In the Web2.0 Era, Social Media Marketing Brings Business Opportunities to Enterprises ()
1. Introduction
Today, we’re in the web2.0 era. Different from one-way information delivery mode with web1.0, the content of the web site in the web2.0 era is often the users; users are the content of visitors and also site content makers. This also means that the web site provides users with more opportunities to participate in, for example blog and wiki are the guiding ideology of the typical user generated content, and the tag technology (user Settings TAB) to classify the information in the traditional web site directly to the user to complete the work.
And as statistics shows, about 83% of Fortune 500 companies communicate with consumers in the form of social media. In addition, more and more marketers will make social media as part of the promotion mix enterprise microblogging page has become a common marketing channel, and its importance is increasing. The research found that, regardless of the type of social media, the word-of-mouth information of the products will have a significant impact on consumers’ shopping decisions.
Facebook, a leading social media platform, has more than a billion active users (Facebook Newsroom, 2017) [1]. Thus, network marketing has shifted from traditional media to social media; e-commerce occupies a more and more important position in economic activities with the continuous development of web 2.0 technology and the widespread application; social media gradually become a place where consumers can easily share their shopping experience and lessons after shopping, and persuade others by sharing useful information to realize their self-worth. Nowadays, digitalization has been gradually integrated into our life. The boom in e-commerce has led many companies and traditional stores to start online business development and digital marketing to meet the needs of the new era. Under the influence of digitalization, the traditional mode of influence between consumers and enterprises has been reshaped. Digitalization, especially social media, is believed to change consumer behavior (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010) [2]. More and more consumers spend time online and start to use social media (Forrester Research, 2008; Nielsen, 2012) [3]. Different from traditional ways, individuals today can use YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and so on, to connect together. There is no doubt that, by using platforms, people are able to show themselves easily. In addition, it is worth mentioning that in the traditional way, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that do not have sufficient funds and resources for promotion can now use these social media to have a brand new way to show themselves and achieve an unexpectedly better display effect. It should be noted that digital channels play a very important role for brands and SMEs should fully exploit the potential of using new digital tools. As an important part of the world economy, the importance of SMEs cannot be ignored. In addition, it is not difficult to find that digital marketing and social media provide new opportunities for SMEs to attract customers. Generally speaking, the marketing of SMEs is characterized by unorganized and unplanned. With the injection of the new generation of young people with more professional management education, the formal marketing planning of SMEs will undoubtedly increase. Digital marketing is a new marketing strategy, and it makes the original traditional marketing under the impact. It can be divided into one-way digital media and two-way digital media. Traditional advertising is a one-way digital media, while email is a two-way digital media because the response of customers can be accepted and responded by enterprises. The rise of social media, there is no doubt that the relationship between the customers and the market has changed, this is because the power has been shifting from the marketing personnel to the hands of customers (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010) [4]. It is worth noting that in social media, the audiences expect not sales and marketing information, but the authenticity of information based on the brand communication (Christodoulides, 2009; Weinberg and Pehlivan, 2011) [5]. It can be said that Internet brands are about “soft selling”, co-creating value and managing customer relationships, rather than directly driving sales. (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2010; Rowley, 2008) [6]. Social media is an important part of organization marketing and branding (Bruhn et al., 2012) [7]. According to the United States, Britain and Australia more than 7000 consumer research (Spenner and Freeman, 2012) [8], marketers focus too much on network social connections with the customers. However, facts show that consumers have little or no interest in developing social relationships with marketers that go beyond commodity trading. Generally speaking, large enterprises are more likely to have sufficient resources and knowledge to successfully adopt new relevant digital tools and digital channels (Barnes et al., 2012) [9]. The lack of financial resources is generally regarded as an obstacle to the growth of SMEs (Cooper et al., 1994; Federico et al., 2012; Gilbert et al., 2006) [10] will also hinder its use of digital channels. Although digital marketing has no variable costs under ideal conditions, its fixed costs still exist and are unaffordable for most SMEs. Marketing in a new, dynamic environment can produce surprising labor intensity, because new forms of conversational communication require constant attention and engagement and require novelty and content creation.
2. Theoretical Assumptions and Conceptual Models
2.1. Stimuli-Organism-Response
According to the Stimuli-Organism-Response theory, environmental factors can also be seen as a kind of stimulus information, and it will affect the individual cognitive and emotional, thus further influence individual behavior Mehrabian (1974) [11], and other stimulus is defined as the influence factors of individual will evoke emotion. Under the background of electronic commerce, stimulus can be embodied in website design, such as word of mouth communication refers to the individual body internal state, including the cognitive and emotional system, such as individual perception, physical, emotional, psychological activities and so on. Feedback embodied in individual reactions include attitudes and behavioral responses, such as buying behavior, online communication behavior, adoption behavior on the basis of the theoretical framework S-O-R, will stimulate information is defined as e-commerce sites and social media sites of two kinds of different factors (namely the relationship between strength and number of social cues) body defined by word of mouth the receiver response to the perceived credibility of word of mouth information refers to the word of mouth the recipient after considering the word-of-mouth information on product purchase intention
2.2. Fine Processing Possibility Theory
Elaboration Likelihood Model, ELM is a widely used dual process theory, it explains the attitude change is composed of two the effort degree caused by the different information processing. According to this theory, the dissemination and acceptance of information are two ways to achieve the purpose of persuasion; Path 1 is the central route, which is mainly used by individuals to carry out detailed and logical careful thinking on the subject information, thus leading to the change of attitude. Path is peripheral path (peripheral route), mainly through individual peripheral information to realize the change of attitude of information to the individual’s choice of path mainly depends on the individual level of refinement (elaboration) fine degree refers to the individual through the center path of information processing ability and motivation, namely when individuals have an incentive and have the ability to process information, tend to choose more cognitive effort is needed at the center of the path.
When people have the ability to process information, and have a strong desire to deal with, they will choose the center path requiring effort. And what businesses need to do is to let the audience have the motivation. Audiences’ capacity is a subjective factor, merchants can’t change, but as long as the use of social media strategy, can well solve the problem of motivation, this is undoubtedly an important means of marketing. However, when individuals lack motivation or the ability to process information, will tend to peripheral path in the face of different brands and judgment word-of-mouth credibility in the different reputation platform choice of path is not the same.
2.3. The Development of E-Commerce Reputation
With the continuous development of e-commerce, online review, a new form of e-commerce word-of-mouth, has emerged and has been continuously improved in the subsequent development. Nowadays, it has been widely used, and many enterprises take it as an important indicator to conduct detailed and in-depth research. Based on this, they can conduct customer analysis and understand customers’ preferences and interests, so as to formulate more effective development plans to attract audiences. Should note that on the original model of development, the company about the design of the electronic commerce network also should use the online review, etc., such as web designer can through product comments relevant function module design strengthen commenters and vendors, critics and reviewers with stable customers and potential customers to communicate between makes potential customers in the process of interaction for the self awareness and credibility of the brand. It can be seen that consumers do not have a strong sense of e-commerce word-of-mouth. Different from traditional social media, e-commerce word-of-mouth information is still in the stage of development, and consumers do not have a high level of cognition. In this context, on the basis of continuous self-improvement and functional enhancement, the managers of e-commerce websites should cooperate with traditional social media managers to encourage consumers to share shopping experience, recommend relevant high-quality products and conduct online publicity related to product information. In addition, it is necessary to make proper use of publicity. For some low-risk and cheap commodities, merchants should pay more attention to the analysis of commodity review information instead of investing too much capital resources in the word-of-mouth information promotion on social media. Because consumers tend to ask people around them for their opinions on low-priced products, the comments of customers who have already bought relevant products at this time are of great reference significance. Through these comments, consumers and merchants can gain a lot of convenience. It not only enables consumers to get purchase suggestions, but also enables merchants to get real and effective feedback. By virtue of this, products can be optimized to better obtain more customers. In this way, the reputation of e-commerce gradually moves towards the mainstream. It can be predicted that in the current era of high-speed Internet development, the reputation of e-commerce will continue to develop and improve and bring new vitality to marketing.
3. Statistical Analysis
YouTube is an audio, video, text and image site that can share videos, so it can be classified as social media. Today’s web2.0 era is different from web1.0. Social networking and online video have become new contents of the Internet, bringing new ways of online surfing. As a video sharing website, YouTube has always been in a dominant position in the field of Internet video. As early as 2013, its American viewers watched 48 billion videos in a single month, ranking first among all kinds of video websites in the United States. YouTube has developed a platform strategy, building channels to strengthen its market position. It strongly supports users to make and upload videos by themselves, and expands the diversity of subjects through self-development, so that it has diversified video clusters. It not only innovates on traditional social media, but also has an impact on traditional television. Specifically, YouTube adds an important channel for traditional TV stations and opens channels for TV stations to internationalize and achieve transnational competition. Now, major brands have also released advertisements on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to promote themselves with words, pictures or videos, and build their own reputation through the new Internet platforms in the era of web2.0, so as to gain more subscriptions and more stable consumers. And on the platform, with thumb up, sharing and comments and other diversified functions, businesses and audiences can communicate, and both sides can achieve their own goals on the platform.
Now, we choose Pandora and Swarovski, for example. Pandora and Swarovski have their own marketing models as jewelers, and we only compare them in terms of their marketing on YouTube.
The data about the frequency in 2018 and 2019 of how many times Pandora post on YouTube to some extent show one company’s strategy about absorbing target audiences attention.
More specifically, as the table shows Pandora doesn’t post as much as its competitor Swarovski. For Pandora, it posted nearly 3 times a month in 2019 and 2018 on YouTube. For Swarovski it posted nearly 18 times a month in 2019 and 2018 on YouTube.
However, compared with Swarovski, Pandora has much more followers. How can this happen? The research on Swarovski’s posting finds that Swarovski tends to post the same video for many times or it usually posts the same series videos. These videos are not the same, but they have the same topic. They have connections between each other.
It is not hard to see that Swarovski hopes to attract more people’s attention through the number and frequency of its video posts on YouTube. But in fact, Swarovski’s strategy did not work out as expected, having 48,910 subscribers, nearly 20,000 fewer than Pandora.
4. Discussion
YouTube is an audio, video, text and image site that can share videos, so it can be classified as social media. Today’s web2.0 era is different from web1.0. Social networking and online video have become new contents of the Internet, bringing new ways of online surfing. As a video sharing website, YouTube has always been in a dominant position in the field of Internet video. As early as 2013, its American viewers watched 48 billion videos in a single month, ranking first among all kinds of video websites in the United States. YouTube has developed a platform strategy, building channels to strengthen its market position. It strongly supports users to make and upload videos by themselves, and expands the diversity of subjects through self-development, so that it has diversified video clusters. It not only innovates on traditional social media, but also has an impact on traditional television. Specifically, YouTube adds an important channel for traditional TV stations and opens channels for TV stations to internationalize and achieve transnational competition. Now, major brands have also released advertisements on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to promote themselves with words, pictures or videos, and build their own reputation through the new Internet platforms in the era of web2.0, so as to gain more subscriptions and more stable consumers. And on the platform, with thumb up, sharing and comments and other diversified functions, businesses and audiences can communicate, and both sides can achieve their own goals on the platform.
Now, we choose Pandora and Swarovski, for example. Pandora and Swarovski have their own marketing models as jewelers, and we only compare them in terms of their marketing on YouTube.
The data about the frequency in 2018 and 2019 of how many times Pandora post on YouTube to some extent show one company’s strategy about absorbing target audiences attention.
More specifically, as the table shows Pandora doesn’t post as much as its competitor Swarovski. For Pandora, it posted nearly 3 times a month in 2019 and 2018 on YouTube. For Swarovski it posted nearly 18 times a month in 2019 and 2018 on YouTube.
However, compared with Swarovski, Pandora has much more followers. How can this happen? The research on Swarovski’s posting finds that Swarovski tends to post the same video many times or it usually posts the same series videos. These videos are not the same, but they have the same topic. They have connections between each other.
It is not hard to see that Swarovski hopes to attract more people’s attention through the number and frequency of its video posts on YouTube. But in fact, Swarovski’s strategy did not work out as expected, having 48,910 subscribers, nearly 20,000 fewer than Pandora.
5. Conclusions
Result revealed that not only desire was needed, self-brand congruity and self-referencing are also exerted significant effect on audiences’ purchase intention. The results are supported by the theoretical concepts of self-brand congruity (Sirgy, 1982) [12], self-referencing (Ahn et al., 2017; Escalas, 2007) [13], and extant literature on humor in advertising (Weinberger and Gulas, 1992; Sternthal and Craig, 1973) [14].
And simultaneously, branded content can be transmitted through social media at a much faster rate and to a larger, more engaged and responsive audience, at fractions of the cost of traditional media advertisements (Quesenberry, 2015).
They share their opinions and experiences, either satisfaction or discontent on corporate social media pages, establishing social media as a powerful electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) forum with the capability to reach a massive audience in a matter of seconds (Marken, 2007). Prior research has effectively demonstrated the effects of eWOM on purchase decision-making and attitude change (Duan, Gu, & Whinston, 2008; Jansen, Zhang, Sobel, & Chowdury, 2009).
So if companies want to open their markets to have more followers, they need to have good reputation, which is not just the traditional word of mouth (WOM), but electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). To attract people, business can put hot triggers in the path to motivate people (Fogg Design Mantra). Taking Facebook and YouTube as examples to further concrete analysis, today, social media are where the people are, and that is the primary reason for corporations to invest the time and money to communicate with consumers on social media (Kabani, 2013). Facebook, a leading social media platform, has more than a billion active users (Facebook Newsroom, 2017). Various businesses on platform put Hot Triggers in the path of Motivated People. It is not difficult to find that on YouTube, we can often see a large number of videos that have some characteristics: they have vivid music, vivid pictures. This is the psychological level of the receiver’s visual, auditory mobilization, affecting the user’s mood. Therefore, the vividness of the images in the video and its content create a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship. The interaction between image and content produces stronger emotions that attract more attention and may have more lasting effects. For the hyperlink of the video, the user will regard it as a hint, reflecting the interactive consciousness of the source. Sharing similar content through hyperlinks further improves interaction with users. The same can be said of Facebook, where a post with a graphic photo is undoubtedly more eye-catching, and companies can do more research to reach more potential customers. It is worth noting that excessive hyperlinks may make users reluctant to share and become a burden. Marketers should master the skills to make marketing appropriate.
For instance, they put links, images and other content in the path of people who want to see it. In this way, a lot more people are attracted, and then they become potential audiences.
Companies need to know readers’ motivation to find methods to make them full of passion about products. Luckily with today’s social media, a company can easily find its motivated audiences. For example, on Facebook, if readers leave comments, give a like, or share ads with others, these behaviors can be an important indicator to show their motivation. The motivation of audiences is really powerful. It makes all the difference if they want to see companies adding or they don’t. If they are motivated, all companies have to do is to find a way to put hot triggers in their path.
And on YouTube, links can be hot triggers to influence YouTube users. If people are watching a video that they find quite interesting, at this time links about the similar and related videos are added in the videos. In this case, there is a high probability that audiences will choose to click on the link to get more interesting information they want to know. Hot triggers give these recipients of network information more control. These triggers are effective, and with these links, audiences would watch much more related videos, increasing video views, making videos and video makers much more popular.