The power of like 2: how social marketing works

The Power of Like 2: How Social Marketing Works is the second research report in a series examining the ways in which brands can quantify the paid and earned effects of their social marketing programs on Facebook and optimize their efforts. The analysis leverages data and insights from the comScore Social Essentials™ and comScore AdEffx™ products. By understanding the core elements of maximizing reach on Facebook – Fan Reach, Engagement, and Amplification – brands can benchmark their performance against other brands and devise strategies to improve on these dimensions and deliver measurable social marketing ROI. The report includes original analysis demonstrating ways in which exposure to earned and paid media on Facebook drives behavioral lifts in purchase behavior. &nbsp

Brand Tracking on Social Media: The Role of Country of Origin Perceptions

Marketers are now almost a decade into using social media as another outlet in developing brand relationships with consumers. Yet an understanding of how consumers interact with brands online is still in its infancy. This paper compares the social media and brand-tracking habits of consumers in three parts of the world: Asia, the Middle East and the USA. In addition, the study attempts to explain what motivates consumers to follow brands on social media, focusing on the role of products’ country of origin in explaining the relationship. The results show that US consumers spent the most time on social media and tracked the most brands, while Thai respondents did the least of both. Four dimensions of social media brand tracking were identified and ratings compared across groups. Significant differences among groups were found for one of the four factors, ‘brand experience’, with US consumers experiencing significantly more positive ‘brand experiences’ than Thai consumers, and Egyptian consumers falling somewhere in between. The results also indicate that the country of product origin can have some effects on brand tracking

Social Media’s impact on Intellectual Property Rights

This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in Handbook of Research on Counterfeiting and Illicit Trade, edited by Peggy E. Chaudhry, published in 2017 by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785366451. This material is for private use only, and cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher.Peer reviewe

Fast-food advertising in social media. A case study on Facebook in Egypt

The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that affect young Egyptian consumers' attitudes towards fast-food advertising in Facebook which is considered the most widely used social media network. 4 focus groups were conducted with young consumers from 2 Egyptian cities. Content analysis was applied for the Egyptian fast-food Facebook fan pages with the aid of the NVivo software. The findings of this exploratory study have shown that young consumers are accepting the idea of fast food advertising in Facebook. Moreover, the research provides a framework for the factors that lead to consumers' engagement with the advertisements on Facebook. With the increase in the popularity of social media websites among the young generation, fast-food marketers find it a more effective medium for advertising for their chains among that segment. The research provides insights for marketers to make their advertisements more effective on Facebook. The participants in the focus groups were young consumers in Egypt. It would be useful to expand the sample and conduct the research in other developing and developed countries with more consumers from other age groups. Consumer attitude towards advertising as a topic generates interest from academics and practitioners in looking at analysis of the effectiveness and success of advertisements in social media. Therefore this research adds value in that, so far, there is very little academic literature on this particular topic examining young Egyptian consumers' attitudes towards fast-food advertising in Facebook

Factors shaping attitudes towards UK bank brands: An exploratory analysis of social media data

Social media provides a huge amount of data and rich market insight, and has changed the way customers interact with brands. This interaction is of great concern for any organisation as it transfers the power to shape brand image from advertisers to consumers. In light of the global financial crisis and the ensuing negative attitudes towards bank brands, this study has extracted 1176 comments on bank advertisements from the verified Facebook pages of 10 UK banks. These comments have been thematically analysed to identify seven key factors that shape customer attitudes to bank brands. The study presents the power of social media as a platform for brands and customers to engage and build relationships, especially bank–customer relationships in the UK, providing managers with important insights that can guide the development and execution of their brand-relationship campaigns. The fact that this study is based on real-life advertisements and real-life responses from social media network users can be considered as one of its strengths, as it does not suffer from various issues relating to experimental studies. Nonetheless, the study’s limitations and suggestions for future research directions are provided

The Role of Country of Origin in Brand Following on Social Media Among U.S. Consumers

An understanding of how consumers interact with brands online is still in its infancy. This study will attempt to explain what motivates consumers to follow brands on social media, looking specifically at the role country and region of origin of products plays in explaining the relationship. Given the personal nature that attracts people to social media to build relationships, it is believed that the personal nature of brands originating from the social media users’ home country will heighten the likelihood that consumers track certain brands and may enhance the relationship that evolves between the brand and the consumer. A model is proposed to explain the relationship, with survey data from U.S. consumers used to begin to establish any links between product origins and brand tracking behavior through social media

Exploring the commercial value of social networks: enhancing consumers’ brand experience through Facebook pages

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors which impact upon the consumers’ willingness to utilise company Facebook pages and e-word-of mouth by proposing and testing a conceptual framework which is inspired by theories in marketing and information systems fields. The authors believe that only by applying both theories will provide a more complete understanding of the relationship between brand experience and Facebook. The research model attempts to illustrate the factors according to customers’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and their impact on brand experience, brand Facebook page loyalty and e-word-of-mouth (E-WOM). Design/methodology/approach – The authors adopted an online survey method for data collection. The subjects the authors used were Facebook users. The data were collected in Taiwan over spring 2011. The authors then used the structural equation model to analyse the data collected. Findings – The findings suggest that users are influenced by the technical characterises of a brand Facebook page, such as ease of use and usefulness, which might be combated by attempting to reduce customer effort when accessing Facebook pages. The authors conclude that customer effort influenced brand experience and consequently loyalty to brand Facebook pages and E-WOM. Research limitations/implications – The limitations of this study relate to the investigation of consumer perspectives in a specific geographical context and time frame. Originality/value – The study’s contributions are both theoretical and practical, as it offers new insights into brand experience attitudes in an online environment and useful insights to companies willing to market themselves on Facebook. Keywords Marketing, Facebook, Virtual community, Extrinsic motivations, Intrinsic motivations Paper type Research pape

The applications of social media in sports marketing

n the era of big data, sports consumer's activities in social media become valuable assets to sports marketers. In this paper, the authors review extant literature regarding how to effectively use social media to promote sports as well as how to effectively analyze social media data to support business decisions. Methods: The literature review method. Results: Our findings suggest that sports marketers can use social media to achieve the following goals, such as facilitating marketing communication campaigns, adding values to sports products and services, creating a two-way communication between sports brands and consumers, supporting sports sponsorship program, and forging brand communities. As to how to effectively analyze social media data to support business decisions, extent literature suggests that sports marketers to undertake traffic and engagement analysis on their social media sites as well as to conduct sentiment analysis to probe customer's opinions. These insights can support various aspects of business decisions, such as marketing communication management, consumer's voice probing, and sales predictions. Conclusion: Social media are ubiquitous in the sports marketing and consumption practices. In the era of big data, these ＂footprints＂ can now be effectively analyzed to generate insights to support business decisions. Recommendations to both the sports marketing practices and research are also addressed

The impact of brand gender on consumer-brand engagement and consumer-based brand equity on Facebook

In this research, we investigate how two distinct and universal dimensions of brand personality - brand masculinity and brand femininity - which constitute the two dimensions of brand gender (Grohmann 2009) influence consumer-brand engagement on Facebook. Another critical aim is to investigate the relationship between brand masculinity and brand femininity perceptions and consumer-based brand equity, on Facebook

Not so social media: Twitter use in the conference sector

This research forms part of a larger project funded by Meeting Professionals International (MPI) focusing on the future of business events . In this paper we investigate the motivations for social media use within a professional event context. Twitter was tracked before during and after seven conferences and from this the top tweeters and organisers were identified. Fifteen interviews were conducted into both the organisational strategy and individual motivations for tweeting and were analysed alongside interviews with five social media experts. The research highlights several potential areas of conflict. Social media use tends to focus on broadcasting information rather than encouraging dialogue. People only tweet if they gain personal or individual professional value from doing so and event organisers need a deeper understanding of what that value is. Monitoring social media to gain customer insights and develop a more responsive customer service strategy is not yet happening although it is recognised as a necessity. The silent majority (passives) need to be better understood and catered for through social media use. Overall this sector, which successfully creates social interactions offline appears to be failing to do so online. A more strategic and resourced approach to social media is needed if its potential is to be achieved