New Media, New Influencers and Implications for Public Relations

Marketers and public relations professionals today are confronted with an astounding array of new communications channels. Internet-based social media tools like blogs, podcasts, online video and social networks are giving voice to the opinions of millions of consumers. While mainstream media continues to play a vital role in the dissemination of information, even these traditional channels are increasingly being influenced by online conversations. The "new influencers" are beginning to tear at the fabric of marketing as it has existed for 100 years, giving rise to a new style of marketing that is characterized by conversation and community. Marketers are responding to these forces with a mixture of excitement, fear and fascination. They're alarmed at the prospect of ceding control of their messages to a community of unknowns. Yet at the same time they're excited about the prospect of leveraging theese same tools to speak directly to their constituents without the involvement of media intermediaries.The Society for New Communications Research set out to conduct an examination of how influence patterns are changing and how communications professionals are addressing those changes by adopting social media. The goals were to discover how organizations:Define new influencers;Communicate and create relationships with them;Use social media to create influence; andMeasure the effects of these efforts.Another goal of the study was to use these discoveries to offer a set of recommendations to professional communicators

Could social media improve New Save Supermarket’s Asian market segment?

Social media has become a part of people’s daily life. It is a multi-functional tool for people, who use social media to communicate with others, share content, and consume information in real time. Social media can be used not only by ordinary people but is also a useful marketing tool for businesses, according to previous research. New Save Supermarket is in the city centre, Hamilton. It is the oldest of Hamilton’s large-scale Asian grocery shops. The Asian community is New Save’s target market. This research is to investigate the possibility of using social media to attract more Asian consumers to shop at New Save. In this research, online questionnaires are used to collect data and the thoughts of the customers. The findings of this study indicate that WeChat and Facebook are the primary social media platforms that most customers use. Currently, there are few customers who know of and follow New Save’s WeChat account and Facebook page. Respondents think New Save’s social media do not convey enough information or update regularly enough. They agree that social media advertisements will attract regular shopping. This research suggests that New Save should create a strong social media presence, posting more and useful information for customers, updating regularly, and interacting with customers via social media

Profiles of social networking sites users in the Netherlands

Online social networking has become a reality and integral part of the daily personal, social and business life. The extraordinary increase of the user numbers of Social Networking Sites (SNS) and the rampant creation of online communities presents businesses with many challenges and opportunities. From the commercial perspective, the SNS are an interesting and promising field: online social networks are important sources of market intelligence and also offer interesting options for co-operation, networking and marketing. For SMEs especially the Social Networking Sites represent a simple and low cost solution for listening the customer’s voice, reaching potential customers and creating extensive business networks. This paper presents the results of a national survey mapping the demographic, social and behavioral characteristics of the Dutch users of SNS. The study identifies four different user profiles and proposes a segmentation framework as basis for better understanding the nature and behavior of the participants in online communities. The findings present new insights to marketing strategists eager to use the communication potential of such communities; the findings are also interesting for businesses willing to explore the potential of online networking as a low cost yet very efficient alternative to physical, traditional networking

Biases in Social Commerce Users\u27 Rational Risk Considerations

Social commerce has emerged as a new commercial platform which uses social media features in addition to conventional commerce facilities to enhance users’ shopping experience. It thus adds a social context to the conventional online commerce platforms. Nonetheless, the effect of these social facets on social commerce users’ behaviors is not fully studied. Furthermore, current social commerce literature mainly focused on factors that drive social commerce acceptance; however, there are negative factors which may demotivate or deter the social commerce use. In this study, we suggest potential risks that may hinder users’ engagement in the social commerce platforms. Moreover, drawing upon the “risky/choice shift” logic, habit literature, and information cascade theory, we propose that social identification, habitual use, and herding behavior can skew the way social commerce users consider and weight risks in their purchasing and participation decisions

Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on the financial performance of industrial companies in New Zealand

The purpose of this study is to discover the influence Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure has on the financial performance of industrial companies operational in New Zealand. The study implements a quantitative methodological approach. By means of a statistical analysis technique the study examines the hypothesis that CSR has a positive impact on financial performance of industries. The study makes use of content analysis in order to extract data about the independent variable (CSR Disclosure Index Rating) and dependent variable (Average Stock Price) of industrial companies. The sample comprises of 15 listed industrial companies in New Zealand. In this research it is observed that there is significance between CSR Disclosure and Financial Performance, apart from a few industries. This further reflects that there are several other factors which make CSR Disclosures affect financial performance, like industry risk and exposure and level of stakeholder engagement. The lower the rank of correlation, the better is the company. The analysis is being done with the help of correlation and regression method using MS-Excel and the data is being taken from New Zealand Stock Exchange and Bloomberg. With the help of all this data, the researcher will use it to make conclusions and offer suggestions

Social Commerce In Retaling – Why You Use IT?

Social media has not only reshaped the way people make decisions, but also changed the norms of how people interact with others. Due to the popularity of social media, social commerce is becoming a new form of e-commerce approaches. This study attempts to investigate what motivates individuals’ use of social commerce in the context of grocery retailing service based on the theoretical framework of the Uses and Gratifications theory. The empirical data was collected from a Finnish social commerce website offering a social media environment for social commerce in grocery services. Based on both survey data and clickstream data, we found that i) individuals are motivated to use social commerce in grocery retailing service mainly due to their utilitarian gratification in using it as social commerce platform can meet their functional needs; ii) social gratification plays weak role in determining social commerce in grocery retailing service as individuals has less social needs compared to their functional needs in social commerce; and iii) hedonic gratification might be a potential reason as the hedonic needs seems to be very weak. The functions (searching for products and recipes, compiling shopping lists and online shopping, etc.) offered by the social commerce services meet individuals’ functional needs, and motivate them to use social commerce. Finally the limitations of the current research are discussed, and the directions for further research are also suggested

How could Sunny Bay more effectively use existing marketing channels? What new marketing channels they could use?

Health care products are a popular market in New Zealand. There are more and more health care product stores operating every year. Sunny Bay is a health care product retail store in Hamilton, which has been operating around 15 months. The aim of this research is to evaluate Sunny Bay’s current online marketing channels, and recommend new marketing channels to Sunny Bay. In this study, the researcher used primary and secondary research methods. The primary research involved using questionnaires to randomly survey 50 customers who visited Sunny Bay. Results showed that most customers prefer shopping online and think that store location will affect their purchase decision. The questionnaire showed that Wechat is the most popular social media site, and that Facebook is second most popular. After analysing the results of the primary and secondary research, I conclude that Sunny Bay could advertise their discount information on social media, which could attract more potential customer and increase sales, and use information technology to integrate online and offline sales. I recommend that Sunny Bay create its own retail official website and create a Facebook account and post profile products and special promotions regularly on the Facebook page

Exploring social gambling: scoping, classification and evidence review

The aim of this report is to speculate on the level of concern we might have regarding consumer risk in relation to ‘social gambling.’ In doing so, this report is intended to help form the basis to initiate debate around a new and under-researched social issue; assist in setting a scientific research agenda; and, where appropriate, highlight concerns about any potential areas that need to be considered in terms of precautionary regulation. This report does not present a set of empirical research findings regarding ‘social gambling’ but rather gathers information to improve stakeholder understanding

DETERMINING THE CHALLENGES OF ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIAL MEDIA ADOPTION AND USE

Organizations often face challenges with the adoption and use of new information systems, and social media is no exception. In this exploratory case study, we aim to identify internal and external challenges related to the adoption and use of social media in a large case company. Our findings show that internal challenges include resources, ownership, authorization, attitudes and economic issues, whereas external challenges are associated with company reputation, legal issues and public/private network identity. We add to the knowledge created by previous studies by introducing the challenges related to ownership and authorization of social media services, which were found to be of high relevance in corporate social media adoption. In order to overcome these obstacles, we propose that organizations prepare strategies and guidelines for social media adoption and use