Notesale: Turn your study into money

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St Edmund Hall
Critically consider the extent to which developments in Twitter are acting as
drivers of customer retention and engagement for firms
As of July 2014, Twitter had over 500 million users – a consumer number to catch
any marketer’s eye
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However, with the power of Facebook coming to
light through events such as political and social protests in Israel in 2008, much of
which was organized and spread through the social networking site, the ease of use of
Twitter and its huge use by consumers identifies it as an influential tool for firms
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The
thesis I am presenting in this essay is that it is clear firms have recognized the
potential of Twitter to drive customer retention and engagement, however the lack of
uniformity across firms and industries suggests that the best way to harness this power
is yet to be discovered
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The conceptual shift in the role of firms over the last decade has been slow, however
the management of customer relationships has now become a top priority for many
companies
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For example, Lays’ crisps asked their customers to develop a new flavour
in a firm-run contest, with the winner receiving 1% of the turnover of the resulting
product – such customer involvement is expected over time to increase loyalty for the
brand and therefore profits in the long run
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She proposes that customer engagement essentially involves
three steps, taking a new customer through to being loyal and committed to the brand
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These customers are
proposed to rely on a piecemeal, attribute based approach of evaluation, which
focuses on identifying the utility that the new service brand offers
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This shifts
evaluation of the brand to being more relational and heuristic, as customers tend to
evaluate recent service expectations in the light of previous experiences and engage in
cognitive complacency
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To have customers in this
state is the goal of many firms, as it is commonly believed to lead to increased Word
of Mouth (WOM) recommendations, higher profits, market share and return on
investment
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While this echoes what has been said above,
what is important for us to consider is how firms can encourage such involvement
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The key to success is to provide customers with non-standardised service experiences
that convey a sense of relationship-based reciprocity
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The ways in which
‘extras’ can be created, attention and participation can be given and encouraged, and
relationships can be fostered has become considerably easier since the introduction of
the internet, and the set-up of Twitter, where brands essentially have online personas
and can communicate and respond to their followers, is an ideal platform for this to
take place
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These firms range in their
industry and their use of the platform – from Government Agencies like the US
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who have been using Twitter to provide
updates regarding the H1N1 situation, to the US Army using it for recruitment
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Jet Blue watches and listens to
blogs for market research, while Zaphos makes personal connections among
employees and with customers, promoting their own corporate culture
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The most diverse in terms of
these are general retailers, commercial banks, computer and IT firms, and food and
drug stores, who all exhibit three or more of these categories
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The use of Twitter as a promotion
mechanism extends beyond firms and into individuals – Edwards and Obama
integrated Twitter into their campaigns for the Democratic Party Presidential
Primaries in 2008, and Aharony (2010) has looked into the tweeting behaviours of
three politicl leaders, David Cameron (UK), Barack Obama (USA) and Benjamin
Netanyahu (Israel)
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Between
August and October 2010, the majority of the three leaders’ tweets fell into the
information category (Cameron 93
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15%, Obama 45
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Twitter is thought to be a useful tool for political heads
particularly, as it allows them to reach those people who are inaccessible through
traditional news media and provides them with the ability to influence public opinion
and response on a massive scale
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The range of page descriptions found by Case
and King (2011), with firms like Dell attempting to build a community, and banks
like Bank of America focusing on service issues, suggests a lack of uniformity that is
indicative of there being no best practice found as of yet
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In Aharony’s study, Obama was the only political leader to
create dialogue with people through retweets, but this interaction can be taken
considerably further
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com), interaction can also be
fostered through tweet conversations and the use of hashtags, which inevitably
increase consumer involvement
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A relatively untapped
strategy by the larger firms is that of parasocial relationships, built on the interaction
between a media user and the media being consumed, the ‘lurkers’ of online
communities
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Viewers often feel like they know and understand the persona in
the same way that they do their real friends, based on belief that the persona is like
other people in their own social circle
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In the case of television shows, viewing
episodes becomes ritualistic in nature to maintain the relationship, and viewers may
buy memoriabilia or write to actors in order to keep the ‘friendship’ in tact
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In the case of brand pages, the
maintenance of the relationship would almost certainly lead to consumption related
behaviour, and increase the loyalty and commitment users show to the firm
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Whether the use of social networking sites like this is useful or not is yet to be
decided
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If firms are aiming to retain customers,
locking them into affective commitment, the formation of parasocial interactions to
create ‘extras’ for customers, afford them attention and encourage participation is I
think the best way to move customers away from calculative commitment, and
towards loyalty
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References
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Bowden, J
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(2009)
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Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 17(1), 63–74
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(2012)
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Online Information Review, 36(4), 587-603
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J
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L
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Twitter usage in the fortune 50: A
marketing opportunity? Journal of Marketing Development and
Competitiveness, 5(3), 94-102
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C
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J
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(2010)
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Journal of Service
Research,13(3), 247-252
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W
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A
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(2005)
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Advances in Consumer Research, 32(1), 197–202

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