Literature Review (extract)
Regardless the generalizability, the popularity and the sociability of social media, some choose not to actively engage in Web 2.0 websites. There is not much studies in examining the reasons of not participating, but in the another way round, one empirical research from Al-Debei, Al-Lozi, & Papazafeiropoulou (2013) found that the perceived value gained from continuous participation further leads to a more continuance participation of users. The same positive result attains in the study of interdependence between Facebook’s usage and students’ life satisfaction and social trust of students. (Valenzuela, Park, & Kee, 2009).
i)Trust
A step before achieving loyalty is the gain of trust from consumers. (1.) Regarding to the reliance of social media on Internet for diffusion, it is reasonable to make reference to past studies about internet trust with the review of social media trust in here. With the uncertainty and easy accessibility and entry for internet, e-commerce to be exact, there is a perceived risk that social media is an unreliable, manipulative and dishonest marketplace or platform, which further address the importance of developing trust among customers. Consumer will not pay attention on everything the company promote and claim and eventually turn away when there is issue in trusting a brand from its social media performance. ( ) Thus, it is important for a brand to communicate sincerely and with certain transparency ( ). With the study concerning loyalty (Reichheld & Schefter,2000), it recommends that a company should act in customers’ the best interests in order to earn trust. It has to carefully consider and be aware of the posts uploaded. To put this, the company should ensure realistic communication and make a lot of information available which could be verified in real term as promised, like providing real product image with truth description, on its media sites to show their reliability of every posts on social media site and to engage customers as they are more well informed. A research (Mangold & Faulds ,2009 ) indicates that consumers would discuss about the brand more when they are well informed and be confident with its trustworthiness- the world of mouth (WOM) issue , which will be talked about in below.
In fact, the relationship between trust and WOM cannot be ignored. Another study by Grönroos (2000) suggests that effectively and sincerely responding to customer complaints and inquiries,as well as asking consumers about their preferences and views on the social media platforms, is crucial in leading to the development of trust and hence long-term relationship, thus ,company should deal with customer feedback actively. According to Reichheld & Sasser (1990), Bentley(1999) and Thatcher & George, (2004), since long term relationship is successfully grasped, both consumer loyalty and the likeliness of them advising the brand within their network increase.
ii) Socialbility
Sociability, as implied from the name of‘social media’, is one of the key functions of it where community and connectedness are the two features that best illustrate this function. (Spannerworks,2008). With the virtual communities created, there always are groups of different people sharing the similar ethnicity and culture and value. Compared with the offline WOM, they bring out a more influential and far-reaching online WOM effect, which is known as eWOM, the distribution of information among users within the community is frequent. A past study by Yang, Mai, & Ben-Ur(2011) displays the power of authority or expertise by proving that they could actually provoke more attention, consultations and trust within members in the community. The impact of it needs to be further investigated.Another characteristic, connectedness or online tie, is tightly linked to the perceptions and usage of social media platforms of a user. The stronger the social media tie the person is, the more credible is its information provided. (Riedl, Köbler, Goswami, & Krcmar, 2013).
iii) Technology Acceptance Model
Content analysis-observation data
Starbucks and Facebook are mutually connected because there are number of activities that Starbucks realizes through Facebook and also number of purposes it’s using it for. Here is a short description of the whole story.
• Starbucks is using Facebook as a way to communicated and share content with the public. For that reason it engages in the so called Megaphone function
o • Connects with 15+ million fans making it the largest corporate fan page
o • Updates fans via a users’ news feed, including promotions (e.g., Free Pastry Day), cause marketing (e.g., Love Project, Day of Service), firm-posted videos and images
o • Offers discussions on topics Starbucks wants to encourage
o • Allows patrons to load Starbucks payment cards
o • Provides a platform to share photos, video, and news of upcoming events
• Starbucks is using Facebook as a way to attract new customers and initiate dialog between the existing ones. That function is called Magnet and consist of the following actions
• • Draws praise, complaints, support requests, and product suggestions
• • Focuses attention on the firm’s wall, where content can be managed
• • Attracts over 15 million fans
• • Lets customers comment on Starbucks messages in user news feeds
• • Provides an easy way for customers to opt-in to Megaphone messages
Finally Starbucks is using Facebook as way to monitor the social media behavior of the consumers, bringing to its own attention different interactions of the consumers. It manages to mediate those interactions if not publicly than at least privately.
• • Measures exposure, showing user activity and demographics, and demonstrating campaign-related actions (e.g., click-throughs, page visits or “Likes”)
• • Indicates trends involving users who ignored content or who have chosen to stop following as a fan
• • Catalyzes consumer-to-consumer conversation, with “Likes” and news feed comments visible in a fan’s friend base, generating more conversation
• • Stimulates discussion among users; everyone can see and comment on the wall posts that are made within the forums.