Role of Facebook in the Enhancement of Brand Loyalty for Knorr Seasoning among Members of Its Nigerian Online Community
SECTION 1
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Social Media are an integral part of the integrated marketing communication (IMC), which has been defined thus: “True IMC is the development of marketing strategies and creative campaigns that weave together multiple marketing disciplines (public relations, paid advertising, social media, promotion, and owned assets) that are selected and then executed to suit the particular goals of the brand" (Bennett, 2013). Owing to its nature of generating large user content (user generated content, UGC), its stickiness and user behaviour which make them generate useful insights for businesses, the ease of sharing contents and the viral ability of these media, empowering the users to voice their sentiments, businesses have few choices than to tap into the opportunities provided by these media.
This research seeks to investigate the role of Facebook as a social media platform in the enhancement of loyalty to Knorr Seasoning (a product of Unilever Nigeria Plc.), and to understand how its engagement with customers makes an impact on their commitment to continuously using the brand.
1.2 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Preliminary findings based on personal observation shows that brands in Nigeria are gradually taking up the opportunities presented by Facebook, but seem not to be fully utilising it effectively for building brand loyalists and
The use of social media marketing has become a standard way in which organizations advertise their products or services. Social media marketing allows consumers to have immediate access to other consumers reviews or to post a review about a product or service. There is engagement between the company and the consumer (Evans, Dave 2010). Social Media emerged in the late 1980’s when websites such as Prodigy, Compuserve and America Online. Prodigy was first of it’s kind and was known as a ”consumer online service”. Half of the page is devoted to advertising. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Hi5, Bebo and Orkut are all social media platforms that are utilized as platforms today.
Social media has become an influential ground for consumers to share their opinions about a company’s brand and products. In addition, it helps in having a strong brand that produces positive relations and distinguish the brand from competitors, is a critical component for effective marketing. According to Dahlén and Lange (2009) “the quality of the product is not the evident factor when it comes to purchasing a product, the deciding factor depends on how the brand is perceived” (Para. 1). This demonstrates the importance of incorporating social media as a tool to promote brands, allow for interactions, and customer satisfaction by engaging with customers more frequently for feedbacks or reviews. Thus create an opportunity for the company to show its devotion to their customers, and initiate good reputation, which can increase sales. In other words, social media has the ability to upsurge the awareness for businesses as well as the brand.
The third issue for Trader Joe’s is their lack of social media presence. Trader Joe’s from their beginning has used a customer newsletter and occasional radio ads in order to promote their brand, and these advertising methods have not changed with the introduction and prevalence of social media. Many brands nowadays are seeking to gain a competitive advantage over the
The brand promise of “Choosy Mom’s chose Jif” signifies the main market segmentation group of Jif peanut butter’s marketing research - Mom. A marketing research method used by J.M. Smucker and many other food manufacturers is the offering of taste samples at grocery and warehouse stores and then tracking the number products sold by evaluating scanner data. On line reviews by consumers of products sold on places like amazon.com is also another way for the company to gather primary market research information. In today’s market, social media is a popular way of collecting information and Jif has joined that bandwagon with a Facebook and Twitter account. To remain strong in the industry, J.M. Smucker should continue to use social media along with consumer
In nowadays of web-based social networking, those numbers are certain to increment no less than ten times and as they do, the question emerges; how might you get more customers functioning for you, less against? An awesome place to begin is to focus on comprehension consumer loyalty and to do that, you should make a striking client encounter, one they can't hold up to delineate for others.
The study will take the form of a cross-sectional design in which the target population will be people selected via convenience sampling. It aims to assess the view of the customers at a specific point in time. The tools of study to be used will include a random selection of feedbacks from social media. Also, an online search on databases will be conducted to provide relevant journal articles on the companies. Online sources will also be useful in finding out relevant information about the Company websites, and their online platforms in social media will also be examined for relevant
Social media is not new. Facebook has been around since 2004, YouTube since 2005, and Twitter in 2006. What is new is how social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are affecting the way businesses market their products and services. Never before in our history have consumers been able to communicate so effortlessly with each other and with the businesses they frequent. Never before have businesses been able to interact and react to customer feedback so quickly and efficiently. However, just because businesses have the ability to use social media for their marketing and advertising efforts, does not necessarily mean they should. This paper intends to
Social media is an effective media of communication between the consumers and companies. The companies are using social media for improving consumer engagement and brand lift. This essay gives a brief overview of social media platforms and how effective they have been. It shows that the whole marketing concept has undergone radical transformation due to the social media interaction. The essay ends in conclusion depicting what marketers need to take care in order to have successful social media campaign.
Digital media is becoming powerful in the way grocers are communicating and engaging with consumers today. The use of paper, leaflets, newspapers and posters or it can be known as ‘‘traditional advertising’’ is now being switched to digital media platforms. Millennials are utilising digital platforms such as websites, apps and social networking sites as a new way to advertise (The Voice of Food Retail, 2016). Aldi uses Facebook as a form of promotion for advertisement purposes and to increase their brand awareness by providing incentives likewise inspiring followers to interact with their daily posts (Evonimie, 2015). Another social media platform used by Aldi is Twitter in order to interact with shoppers. By interacting through social media,
Social media is capable of connecting a brand with its consumers and discover how they are being perceived, it also has the power to change perceptions and identify the key people within the business network. The unique feature of social media is that it can provide corporations and businesses solutions developed through operating with consumers and stakeholders. Basically, social media serves as a visible connection to one’s corporation and its stakeholders, consumers, suppliers, etc, who each have a defined role within the system to filter and regulate information. As mentioned earlier, the influence of social media is spreading in a proliferative pace that has resulted to an essential transformation in society, technology and business customs.
The marketing industry is an elaborate network that links companies to their consumers, primarily through written communication. The main objective of marketing is to identify trends and patterns in consumer behavior, and utilize the data to influence consumers to purchase more goods. From a macroenviroment standpoint, the general conditions of a market are heavily dependent on global environmental factors. The most significant factor that influences the markets today is technological advancements. Since the release of Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter, and Myspace in the early 2000s, the number of people using social media has increased to over sixty-five percent. The ever-growing dependency on social media platforms, has given marketers the tremendous opportunity to further market potential consumers. Social media marketing is a specific form of marketing that focuses on producing ad content that social media users will post on their own networks. This particular marketing technique is effective because ads and content are created, based on what personal information users post on social media. Firms and organizations that advertise their brands on social media are more likely to increase their customer base and annual revenue. By doing so, companies are able to increase exposure of their brand and widen previous hidden, customer bases. As a marketer, the fine line between right and wrong is often blurred. The amount and
In today’s business world, social media is being discussed on a daily basis. This phenomenon has taken over the marketing and advertising industries and has changed the way they handle their efforts to attract customers. There is a big misunderstanding that social media are only popular networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, social media are “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and micro blogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos).” The rise of these online communities has given companies an opportunity to engage in conversations with their customers. This in
Social media is defined as a group of Internet-based applications which build on the platform of Web 2.0 and the contents of these applications can be modified by all users in a participatory and collaborative method (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Social media creates a platform for companies to talk to their customers as a hybrid element of promotion mix. With the emergence of social media, the tools and strategies for companies to connect with customers have also changed (Mangold and Faulds, 2009). To adapt with the emergence of social media in the marketing, companies should have unique insights about these significances (Quan-Haase and Young, 2010). The significances of social media embody three main aspects which are technology, decision-making and purchase behaviors of customers.
The relation brand-consumer changed aspect. The brands have to watch henceforth what people say of them on these social media and to begin the dialogue with their consumers to make sure to keep a good "e-reputation" and to enter a relational optics with their customers. But they can also benefit from these digital social networks to try to create consumers' community on-line "ambassadors" around them, to federate them and to develop loyalty of them thanks to a communication and specific tools.
Social media has played a significant role in consumer decision making, including such areas raising awarness, sharing information and opinions as well as postpurchase experience ( Mangold and Faulds,2009). It turns out that consumers tend to trust knowledge and experience shared by other customers on social media more than those opinions reviewed by the manufacturer or the marketer of the product or the service.(Linchi Kowk,2012)