Social Media Harvard Business Case
Social Media
March 18, 2014
Social media is a new marketing tool for businesses to interact with their customers in ways that deepen the communication that was not possible before. In addition, it is a relatively inexpensive platform for an organization to implement marketing campaigns. Based on this platform, businesses become more transparent and consumers have the control of the marketing message.
Pros:
1. Lower hard cost compared to traditional marketing, such as direct sales, printing, radio, television, mail and etc.
2. Able to gather quick, diversified, honest and detailed feedback from large amounts of customers in different market segmentations, reaching out to customers in different cities or countries in terms of geographic segmentations and getting feedback from various income level individuals in terms of the demographic segmentation.
3. Contribute to build brand loyalty. Social media can boost one’s reputation and through keeping in touch with customers on this platform, interact with consumers to satisfy what their needs and wants, in return to get customer loyalty.
Cons:
1. Companies utilizing social media have to potentially take the risk of loss of control of the information. Negative information that can harm a company’s reputation can be posted on social media spaces, whereby Home Depot can serve as a prime example of this. The company’s lack of sufficient engagement in their social media spaces presents the opportunity for negative comments about the company’s prices and services to be posted on such spaces.
2. Another potential disadvantage of social media is its time consuming nature. In essence, companies must constantly engage in “online conversation,” constantly feeding social media pages with interesting comments to increase the consumer’s level of interest. Thus, companies must create these discussions, and monitor the space constantly.
How has social media changed the marketing landscape?
March 18, 2014
Social media is a new marketing tool for businesses to interact with their customers in ways that deepen the communication that was not possible before. In addition, it is a relatively inexpensive platform for an organization to implement marketing campaigns. Based on this platform, businesses become more transparent and consumers have the control of the marketing message.
Pros:
1. Lower hard cost compared to traditional marketing, such as direct sales, printing, radio, television, mail and etc.
2. Able to gather quick, diversified, honest and detailed feedback from large amounts of customers in different market segmentations, reaching out to customers in different cities or countries in terms of geographic segmentations and getting feedback from various income level individuals in terms of the demographic segmentation.
3. Contribute to build brand loyalty. Social media can boost one’s reputation and through keeping in touch with customers on this platform, interact with consumers to satisfy what their needs and wants, in return to get customer loyalty.
Cons:
1. Companies utilizing social media have to potentially take the risk of loss of control of the information. Negative information that can harm a company’s reputation can be posted on social media spaces, whereby Home Depot can serve as a prime example of this. The company’s lack of sufficient engagement in their social media spaces presents the opportunity for negative comments about the company’s prices and services to be posted on such spaces.
2. Another potential disadvantage of social media is its time consuming nature. In essence, companies must constantly engage in “online conversation,” constantly feeding social media pages with interesting comments to increase the consumer’s level of interest. Thus, companies must create these discussions, and monitor the space constantly.
How has social media changed the marketing landscape?