Social Media Usage and Adoption

Social media is in vogue, but managers need to know their customers’ social media readiness to help them overcome any resistance to adopting the new benefits that social media offers and to secure customer satisfaction with the services offered through these channels. In this chapter, the authors present findings from two studies. In the first study, general technology readiness is investigated and pockets of users are identified. This study works as a backdrop for the second study, in which consumers’ social media readiness, the construct and its drivers are investigated. Overall, the authors find that customers seem to be ready for social media, as social media readiness has a positive, indirect effect on attitudes toward interaction in social media. Moreover, the effect is mediated through ease of use and usefulness.

Marketing in an Interactive World

The focus of this chapter is to address emerging trends, opportunities, and key challenges facing managers in their communication processes in an increasingly interactive social media environment. A review of the current social media literature and two qualitative research studies provide insights into the changing nature of the communications process in social media, as opposed to more traditional, communications environments. These insights are drawn together to provide a number of managerial implications for social media marketers.

Marketing Meets Social Media

In Internet marketing, organizations leverage the Internet and related technologies to promote themselves, their products, their services, and their brands. In virtually all sectors, recent advances in Web technologies have dramatically changed the nature and volume of Internet marketing. Competition in online advertising is currently very intense as organizations have shifted their focus from print and other traditional advertising media to emails, search engines, and social media outlets for most of their promotional activities. However, due to the growing convergence of digital technologies, distinguishing one form of online marketing from another is becoming increasingly difficult. The current practice shows that there is a significant overlap of technologies as well as activities in most of the online marketing and advertising outlets. This chapter attempts to provide a classification of the major forms of Internet marketing (or online advertising) available, and discuss the key technological trends, practices, and academic research in each area. In particular, the chapter highlights the changing trends in Internet marketing due to recent developments in Web 2.0 and social media technologies.

Insights into Social Media and Online Digital Music

This chapter investigates social media along with traditional assessment channels and their roles in music evaluation. For the current popular social media (such as Facebook and Twitter), marketing applications in the music industry are found to be limited. For certain specialized social media (social media sites specifically dedicated to music and audio sharing and product reviews and opinions), they are neither well known nor commonly used. More efforts to promote these social media are required to increase consumer awareness. This chapter also includes findings which describe consumers’ different attitudes about social media related to new artists and established ones. The use of traditional music evaluation channels and the use of social media are positively correlated. At present, social media do not significantly impact consumers’ music evaluations, but they do impact how much consumers are willing to pay for music products. Analysis of respondents’ statements about social media demonstrate that social media marketing applications potentially can have a great impact on digital music product evaluations and willingness to pay. Overall, findings indicate that the music industry should take better advantage of social media to influence consumers’ music evaluations and willingness to pay. Traditional channels and social media are correlated, indicating that the music industry should not neglect traditional channels while expanding the use of social media.

Effects of Consumers’ Social Media Participation on Consumer Behavior

Technological advancements have shaped and reshaped the marketing landscape from time to time. The digital revolution in particular has given rise to a new digital era that has changed this marketing landscape, perhaps permanently. One of the core technologies involved in defining this digital era is the Internet. The Internet has not only empowered the people by creating and disseminating information like never before but also has affected the way we conduct our businesses. Various business usages of the Internet in search engines, email, mobile, and social media have given rise to new ways of conducting marketing activities such as affiliate marketing, display advertisement, email marketing, search marketing, and social media marketing among others. The significance and the relevance of online social media marketing have made this particular digital channel a topical subject of the digital era. The effects of social media have been felt in influencing both seller and buyer behaviors. However, the focus of this chapter is to address two important aspects of consumer behaviors in an online digital social media environment. First, the authors propose a conceptual framework of consumers’ social media participation. Second, the chapter discusses how this participation affects consumers’ behaviors including their purchases. Finally, the authors present a few econometric challenges associated with modeling consumers’ social media participation and quantifying its impact on their behaviors.

A Semantic Approach to LinkedIn Profiles

Language is essential in allowing us to analyze and make sense of our everyday lives. The development and increased use of social media now means that the way language is structured online can facilitate communication; however, it can also hinder communication. This chapter examines LinkedIn as an example of an online platform which uses verbal and visual linguistic expressions to aid communication. A number of linguistic theories and their impact on LinkedIn as a social media platform are examined. LinkedIn, and its use of user profiles, has been chosen over other social media because it encapsulates the majority of theories presented. The theories are strongly linked to the linguistic background appropriate for the online environment and recommendations and discussions are presented.

Improving Search and Navigation User Experience by Making Use of Social Data

Available user-generated content provides a huge opportunity to contextualize and improve search and navigational processes. Currently, the huge amount of available social data requires that new forms of personalized content indexing be oriented towards a more efficient reuse and retrieval of information. Based on these considerations, this chapter presents a new system that makes use of the social profile of the user, which is automatically extracted and modeled from social network platforms, to improve the search and navigation experience of the user. This proposed system dynamically defines the social context of the user in way that allows it to be positively used to improve his navigational experience. In this chapter, the authors provide a set of visualization tools that permits the user to be immersed in a user-dependent visual space that represented by a set of text boxes that are semantically related to the user query. These boxes represent possible context-aware refinement of the user search interest which are represented through different cohesive set of terms extracted from his social profile. Within this immersive system, at each step, users can deepen their searches by selecting a semantic box that best fits with their needs. This chapter also presents an evaluation aimed at testing the efficiency and the usability of the proposed system and provides real case scenarios and user studies that validate the proposed approach from the user point of view.

Exploring the Properties of Online Social Network Data and Their Implications for Consumer Social Data Analytics

The prediction of consumer behavior is largely based on the analysis of consumer data using statistics as a tool for prediction. Thanks to online social networks, large quantities of heterogeneous consumer data are now available at competitive costs. Though they have much in common with conventional data, online social network datasets display several different properties. The exploration of these unique properties is indispensable to insuring the accuracy of predictions and data analytics. This chapter presents online social data, discusses seven properties of online social network data, suggests some analysis tools, and draws implications regarding the use of social data analytics.

Analytics and Performance Measurement Frameworks for Social Customer Relationship Management

This chapter provides an overview of the analytics and performance measurement frameworks for social customer relationship management (SCRM). Based on a review of academic research and industry practices, the chapter discusses the limitations of traditional CRM, and the technology and analytical capabilities that support SCRM. The chapter also provides a review of existing measurement frameworks for SCRM strategies and outlines the various metrics that have been proposed and/or are currently in use as part of SCRM systems. Furthermore, in view of the opportunities and challenges of big data and the social media environment, the chapter highlights current business practices as well technology and analytics trends that facilitate the implementation and maintenance of SCRM systems.

Integrating Social Media and Traditional CRM

In recent years, marketers have paid lots of attention to a new field called social CRM, created from the combination of social media and traditional customer relationship management (CRM) practices. In the past, traditional CRM practices have mainly focused on the task of valuing individual customers’ profitability through relationship management over time as the proxy of creating the firm’s value. Shifting away from this trend, firms have recently attempted to promote customer engagement into the value creation process as the core of CRM strategy. This chapter proposes conceptual guidelines for the success of social CRM practices, while considering the development of personalized customer engagement programs with social media depending on customer status over the life cycle.