2.1 Marketing through Social Network
In this decade,internet is the best medium to communicate ,entertain and inform facts about products,there are no limits regarding online advertisement especially though social media (Mittun Duta , 2013).Social media have successfully invade into the mechanics of our everyday life,effecting the conditions and rules of social interactions.(Jose Van Dijk & Thomas Poell , 2013)The internet has generated three categories of advertising.Display or Banner Ads made their early appearances in a graphical box structure on web pages,but nowadays we can incorporate videos on websites and social platforms easily(Mittun Duta 2013).Through this new marketing scheme, marketers can transmit their information to a large scale by providing less effort than other media (Mrinal, 2008).The word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing in social media and traditional marketing have seem to be effective in different ways and the WOM marketing is actually derived from traditional marketing that started from many years ago and experienced by large amount of people from gen x and above before internet was even recognisable.However,as time goes into the 4th industrial revolution,communications have moved to social media,people from different continents could communicate each other from just a click away via various platforms.Therefore,chances that word of mouth to go from places to places on the online platform like Instagram,Facebook and social media are higher and faster compared to traditional marketing..On the other hand,the word of mouth in social platforms are trackable,and can even be controlled.Like Facebook ads,sellers can decide to which group of people they want to send out their ads to.Unlike before,during the old times,the marketing is spread out evenly to all sorts of people without filters (Michael,Randolph. & Koen, 2008).Companies put a high value on marketing communication as a tool to empower and manage their bond with the market and stakeholders of the company(Annamaria Esposito ,2013)When firms increase their social media activity,the importance of content marketing has become more important(Dokyun Lee ,Kartik Hosanagar ,Harikesh S. Nair , 2017).From the article referred to,the author employed a Vector Autogression (VAR) modelling approach.It has been estimated that mouth referrals have substantially longer-lasting effects rather than traditional marketing actions.Practitioners have recently been attracted to WOM marketing technique as it is a viable alternative to traditional marketing communication tools.It has been called as one of the world’s most effective yet less understood marketing strategy. (Michael,Randolph. & Koen, 2008).Due to the the synergistic and co-creativeness of public network, the implications of brand engagement can be seen briefly through the key social media usage metrics that involves expressions of agreement,ratings,responds, impressions,and shares (Barger and Labrecque, 2013)
Social media is a relatively modern marketing phenomenon and there is thus a technique for how engagement should be created, tracked, and measured (Barger and Labrecque, 2013, Schivinski et al., 2016).Effecting the traditional forms of communication that has appear to be losing its effectiveness towards the gen y ,z and millennials as they have different expectations,standards and demand towards modern marketing.They are more attracted to entertainment based media and advertisements.60% disagreed that advertisements are a good way to learn about new products,hence,they prefer to be exposed in a less direct way of marketing than ads,such as product placements and reviews.
WOM marketing through social platforms are also are an appealing alternative to sellers as they are cost effective,less consumer resistance and it gives fast results.The internet platforms provides a lot of for consumers to share their thoughts,opinions,experiences and impression towards the product.Making it easier for sellers to navigate their current brand image and find solutions on how to improve it. The social platforms such as Facebook,Instagram,Twitter and Youtube are mostly user generated content and it has created new Word of mouth marketing activities which are Viral marketing,Referral Programs and Community Marketing.Viral marketing are either successful campaigns or a failure.There are marketing campaign that I have seen in local context are a failure where the bad image of the brand was exposed from their campaign (Michael,Randolph. & Koen, 2008).Social media offers customers a platform for easily engaging in bad word‐of‐mouth which can lead to a threat for a company's image(Frank Piller, Alexander Vossen & Christoph lhl ,2011).Such as Naelofar ,who launched their new product with a campaign concept derived by night club concept.That has tarnished their brand image in social media just through word of mouth marketing(Michael,Randolph. & Koen, 2008).Also companies as large and prominent as Arthur Andersen and Bridgestone/Firestone learned hard lessons about how quickly a damaged reputation can harm employee and customer loyalty, threatening a company’s financial well being and even its viability(Paul A. & Bob Druckenmiller,2013)However,there are many more campaigns that are successful.Referral programs are practiced by many online shopping platforms to give credits to the users who used the platform and recommended them to their friends. Colourpop cosmetics and Zalora are one of the company who give out discount codes for their user to spread out and at the same time reward the user.It generates relationship between the company and the users and at the same time fasten their engagement towards new audience.Community marketing are very much used in the current days where promotional activities are carried out for the community to participate and at the same time create awareness to the participant’s circle.This has been very effective and cost efficient (Michael,Randolph. & Koen, 2008).
2.2 Effective Advertising and Consumer Behaviour
In the early years ,Marketing and Communications were often used as a synonym for advertising.This action is slowing down as the marketing communication is developing a strategic importance through the communication process of a company.Communication in marketing is linked between marketing and corporate communication of a company or organization.Therefore,the marketing communication becomes an important element of marketing mix (Kotler & Keller ,2006)The marketing mix consists of four subsets which is the 4ps, product,price,place and promotion,advertising falls under the promotional mix to create awareness about a certain organization to influence purchase decisions(Ghulam et al.,2012 ).According to Richards and Curran (2002)Advertising is a paid,mediated form of communication from an identifiable source,designed to persuade the receiver to take action straight away or in the future.Different organisation have different techniques,tools and approach for advertising to meet the consumers criteria and match their behaviours.Five product-related factors have been explored in terms of consumer engagement: hedonic vs. utilitarian products, new vs. updated products, extant product reviews, product quality, and product experience(Barger,Peltier,Schultz ,2013). In order for a company to become a market leader ,they must invest lots of their investments and capitals for their promotional purposes (Ghulam et al., 2012) .Such as Coca cola whom spent almost 3.5 Billion dollar a year and Apple spent 1.8 Billion in 2015.The main objective of the advertising is to create impact on their consumer behaviour (Ghulam et al., 2012).Although there might be lack of studies in the social media literature, the firm’s effort to build rich social media strategies and tactics is expected to impact brand engagement (Pomirleanu,Schibrowsky,Peltier, J.W. & Nill, 2013).The more advertising approach they make,the more they can strengthen the consumer’s memories about their product.Most companies put their investment into the effort of making an analysis of consumer behaviour to really recognise their characters and make stronger engagement towards their customers.Consumer behavioural analysis is important for companies to understand the behaviour of consumers from time to time.Whereas in market and salesmanship research,a company analysts would ask a representative sample of customers to collect input for them to innovate their marketing strategies,later on, the innovating process ,the company propose a different solutions and concepts to the customers for their opinion on behalf of a consumer (Frank Piller,Alexander Vossen & Christoph lhl ,2011). It has been difficult for companies to differentiate their products or services by the functionality,companies and brand images are now recognised by its identity,activity and concept.Such as Coca cola and pepsi ,apple and samsung,they both have products with the similar functionality,but what makes them different are their image,identity and their style as well as their marketing approach,how they reach their consumers (Ghulam , Javaria , Burhan & Ahmad , 2012).The rise of corporate image and identity management provides opportunities to connect the strategy and vision of a firm to its marketing and corporate communication functions.It could offer significant financial gains both to public relations agencies and the companies they support.Those who master the art of corporate branding can create a significant changes to their companies for current business environment(Paul A.,Bob Druckenmiller,2013)The promotional tool for marketers are surely advertisements.But it has a various types of medium to spread the ads.Most importantly,each medium either modern or traditional medium gives different impact towards consumers.The consumer’s final purchase decision depends on their experiences and what they see everyday in the TV and gadgets.Advertisements acts as a general tool to promote notions,concepts,products or services and knowledge content through media either in visual,verbal or text form.The tool is to create understanding,awareness,engagement and interests towards a product/services.Advertisements could affect consumers attitude towards the ad and also the brand and at the same time influencing them to reach the advertisers message and absorb the message into their subconscious mind.The change of consumer behaviours from the advertisements is produced by discernment created by three main elements which are pleasure,arousal and dominance.The pleasure is the state where the person feels pleasure or contentment in a particular situation.Arousal is when the feeling varies from person to another person on different situation.Dominance spells out individual sentiment which are in control or free to act in a distinct situation. The consumer behavioural analysis is to determine what caused them to make the purchase decision and how they could act in a certain way towards the product (Ghulam et al., 2012)
2.3 Effects of Advertising and Product Placement.
In America and other countries,television has become the dominant leisure activity for everyday basis.From a telephone survey,it has been reported that Americans watch television 2.6 hours a day in average which is more than a half portion of daily leisure time.Nielsen media research estimated that an average adult would watch 4.9 hours of television a day in 2007.Therefore makes television a dominant medium for audio and visual advertising.Only in 2007,television industry single-handedly earned $67.8 billion revenues in advertising. And has been increasing for 35% throughout 6 years from 2001.Back in the old traditional days,broadcast television provided free programs in exchange to advertisements being advertised on their channel.The more attention brought to the ads,the more the price of buying television ads time increases.But then,the traditional television business model has been weakened by few new media approaches,DVD and CDs of films and programs.It has fully excluded TV advertisements and make them unreachable.Then a new alternative was found which is product placement in tv shows which makes them totally unavoidable in films or programs that they are watching.Some Malay films on astro broadcasting channels,although they are paid for the subscriptions,viewers could not avoid product placement in the best possible way especially the famous and highly demanded tv shows and dramas on a broadcast channel. A few group of big companies put a very large capital on the broadcasting channel.They sponsored/bought the tv show,they make a obvious appearances of their products,ambassadors and their CEOs themselves.Since they have sponsored the airtime,they have control throughout the 1 or 2 hour of the tv show,therefore,they conquer the tv advertisements.Resulting the channel to become 80% just for advertisements.However,their tactics seem to be effective for certain group of audience since they have made so much appearance that makes them unforgettable in viewer’s conscious and subconscious mind. The television advertisements has become so remarkable that a few broadcast channel and tv programs has been aired just for advertisements to promote products such as Go Shop.(Kenneth , Michelle & Geert , 2008)