Have you ever thought about the fact that how do advertising companies know about the goods we are interested in and when are we in need of them? The purpose of electronic commerce has grown potentially as has the amount of information being shared through surveillance and profiteering of social media users, ever since the Maddox affair. Data collectors then extract and demonstrate the information collected about their interests and disinterests. Advertisers then use the collected information to demonstrate customer needs and trends.
Since the Maddox affair, Electronic Commerce has grown rapidly along with the flow of information being shared on social media through surveillance and social media users. Information is then used by marketers to predict future needs and trends and thus provide to the consumers. We are continuously being involved in the act of consumerism. Though social media users are exploited to broaden horizons of money mongering marketers, one can argue that consumers have greatly benefited through the growth of e-commerce and the work of being watched as a wide variety of goods and services are now at their fingertips at all times which would not have been possible without e-commerce (Packer, 2018).
Data processors, retailers and advertising companies have their eyes on information being shared on social media forums such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Billions of people around the world use social media. Facebook, for example, reported having 2.38 billion monthly active users and 1.56 billion daily active users as of March 31, 2019 (Facebook 2019). Globally, the total number of social media users is estimated to grow to 3.29 billion users in 2022, which will be 42.3% of the world’s population (eMarketer 2018). Majority of the population is spending most of their time online using social media applications, that is why social media marketers have chosen this platform for advertising. Due to the fast-paced environment and growth of social media the marketers are taking an advantage of it.
Taking control of the information is done by monitoring the users, by doing this the marketers have an idea about the interests and disinterests of customers. Making sure that only their interests appear on their webpage as advertisements.
“The research also aims to serve as an indicator to potential readers (companies) of how they can tab into the decision-making process via social media sites.” (Lee, E. 2013)
Advertising companies also control our mind in a way that we make our decision as soon as possible about the products we’re interested in or were. By collecting the data provided by the consumers to the marketing companies and advertising companies. The companies then provide products that interest the customers. For a long time, the information couldn’t be available to marketers openly. By time, the rise of electronic commerce has been able to access information of consumers.
“Through e-commerce, marketers have at their disposal valuable content which makes their products desirable and profitable” (Packer, 2018).
Marketers sell out quickly and gain more profit by advertising the same product the consumer is interested in again and again. We as customers are uncovered and exposed to surveillance due to the increase of e-commerce. Customers now have access to services they would not have if it wasn’t for e-commerce and surveillance through social media forums such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
“Given the widespread cultural commitments to scientific objectivity, efficiency, rationality and the ease with which one can see, measure and count technologies, it is hardly surprising that the mere existence of more and new technology becomes the only, or primary yardstick of progress.” (Slack, J.D. & Wise, J.M. 2014)
“Americans are exposed to an astounding number of advertising messages every day. The result of this bombardment of advertising on society is that consumers have become increasingly resistant to traditional forms of advertising. After spending millions of dollars on mass advertising that consumers tend to block out and ignore, marketers have re-evaluated their advertising methods and are following holistic marketing concepts that focus on customer relationship marketing and more creative, understated ads instead of in-your-face billboards and loud television segments. This paper explores social media trends, including social media opportunities and mobile marketing, and the potentially lasting effects that these trends have on advertising.” [Source]
The article breaks down the effect social media has on advertisements and the way they are portrayed in the market in a positive and negative way which determines its success and failure; whether social media trends should be altered to determine their success and failure. This article is important because it reflects light on importance of social media to determine the demands of the market trends which is the assumption of online buying and selling.
“Given the widespread cultural commitments to scientific objectivity, efficiency, rationality and the ease with which one can see, measure and count technologies, it is hardly surprising that the mere existence of more and new technology becomes the only, or primary yardstick of progress.”
The article focuses on the agenda that acts as a motivation for surveillance and taking advantage with the help of social media. The article is of relevance because it helps the readers read the way of thinking of businessperson in today’s era which also reflects on how the owners take advantage of social media to endorse there brand and their profits.
“The stock market floatation of Facebook brings together a range of issues in how we understand work and the creation of economic value but we should be careful not to overstate the novelty and conflate the newness of the media with the basic economic logic at work here. As Chris Prener suggests in his post, ‘Facebook may represent a new frontier for work and labor where even leisure activity can be exploited for the generation of profit’, but is this really so new?” [Source]
The article quotes Facebook to highlight the art of being on the watch effects financial value. The article is important because this article explains that we are regularly on the watch and being observed.
This article explores a range of technologies for ‘lateral surveillance’ or peer monitoring arguing that in a climate of perceived risk and savvy skepticism individuals are increasingly adopting practices associated with marketing and law enforcement to gain information about friends, family members, and prospective love interests. The article argues that the adoption of such technologies corresponds with an ideology of ‘responsibilization’ associated with the risk society: that consumers need training in the consumption of services and the development of expertise to monitor one another. Rather than displacing ‘top-down’ forms of monitoring, such practices emulate and amplify them, fostering the internalization of government strategies and their deployment in the private sphere. In an age in which everyone is to be considered potentially suspect, all are simultaneously urged to become spies.”
The article talks about “lateral surveillance” controlled surveillance is popular and marketers are becoming aware of it slowly through social media. The article is important because it sheds light on the type of culture the market is looking for which they use to outlook customer needs.
“Recognizing that privacy rights are complicit in the very forms of economic monitoring and data gathering they ostensibly oppose, this essay offers a critique of corporate surveillance as a technique for exploiting the work of being watched. Consumers who submit to comprehensive surveillance in response to offers of convenience and participation perform valuable work for corporations and marketers. The model of consumer labor developed in the essay is applied to the online economy and the example of interactive TV. The analysis suggests that a critical approach to forms of surveillance facilitated by interactive media must focus on the asymmetries of power and control over information technologies and resources.” [Source]
The article explains that people who use social media are regularly interacting in “work of being watched” moreover the article also concentrates on the fact that social media surveillance is also a way of promoting brands on the internet. The article is relevant because it sheds light on the fact that social media users are being watched all the time and their personal information is in the hands of the brands and the companies are taking an advantage of it.
“The research also aims to serve as an indicator to potential readers (companies) of how they can tab into the decision-making process via social media sites.”
The article sheds light on the fact that due to the high demand of social media users nowadays the marketers have an idea of what customers like and what they dislike. The article is important because it talks about how the information is gathered from customers with the help of social media and then the information is used to sell items.
If Internet is treated as a single invention, it is certainly the most important human invention in human history. Internet has developed into a versatile and universal worldwide communication tool that fundamentally transformed our lives. In the beginning, Internet was primarily a static one-direction information dissemination tool, which is basically an electronic version of newspapers, TV, or radio. However, in the era of web 2.0, everything has been changed. Web has becoming more flexible and the user-generated, which makes human interaction on virtual spaces very convenient. As such, Internet itself has evolving into a social media, and therefore, becomes a very important marketing tool. Social media per se is not a new concept at all. All human beings must always engage in social networks unless he lives in solitude. Any means, places, or tools that help human beings to form family, friendships, beliefs, or other social relationships can be broadly defined as social media. However, in this era of Web 2.0, social media are actually usually referred to any social networking websites, apps, or services that can help us to share our social networks with other people.
First and foremost, the essence of social media marketing is the multi-directional transmission of information. As such, a company can initiate or manage the social media marketing, but can never fully control it. In other words, the power to communicate is shared by the company and users. Whilst it’s always beneficial for a business to get feedback from end-consumers, a company using social media marketing has to abdicate some of its power to the public. If a customer has bad user experience, he may be compelled to share his unsatisfied experience on the company’s social network profile. As such, the actual campaign may backfire and hurt the marketer. As such, a social media marketer must have a contingent damage control strategy to handle negative feedback immediately, before the bad comments go viral and run the brand.
Few marketers in this Internet era dispute that social media is just “fuss or buzz”. However, many companies do not think or feel that there is a “must have” social media platform that they have to embrace in the near future. They believe social media is a ‘nice to have’ adds-on, which implementation depends on marketing budget and goals Such myth lies upon the difficulty to measure the success, or the lack of, of social media marketing using traditional metrics. Every businessman knows the famous joke of John Wanamaker, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” As the early pioneering in marketing, he is well recognized for his insight on the difficulty in measuring success of marketing and advertisement.
The success of socially media is absolutely stunning and universal. Everyone, from college geeks living in dorms, to business people, to celebrities, to politicians has embraced this paradigm of communication. Some even believe Social media have played a major role in aiding the Barack Obama won the presidential election in 2008. Despite the above difficulties and pitfalls, social media is still the future of our company’s marketing. As you might be aware, numerous corporations have reaped greatly improved positive brand awareness and increased sales from social media campaign. Viral marketing has moved on from being about posting videos on YouTube.
2020-3-5-1583386941
NB : We have endeavoured to split up the quoted source material from the student’s words but it has proved difficult, since the student used quotation marks in all the wrong places. Please take care and check any quotes you do use.