Investigating value propositions in social media: studies of brand and customer exchanges on Twitter

Social media presents one of the richest forums to investigate publicly explicit brand value propositions and its corresponding customer engagement. Seldom have researchers investigated the nature of value propositions available on social media and the insights that can be unearthed from available data. This work bridges this gap by studying the value propositions available on the Twitter platform. This thesis presents six different studies conducted to examine the nature of value propositions. The first study presents a value taxonomy comprising 15 value propositions that are identified in brand tweets. This taxonomy is tested for construct validity using a Delphi panel of 10 experts – 5 from information science and 5 from marketing. The second study demonstrates the utility of the taxonomy developed by identifying the 15 value propositions from brand tweets (nb=658) of the top-10 coffee brands using content analysis. The third study investigates the feedback provided by customers (nc=12077) for values propositioned by the top-10 coffee brands (for the 658 brand tweets). Also, it investigates which value propositions embedded in brand tweets attract ‘shallow’ vs. ‘deep’ engagement from customers. The fourth study is a replication of studies 2 and 3 for a different time-period. The data considered for studies 2 and 3 was for a 3-month period in 2015. In the fourth study, Twitter data for the same brands was analysed for a different (nb=290, nc=8811) 3-month period in 2018. This study thus examines the nature of change in value propositions across brands over time. The fifth study was on generalizability and replicates the investigation of brand and customer tweets (nb=635, nc=7035) in the market domain of the top-10 car brands in 2018. Lastly, study six conducted an evaluation of a software system called Value Analysis Toolkit (VAT) that was constructed based on the research findings in studies 1 - 5. This tool is targeted at researchers and practitioners who can use the tool to obtain value proposition-based insights from social media data (brand value propositions and the corresponding feedback from customers). The developed tool is evaluated for external validity using 35 students and 5 industry participants in three dimensions (tool’s analytics features, usability and usefulness). Overall, the contributions of this thesis are: a) a taxonomy to identify value propositions in Twitter (study 1) b) an approach to extract value proposition-based insights in brand tweets and the corresponding feedback from customers in the process of value co-creation (studies 2 - 5) for the top-10 coffee and car brands, and c) an operational tool (study 6) that can be used to analyse value propositions of various brands (e.g., compare value propositions of different brands), and identify which value propositions attract positive electronic word of mouth (eWOM). These value proposition-based insights can be used by social media managers to devise social-media strategies that are likely to stimulate positive discussions about a brand in social media

The Obstacles in Social Media Engagement: the Need for an Overarching Management Process

The use of social media for marketing has become a common practice across all industries. However, practitioners are struggling to manage related social media activities, in particular, fan engagement. To address this, case study research method, involving seven case companies from a retail group, was conducted to understand practitioners’ difficulties in managing their social media campaigns. This study finds that, besides ROI and fan engagement, the nature of an industry, lack of well-defined standard procedures and insufficient financial resources present the fundamental obstacles in brand page engagement management. Based on the best practices from the case companies and together with professional literature, this paper (1) proposes a basic social media management process to guide businesses to unify their social media fan engagement management and performance evaluations; and (2) integrates various social media marketing tools, readily available in the market, to assist in social media performance monitoring and data analysis

Brand sabotage: Managing social media and reputational crises in utility companies

In 2011, the market leader in the Portuguese energy sector decided to delete its presence on Facebook, its most active social media platform, after a poorly perceived social media management decision went viral and unleashed a series of accusatory comments that harmed the company’s brand and reputation. Today, in 2018, this company is still opting not to be fully present on its social media platforms, revealing that the effects of the 2011 crisis were both long-lasting and harmful for the company’s image with its main stakeholders. In this thesis, we develop a set of best practices in social media management that can help prevent social media crises in the Portuguese energy sector and, simultaneously, provide energy companies with the tools to improve their brand awareness, image, and reputation through social media platforms in the current digital and globalized economy. We start by characterizing the main challenges faced by utility companies on their daily social media activities. Related to this, we identify the potential channels that can lead these companies into social media crises, and we study the best actions undertaken by the market leaders in the Spanish and UK energy markets against these reputation threats. To do so, we undertake a quantitative netnography analysis on these markets, using state-of-the-art data scrapping and text analytics techniques. Finally, we use the main results from the netnography analysis to clearly define the most important social media strategies followed by the Spanish and UK energy market leaders. We highlight the managerial implications of our analysis by developing a unifying social media strategy to help Portuguese energy companies prevent new social media crises and to allow them to effectively manage their brand awareness and reputation by using social media platforms. We conclude with the implementation of this strategy using a best practices framework that Portuguese energy companies could follow in the near future.No ano de 2011, a empresa líder no mercado de energia em Portugal, colocou um fim à sua presença ativa nas redes sociais, após a tomada de uma decisão estratégica que levou à massificação de críticas de clientes e seguidores. Atualmente, a empresa continua cautelosa em estar nas redes sociais, mantendo apenas uma presença limitada no YouTube e, mais recentemente, através de uma página de Instagram específica para divulgação de eventos patrocinados ou desenvolvidos pela mesma. Esta estratégia de comunicação online da EDP, revela que os eventos vividos em 2011 foram duradouros e prejudiciais para a reputação e imagem da mesma junto dos seus stakeholders. Nesta dissertação, é desenvolvido um conjunto de práticas para uma melhor gestão de redes sociais, com foco especial no Facebook. Esta análise tem como objetivo ajudar as empresas de Energia Portuguesas a prevenir crises virais relacionadas com a sua política de comunicação nestas plataformas e, por conseguinte, melhorar a brand awareness e reputação destas empresas no contexto de uma economia digital e globalizada. Para tal, caracterizamos os principais desafios de diferentes estratégias de comunicação, envolvendo redes sociais por parte de empresas internacionais no setor da Energia. Consequentemente, são então identificados os potenciais canais e ações destas empresas que poderão deteriorar a relação da empresa com os seus stakeholders e levar, eventualmente, a uma situação de crise. Para fazer face a tal possibilidade, são estudados exemplos de empresas líderes no setor de energia no Reino Unido e em Espanha, através de uma netnografia quantitativa, utilizando técnicas de data scrapping e text analytics. Através desta análise, são realçadas as principais melhores práticas que poderão ajudar empresas Portuguesas a prevenir eventuais crises de comunicação online nas suas páginas e plataformas sociais. O objetivo último desta dissertação é permitir a estas empresas gerir eficazmente a sua brand awareness e reputação e, simultaneamente, fomentar de forma eficiente e transparente a sua relação com os seus stakeholders

Facebook and Twitter in the context of customer-based brand equity : analyzing Liverpool FC's posts and comparing the perceptions of UK and Greek fan clubs

The growth and penetration of social media provide professional sport clubs with a powerful tool to communicate their brand to a worldwide fan base. This study aimed to provide an understanding of how Liverpool FC uses Facebook and Twitter in terms of communication tools and brand attributes and how its fan base engages to this usage in terms of key responding features of Facebook and Twitter. In addition, it aimed to analyze and compare UK and Greek fan clubs in terms of engagement, perceived brand benefits and effects in their consumption behavior. A mixed method case study design has been applied using content analysis, online questionnaires as well as focus group and one to one interviews. The research confirms the literature models of sports brand image in terms of identified product and non-product related brand attributes and brand benefits and enhances the literature on customer-based brand equity of sport clubs by taking a combined view of the usage of Facebook and Twitter by a professional football club as well as its fans in this context. From a practical standpoint, the study offers an evaluation of the clubs’ social media presence by its fans, providing valuable insights as far as the design of the most appropriate marketing strategy is concerned. In addition, the study confirms the existence of a positive relationship between social media usage and professional football club revenues either through the impact of brand attributes on sport consumer buying behavior or through increased sponsorship value

Managing the Paradox of Growth in Brand Communities Through Social Media

The commercial benefits of online brand communities are an important focus for marketers seeking deeper engagement with increasingly elusive consumers. Managing participation in these socially bound brand conversations challenges practitioners to balance authenticity towards the community against corporate goals. This is important as social media proliferation affords communities the capacity to reach a scale well beyond their offline equivalents and to operate independently of brands. While research has identified the important elements of engagement in brand communities, less is known about how strategies required to maximise relationships in these circumstances must change with growth. Using a case study approach, we examine how a rapidly growing firm and its community have managed the challenges of a maturing relationship. We find that, in time, the community becomes self-sustaining, and a new set of marketing management strategies is required to move engagement to the next level

Managing the Paradox of Growth in Brand Communities Through Social Media

The commercial benefits of online brand communities are an important focus for marketers seeking deeper engagement with increasingly elusive consumers. Managing participation in these socially bound brand conversations challenges practitioners to balance authenticity towards the community against corporate goals. This is important as social media proliferation affords communities the capacity to reach a scale well beyond their offline equivalents and to operate independently of brands. While research has identified the important elements of engagement in brand communities, less is known about how strategies required to maximise relationships in these circumstances must change with growth. Using a case study approach, we examine how a rapidly growing firm and its community have managed the challenges of a maturing relationship. We find that, in time, the community becomes self-sustaining, and a new set of marketing management strategies is required to move engagement to the next level

Detecting consumer emotions on social networking websites

The social networking environment goes beyond connecting friends. It also connects customers with companies and vice versa. Customers share their experience with friends, followers, and companies and these experiences carry sentiments and emotions thereby creating big data. There is an ocean of data that is available for companies to extract and make meaning out of it by applying to different business contexts such as consumer feedback analysis and marketing & communications. For companies to benefit from consumer emotion data, they must make use of computational methods that can save time and work consumed by traditional consumer research methods such as questionnaires and interviews. The objective of this research is to explore existing literatures on detecting consumer emotions from social networking data. The author carried out a systematic literature review on research articles from three bibliographic databases with the intent to find out social networking data extraction process, dataset sizes, computational methods used, consumer sentiments, emotions studied, limitations and its application in a managerial context. To further understand consumer emotion detection, a case study in the form of a Twitter marketing campaign was conducted to emulate the process of consumer emotion detection on a company that is selling stress management products and services. The results indicate that most companies use Twitter networking platform to carry out consumer emotion analysis. The dataset sizes range from small to very large. The studies have used variety of computational methods, some with accuracies to measure the performance. These methods have been applied in various industries such as travel, restaurant, healthcare, and finance to name a few. Managerial applications include marketing, supply chain, feedback analysis, product development, and customer satisfaction. There are few limitations that were identified from using these methods. The case study results and discussion with the case company CIO communicated the potential for the use of some of the methods for consumer behavior research. The valuable feedback from the CIO revealed that by customizing existing methods, their company can create new tools and methods to understand their customers by providing better recommendations and customize their offerings to individual customers

Manifesting Personal Brands in Politics: Strategic Manoeuvring by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the Third US Presidential Debate of 2016

In this thesis I investigate how the political brands of the two presidential candidates of the 2016 US presidential election, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, were manifested in their argumentation during the third and final presidential debate of 2016. The method used for the analysis is the extended theory of pragma-dialectics, which includes the notion of strategic manoeuvring. The theory allows the evaluation of how the candidates balanced the simultaneous objectives of adhering to the rules of argumentation while manoeuvring the discussion to a direction that was in their favour. The analysis focuses on a 15-minute segment of the debate, the topic of which was fitness to be the president of the United States. The analysis indicates that both candidates strategically manoeuvred the discussion toward topics that were beneficial for their brand or detrimental to the opponent’s brand. The most notable differences between Clinton’s and Trump’s argumentative strategies were related to the core characteristics of their brands: Clinton was a politically experienced insider, while Trump was a newcomer to politics and promoted the image of an uncorrupt outsider who “says it like it is.” Clinton highlighted her brand by demonstrating her well-preparedness with a full and coordinated argumentative strategy and premeditated argumentation structures. Trump, on the other hand, maintained his brand as a man of the people by arguing much more like an uneducated non-politician would. The most notable features of Trump’s argumentation were the copious violations of the rules of argumentation, which indicate that his desire to “win” the argument overruled his desire to argue reasonably. The findings of this study demonstrate that not complying with the rules of a critical discussion may be beneficial for the speaker’s brand when their brand as well as the expectations of the audience allow it. However, when a person who is branded as someone who “says it like it is” and uses fallacious argumentation, the danger of the introduction of more radical ideas presents itself. Thus, critical thinking and awareness of the copious strategies used in political branding are becoming increasingly important