive with this particular brand? (In total) (So for example: If you had 2
Toyota's, one for 8 years and the current one for 3 years => your answer would be 11)
8 : How often do you use the Internet?
9 : What is your (estimated) average usage of Internet a month (in hours)? (ex.: 30)
10 : How often do you use Facebook?
11 : Are you a Facebook fan of the car brand you own?
12 : On Which fanpage did you see the link to this survey?
13 : How often do you visit this particular fanpage? (in days a month)
14 : Do you think this fanpage is an official fanpage from the company?
15 : Do you think there should be a clear distinction between "official fanpages" and "normal
fanpages" on Facebook?
16 : When do you visit this fanpage?
17 : What do you do on this fanpage?
18 : How often do you react on a post (or another reaction)? (estimated times a month)
19 : How often do you post something on the fanpage (post a video or photo, start a new discussion
on the forum, post something on the wall,...)
20 : Are you a member of other fanpages from car brands?
21 : Which ones?
22 : (Assume if it does not apply to you at the moment) "You have a complaint about your car or car
dealer." Would you put this complaint on a fanpage on Facebook?
23 : What is your intention for posting this complaint?
24 : How did you find the Fanpage?
25 : Which website?
APPENDIX 2: SURVEY QUESTIONS
26 : What have you ever posted or shared on the wall of this particular fanpage?
27 : What is the language used on this fanpage?
28 : Is this your native language?
29 : Do you think you would post or react more if there existed a fanpage in your native language?
30 : Does the fanpage have a forum?
31 : What have you ever posted on the forum of this fanpage?
32 : Do you think it is useful when there would be a forum on the fanpage?
33 : Is there a tab where you can sort the posts for: "company name and fans" "company
name" "just fans" (So that you can sort the posts on the wall?)
34 : Do you believe the presence of such tabs is useful and helps making the fanpage more decent
and trustworthy?
35 : Do you feel the company puts enough posts online? (on the wall)
36 : Do you feel the company puts enough posts/questions on the forum?
37 : Do you have the feeling someone from the company is actually reading all the things being said?
38 : Do you have the feeling your opinion or reactions on this fanpage matter to the company?
39 : Does the company react on wallposts of fans?
40 : Does the company react on posts from fans on the forum?
41 : Do you feel there is too much advertisement on the page?
42 : Do you feel the fanpage is well maintained and neat? (orderly, clear rules, no spam,...)
43 : Do you have the feeling that there are possibilities to ventilate complaints?
44 : Do you have the feeling the company reacts on them?
45 : What do you expect from the fanpage?
46 : Why did you become a fan of this page? (Can be answered in English, French, Dutch or German)
47 : Last question! How would you describe the relation with the brand you currently own? Very
good = They know me well and I know what to expect from them. I would probably buy this brand
again and recommend it to friends and family Very poor = They don't know me at all, I don't have a
relationship with this brand. I would probably not buy this brand again.
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