Proposal on Consumer-Brand Relationship in the Social Media Age
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The study is to investigate the following objectives
- To examine the benefits consumers perceive through the use of social media
- To investigate the speedy communication between organizations and the consumers
- To investigate the extent to which consumers patronize organizational media platforms for product information
Chapter Two
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Social Media
Many aspects of digital world are yet to be assigned a clean-cut definition due to the technology’s vagueness and its rapidly changing existence. Therefore, tremendous definitions have been proposed regarding social media, and we will depict quite a few. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue (Baruah, 2012). Marketo (2010) described social media as the production, consumption and exchange of information through online social interactions and platforms. Because the phenomena of social media did not replace anything, it is hard to define social media as it is, however, Kahlow (2009) summarized the concept of social media in a very simple way that he defined it as a user controlled media. A notable conceptualization made by Kaplan & Haenlein (2010:61) associating social media with digital technology, and they describe social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content.” Conforming to Kaplan & Haenlein (2010) definition, Web 2.0 aggregated a basis for social media along with other technological improvements. The term Web 2.0 is defined as a network, “spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an “architecture of participation,” and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.” (O’Reilly, 2007: 17). Although Web 2.0 seems to highlight an update over Web 1.0 by term itself, it is rather a change in usage of web sites. This interactive, open source and user controlled change improved web experience, collaboration, knowledge and market power of the users as participants in business (Kim & Ko, 2012). Web 2.0 has introduced the following activities to the Internet users: (1) a shift in locus of activity from the desktop to the Web, (2) a shift in locus of value production from the firm to the consumer, (3) a shift in the locus of power away from the firm to the consumer, (4) creation of informal users’ networks facilitating the flow of ideas, information, knowledge, and (5) promoting innovation and creativity by allowing the efficient generation, dissemination, sharing and editing of content (Berthon et al., 2012; Kim & Ko, 2012). Web 1.0 era applications such as web pages, encyclopedia pages, and other content publishing online environments replaced by blogs, wikis, and collaborative projects in era of Web 2.0 and social media (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Dialog and social networking allow the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming individuals from content consumers to content producers (Constantinides, 2014). Since the introduction of social media, the growth of social media has been near exponential, new platforms start to appear day by day. Therefore, it is essential to take into account such a classification scheme. According to Kaplan & Haenlein (2010), social media can be classified best by combining two different theories arguably media research (social presence, media richness) and social processes (self-presentation, self-disclosure). Moreover, social media zones can be categorized as the following: (1) Blogs, (2) social networking sites, (3) virtual social worlds, (4) collaborative projects, (5) content communities, and (6) virtual game worlds (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Brand related social media classification is available in the literature. Martins & Patrı´cio (2013) emphasize the difference between online brand communities and social media brand pages, and introduces company social networks, which is alluded to brand fan pages in the literature (Kunz, 2012; Leeflang et al., 2012). This study focuses on brand fan pages and consumer interactions with the brand via brand fan pages. Unlike in brand communities, members of brand fan pages are also connected to their friends who may not be fan of the particular brand (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). This indicates that brand fan pages can be a determinant of a possible consumer-brand relationship by emphasizing member’s selfidentity. Brand fan pages are used as a medium of brand communication (Jahn & Kunz, 2012) where brands offer product oriented activities and content (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014a) including promotions (Sung et al., 2010). Furthermore, consumers interacted with brand fan pages are more likely to be loyal to the brand (Bagozzi & Dholakia, 2006; Kunz, 2012).
Consumer-Brand Relationship in Social Media
The theory of consumer-brand relationship has given a new direction in branding theory (e.g., Fournier, 1998; Franzen, 1999). Brands act as a mediator between organizations and customers, which establishes a long-term relationship (Aaker, 1996; Fournier, 1998; Keller, 1993). This long-term relationship refers to consumer-brand relationship in previous studies (Duncan & Moriarty, 1998; Fournier, 1998; Franzen, 1999). According to Chang and Chieng (2006:935) consumer–brand relationship is defined as “the tie between a person and a brand that is voluntary or is enforced interdependently between the person and the brand”. Their definition is mostly based on Blackston (1993) proposing that cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes prevail between consumers and brands through the combination of the processes. Alternatively, Fournier (1998) relates consumer-brand relationship to interpersonal relationships. Subsequently, in the consumption context, consumer-brand relationship can be highlighted as a win-win partnership that provides mutual benefits for both consumers and brands (Park & Lee, 2005). The growing literature has adopted brand relationship quality (BRQ) model of Fournier (1998) to measure the strength of a brand related interactions between consumers and brands.
Chapter Three
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
The researcher used descriptive research survey design in building up this project work. The choice of this research design was considered appropriate because of its advantages of identifying attributes of a large population from a group of individuals. The design was suitable for the study as the study sought to examine Consumer-brand relationship in a social media age
METHOD OF DATA ANALYSIS
The researcher will employ oral and direct interview in administering this research questions. Responses from the respondents were needed unlike questionnaires, which is less rewarding due to late receipt and loss of responses from respondents. The method of data analysis used by the researcher is the simple percentage. More so, percentage and degrees of the responses will also be used in the analysis. Here, the ratio of those whose responses were not in the affirmative will be found and conclusions will be drawn there upon. Representations of the level of responses will be made in tabular form.
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