Post on 11-Jan-2023
An Exploration of the Impact of Social
Media on Integrated Marketing
Communications in Business to Consumer
Organisations.
Vanya L. Maplestone
An independent research report submitted in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the Bachelor of Commerce (Honours), 2013
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP AND INDEPENDENT RESEARCH
Except where reference is made in the text, this report
contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in
whole or in part from a thesis or report presented by me
for another degree or diploma.
No other person’s work has been used without the due
acknowledgement in the main text of the report.
This report has not been submitted for the award of any
other degree or diploma to any other tertiary
institution.
Name: Vanya L. Maplestone
Signed:
Date:
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis year has probably been one of the most exciting,challenging, frustrating, rewarding, terrifying anddeeply satisfying in the thirty-six I have experiencedthus far. For creating, alleviating and mitigating thoseextreme emotions, I would like to acknowledge thefollowing people, to whom I am eternally grateful.
Dr Paul Turner: In what was an incredibly fast moving year, and for making the on-campus experience so civilized, I thank you for your assistance and encouragement, which was shown not only to me but also toour class throughout the triumphant as well as the dark moments.
Dr Michael Valos: My ‘mad professor’; we had quite a journey together. Thank you for testing me, challenging me, calming and questioning me. The lessons I take from you will stand me in good stead for the ‘real world’ and remind me to listen, trust my instincts and write faster!
Maral Mayeh: Your words of wisdom and ability to clarify things so that they simply make sense was very helpful. The lesson on EndNote was life changing.
Dr Melissa Parris: Thank you for finding the most entertaining book on analysing qualitative data that exists in the universe, and thank you for your valuable time and advice when I needed you, which was essential tothe completion of this monumental task.
Yee Ling Boo: After such a long break from quantitative analysis units, I know I was a challenge for you to teach, and I appreciate your patience, guidance and encouragement with our first trimester classes and assignments.
Sharon Chua: I am so lucky to have had access to your researching skills and a private EndNote tutorial; you really are the best librarian at Deakin.
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Lee Kim: The most over-qualified transcriber in Australia, at my beck and call, lucky me. ‘Thank you’ does not cover it, but it will have to do; my word count is heaving.
My Fellow Honours Students: Aisling McCarthy, Mark Jones,Damien Whitburn, Jenny Bith. What a pleasure it was to meet you all. I know some of you will be in my life longafter Honours and that is a nice bonus on top of an incredibly fulfilling year together.
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ABSTRACT
Social Media is a cultural and technological phenomenon
currently pervading many aspects of business to consumer
marketing. SM has become a powerful marketing
communications channel, eliminating as well as altering
the role of many traditional forms of interactive
marketing communication mediums. This is due to the
interactive, individualized and responsive nature of the
medium. Since the proliferation of digital media,
marketers are faced with more strategic and tactical
decisions than ever before, and guidelines to assist this
process are largely lacking in the academic literature.
This research uses the integrated marketing
communications framework (Chitty et al. 2011, p. 10),
which outlines the decision-making processes and outcomes
of implementation of communications programs. This is
because the model can identify appropriate processes of
integrating social media into marketing communication
decision making. Using an exploratory approach and a
qualitative methodology, this study comprised of eight
in-depth interviews with senior marketers from the
business to consumer sector. The study found that social
media imposed new features in the decision–making process
for IMC programs. The research also investigates how the
inclusion of social media in integrated marketing
communications alters the traditional framework. This
thesis puts forward tentative guidelines for managers and
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 11.1.1 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY 41.1.2 AIM OF THE STUDY 41.2 RESEARCH PROBLEM 51.3 RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS 51.4 CHAPTER SUMMARY 6
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW 8 2.1 INTRODUCTION 82.2 IMC OVERVIEW 82.2.1 IMC: A DEFINITION 112.2.2 IMC: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 112.3 SOCIAL MEDIA OVERVIEW 182.3.1 SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS 202.3.2 OPPORTUNITIES PROVIDED BY SOCIAL MEDIA TO THE IMC MIX 212.3.3 SOCIAL MEDIA IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES 242.3.4 SOCIAL MEDIA’S INTEGRATED ROLE IN THE IMC FRAMEWORK 282.3.5 SOCIAL MEDIA’S AFFECT ON IMC PROGRAM OUTCOMES 322.3.6 SOCIAL MEDIA’S AFFECT ON IMC PROGRAM EVALUATION 352.3.7 MEASUREMENT OF THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON IMC 352.4 HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGES THE IMC FRAMEWORK 392.5 CHAPTER SUMMARY 39
CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 40 3.1 INTRODUCTION 403.2 RESEARCH DESIGN AND APPROACH 403.2.1 NATURE OF THE STUDY 403.2.2 RESEARCH PARADIGM 413.2.3 PHENOMENOLOGY 433.3 DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES 453.3.1 TRIANGULATION OF DATA 453.3.2 LOCATION, POPULATION AND SAMPLING 463.3.3 SAMPLING STRATEGY 463.3.4 SELECTION OF INTERVIEW PARTICIPANTS 473.3.5 SOURCING PARTICIPANTS 473.3.6 INTERVIEW METHOD 483.3.7 INTERVIEW PROCEDURES 493.3.8 INTERVIEW QUESTIONS AND APPROACH 503.4 DATA ANALYSIS 513.5 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS 53
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3.6 LIMITATIONS OF THE METHODOLOGY 543.7 CHAPTER SUMMARY 54
CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 55 4.1 INTRODUCTION 554.2 RESULTS OVERVIEW 554.3 FINDINGS WITH DISCUSSION 564.3.1 DEFINING SOCIAL MEDIA 574.4 PROPOSAL OF A MODIFIED IMC FRAMEWORK 594.5 THEMATIC ANALYSIS 594.5.1 LISTENING 604.5.2 ENGAGEMENT 634.5.3 AGILITY 684.5.4 STRATEGIC FIT 704.5.5 RESOURCES 754.5.6 INTEGRATION 794.6 CHAPTER SUMMARY 84
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND LIMITATIONS 86 5.1 INTRODUCTION 865.2 REVIEW OF THE RESEARCH 865.3 CONCLUSIONS 875.4 THE SOCIAL IMC FRAMEWORK 895.5 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MANAGERS 905.6 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH 905.7 LIMITATIONS AND CHALLENGES OF THE STUDY 91
REFERENCES 93
APPENDICES 101 APPENDIX A: THE IMC FRAMEWORK & THE SOCIAL IMC FRAMEWORK 101APPENDIX B: SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS 102APPENDIX C: SAMPLE TRANSCRIPTION 104APPENDIX D: BRAND IDENTIFIER MATRIX 105APPENDIX E: GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS 106APPENDIX F: PLAIN LANGUAGE STATEMENT & PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM 107
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LIST OF TABLESTABLE 2.1: EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL MEDIA....................................30
TABLE 2.2: TRADITIONAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA CHARACTERISTICS AND CHALLENGES.......40
TABLE 4.1: SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS USED BY PARTICIPANTS....................87
TABLE 4.2: DEGREES OF DETAIL IN SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINITION GIVEN BY PARTICIPANTS. 90
TABLE 4.3: DEGREES OF SOPHISTICATION IN SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINITION GIVEN BYPARTICIPANTS.....................................................90
LIST OF FIGURESFIGURE 2.1: THE INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS FRAMEWORK...............13
FIGURE 3.1: TRIANGULATION OF DATA......................................45
FIGURE 4.1: THE SOCIAL INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS FRAMEWORK.........59
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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
The current media environment experienced by marketers is
becoming increasingly fragmented and in a state of
constant change. Senior marketers are faced with more
strategic communication decision making than ever before.
When taking their brand to market they are faced with
more heavily integrated marketing communications channels
than we have ever known. Since the inception of the
digital age, the Internet and particularly social media,
the possibilities for marketers to grow their brands
utilising these new mediums have dramatically expanded.
This has created problems of complexity in integrating
communication programs;
Managers now recognize that their customers andprospects are more powerful and skeptical than everbefore, with consumer-to-consumer influence at timestaking precedence over purchasing and relatedbehaviours previously shaped by thebusiness-to-consumer marketing tools of advertising,public relations, promotion, direct mail andpersonal selling (Kimmel & Kitchen 2013, p. 1).
Social Media (SM) itself is constantly evolving and
taking an increasingly significant role in organisations’
marketing communications with other organisations,
communities and individuals (Kietzmann et al. 2011). SM
has become a powerful marketing communications channel,
eliminating as well as altering the role of many
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traditional forms of marketing communication, due to the
interactive, individualized and responsive nature of the
medium. The traditional process to coordinate
promotional tools in marketing communication media, as
well as ensuring a consistent brand message, is known as
integrated marketing communications (IMC).
The IMC Framework
This study will address marketing communications using
the perspective of the IMC framework (Chitty et al. 2011)
(See Appendix A). The framework assists in identifying
the issues SM raises for each step of a marketer’s
decision-making process and its impact on the outcomes of
an IMC program. This study seeks to examine how
appropriate this traditional marketing communication
framework is for marketers seeking to utilise SM to
enhance their marketing communications strategy and
implementation.
The Role of IMC
Marketers make marketing communication decisions for
strategic purposes. This may be directed by objectives
set by the company as a guideline for every department in
their operation, or they may be goals set by marketing
management personnel. Those may be goals in the form of
acquiring new customers, growing the relationship with
existing ones or the retention of brand loyalists. SM
has the potential to change the way this occurs.
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Those decisions are largely based on budgeting allowances
and resources. The company will provide human resources,
technology and a promotional budget to execute a
marketing program for their brand. Large multinational
companies are known for the extensive lengths they go to,
to get their brand message across, and the cost is always
a fundamental part of that scale. If SM can provide more
effective and efficient marketing communications, a
reduction in traditional communications such as
television and print can occur.
Studies in consumer behavior tell us that marketing
communications must aim to influence the consumers’
brand-related beliefs, attitudes, emotional reactions and
choices (Chitty et al. 2011). The primary goal of a
marketing communications program is to increase a brand’s
equity in the minds of the consumer (Kevin Lane Keller
2009). Brand equity is enhanced when the consumer is
said to hold strong, favourable and sometimes unique
associations with the brand. Hence all elements of the
marketing mix are designed to enable the consumer to
undertake positive actions towards purchasing a brand.
With marketers losing control of their brand through
consumers making public comments on social media
platforms, brand equity is threatened. How do marketers
maintain their brand equity and stay aligned with
positioning when consumers are creating messages about
the brand.
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In a cluttered, complex marketplace, marketingcommunications can allow brands to stand out andhelp consumers appreciate their comparativeadvantages. (Keller, KL 2001, p. 823)
Media must be carefully selected to reach the target
audience in order to achieve desirable outcomes. The
marketing department members make decisions about the
media they choose to use based on market research,
experience, industry best practice and trends (Schultz,
Don E & Schultz 1998). This is especially important in
todays fragmented media environment, where the
traditional advertising mediums of TV, radio and
magazines are becoming less and less effective and
cost-efficient (Mangold & Faulds 2009). Social media is
making this more complex as there are many more platforms
where branding will occur and consumers need to be
reached. What framework can facilitate an alignment
between media and message across traditional forms of
media and SM?
The information contained in any communications must echo
the brand-related values in the messages that they
promote to their audiences. ‘Marketing communications
allow marketers to inform, persuade, incite, and remind
consumers’ (Keller, KL 2001, p. 823). Being in the front
of the consumers’ mind is the key to affecting behaviour,
namely encouraging trial, repeat purchase and ultimately
becoming brand loyal. Those decisions are based on the
positioning strategy of the brand, that is, where the
brand sits in the mind of the consumer. That largely
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determines the type of communication aimed at the target
market profile and suitable content for conveying the
message.
Social Media and IMC
Social Media has provided this decision-making process
with many opportunities and indeed challenges. Will the
traditional IMC framework be able to deal with a
different direction of communication between consumers
and companies and between consumers themselves or will a
new framework be required? The shift away from one-way
mass communication via TV, radio and print media towards
interactivity and online media has changed the rules for
marketing communicators forever. The two-way
conversations now possible with individual customers has
challenged the entire IMC process from its very
foundations. Social media has democratised the content
of marketing communications, and companies have to be
prepared for less control over what is said about their
brands (Winer 2009).
Social media now refers to ‘an intersection of software,
marketing, media, information and entertainment’
(Fernando 2007, p. 10). The opportunities this presents
to marketers are still being discovered, as a
trial-and-test approach is taken by many organisations
when implementing SM as a media channel. As a result,
this is an exploratory study to examine the many ways
organisations are taking alternative approaches to
developing their media selection and messages in SM. A
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proficient understanding of the complex nature of SM is
of the utmost importance due to its ability to directly
affect the customers’ brand awareness and reputation
(Montalvo 2011). Currently, the SM field is saturated
with multiple platforms and applications, and new
developments are frequently made in supporting
technologies, making theory development in this field a
constantly evolving process.
1.1.1 Purpose of the StudyThe purpose of this study is to describe the issues that
senior marketers have experienced since the inclusion of
SM in IMC programs for their brands. In this way it will
make a contribution to the existing research by providing
contemporary insight based on qualitative research
methods and analysis. The conclusions from this study
will shed light on any issues that arise, and then offer
some solutions and perspective on the topic. This study
puts forward tentative guidelines for managers, as well
as research propositions for further qualitative and
quantitative research.
1.1.2 Aim of the StudyThe aim of the study is to challenge the traditional IMC
framework which was developed for traditional media
formats such as television and print. This study seeks
to provide marketing organisations with insights to
enhance the successful implementation of Social Media
within an IMC program. It does that by providing a
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deeper understanding of emergent themes and practices
identified in the research findings. Using qualitative
data collection and analysis procedures within the scope
of a phenomenological design, a rich account of the
common experiences of marketing executives will arrive at
the essence of the research problem. Using an
exploratory approach, this study aims to provide a
wide-ranging snapshot of current issues faced by
marketers in the Business to Consumer (B2C) sector when
implementing and operating Social Media within their IMC
programs. The aim of the interviews was to uncover the
benefits of and barriers to successful implementation of
social media in the IMC mix. Using a qualitative
approach, the study seeks to explore the experiences of
these marketers and allow the issues to surface. While
the majority of the challenges faced by marketers in this
area are identified in the literature, there is a
deliberate intention to look for new initiatives,
successes or novel ideas encountered by the different
approaches taken by B2C marketers. Henceforth, the
outcome aims to propose solutions for practitioners in
this context and offer further avenues for academic
investigation.
1.2 Research Problem
The following research question and sub–questions have
been developed to aid the investigation into senior
marketers’ experiences in implementing social media in a
B2C context. These questions are designed to allow rich,
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useful data to unfold from a broad range of participants
and yet contain the limits of the study to divert and
direct the information flow from the research
participants.
1.2.1 Research Question What is the experience of integrating Social Media
into the traditional IMC mix for marketing
executives in B2C companies?
In order to answer this research question to the fullest
extent, the following sub–questions are to be addressed:
1.2.2 Sub–questions What is the role of SM within IMC?
What are the perceived benefits of SM implementation
to IMC?
What are considered the determinants of successful
implementation of SM in IMC programs?
1.3 Research Contributions
There have been many successful studies on both the IMC
and SM functions for marketing practice as it stands
(Kaplan & Haenlein 2010; Kietzmann et al. 2011; Kitchen
et al. 2004; Kliatchko 2008; Mangold & Faulds 2009;
Peltier, Schibrowsky & Schultz 2003; Phelps & Johnson
1996; Schultz, D & Peltier 2013; Valos, Ewing & Powell
2010). The conclusive studies of IMC develop elements of
or make suggestions on how to implement, measure and
adjust IMC programs to maximize organisational strategic
outcomes. Yet the dearth of literature on social media as
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a new phenomenon within the IMC context shows the lack of
a discussion on the connection or interplay between the
two. Current literature in the area of IMC consistently
focuses on the lack of a universal definition of IMC
itself and lack of a conceptual framework that can be
tested to facilitate further study of the dynamic forces
at play in the execution of IMC programs. This research
seeks to identify the links between Social Media and the
IMC construct, moving beyond the unsubstantiated claims
of many IMC conceptual arguments. The study will extend
the IMC theoretical framework to include the unique
interaction of SM in the current framework.
This project will put forward tentative guidelines for
managers as well as research propositions for further
qualitative and quantitative research. It is anticipated
that the following contributions will be achieved by this
study:
A rich, descriptive analysis of both the challenges
and solutions to the integration of social media
implementation within a marketing managers decision
making framework;
Examples of processes and practices used to develop
synergies between social media and traditional
promotional tools in order to ensure brand
consistency and facilitate brand equity to achieve
competitive advantage;
Characteristics of effective practices in terms of
implementing social media;
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A modified IMC framework that takes into account the
characteristics of new and emerging social media
platforms and provides more relevant contemporary
guidelines to managers and researchers.
1.4 Chapter Summary
This chapter outlines the background to the research by
stating the purpose and aims of this study. The research
problem is articulated addressing the appropriateness of
the traditional IMC framework in terms of SM, with the
accompanying sub–questions addressed in the exploratory
research. Finally, there is a summary of the intended
contributions to the IMC literature with respect to the
inclusion of SM in its contemporary context.
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CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW2.1 Introduction
This chapter provides a review of the literature; which
comprises academic and practitioner literature in the
areas of Social Media (SM), Integrated Marketing
Communications (IMC) and marketing management. Key
concepts are defined and synthesised to provide a
background to the research framework and research
questions. Topics of the chapter are reviewed in the
following order: the definition and evolution of IMC, the
definition and relevant descriptions of Social Media
(SM), the opportunities and implementation challenges of
SM. Then we classified the SM platforms and discussed
integrating SM in IMC programs and SM’s impact on IMC
outcomes and measurement. The chapter concludes by
proposing a modified IMC model incorporating the
characteristics of social media.
2.2 IMC Overview
IMC has undergone significant change from its emergence
in the early 1950s to its more specific tangible
characterisation in the early 90s. Subsequent rigorous
academic efforts have been made to define IMC as a
dynamic phenomena prominent as a communications
management style with businesses and consumers to the
present day (Chandor 1950; Kitchen et al. 2004; Kliatchko
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2008; Phelps & Johnson 1996; Schultz, Don E 1996; Valos,
Ewing & Powell 2010).
In order to define IMC, the purpose of this study, it is
important to include a description of the boundaries of
IMC. The definition of IMC throughout its evolution has
been deemed a significant research issue within the last
decade (Kitchen et al. 2004; Lee & Park 2007; Peltier,
Schibrowsky & Schultz 2003; Reid 2003, 2005; Reid, Luxton
& Mavondo 2005). To understand the impact of social
media on IMC, it is also important to look at the
underlying dimensions of the IMC construct.
The IMC construct in terms of its concept and processes
has been the subject of much theoretical discussion and
debate. IMC is considered by some academics as simply
incorporating the marketing communications mix and its
components (advertising, sales promotion, public
relations, the internet and direct marketing) and often
referred to as ‘channels’ or ‘media’. Nevertheless this
allows a solid foundation upon which to develop the
conceptual base, and analysis of IMC activity (Lee & Park
2007).
Traditionally IMC has been considered a process involving
the integration and alignment of strategic and tactical
decision making. Integration in companies has been
described as existing on a continuum from low-level
integration to absolute integration (Reid, Luxton &
Mavondo 2005; Schultz, Don E & Schultz 1998). Tactical
execution is guided by consistency between all messages
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depicting the core values of the brand. All marketing
communications are customer oriented and driven by
knowledge derived from consumer data to ensure strategic
goals are met and returns on investment are monitored.
According to the academic literature, a consensus on
appropriate measurement of IMC outcomes has not yet
occurred. Acceptance of the IMC concept has been
challenging for many managers, with many seeing it as no
more than a management fad. This may explain the lack of
development in the measurement of IMC outcomes, which has
been lacking in research, and the attention from senior
executives (Cornelissen & Lock 2000; Kitchen et al. 2004;
Reid 2005). IMC’s initial conceptualisation describing
the coordination and interaction of the promotional mix
elements is owed largely to Don Schultz (Schultz, Don E
1996; Schultz, D E 2011; Schultz, Don E & Kitchen 1997;
Schultz, Don E & Schultz 1998; Schultz, Don E, Tannenbaum
& Lauterborn 1992; Schultz, Don E, Tannenbaum &
Lauterborn 1994). Effective coordination of the IMC
marketing communication mix was said to culminate in a
‘one-voice’ phenomenon (Kitchen et al. 2004, p. 19) with
much research dedicated to the development of this
concept (Duncan, TR & Everett 1993; Nowak & Phelps 1994;
Phelps & Johnson 1996; Schultz, Don E, Tannenbaum &
Lauterborn 1992). The literature in subsequent years
invoked widespread criticism of IMC coordination to
create ‘one voice’ as a management fad (Cornelissen &
Lock 2000; Kitchen et al. 2004). The aim of IMC is to
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maintain consistency between the elements of the
promotional mix and yet provide a clear message via
different forms of media. The ‘one-voice’ term was
confused as one message for all mediums and hence became
the center of the debate as to how to customize a
campaign to suit various forms of media. SM has
increased the pressure to solve this challenge.
Primarily, by tracing the evolution of IMC we can attempt
to define it. The vast amount of academic literature on
IMC debates how to achieve integration and what is
understood as a holistic view of this concept. This has
most effectively been summarized in studies by Phelps and
Johnson (1996), Lee and Park (2007) and Kliatchko (2008).
Phelps and Johnson (1996) made an attempt to move beyond
the rhetoric of defining an expanding concept such as
IMC. IMC is constantly evolving, and these authors
sought rather to develop the conceptual base and the
measurement of IMC. Subsequent research used this
approach to enable development of new rigorous research
frameworks and went beyond the scope of much IMC research
up to that point (Lee & Park 2007; Peltier, Schibrowsky &
Schultz 2003).
Then a decade later, Lee and Park (2007) also addressed
this aspect of IMC study by developing a four-dimensional
concept of IMC, the first of its kind to address the
multiplicity of the paradigm and produce conclusive
results. Lee and Park (2007) discuss the progression of
the IMC construct, its various definitions and
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development since its initial concept in the early 1990s.
As a conclusive piece of research, this study makes a
contribution to the empirical knowledge of IMC and its
measurement, by developing a research instrument that is
valid, reliable and can effectively be used in any future
studies.
Jerry Kliatchko (2008) comprehensively looked at the
recurring themes of IMC, its theoretical evolution and
definitional challenges from 1990 to 2006 in an effort to
consolidate the preceding two decades of development. He
recognized the fundamental need to agree upon the
parameters of the IMC concept, that is, its role both as
a coordination process and as a business strategy.
Kliatchko (2008) redefined the original IMC framework he
put forward in 2005. His research outlined the major
issues and development of the concept up to 2008. This
study revises the IMC construct to propose a highly
practical definition of IMC which provided more rigour
for academic research into IMC assisted academic research
.
2.2.1 IMC: A Definition A further definition that helps provide background to
this study was undertaken by Boon and Kurtz ;
Integrated marketing communications attempt to coordinateand control the various elements of the promotional mix -advertising, personal selling, public relations,publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion - toproduce a unified customer-focused message and,therefore, achieve various organisational objectives(Boone & Kurtz, 2007, p. 488).
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In summary, the Kliatchko definition provides the most
suitable definition to guide this study,
IMC is an audience-driven business process ofstrategically managing stakeholders, content, channels,and results of brand communication programs (2008, p.140).
The benefit of this definition is that it highlights the
role of strategy in the coordination of a marketing
program and mix, and places less focus on the ‘one-voice’
approach (Cornelissen & Lock 2000; Kitchen et al. 2004).
The impact of SM has meant that IMC theory must move
beyond outdated beliefs and look at new strategies for
development of the concept.
2.2.2 IMC: A Theoretical FrameworkWiner (2009, p. 109) lists the typical management
decisions involved in applying the IMC process to achieve
clear positioning and a similar ‘look and feel’ across
communications:
The objective of the communications, The target market, The strategy (copy, media, timing), Budgeting, How to evaluate whether the objectives were
being met.This list provides a suitable guide for a study examining
how SM might require the IMC process to be modified due
to the unique and dynamic characteristics of SM . A
number of models were considered when looking for
underlying theory to guide the aims of this study and the
methodology .
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Lee and Park (2007) addressed two of the most urgent
issues in IMC theoretical and conceptual research.
Firstly, approaching a definition of the IMC concept
incorporating its multidimensional nature to enable more
rigorous study; and secondly, to develop a universally
acceptable measurement tool for the IMC construct. While
this provided a framework to generalise the research
results, it was not comprehensive enough to enhance a
critical analysis of the interplay of elements in the IMC
process.
Jerry Kliatchko (2008) designed a four pillars model of
strategic IMC management to depict the interaction
between a brand’s stakeholders, the content, channels and
results. The pillars interplay with each another allowing
the results of each pillar in the IMC program to inform
the others, thereby creating a feedback mechanism for
measurement, evaluation and analysis. This creates a
basic framework to illustrate how an organisation may
attempt to integrate their marketing communications.
This framework, although simple, creates a good overview
of the IMC process and lays the path for further study.
Schultz and Schultz used the ‘four levels of IMC’
framework to break down integration tasks of the IMC
process as it moves up through tactical coordination, to
redefine the scope of marketing communications, then the
application of information technology and finally
incorporating financial and strategic goals at the top
level (Kliatchko 2008; Schultz, Don E & Schultz 1998).
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They argue that marketing and marketing communications
are in transition due to technological advances, so an
organisation moves from one stage of integrated marketing
communication development to another as a result of the
organisation’s ability to capture and manage information
technology. This conceptual framework although effective
in describing the IMC process of integration, fails to
include the importance of outcomes and feedback
mechanisms for future improvement and shared learning of
IMC programs.
A further alternate IMC model was devised by Chitty et
al. (2011, p. 10). It was designed as a framework for
making brand-level marketing communication decisions and
achieving the expected outcomes (see Figure 1.). A
marketing communications program essentially consists of
first making fundamental decisions, which then influence
implementation decisions. In combination they create two
desirable program outcomes: to enhance brand equity and
affect behaviour. These outcomes are co-dependent in
that it is thought that if a consumer favours a brand
with increased brand equity, then they are more likely to
purchase it, or change their behavior towards it.
Likewise, a favourable experience with a brand can create
loyalty and repeat purchase behavior and ultimately
retain a customer.
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FIGURE 2.1: THE INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS FRAMEWORK
Of the models examined by this study, this model appears
the most appropriate for a number of reasons. A focus on
the fundamental (strategic) and implementational
(tactical) decisions from the IMC model will lead an
inquiry into the influence of SM over these activities.
The framework allows components to be broken down and
more clearly understood by marketing practitioners who
may be struggling to understand the complexities of
social media.
‘IMC is a strategic process for better managing the brand
messages that create, maintain and grow customer
relationships’ (Reid 2005, p. 43). This process involves
fundamental strategic decisions in terms of positioning,
targeting, setting objectives and budgeting. The
following pages will now examine each of these in order
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to demonstrate the marketer’s traditional approach to
communications strategies.
Positioning
Positioning is determined by several factors, but
ultimately the goal for the brand is to distinguish
itself from competitor offers. A brand’s position is its
key, unique feature, image or benefit, as perceived by
the brand’s collective audience. The position of the
brand is where the marketer determines where the brand
will sit in the mind of the consumer, that is, what space
does it occupy? A brand’s positioning will then guide
tactical decisions such as the selection of media
channels and creating content and messages. Decisions on
positioning are interdependent with targeting in the
fundamental planning stage, as the target audience
selected will often hold a similar view of the unique
properties of the brand (Chitty et al. 2011). The early
decisions a firm makes for a brand’s position will have a
lasting impact on the associations that consumers hold in
relation to the brand (Hoeffler & Keller 2003).
Targeting
Targeting is undertaken to ensure the intended message is
delivered to the desired audience based on consumer
profiles. This reduces wasted coverage and is contingent
on efficient and effective market research into the
brand’s consumers. Targets can be selected based on
shared characteristics such as geographic location,
20
demography or cohorts, values and lifestyles, consumer
behaviour or a combination that portrays a similar class
of consumer with shared purchasing habits (Chitty et al.
2011).
Setting Objectives
The basic premise of IMC is that there are a number of
communication objectives for a brand and a number of
different means of communication to achieve each of those
different objectives, suggesting that it therefore makes
sense to employ multiple communication options in
marketing communication programs (Keller, KL 2001). A
marketer will set objectives based on the goals and
values of both the organisiation and the marketing
department. Marketing communications should be viewed as
a strategic management tool and thus as an investment in
long-term results for the business (Kliatchko 2008).
These objectives may be set at the tactical to the
strategic level, from communication objectives to
financial outcomes.
Budgeting
The brand marketing team members are accountable for
their proportionate amount of specific budgets. Measures
such as Return on Investment (ROI), sentiment,
engagement, impact, reach, frequency, acquisition,
conversion and retention may be tactical goals set for
the integrated marketing program (Hoffman, D & Fodor
2010). Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) can be used to
21
define goals and objectives for a marketing
communications program for comparison between programs
and to determine levels of achievement within the
organisational objectives (Murdough 2009).
Budgets are set for IMC programs based on a combination
of historical data, market insights and strategic goals
of the organisation. Reid (2005) identified that IMC was
more prevalent in larger organisations, market leaders or
those with larger budgets. This could suggest the
successful implementation of IMC processes and potential
impact of IMC on market performance rests with budgeting.
Once these macro level IMC decisions have been made,
tactics are required to execute an IMC plan. Referred to
in the framework as ‘Implementation decisions’, these
short-term decisions guide the day-to-day aspect of an
IMC program and are more flexible in nature.
Implementation decisions include mixing elements,
creating messages, selecting media and establishing
momentum.
Mixing Elements
Mixing the marketing communication elements is a crucial
orchestration of allocating resources and seeking the
synergistic effect of using these elements in an optimal
combination. Kevin Lane Keller (2009) lists the major
marketing communications mix elements as advertising,
sales promotion, events and experiences, public
relations, direct marketing, interactive marketing,
22
word-of-mouth marketing and personal selling. For the
purposes of this research that is an exhaustive list
which will provide a basis for comparison between
different companies when referring to uses of the IMC
promotional mix.
Creating Messages
IMC is described as having achieved ‘one-voice’ when the
brand develops a clear and consistent image, position,
message or theme across all marketing communications
(Phelps & Johnson 1996, p. 167). Creating those messages
is one tactical element of the communication strategy,
but it is perhaps the most pivotal aspect of a campaign
given that the message draws on the brand’s identity and
represents the brand in the mind of the consumer.
Content strategy and consistency in tone of voice, brand
values and public image is of the utmost importance when
creating messaging. Marketing communication programs
must not be developed in isolation. The effects of any
communication option will depend, in part, on the
communication effects engendered by other communication
options. That realization poses a challenge to marketers
as to how to collectively design and execute marketing
communication options so that they reflect aspects of
other communication options in an optimal manner (Keller,
KL 2001).
Selecting Media
23
In order to reach the target audience and remain flexible
and versatile, a combination of media elements must be
employed. Furthermore, the correct mix of media can
achieve traditional IMC goals such as maximum coverage,
wide reach and efficient frequency while minimising waste
coverage and costs (Belch & Belch 2012). All possible
communication options should be evaluated in terms of
their ability to create the desired communication
effects. This is largely based on the strengths of the
selected option. The optimal communication program will
depend on the particular objectives involved. Thus, it is
important to employ a ‘mix’ of different communication
options, each playing a specific role in creating the
desired communication effects or brand knowledge
structures (Keller, KL 2001). Marketers should ‘mix and
match’ communications options to build brand equity, that
is, choose amongst the variety of communication options
with similar content and meaning but that offer
complementary advantages in that the whole is greater
than the sum of the parts (Duncan, TR & Mulhern 2004;
Naik & Raman 2003; Naik, Raman & Winer 2005).
In the light of digital marketing and the proliferation
of media options now utilised in the marketer’s tool kit,
it is important to understand how paid, owned and earned
media works for the modern marketer. Paid media is
typically considered to be traditional advertising:
print, television, radio, display, direct mail, paid
search, retail and channel advertising. Those media
24
forms attempt to develop brand awareness and acquire new
consumers to the brand’s offerings. Paid media is the
channel often selected to reach a mass market and achieve
scale of reach in a short space of time. The benefits
are complete control over the message content and costs
involved, however the downside can be the saturation of
similar advertisements and pure ‘brand messages’ can
reduce the ability for the advertisement to cut through
this ‘clutter’. Owned media is online media content that
the brand has complete control over, such as a corporate
website, campaign microsite, blog, online brand
communities, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram or
mobile applications. Those media channels target your
existing brand followers and current customer base.
Earned media is the natural result of public relations
efforts, advertising campaigns, events and content
created in the existing owned media channels.
An important part of marketing communications today is
also word of mouth (WOM), and electronic word of mouth
(eWOM). When an online brand advocate creates social
media posts, comments, tweets, product reviews, videos,
photos and open conversations with online communities, it
is considered earned media (Brito 2013). Integrating
those channels is referred to as converged media, and
utilising two or more is capable of creating a consistent
brand story. The convergent media strategic approach
supports a consistency between platforms, devices,
channels and furthermore can protect the brand against
25
disruption caused by emergent technologies in the modern
marketing mix (Brito 2013).
Establishing Momentum
The marketing communications program must establish a
degree of momentum, or consistent level of impetus, to be
effective and worthwhile (Chitty et al. 2011). While the
concept of momentum is relative, essentially new brands
will need to create strong, favourable and unique brand
images by spending a larger proportion of their budget
than an established brand. The fundamental approach to
establishing momentum is consistency. The brand must be
visible to consumers and the coordination of
communications must reflect a sustained, consistent
effort to be in the minds of their consumers.
Integrated marketing communication programs were defined
earlier as those involved in using multiple communication
options where the design and execution of any
communication option reflects the nature and content of
other communication options making up the IMC program.
Evaluating IMC programs thus requires an assessment of
exactly how ‘integrated’ the program is from the
standpoint of how well different marketing communication
options ‘fit together’ to produce the desired effect
(Keller, KL 2001).
2.3 Social Media Overview
Social media is the fastest growing area of interest
among marketing academicians, however the focus is
26
largely on uses, usage, tools and tactics rather than
understanding where SM might fit in an IMC mix (Schultz,
D & Peltier 2013). Social media (SM) refers to:
… a group of Internet-based applications that build onthe ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,and that allow the creation and exchange ofuser-generated content (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010, p. 61).
This research study attempts to address this gap by
modifying the IMC framework to take into account the
unique characteristics of social media such as two-way
communications and interactivity. It is important to
define Web 2.0 as it impacts IMC, likewise ‘user
generated content’ must also be defined in the context of
SM. Web 2.0 is the technological and conceptual platform
upon which SM operates and evolves (Kaplan & Haenlein
2010). Web 2.0 is a name given to the movement from
individually programmed activity on the World Wide Web
(WWW) also known as Web 1.0, to the interactive,
collaborative and user-driven nature of the Internet
since 2004 (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010). This shift was
caused by the development of new applications that
enabled the functioning of interactive sites and
platforms and allowed tools to provide the necessary
functionality to generate and share content. Those
applications include software packages such as Adobe
Flash, AJAX and RSS. However their uses are beyond the
scope of this study (Mangold & Faulds 2009). The ability
to operate and utilise these functions allows the user to
generate, publish, upload, comment, share and publicise
27
content. ‘User generated content’ is therefore all online
activity created by users for other users, branded or
unbranded. It can take the form of text, images,
conversations or shared documents. It is due to those
reasons that social media behaves differently from
traditional media hence a new model is required to depict
this unique interaction with consumers.
Social Media is defined by another group of authors as:
… forms of electronic communication (as Websites forsocial networking and blogging) through which userscreate online communities to share information, ideas,personal messages, and other content (such as videos)(Edosomwan et al. 2011, p. 79).
This acknowledges the online community aspect of SM, a
natural form of self-segmentation practice among users of
Web 2.0 (Canhoto, Clark & Fennemore 2013). Edosomwan et
al. (2011) also identify the difference between SM as a
strategy and an outlet for broadcasting, and contrasted
it with Social Networking (SN) as a tool for connecting
with others. This thesis recognises the uses of SM as
incorporating all forms and effects of SM in a broad
strategic sense. Beyond the traditional IMC framework,
these characteristics suggest the model needs a two-way
dynamic process .
Blackshaw and Nazzaro (2004) use the term
‘consumer-generated media’ interchangeably with SM and
look at it as a form of media which:
… describes a variety of new sources of onlineinformation that are created, initiated, circulated andused by consumers intent on educating each other about
28
products, brands, services, personalities, and issues.(Blackshaw & Nazzaro 2004, p. 357)
The characteristics of SM that differentiate it from
traditional media channels, stem from the interactivity
of this relatively new medium. There is growing belief
that consumer brand engagement needs to be addressed
beyond the transactional level to include all potential
touch points with the brand (Schultz, D & Peltier 2013).
Two-way communication flow between consumer and brand
allows a level of interaction where users of SM become
active participants in the brand’s communications
program. The consequences of having highly engaged
consumers include increased brand equity, retention,
share of wallet, ROI and positive WOM (Vivek, Beatty &
Morgan 2012).
In summary these characteristics are quite different from
those of traditional forms of media such as television,
radio and newspapers, and the relationships between IMC
concepts are likely to require some rethought and need
rearrangement.
2.3.1 Social Media Platforms Classification of SM platform types can be based on the
utility they provide to the IMC promotional mix, hence we
refer to four categories of SM:
Social Networking Sites (SNS) – Facebook,LinkedIn, Google+,
Microblogs – Twitter, Content – YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Online Communities – Forums, Blogs.
29
The most commonly used SM platforms in 2013 are Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging and YouTube. They were the
top five platforms used by marketers, with Facebook
leading the way. All the other platforms were distinctly
less popular in comparison to that top five. The top six
have remained virtually the same since 2012 (Stelzner
2013).
Table-1 outlines some examples of the type of SM
platforms in existence, based on their uses. This list
is far from exhaustive, but it illustrates the importance
of the variety of uses encountered via SM.
TABLE 2.1: EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL MEDIA.
Social Networking Sites
Facebook, MySpace, Faceparty, Google+
Creativity works sharing sites
Video sharing sites: YouTubePhoto sharing sites: Flickr, Tumblr, Instagram, PinterestMusic sharing sites: SpotifyContent sharing combined with assistance: Piczo.comGeneral intellectual property sharing sites: Creative Commons
User-sponsored blogs The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Cnet.com
Company-sponsored blogs/websites
Apple.com, P&G’s Vocalpoint
Company-sponsored cause/help sites
Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, click2quit.com
30
Invitation-only social networks
ASmallWorld.net
Business Networking Sites
Collaborative websites
Wikipedia
Virtual Worlds Second Life
Commerce Communities eBay, Amazon.com, Craig’s List, iStockphoto, Threadless.com
Podcasts ‘For Immediate Release: The Hobsonand Holtz Report’
New delivery sites Current TV
Educational materialssharing
MIT OpenCourseWare, MERLOT
Open Source Software communities
Mozilla’s spreadfirefox.com, Linux.org
Social bookmarking sites allowing users to recommend online news stories, music, videos, etc.
Digg, del.icio.us, Newsvine, Mixx it, Reddit
*Adapted from Mangold and Faulds (2009, p. 358)
2.3.2 Opportunities Provided by Social Media to the IMC MixSM as a technological concept, has brought about many
significant changes to the nature of business to consumer
(B2C) marketing communications (Kietzmann et al. 2011).
SM’s role in the promotional mix of an IMC strategy is
twofold: firstly, to enable companies to talk to their
customers; and secondly, to allow customers to talk to
31
one another (Mangold & Faulds 2009). The former is
consistent with the role of traditional IMC programs; the
latter, is unique. The potential power and scope of
opportunity provided by SM platforms comes with a whole
set of new purposes for the marketing practitioner and
researcher alike and has become an integral part of
marketing strategy (Barnes 2010). The ways in which SM
has created a global, interactive, user-driven space
where the fundamental principles of mass communication
are less relevant, means that marketing communications
are redefined and new approaches to trusted, traditional
marketing practices must be proposed, trialed, tested and
shared (Winer 2009). Anecdotal evidence from market
research reports suggests that firms use SM, to build
direct relationships with customers, increase traffic to
their website, identify new business opportunities,
identify trends and keep up with competitors, create
communities, distribute content, demonstrate product,
collect feedback from customers and generally to support
their brand (Barnes 2010; Breslauer & Smith 2009).
Strategic Uses The role of SM within the IMC mix is to provide support
to the traditional forms of advertising, public
relations, word-of-mouth marketing and direct marketing.
By utilising the transparent, two-way communication
characteristic of SM, the IMC mix becomes faster, cheaper
and more efficient at delivering the message of the
brand’s communications to the targeted audience. SM can
32
enable advertising messages to reach wider audiences than
traditional forms, in less time and for a fraction of the
cost (Keller, E & Fay 2013). Due to their
non-transactional nature, SM platforms such as Facebook
and Twitter are particularly suited for collecting
information and feedback from customers, initiating
two-way conversations with customers and developing
relationships with customers through communication and
interaction (Kaplan & Haenlein 2010). The dynamic nature
of SM interactions allows highly targeted marketing
efforts, based on the volume and speed of information
available to marketers and the rich customer insights
available when users share their consumption experiences
(Canhoto, Clark & Fennemore 2013). Online communities
devoted to consumption-related topics are an increasingly
important source of data for marketing research (Kozinets
2002). Companies like IBM, Nike and the like embrace
their communities, to co-create purposefully, in a way
that plans for long term outcomes (Berkman 2013).
According to the IMC choice criteria, the ideal
integrated marketing communication program would be one
that retained a core of consistency across communication
options but designed these various options so that the
strengths in one option helped to negate the
disadvantages of another option (Keller, KL 2001).
Hence, the confluence of paid-owned-earned media helps to
form a strategy that builds the ability to withstand the
disruptions caused by emerging technologies. (Brito
33
2013). The relatively inexpensive access to rich data on
consumer opinions, preferences and purchasing behavior
renders the companies with the best adapted technological
capabilities in the most competitive position to build
brand equity and affect buying behaviour by using SM
(Canhoto, Clark & Fennemore 2013).
Tactical UsesResearch into changing market segments, identifying
emergent demographics, tracking opinions, ‘crowdsourcing’
or using online conversations to aid in product
development and ‘always on’ customer service are just
some of the ways SM can enhance the IMC mix (Canhoto,
Clark & Fennemore 2013; Vuori 2012). The deeper
understanding gained from engagement with a brand’s
consumer via SM assists in developing the program to
deliver more efficiently and effectively a marketing
communications program to the targeted audience or
individual. Tom Smith (2009) refers to these new
research opportunities collectively as being created by a
‘listening economy’ (p. 560) meaning that SM can become a
valuable source of knowledge, but the marketer must make
listening a part of their marketing communications
strategy. This is ultimately the best way to build a
relationship with a consumer and encourage loyalty and
favourable brand associations. Transparency and being
open with the consumer will become commonplace as the
customer demands direct responses from a personality
within the company and personalized prices, promotions
34
and communications for their individual consumption
needs. Firms that can influence the ‘likeability’ of
their brands by creating unique transactions with each
consumer, reduce the outcome inequity and differentiate
them in the marketplace (Nguyen, Melewar & Chen 2013).
The culture of sharing opinions via SM has meant that
peer reviews are now more trusted than the traditional
elements of the promotional mix (Mangold & Faulds 2009,
p. 360). This creates the need for marketing managers to
use SM to create brand advocates and participate in SM
activities that stimulate positive eWOM and brand
associations on Web 2.0. As an information channel, SM
is fast becoming the main source of information for many
customers in their purchasing behavior (Kaplan & Haenlein
2010). Text, photos, video and audio files can easily be
disseminated among customers, and a consistent message
aligned to the company values is necessary to utilise
this medium to extend traditional communications, create
engagement and extend their social capital (Khan 2012).
Brand OutcomesWord-of-mouth marketing, an essential part of IMC, is
perhaps the most influential aspect of SM benefits. By
enabling customers to talk to one another, SM becomes an
extension of traditional word of mouth (Mangold & Faulds
2009). Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) enables a brand
message to spread exponentially via the Internet. Word
of mouth (WOM) has the reputation of being the most
trusted and reliable form of advertising (Blackshaw &
35
Nazzaro 2004). WOM referrals have been found to have a
strong impact on new customer acquisition, and the
elasticity for WOM is approximately 20 times higher than
for marketing events and 30 times higher than that of
media appearances (Trusov, Bucklin & Pauwels 2009).
Within the SM landscape of the Internet, WOM, both good
and bad, is a trusted source of information and research
suggests that marketers must harness this influence.
According to Neilsen BuzzMetrics, more than 60 per cent
of consumers trust other consumers’ online postings about
a product or service (Blackshaw & Nazzaro 2004).
Building online communities can create a panel of
experts, and advocates for a brand to become online
ambassadors for that brand where popularity and influence
holds the key to brand engagement (Schultz, D & Peltier
2013) and ultimately sales (Keller, E & Fay 2013).
2.3.3 Social Media Implementation IssuesIn the seminal article authored by Rust and Oliver(1994),
it was predicted that the ‘information superhighway’
would render the traditional advertising agency obsolete
and see the consumer unite with the producer. Rust and
Varki (1996) then went on to posit that advertising will
become solicited by the customer, and that mass media
will be replaced by interactive forms of media. The era
of mass customisation was predicted as early as 1997
(Gilmore & Pine 2nd 1997).
Challenges faced by marketers implementing an SM
component in IMC programs seem to be arising due to the
36
nature of SM, its lack of coordinated control and all the
associated problems surfacing from the lack of managerial
guidelines and best practices. The issues of impeding
implementation include the lack of integration across
organisational culture, allocation of human, financial
and technological resources, clarity of strategic role
and overall control.
Implementation of IMC programs was found to be positively
related to a strong customer orientation and higher
levels of inter-functional coordination (Reid 2005).
This is the essence of IMC in action, to take an
‘outside-in’ (Schultz, Don E 1996) approach to
communications. SM operates on the same principle when
part of a wider IMC plan.
Organisational cultures that foster the adoption of SM
will largely determine its successful implementation. SM
requires resources and some access to management. If the
management does not reward and encourage participation,
the tools cannot be used effectively (Barnes 2010).
Leadership orientation towards marketing in general and
SM specifically, can dictate the level of SM integration
within an organisation.
Resources can enhance the implementation of SM, whether
that be budgeting, innovations in technology or human
resource management. Resources and cost are frequently
cited as a barrier to successful usage of SM
(Michaelidou, Siamagka & Christodoulides 2011).
Technology is frequently cited as the main barrier to
37
successful SM implementation, due to the gap in
technology that currently exists between social media
metrics and analytical tools, and CRM databases and sales
records. Although this area of IT is developing rapidly,
it makes current implementation of SM difficult to
quantify and demonstrate outcomes in a meaningful way.
The costs involved in SM proprietary software such as
Radian6 can outweigh the long-term benefits in the
majority of cases with small to medium enterprises
(SMEs).
Mike Reid suggests that well implemented IMC programs
will provide organisations with the ability to achieve
their stated strategic goals (2005). As a user–dominated
medium, a strategy of customer orientation lies at the
core of successful implementation. SM tools are not
useful unless they are fully understood by the decision
makers. SM has to be integrated into the strategic plan
of the organisation. It must be featured in every
marketing initiative, be it a brochure, packaging,
labeling or electronic direct mail (EDM), as well as
becoming part of the corporate mentality (Barnes 2010).
The ‘user democracy’ culture (Leung et al. 2013) and
information sharing via SM has created a wave of change
in information asymmetry and increased the bargaining
power of consumers. Vuori (2012) found that ‘fear of the
unknown’ may impact on company willingness to adopt SM
for business use (p. 158). Risk averse managers will
impede the success of SM implementation if careful
38
execution of policy and procedures are followed in the
governance and regulation of SM platforms and assets.
The proliferation of media, advertising and digital
agencies offering SM services can create barriers to
successful implementation due to conflicts of interest,
lack of brand consistency and loss of control from a
brand management perspective. Advertising agencies
cannot be seen to be operating in silos, but rather must
create IMC specialists and absorb the online aspects into
their overall brand strategy to be of use to their
clients (Edelman 2007; Lace 2004). Larger fast moving
consumer good (FMCG) organisations employ multiple
agencies to oversee their advertising, digital and media
planning, and if uncoordinated this will dilute brand
consistency.
Lee and Park reduced the literature reviewed in 2007 down
to four dimensions of IMC. They were identified as
‘unified communications for consistent message and
image’, ‘differentiated communications to multiple
customer groups’, ‘database-centered communications for
tangible results’ and ‘relationship fostering
communications with existing customer dimensions’ (Lee &
Park 2007). Table 2 highlights some key themes to inform
the research sub-questions for this study, and therefore
the data collection process, and isolates opportunity
areas where SM will enhance the optimal mix for IMC
promotional programs. Likewise some challenges arise
from the consumer-driven content and interactivity of SM
39
and the subsequent impact on the implementation of IMC
programs.
TABLE 2.2: TRADITIONAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA CHARACTERISTICS AND CHALLENGES
40
Lee andPark’s IMCDimensions
(2007)
TraditionalMedia (TM)Characteris
tics
Social Media(SM)
Characteristics
Social MediaImplementati
onChallenges
ResearchSub–
questions
Unified communications for consistent message
One-way communicationsMarketers control content
Two-way communicationsUser generated contentUser democracy
Multiple channels andplatforms lack controlfor consistency
What factorsdetermine successful implementation of SM?
Differentiated communications to multipleuser groups
Mass communications and strategic uses of multiple channels
Targeted communicationsMultiple platforms/screens
Content strategySelf-segmentationResourcesInhouse/Agency costs
What is the role of SM in the IMC mix?
Database-centered communications for tangible results
Limited capacity touse as a data collection channel
Interactive communications and data collection via CRM, Insights, SEO, Analytics
Measurement of data, unable to align with measurement of TM
What are thebenefits of successful SM implementation?
Relationship (long term) fostering communications with existing customer dimensions
Not integrated with TM media channelsMessage is broadcast, not interactiveConversation is static
Mulitple touch points across organisation and communicationchannelsBuild Brand Advocates through online communities
Customer-centric communicationsListening and participating in authentic and transparent way
What is the role of SM in the IMC mix?
41
2.3.4 Social Media’s integrated role in the IMC frameworkUsing the IMC framework as a theoretical guide, this
study will seek to identify the fundamental and
implementation decisions that are affected by the
integration of social media into the traditional elements
of the marketing communications mix. The review of the
literature will now discuss each element of the IMC
decision-making cycle in relation to the impact of SM
upon these strategic and tactical decisions.
Positioning IMC is a strategic process for better managing the brand
messages that create, maintain and grow customer
relationships and brands (Duncan, Tom & Moriarty 1998;
Reid 2005). Positioning identifies the key
characteristics of a brand and the SM strategy must be
selected to augment the place it occupies in the mind of
the consumer. However, these marketing communications
activities must be integrated to deliver a consistent
message and achieve the strategic positioning. The
starting point in planning marketing communications is an
audit of all the potential interactions that customers in
the target market may have with the company and all its
products and services. For example, someone interested in
purchasing a new laptop computer might talk to others,
see television ads, read articles, look for information
on the Internet and look at laptops in a store
(Kevin Lane Keller 2009). Mangold and Faulds (2009)
43
recommend methods that can be used to shape online
discussion between consumers, while reinforcing the
organisation’s strategic goals and underlying values and
mission. The authors describe SM as a new ‘hybrid’ of
some of the elements of the promotion mix, identifying
the place it will come to occupy in the mix but also the
way in which new methods will be required to manage it.
Targeting A marketer’s ability to engage customers through
interactivity and communicate with targeted segments will
allow them to deliver benefits that the traditional media
cannot. It seems that incorporating SM into the
promotional mix of IMC will further develop marketing
management practices, while allowing more effective
communication with target markets (Mangold & Faulds
2009). Noone, McGuire and Niemeier (2011) suggest that
by monitoring ‘user-generated content’ on SM, marketers
can develop a better understanding of the characteristics
of consumers on different SM platforms and therefore
guide the target advertising and promotional message used
on different SM applications.
Personalised marketing is facilitated via the public
discussions and activity on SM, and marketers are
increasingly interested in ‘behavioural targeting’ (Winer
2009, p. 109) by following what people are doing on the
web and where they are located by personal GPS when they
use mobile devices such as tablets and mobile phones.
Targeting now involves getting to know the brand’s
44
consumers intimately. ‘The key to marketing success in
this WOM era is to think first and foremost about social
consumers rather than social media’ (Keller, E & Fay 2013,
p. 463). The general consensus is that markets are
becoming fragmented with typical demographic breakdowns
becoming less and less useful (Winer 2009).
Setting ObjectivesIMC objectives are a list of statements describing what
communication tasks must be used to deliver the intended
message to the targeted audience (Belch & Belch 2012).
As opposed to marketing objectives which are
traditionally stated as measurable, business outcomes
such as return on investment (ROI), sales volume, market
share or profits and IMC objectives are defining the role
IMC will play in achieving those objectives. The
manager’s task is to take as much information about the
product or service and the overall marketing strategy and
then translate that into specific tasks within the
communications program. That can be defined in terms of
how they communicate about a brand and disperse
information or it can be related directly back to a
quantifiable marketing goal such as sales or market
share. Social Media subverts this process by shifting
the way objectives are selected due to the largely
consumer-controlled environment and the measurement of an
interactive media environment (Hoffman, D & Fodor 2010).
Hoffman and Fodor (2010) list sales, cost efficiencies,
product development and market research, as specific and
45
measurable objectives, but adding the unique
characteristics of SM to enable insight into brand
awareness, brand engagement and word-of-mouth objectives.
The interactive nature of SM can develop favourable brand
associations in the customer’s minds, foster loyalty
through commitment to an engaging campaign and share
their positive brand attitudes with others.
BudgetingWhen considering budgeting elements in IMC, it is
inherent in any marketer’s modus operandi to compare the
relative costs of media. Traditionally, metrics such as
cost per thousand (CPM) and daily inch rates have been
used respectively in magazines and newspapers so that the
proportion of the printed material in circulation can be
effectively quantified (Belch & Belch 2012). That method
calculates the cost efficiency of one form of media over
another in any given campaign as long as they are similar
media vehicles. This perspective of budget setting cannot
as easily be applied to SM within an integrated marketing
program as the metrics set for a SM initiative may be
somewhat less tangible, for example, increased
engagement, click through rates and ‘likes’. The
effectiveness of a banner ad when compared to a print ad
equivalent in terms of cost and return, is hard to
reconcile. Winer (2009) attributes the lack of research
into budgeting and planning in new forms of media, such
as SM, to the ‘three screen’ problem. The complexity of
coordinating media plans across TV, personal computers
46
and mobile phones means that budgeting can be difficult
to assign to each part of an integrated program. If
management sees budgeting as outside the domain of the
IMC function, one could expect that the importance
ascribed to budget reflects financial constraints and the
bearing this has on multidimensional communication
options, including emphasis on above or below-the-line
activities (Farrelly, Luxton & Brace-Govan 2001).
Mixing ElementsMarketing executives must coordinate the media selection
to achieve the overall marketing and IMC goals.
Kevin Lane Keller (2009) recommended that a variety of
communication elements that share consistent meaning and
content but offer complementary advantages are used, so
that the ‘whole is greater than the sum of the parts’ (p.
146). Media planners need to think about how, when and
where to reach consumers and the moments most likely to
lead to conversations and engagement (Keller, E & Fay
2013, p. 463). Researchers have traditionally studied
the effectiveness of different communication options or
media types, typically advertising in some form. The
challenge for marketers in the current marketing
communications environment is the fragmentation of
traditional advertising media, as well as the emergence
of new, non-traditional media, promotion, and other
communication alternatives. The optimal mix must
acknowledge that potential interactions may exist among
the different options that make up a communication
47
program that profoundly affects consumer response to any
one particular option (Keller, KL 2001).
Creating Messages The organisation’s strategy and performance goals are
intrinsically linked to the success of SM integration
with IMC, hence the optimal mix will communicate a
unified message that represents the values of the brand
(Mangold & Faulds 2009). Mangold and Faulds (2009)
identify two roles that SM plays in the market place and
that is, as a two-way communication channel between a
company and its consumer; and secondly, it enables
conversations between consumers themselves. This
challenges the traditional amount of control marketers
had on the communications process in the past with an IMC
program (Mangold & Faulds 2009). ‘To be effective, the
content of advertising messages should lend itself to
word of mouth’ (Keller, E & Fay 2013, p. 461). This means
that messages need to be simple, memorable and worthy of
sharing. Newsworthiness and storytelling drive eWOM, and
therefore messages, must create a compelling story with
the ‘sharing’ value being the ultimate goal. SM
campaigns and strategists must focus on their content
being shared, ‘liked’, tweeted and uploaded to SM
platforms.
Selecting Media Media should in many cases be considered first (aftertarget audience and behaviour), creativity should follow(Farrelly, Luxton & Brace-Govan 2001, p. 5).
48
Consumers are turning away from traditional forms of the
promotional mix, and advertising is diminishing as a
source of information input in their purchasing
decision-making process (Mangold & Faulds 2009). In this
new media environment, the consumer is increasingly in
control, and therefore the selection of media forms
becomes a complex task (Winer 2009). Consumers not only
have more choices of media to use, they also have a
choice about whether and how they want to receive
commercial content. Commercial clutter is rampant, and
it seems the more consumers avoid marketing appeals, the
more marketers try to access them. The average city
dweller is now exposed to between 3000 and 5000
advertisements per day. Ads in almost every medium and
form have been on the rise, but many consumers feel they
are becoming increasingly invasive and actively avoid or
ignore them, reducing their effectiveness
(Kevin Lane Keller 2009).
Establishing Momentum The achievement of momentum in an IMC program is
propelled to the forefront of strategy when implementing
a SM campaign. The speed and agility demonstrated by SM
campaigns will become one of the most important aspects
of positive SM implementation. The ability for messages
to be shared and spread virally across the Internet
attracts marketers for the potential reach and benefits
attributed to creating a ‘buzz’ about a product or
service. The term ‘viral’ describes a type of marketing
49
that infects customers with an advertising message which
passes from one customer to the next ‘like a rampant flu
virus’ (Montgomery 2001, p. 93). This is a feature of SM
potential that will become central to content strategy,
media selection and mixing elements. In the book
‘Groundswell’, the authors talk of a future whereby
companies must seek to harness the ‘groundswell’
phenomena (Li & Bernoff 2008) by listening and
participating, and ultimately actively shape the
discussions that occur online. To be effective in their
long-term strategies, a ‘culture of responsiveness’ must
be fostered in the new interactive online environment
where the consumer has more control over their
consumption of media, power in communities and
interaction with brands (Li & Bernoff 2008).
Social Media is about conversation, networking andengagement. Find something you have in common and strikeup a conversation. Begin to network. See whether there isa reason to work together. And then proceed. Remember tobe social (Dietrich & Livingston 2012).
2.3.5 Social Media’s Affect on IMC Program OutcomesMarketing communications can create experiences and build
communities both online and off line. They can contribute
to brand equity by establishing the brand in memory and
creating a brand image, as well as drive sales and even
affect shareholder value (Chaudhuri & Holbrook 2001;
Kevin Lane Keller 2009).
From the IMC framework in Figure 1, the marketing
communications program seeks to affect behavior and
50
enhance brand equity as key outcomes of the program.
Empirical research evidence supporting SM’s effects on
company performance is largely lacking, which creates a
barrier to wider acceptance by senior management and
hinders the implementation process (Michaelidou, Siamagka
& Christodoulides 2011; Murdough 2009; Reid 2003; Valos,
Ewing & Powell 2010). Reid (2005) explores the
relationship between the IMC process and subsequent brand
outcomes. The main finding being that indeed a positive
correlation exists, suggesting the need for wider
implementation of IMC by management.
Enhancing Brand EquityA brand is a name, sign, symbol, term, logo or design
(Kotler et al. 2006) that can be instantly recognised to
convey the value, attributes, benefits and personality of
the product it represents. A brand identifies the maker
of a product or service and differentiates them from
their competitors. The goal for successful branding can
be to develop a deep sense of attachment between the
consumer and the brand. Values and personality are at
the essential core of a brand and brand strategy must be
designed around protection of this personality and public
identity.
When a brand has strong consumer loyalty and preference
it can provide protection against competitors promotional
strategies. This powerful value placed on a brand can be
described as brand equity (Kotler et al. 2006). Brand
equity is based on the extent to which it commands
51
loyalty and strong brand associations with its consumers
(Chaudhuri & Holbrook 2001). Brand equity manifests in a
customer response to any type of marketing activity for
the brand, based on the differential effect their brand
knowledge makes on the promotional efforts of competitors
and favourable brands (Hoeffler & Keller 2003). The
strength and equity of a brand can make consumers:
… more willing to attend to additional communications fora brand, process these communications more favorably andhave a greater ability to later recall the communicationsor their accompanying cognitive or affective reactions(Kevin Lane Keller 2009, p. 140).
The value of a strong brand to its organisation is
visible by recognition of some of the marketplace
benefits. This is inextricably linked to customer equity
(Kotler et al. 2006). Loyalty, in terms of a customer’s
lifetime value, drives brand equity. Further, long-term
effects such as brand trust and affection can affect
market share and relative price, thereby creating a
justification to spend marketing communication budgets on
those drivers of brand strength (Chaudhuri & Holbrook
2001).
Customer equity underpins the strength of a brand and
therefore a consumer-centric focus in brand building is
vital to the success of a strategy (Kevin Lane Keller
2009). Developing knowledge structures through marketing
communications can benefit brands, and likewise studies
show that it is increasingly difficult to change how
consumers consider a brand once established in mind
52
(Hoeffler & Keller 2003). Almquist and Roberts (2000)
found that the major factor to influence positive brand
equity for one brand over another was consumer advocacy.
Brand advocates are created and nurtured via SM
platforms, this in turn can protect a brand’s equity in
two ways. Consumers who are highly loyal to a brand have
been shown to increase purchases of a brand when
advertising increases thus creating a return on
investment in branded advertising on SM (Raj 1982).
Consumers who demonstrate a high level of commitment to a
brand are more likely to counter argue with negative
information during a product-harm crisis (Dawar &
Pillutla 2000). Even before the arrival of the online
brand advocate, studies showed that consumers who have a
high level of commitment to a brand are more likely to
counter argue with negative information in public
spheres, and strong brands were shown to weather
product-harm crises, as a result (Hoeffler & Keller
2003).
Affecting BehaviourIMC allows companies to link their brands to other
people, places, events, brands, experiences, feelings and
things (Kevin Lane Keller 2009). This creates behaviours
that affect the way individuals interact with brands. SM
has increased the ways in which consumer behaviour can be
affected by marketing communications. A key element of
the IMC mix is word-of-mouth marketing, that is, relying
on brand loyalists to generate positive messages about a
53
brand, product or service to other people. SM has
widened the scope of WOM to include the vast boundaries
of the Internet, and this has changed the way people
consume products and services. Advertising and WOM are
inextricably linked: WOM has proven to be highly credible
and linked to sales; advertising has been proven to help
spark conversation (Keller, E & Fay 2013). Since the
inclusion of SM, consumers are using more web-based
information sources, shopping platforms and have access
to more products via online advertisements.
Approximately 23.1 million consumers between 13 and
80 years of age use SM to discover new brands or
products, and 22.5 million people use SM to learn about
unfamiliar brands or products (Naylor, Lamberton & West
2012). This has created new online and offline shopping
behaviour. It has been suggested that the returns on
social media investment are not always attached to a
measurement in dollars but rather directly in consumer
behaviour that is linked to certain social media
applications (Hoffman, D & Fodor 2010). The cost of
acquiring a new customer is higher on the Internet, and
profitability from a customer can only come if that
customer makes many repeat purchases in future years.
This implies that the value of loyalty is often greater
on the Internet than in the physical world (Jain & Singh
2002) and those retained customers can form a basis for
sustained competitive advantage. Such an approach
54
becomes even more relevant in the SM environment where
customer relationships are critical.
2.3.6 Social Media’s affect on IMC Program EvaluationTo evaluate the effectiveness of the IMC program, the
framework flows from the outcomes to program evaluation,
which involves measuring the results, providing feedback
and taking corrective actions (Chitty et al. 2011).
Although this component of the model is a vital mechanism
to drive improvement through development of existing
tools and measurement structures, its investigation is
beyond the scope of this study.
2.3.7 Measurement of the effects of Social Media on IMC An apparent widespread lack of reliable metrics and
generalisability of research studies creates barriers to
understanding and assessing the effect of SM on IMC
programs. The search for valid measurement tools and
empirical understanding of the inclusion of SM in the IMC
concept appears to dominate the scarce literature as a
whole (Berkman 2013; Kliatchko 2008; Lee & Park 2007;
Michaelidou, Siamagka & Christodoulides 2011; Murdough
2009; Reid 2003; Schultz, D E 2011; Valos, Ewing & Powell
2010).
The challenge with traditional IMC programs formerly has
been a question of how to measure the results of a
combination of elements or activities or forms of
communication. Don Schultz (2011) questioned that they
55
may or may not interact with each other and may or may
not enhance results when in combination. SM can be seen
to create a further hurdle in the understanding of the
dynamic forces behind an IMC effort:
... existing business metrics were designed for a worldof concrete boundaries and fixed categories—a world thatis slipping away day by day... The same phenomenon willplague the business economy, as networks become moreinfluential while remaining temporary and informal. Onthe other hand, perhaps this change will finally forceresearchers to develop metrics that are trulycustomer-centric, instead of relying on categories ofbusiness organisations as a convenient crutch (Borders,Johnston & Rigdon 2001, p. 204).
IMC MetricsIn a traditional IMC program, specific objectives, key
performance indicators (KPIs) and benchmarks are aligned
with the firm’s organisational strategy by which the
outcomes of subsequent programs can be compared (Murdough
2009). The way in which SM was adopted by most firms was
typically outside the regular marketing strategy and
organisational structure, and thus caused disruption to
the controlled and planned development of other marketing
activities. Hard measures such as sales, profitability
and return on investment (ROI) are the sole focus for
Chief Financial Officers and therefore dictate the
marketing executives inherent need to satisfy those
measures. Marketing executives are still accountable for
justifying a growing portion of their budget for SM, and
thus an ‘integration gap’ with SM has been created
(Moorman 2013). As a result, successful measurement lies
in approaching implementation and optimization of SM
56
programs with the same coordination of planning,
implementing and controlling its strategy, as is
commonplace with any other marketing strategy (Murdough
2009).
A longitudinal study by Valos, Ewing and Powell (2010)
identified a major aspect of IMC evaluation as the need
for more accountability and quantitative measures. The
biggest challenge stems from an identified gap between
attitudinal measures and financial accountability.
Measuring the impact, reach and frequency is of the utmost
concern to marketers, to arrive at conversion ratios and
ultimately sales and revenue performance indicators
(Chitty et al. 2011). It is suggested that traditional
marketing metrics are based on a linear form of
communication and do not suit the interactivity of
Web 2.0 (Hoffman, DL & Novak 1996; Winer 2009).
The ‘hard’ measures such as sales, profitability and
Return On Investment (ROI) must somehow be derived from
unique online behaviors (Valos, Ewing & Powell 2010).
The measurement of ROI from SM as a strategic element of
communications programs is difficult to determine
(Edosomwan et al. 2011). Furthermore, brands are not
monitoring the effectiveness of the support SM provides
to their brand. Based on these two differential
characteristics alone, the increased influence of the
interactivity of SM may force organisations to develop
more customer-centric metrics to evaluate their SM
strategic effectiveness (Michaelidou, Siamagka &
57
Christodoulides 2011). Keller, KL (2001) proposes that
various marketing communication options must find a
method to arrive at some kind of ‘common denominator’ to
put all communication channels on an equal footing so
that ‘apples are compared to apples.’
Social Media MetricsDue to SM’s relatively recent placement in the new media
landscape, the issue here is twofold. Is SM considered to
be integrated and if so, can it be measured the same way
other integrated marketing communications channels are
currently being measured? Historically, the measurement
of social media’s effect has been elusive, inconsistent
and largely subjective. This can be attributed to a
lack of integration (Hurwitz 2012), lack of rigorous
quantitative measures (Hoffman, D & Fodor 2010) and lack
of long term planning (Murdough 2009).
The aim to attract new customers is prevalent as the most
important reason for using SM channels, and yet
measurement of this important aspect is relatively low.
This demonstrates the link between creating strategic
goals and the use of metrics to assess whether a program
is consistently meeting them and thus reveals a gap where
most organisations are failing (Michaelidou, Siamagka &
Christodoulides 2011).
The addition of SM to the IMC mix has created a need for
quantifiable metrics of concepts such as ‘willingness to
refer the brand’ and ‘likes’ and ‘followers’, and yet
linking these outcomes to profitability is still awaiting
58
acceptable best practice and benchmarking in most
industries and categories. Hoffman and Fodor (2010)
suggest the three goals to measure a successful social
media strategy are, brand awareness, brand engagement and
word of mouth WOM. SM measurement is not impossible and
improving all the time, however, the lack of quality
data, meaningful metrics and interpretation of analytics,
and their successful application to multiple situations
has made evaluation difficult (Valos, Ewing & Powell
2010).
Very little is known about to the metrics currently used
across B2C organisations, but the push from academia and
industry is for the development of new and creative
metrics to suit the social media environment (Russell
2009) to assess branding efforts. Chris Murdough (2009)
proposed an SM measurement process to manage the
challenge of tracking customer behavior via digital
platforms. The fundamental difference in approach when
assigning metrics is that with SM the consumer is
ultimately in control. In Murdough’s Social Media
analysis construct, where reach, discussions and outcomes form
the basis for SM measurement, it is possible to
synthesise SM activity with brands and identify key
opportunities. Reach is measured in terms of quality and
quantity. Discussions are broken down by topic and
sentiment, albeit positive or negative. Outcomes are
measured by subsequent behavior, traffic to the website
and purchase intent. Those metrics of engagement can be
59
a way of quantifying the conversion rate of specific
referral sources, for example, Facebook, Blogs or search
engine optimization (SEO) into sales. This method of
analysis is in alignment with the IMC framework, and thus
potentially could equate SM activities with tangible
financial gains for the brand.
2.4 How Social Media changes the IMC Framework
There is growing belief that interactivity and
interconnections between consumers and marketers will
provide the dominant paradigm for a new interactive
communication model going forward (Jansen, Sobel & Cook
2011; Martin & Todorov 2010; Schultz, D & Peltier 2013).
We propose in this thesis to include the interactive
force of SM into the IMC framework, in order to aid
strategy formation and decision making for marketers, and
propose a research tool for further study. According to
the outcomes of the study, SM places a hub between the
strategic and tactical decisions and the IMC program
outcomes. This hub will transform strategy into new
behaviours towards the brand via social connection with
the consumer. Likewise, the allocation and effective
planning of resources will translate to brand-building
content which drives brand equity.
2.5 Chapter Summary
This chapter showed the evolution of IMC according to the
academic literature from the early 1950s to the present
day. This was undertaken in order to provide the
60
theoretical basis for a research model and data
collection. The alternative IMC conceptualisations were
examined to identify a model that would be appropriate to
incorporate the unique features of Social Media, as these
models were developed prior to the rapid evolution of
digital technology and Social Media. The following
literature fields were examined; definitions and
evolution of the IMC process, the IMC framework, the
impact of Social Media on IMC implementation issues and
the measurement of Social Media outcomes. Finally a
modified version of the IMC model was proposed, which
incorporates the unique effect of Social Media on IMC.
In the next chapter an appropriate qualitative
methodology is selected for understanding the potential
impact on IMC processes due to the rapid evolution of the
characteristics of social media.
CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Introduction
The objective of this chapter is to discuss and justify
the choice of research methodology as appropriate for an
exploratory study into marketers’ experiences of
integrating Social Media (SM) within Integrated Marketing
Communications (IMC). This chapter explains and
justifies phenomenology as the most relevant research
paradigm to guide a study of this nature. This chapter
initially explains the research design and approach of
61
the study; it then discusses the data collection and
analysis methods used; and finally it describes the
ethical considerations implicit in a study of this
nature.
3.2 Research Design and Approach
3.2.1 Nature of the StudySM is a cultural and technological phenomenon pervading
many aspects of business to consumer (B2C) marketing
(Edosomwan et al. 2011). SM has become a powerful
marketing communications channel, eliminating or altering
the role of many traditional forms of integrated
marketing communication mediums. As a result, the
appropriateness of existing models of integrating
traditional media forms of marketing communication needs
re-evaluation. This study explores the impact of SM on
traditional IMC decision-making frameworks. The
literature reflects the rapidly evolving world of SM,
with little conclusive evidence of best practices.
Academia has yet to come up with a widely accepted
definition of SM and empirical metrics and guidelines for
its implementation and role in strategic decision making
within IMC programs. Hence further academic investigation
and development of the main themes arising in this area
of study are needed.
This research seeks to advance the existing marketing
communications literature in order to identify
appropriate approaches and processes to integrate new SM
62
platforms and technologies into marketing communications
decision making. Marketing practitioners and academics
are beginning to acknowledge the utility of qualitative
studies in that they ‘gain valid insights, develop theory
and aid effective decision making’ (Goulding 2005, p.
295). Qualitative methods are required to make new
discoveries when a measurement, statistic or outcome
cannot give us that insider perspective and unlock
possible solutions to problems not allowed for by
quantitative means. Currently there is major evolution
in SM hence the need for exploratory qualitative study of
new SM advancements virtually monthly. Qualitative
research is aimed at ‘exploring the meaning individuals
or groups ascribe to a social or human problem’ (Creswell
2007, p. 37) and thus lends itself to the research
question:
What is the experience of integrating social media intothe traditional IMC mix for marketing executives in B2Ccompanies?
Therefore, this research used a qualitative, exploratory
approach to data collection. The qualitative approach to
research ‘is uniquely suited to uncovering the unexpected
and exploring new avenues’ (Marshall & Rossman 1995, p.
26). The use of a qualitative methodology enabled a
depth in the understanding of the individual experiences
with SM. The study design offered flexibility within the
research to tease out any issues not previously
identified in the literature which could not be supported
by quantitative techniques. Furthermore, the exploratory
63
nature of the study enabled important variables to
surface while supporting the chosen research strategy
(Marshall & Rossman 1995).
3.2.2 Research ParadigmTo develop a deeper understanding of the experiences with
SM within the field of IMC, it would be appropriate to
collect data from marketing practitioners who are working
with SM. These individuals make decisions regarding SM
implementation and experience the phenomena this research
sought to uncover. The pervasive nature of SM uses
across many industries requires a flexible methodology
with scope to look at different applications of the
medium within various organisations and the different
types of consumers who interact with it. Traditionally,
qualitative research in this field has been criticized in
terms of questionable standards of academic rigor and
‘soft’ scientific foundations, resulting in less of those
types of studies being undertaken in the marketing domain
(Goulding 2005). However, qualitative approaches used to
provide insight to marketing research problems is gaining
momentum (Goulding 2005). As mentioned earlier the need
to explore new phenomena surrounding the proliferation of
Social Media platforms and their usage lends itself to
the use of qualitative methods.
This study involved a search for experiences amongst
marketing practitioners; variations in marketing
outcomes, breakthroughs in successful SM implementation
strategy; evidence of alignment between social and
64
traditional media and synergies between social and
traditional media in the IMC program. By doing that, new
areas for future research have been identified and
tentative guidelines for managers have been put forward.
When choosing a methodology, decisions are required as to
the adoption of an epistemological and ontological
stance. Epistemology refers to the outlook that
knowledge is either acquired or inherent. Ontology seeks
to define whether the individual’s reality is internal or
external (Creswell 2007). The methodological parameters
set by those research choices then informs the decisions
and influences the methodology and paradigms chosen to
conduct a particular research study. In some cases
multiple paradigms may exist and the researcher may
unwittingly draw on elements of more than one world view
in the research process.
Qualitative research paradigms build on the philosophical
underpinnings of a researcher’s own qualitative
approaches to research, that is, the notion that one’s
world view shapes the type of research practice
undertaken. A paradigm can simply be defined as ‘a basic
set of beliefs that guide action’ (Guba 1990, p. 17) and
stems from Kuhn’s original ideology, as a guiding
approach to theory and research (Neuman 1991). Neuman
(1991) explores the three most widely used paradigms, as
positivism, interpretive social science and critical
social science. We look mainly at the assumptions made by
the paradigms in the way that they guide our approach to
65
the research problem. Interpretivism and Positivism are
the most commonly used research approaches. Critical
social science sets out to move beyond them by
challenging the status quo and bringing about social
change.
Positivists believe in a singular version of reality,
causal relationships between variables and creating
generalisable results from research that may refine,
support or disprove existing theories (Gioia & Pitre
1990). That paradigm is deductive in that it looks at
finding unanswered questions from gaps in a review of the
existing literature and seeks to build a framework to
anchor a research plan. Interpretivism is a more
inductive approach to research, whereby the collection of
data guides the development of theoretical frameworks and
infers possible theoretical scenarios during the process
of the data collection itself. An interpretive
perspective seeks to gain an understanding or ‘feel’ for
the participants’ experience of the issue under
investigation.
When considering the three main research paradigms as
described by (Neuman 1991), it appears that
interpretivism is a likely fit for the research problem.
The key assumption of the interpretivist view is that
multiple versions of reality exist, that is, that each
person sees a situation with their experiences affecting
the way they process information. Therefore, the
personal accounts of the senior marketers were similar
66
and yet their industry, position and years of experience
and background shaped the individual accounts of their
experience. An Interpretivist approach to this research
supported the changeable nature of the subject matter
itself. A need to understand rather than measure and
generalise the answers of our participants indicated that
an inductive method of research would tease out the
issues the senior marketers were facing, and perhaps shed
some light on any recurring themes or possible answers.
The nature of an exploratory study is to generate further
research questions and lines of inquiry, and yet this
particular area of research is in its infancy, coupled
with the rapidly expanding field of data and unchartered
territory in the Internet and social media. The
underlying concept here is to report the process
systematically and yet allow room for the qualitative
‘magic’ to abound and allow the ‘creative brilliance’ of
qualitative methods to evolve and emerge through practice
and apprenticeship (Tracy 2010, p. 849).
3.2.3 PhenomenologyThe common meaning given to a phenomenon or concept
experienced by a single person or a group of individuals
is known as phenomenology (Creswell 2007). While the
meaning of this term has become diluted over decades of
application to philosophy, social science and, more
recently, qualitative research methodologies, its
overarching foundation remains as the essence of lived
experience for a person or group of people (Patton 2002).
67
The methodological approach of qualitative research
phenomenology is attributed to Alfred Schutz (1967) while
the classic method was introduced to the world in 1913 by
Edmund Husserl (Grbich 2007), who called it the ‘essence
of consciousness’ (p. 85). Heideigger, one of the
forefathers of the phenomenological research paradigm,
sometimes postulated that ‘phenomenology is about
describing something that is sometimes unique, sometimes
generalisable’ (Perrone & Vickers 2003). Phenomenology
is best suited to developing an ‘understanding of complex
issues that may not be immediately implicit in surface
responses’ (Goulding 2005) based on its underpinning
philosophical perspective of subjective experiences being
comparable despite the difference of subconscious
intentions.
Phenomenology as a research philosophy, can be used as
both a guiding principle for analysis and a world view,
while remaining reliable and rigorous for the research
problem under study. The overarching principle of
multiple perspectives on similar situations or phenomena
(Schütz 1967) allows the research to uncover, enlighten
and deepen the understanding of Social Media’s place in
marketing communications through exploratory, informal
and iterative processes that allow space for new
discoveries to be made.
For the purposes of this research, phenomenology was
considered to be the most appropriate methodology,
wherein a phenomenological study: ‘describes the meaning
68
for several individuals of their lived experiences of a
concept or phenomenon’ (Creswell 2007 p. 57). In an
effort to combine the experiences of similar candidates
and identify any emergent themes and common threads
amongst those interviewed, this study seeks out ‘how
human beings make sense of experience and transform
experience into consciousness, both individually and as
shared meaning.’ (Patton 2002 p. 104). That approach
identified the individuals who have experienced the
phenomena, and then probed further, finding out exactly
what they experienced and how they experienced it
(Creswell 2007). Thus, the employees from selected
companies and organisations became the unit of analysis
in this study.
3.3 Data Collection Procedures
Using the phenomenological approach to research design,
the study triangulates the data collection through
in-depth interviews, a scanning of organisational
documentation and a rigorous review of current
literature.
3.3.1 Triangulation of DataThe combination of multiple sources of information to
study a phenomenon is referred to as triangulation (Flick
2011). Marshall and Rossman (1995, p. 91) consider
triangulation to be a strategic choice made to enhance
generalisability, whereby data can be ‘used to
corroborate, elaborate or illuminate’ the research
69
question. By bringing together more than one source of
data to illustrate a point, the researcher can strengthen
their case for use in multiple situations (Marshall &
Rossman 1995). Current research repeatedly reports the
lack of construct validity in qualitative research
designs (Alam 2005). Therefore this research design
seeks to triangulate the data gathered between individual
sources, their firms and amongst the literature to
reinforce the credibility and reliability of the primary
data collection.
FIGURE 3.1: TRIANGULATION OF DATA
(adapted from Flick (2011)
PRIMARY DATASemi-structured
In-Depth Interviews
SECONDARY DATALiterature
Review
SECONDARY DATAOrganisational
Document Analysis
70
Semi-Structured In-Depth InterviewsFor primary data collection in this study,
semi-structured in-depth interviews are the main focus.
To gain the perspective of the strategists within
organisations using Social Media as a part of their IMC,
in-depth interviews enabled the collection of rich
information via open discussions and explanation of their
various experiences, outcomes, ideas and challenges.
Organisational Document AnalysisSecondary data was collected from each organisation’s
website, SM platforms and interfaces, marketing materials
and promotional campaign evidence. This supplemented the
primary data collected via in-depth interviews and
assisted the understanding of the proposed research
problem, and added further validation to the
interviewees’ responses.
Literature ReviewAs a preface to the interview data, the literature review
provides definitions, explanation of concepts and
describes the general state of IMC and the subsequent
effects of SM in the IMC framework (for the full
Literature Review see Chapter Two).
3.3.2 Location, Population and SamplingThe data collection was undertaken in Melbourne,
Australia. The researcher used Melbourne-based marketing
executives owing to limited time for data collection and
travel restrictions. The interview participants’
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organisations were distributed in suburban Melbourne and
the central business district.
3.3.3 Sampling StrategySampling is perhaps the most important decision to make
in the data collection process. The quality of
information in primary data collections is based on the
appropriateness of the sample. Sampling targeted major
Australian companies, based on an even mix of consumer
products, mainly FMCG and Retail (B2C) oriented brands.
Research into how companies use SM is very limited, and
focuses largely on consumer behaviour in a B2C
environment (Michaelidou, Siamagka & Christodoulides
2011). This study therefore looks at issues that arise
in the B2C context from a manager’s perspective.
Criteria sampling (Patton 2002) whereby the participants
are selected based on specific criteria was used to
select the interviewees for this study. That was done in
order to isolate information divulged in interviews that
will reveal similarities and highlight differences or
peculiarities among similar people with similar job
titles. This assured quality in the sample, and it
identified gaps, strengths and areas for improvement that
may otherwise have been overlooked in a more random
sampling method. Furthermore, a criteria-based sampling
strategy is a complementary sampling method in many
qualitative research designs (Miles & Huberman 1994),
thus it was a logical choice for this research.
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3.3.4 Selection of Interview ParticipantsThe criteria for participant selection were based on
three elements. Firstly, the potential participant must
have held a position of seniority within their marketing
department, in job title or through their role in the
organisation. The participant had to hold the role of
Senior Brand Manager, Marketing Manager or Chief
Marketing Officer. Secondly, a minimum of five years
experience in their industry was desirable for a
plausible account of the current situation and to compare
experiences with other participants from a similar time
frame. Lastly, the sample was drawn from a single sector
of marketing practice, that is, Business to Consumer
(B2C) organisations. Products sought were specifically
fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and retail brands based
in Melbourne.
3.3.5 Sourcing ParticipantsFrom a privately-sourced database of brand managers,
marketing practitioners and marketing directors, a group
of 20 possible participants were targeted and approached
for an interview via introductory email. The database
was collated using the researcher’s and supervisor’s
existing industry contacts and further sourced via an
internship industry project undertaken concurrently with
the thesis research. Twenty FMCG and retail brands were
selected to participate in the study. In an effort to
triangulate the evidence and compare the responses of
each marketing practitioner (Patton 2002), a selection of
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products representing different market segments aimed to
provide a wider basis for comparison. This also allowed
for general similarities to be identified between
different organisations and product categories.
Simultaneously the triangulation of data assists in
eliminating bias contained in individual responses to a
manageable degree and hence strengthens the construct
validity of the research (Yin 2009).
The resulting sample was a total of eight participants,
allowing for attrition, and was sufficient for conducting
the in-depth interviews. These participants or their
representatives were then approached by email and
provided with an outline of the interview protocol in the
Plain Language Statement and Consent form (PLSC).
Finally the participants were contacted by follow-up
phone call or email to confirm their receipt of all the
information, and the researcher confirmed interview date,
time and location details.
The researcher ensured that each organisation’s
representative and each individual participant had read
the PLSC (see Appendix E) describing the project and the
commitment required by the participants. Those deciding
to participate were asked to complete organisational and
individual consent forms prior to the interview.
3.3.6 Interview MethodIn-depth interviewing is often described as a
‘conversation with a purpose’ (Berg 1989, p. 57; Kahn &
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Cannell 1957, p. 149) and is a reliable primary data
collection method for the qualitative researcher. The
informal style of the semi-structured interview provides
the rationale for using it to generate something like a
conversation or discussion, as opposed to a structured
question-and-answer format (Mason 2002). In terms of
social media the interview allowed exploration of
experiences not currently identified in the literature
due to the rapid evolution of social media. However
general guidelines were drawn from the traditional
integrated marketing communication model such as role,
benefits and barriers to implementation.
Interviews that utilise a structure of open-ended
questions permit the interviewer some guidance to
navigate through the subject matter while allowing the
opportunity for the interviewee to share their
experiences from the perspective of the organisation and
as a representative of that organisation. The potential
for divulging rich information is more likely in this
traditional manner of qualitative interviewing (Mason
2002).
Thus, the in-depth interviews were conducted face to face
with representatives from eight individual brands, all at
their place of operation. The 14 interview questions
were semi-structured, open-ended questions (Creswell
2007). Each candidate was allocated 45 minutes upto
1 hour per interview to complete.
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Pilot Study InterviewA pilot study was conducted via telephone with an
interviewee who fulfilled the requirements of the
criteria sample. This enabled pre-testing of the
interview protocol and the sequence, structure and
quality of the individual questions (Yin 2009). That
interview was not used in the sample but formed part of
the iterative process of conducting the research in a
qualitative manner (Patton 2002).
3.3.7 Interview ProceduresIn the tradition of qualitative studies which aim to
achieve consistent processing of data (Yin 2009), the
protocol for the interview process followed a simple
procedure. The interviews were conducted in either a
quiet office or a conference room within the physical
location of each organisation.
Interviews were planned to take 45 to 60 minutes. The
interviews were conducted in a location selected by the
participant and all eight interviews were electronically
recorded with the full consent of the participants. The
participants were asked to fill out a registration form
or give the researcher a business card to record specific
details such as name, role in the company and correct
contact details, spelling of name and title. To build
credibility and rapport, the researcher read the PLSC and
offered to answer any questions before the participant
signed the document. During this time, the interviewer
opened a casual conversation about business in general to
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relax the participant and set a comfortable tone for the
interview.
To open the session a brief review of the interview topic
was given to refresh the participant and provide the
opportunity for any questions to be posed to the
interviewer before commencement of the recorded
interview. The interviewer then placed three pages of
questions and a notebook for field notes in front of her
to prompt the interview. The interviewer at that point
stated when the recording began and introduced the
participant to the recording device in order to label the
recorded interview for the purposes of clear
transcription later. The interviews were conducted in a
semi-formal manner with the interviewer allowing the
participant to speak until they paused and interrupted
the conversation only to clarify a question or prompt the
next question’s response once an answer was sufficiently
recorded. At the end of the interview, the interviewer
announced that the interview was completed, ended the
digital recording device, and wrote any field notes,
names or clarified spelling of anything mentioned in the
interview that was immediately considered to be
ambiguous. The interview recordings were sent for
transcription via third party with all identifiers left
in for analytical purposes. The transcription contained a
summary of the contents of the interview, the name,
title, and brand represented by the participant. The time
and location of the interview and the length of the
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interview was recorded in the summary. The transcribed
interviews were returned to the participants within two
weeks of their interview via email in order that they
confirm the accuracy and clarity of the interview
comments (Patton 2002).
3.3.8 Interview Questions and ApproachAt the commencement of the interview, the interviewer
supervised the completion of the consent form. Then some
general questions were asked, and the interviewer
reminded the participant that the interview was being
recorded. Once those questions were covered, the
interview was conducted in a less structured way, asking
the participant to share their thoughts on how they
perceived the use of social media affecting decision
making for their specific company, guided by the
preliminary framework of the questions outlined in
Appendix B.
Using 14 open-ended questions to guide the discussion,
the interview started by requesting the definition and
role of Social Media within the company and its affects
on IMC processes, if any (for the full list see Appendix
B). The questions then gravitated to the aspects of the
organisation that affected SM implementation issues from
the participant’s experiences. The conversation then
aimed to cover analysis of SM performance when compared
to traditional media forms. Finally, the interviewer
asked about their program evaluation methods and if they
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use a system to analyse feedback and take corrective
action based on measurements and metrics of their SM use.
An important concluding question was then posed to the
participant, ‘Is there any other issue that we have not
raised that is relevant to the implementation of SM as
part of your IMC mix for Brand X?’ The inclusion of this
question allowed for some insight and anecdotal
description to arise naturally, giving further
explanation of their individual encounters with SM along
their paths of discovery with the medium.
3.4 Data Analysis
Phenomenology can be applied to guide both the
methodology (Creswell 2007; Patton 2002) of a study and
used as a method of conducting data analysis (Grbich
2007; Moustakas 1994). The aim of this data reflection
is to focus less on the interpretations of the researcher
and more on a description of the experiences of the
participants. Moustakas’s (1994) transcendental or
psychological phenomenology focuses on bracketing, after
Husserl (Creswell 2007), in which the researcher sets
aside their personal experiences as much as possible, to
see each interview with fresh eyes, ‘as if for the first
time’ (Moustakas 1994, p. 34). This process consists of
identifying a phenomenon to study, bracketing out one’s
experiences, and then conducting the data collection from
several individuals who have experienced the phenomenon,
in this case, social media implementation. The
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researcher then analyses the data by reducing the
information to a series of statements and quotes and
identifies some key themes from those. The study then
looks at the textural description of the experiences of these
participants or what they in fact experienced, and the
structural description of how they experienced it and under what
conditions. Essentially it means that the study was
conducted with a strong focus on the context and allowed
the results to reveal themselves and meaning to be
derived from the real life experiences rather than from
abstract theory (Grbich 2007). One example from the
interviews showed a description of what the participant
experienced in terms of the research topic and how it
affected them;
… we tend to continuously talk to our brand advocates andthose who are already loyal. The challenge really is howto increase reach. The biggest slice of pie for us, froma commercial perspective, is engaging and drivingincreased loyalty with our non-loyalists, with ouroccasional buyers. You can imagine they are by far thebiggest portion of people numbers wise, so trying toengage with them is a real challenge, and we haven’treally cracked how to do that.Participant for Confectionary
Therefore, this research takes a phenomenological view of
data collection and then uses thematic analysis (Grbich
2007) to process the data. Following the process of
phenomenological analysis by Moustakas (1994), the
thematic coding will be based on individual and shared
experiences in the broad areas identified by the IMC
framework (Chitty et al. 2011, p. 10). Themes are
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‘summary statements, causal explanations, or conclusions’
(Rubin & Rubin 2012). The presentation of the analysed
data will utilise the summary statement as a marker of a
particular outcome of the collective interviews and later
as a practical recommendation for applied use by brand
managers and marketing practitioners.
Coding itself is an important element of the analysis.
Weston et al. (2001) believes there is a reciprocal
relationship formed between the development of a coding
system and the evolution of understanding a phenomenon.
Interview transcripts were coded according to the three
areas of decision making and then grouped according to
the research sub–questions to which they relate. The
text was scanned for common responses or phrases, such as
‘two-way communication’ when describing social media to
identify common meaning between participants and isolate
anomalies. That process produced ‘clusters of meaning’
which emerged when the related statements and quotes were
grouped together (Creswell 2007, p. 61). From there the
researcher created a composite description of the
‘essence’ of the phenomenon. That is primarily a summary
of the common experiences of the participants arriving at
a general set of statements of the common ‘lived’
experience of the phenomenon under investigation.
Creswell (2007) recommended Moustakas approach (1994) to
analyzing the data for the novice researcher, with one
conditional observation. The challenge of bracketing a
researcher’s personal experiences could be an
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impossibility for an interpretive approach. The personal
experiences of the researcher, at some point, informs the
conclusions drawn from the study. While seeking a common
understanding, the researcher must suspend their own
understanding, in order to objectively portray outcomes
of the data. Thus, the researcher introduces the
inclusion of her own experience as it fits the
interpretation of the ‘essence’ of the phenomenon.
Using the data coding procedures outlined in Galman
(2013), the interviews were expanded into multiple themes
and ideas, the data was organised under six key deductive
themes and during the process six inductive areas of
thought emerged. Those were used to quotes, ideas and
connections between interview data, the theoretical
framework and the literature. Once an initial list of
inductive themes emerged, they were aligned with
deductive headings based around the IMC framework and the
research sub–questions. A review of the literature and
each interview then highlighted the recurrent themes of;
Listening, Engagement, Agility, Strategic Fit, Resources
and Integration. A matrix of those six themes were
created to make a crosstab with the research sub–
questions and the underlying issues were arranged under
each theme. It was that scheme which informed the data
analysis and guided the inferences that were realized at
the conclusion of the study in Chapter 5.
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3.5 Ethical Considerations
Ethics approval was obtained from Deakin University Human
Research Ethics Committee and granted with reference
number: BL-EC 24-13. The study was considered to be low
risk by the Deakin University Human Research Ethics
Committee. In order to gain access to the organisations
and individuals required to complete the study, it was
necessary to present the ethics approval via the plain
language statement, and the participant and
organisational consent forms (see Appendix E). In the
interests of full transparency and disclosure with the
participants, each interview was preceded with a
reiteration of the topic, questioning procedures and the
participant was given the opportunity to ask any further
questions. In some instances it was a requirement that
an external affairs agent sat in the room when the
interview was conducted. Likewise, on two occasions the
legal department of an organisation was consulted prior
to the interview to ensure the transparency, trust and
cooperation of the participant and researcher. All
interview data was collected and recorded in identifiable
form. However, the researcher later removed any personal,
brand or corporate identifiers after transcribing the
recordings. As quotes from the transcripts are
re-identifiable, the researcher kept a password protected
code sheet, which is accessible only to the researcher
and supervisor.
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3.6 Limitations of the Methodology
Within the phenomenological approach lies the propensity
for subjects to infer their experiences as a
representation of an expected response, rather than the
actual reporting of their experience. That is, the
interview participants may self-report and choose their
response content based on external motivations to do so,
rather than didactically report their experiences as they
stand in actuality.
3.7 Chapter Summary
Chapter Three described the qualitative research
methodology used in the study. First, an exploration of
the phenomenological nature of the study, justifying its
appropriateness to the subject matter and the subsequent
sampling methodology was provided. Second, an
explanation of a triangulation method was provided in
terms of data collection. This included the primary data
collection of semi-structured in-depth interviews, a
secondary data collection process of organisational
document analysis (online social media presence) and a
comprehensive literature review. Participant sampling
and interview procedures were explained. Third, the data
analysis process was explained and linked to the relevant
theoretical frameworks used. Fourth, the limitations of
the research methodology and ethical considerations were
acknowledged.
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CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Introduction
In this Chapter we seek to organise the data collected in
the in-depth interviews into quintessential themes
arising from the conversations with eight senior
marketers. In reviewing and discussing the responses to
the interviews, the results explore the experiences of
these marketers in similar Social Media (SM)
implementation conundrums. An overview of the results is
given, then the findings are presented, first with a
review of the SM platforms and then SM definitions used
by the participants. The majority of the chapter then
goes on to discuss the findings of the study in regards
to the emergent themes; Listening, Engagement, Agility,
Strategic Fit, Resources and Integration.
4.2 Results Overview
This Chapter will begin with an overview of the results
of the analysis. Due to the qualitative nature of the
data collected, discussion of the findings will be
intertwined throughout the chapter as the issues are
identified and unpacked. The focus of this study was to
uncover certain truths about what drives SM success in
IMC programs, the benefits of SM to Business to Consumer
(B2C) companies and furthermore what these marketers
perceive to be successful implementation of SM. The
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benefits and opportunities presented by SM were
identified with respect to certain beneficial and unique
SM characteristics. What was discovered was that the
strategic decision-making process was crucial to the
outcomes of a successful SM implementation within an IMC
program. While the study revealed common positive
drivers of SM implementation across different product
types and categories and target markets, the relationship
between strategic decisions and tactical executions
relied heavily on some fundamental decision making by
marketing managers.
Given the dynamic nature of IMC, it is a process that
must be carefully monitored and recalibrated in the light
of new technologies, media and management trends (Winer
2009). SM’s addition to the IMC mix has meant making an
adjustment to include a whole new set of tools that can
be used to create deep brand knowledge via carefully
orchestrated management of the brand’s complete SM
presence.
4.3 Findings with Discussion
The data collected during the eight interviews was
analysed as per the method described in Chapter 3. The
following discussion takes a look at the discoveries
made, confirms certain truths from the literature and
discounts some preconceived theory. What follows is an
exploration of the discussions with eight senior
marketers on the role of SM in their organisation and the
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implementation challenges and opportunities they have
encountered with their brands (See Appendix D for the
Brand Identifiers). All participants were referred to as
their product types, for example, Wine or Retail Food. This
labeling also identified references to their brand name.
The participants were initially asked to describe and
define SM. The participants mostly answered with a list
of the platforms currently in use by the organisation.
TABLE 4.1: SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS USED BY PARTICIPANTS.Brand A
Brand B
Brand C
Brand D
Brand E
Brand F
Brand G
BrandH
%Use
Facebook X X X X X X X X 100Twitter X X X X X X 75YouTube X X X X X X 75Pinterest X X X X 50Instagram X X X 37.
5Blogs X X X 37.
5UnbrandedForums
X X X X 37.5
Google+ X X 25LinkedIn X 12.
5BrandedForums
X 12.5
Other X 12.5
Facebook was the most–used platform with all eight brands
having a functional Facebook page. Twitter and YouTube
were the next most-used SM platforms with 75% of brands
having a page or significant online presence. Pinterest
was used by half of the brands interviewed, and just over
a third of those interviewed had Instagram, a Blog or
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multiple Blogs, or presence on an unbranded forum. One in
eight interviewed stated LinkedIn as being considered
part of the SM platforms. One brand had a dedicated
forum for their brand loyalists, while one of the two
retail brands interviewed used Tumblr. This reflects
the most recent research in that when forced to select
only one platform, 49 per cent of marketers select
Facebook (Stelzner 2013). Overall the sample compared
with general SM platform use to reflect a typical
adoption of the most popular platforms.
4.3.1 Defining Social Media
From the outset of the study, it became apparent that the
way the participants defined SM also described their
level of understanding of SM in general. The majority of
interviewees conceded that SM was a two-way communication
channel. The interactivity of the Internet and Web 2.0
enabled them to converse with a brand’s consumers and
with each other about the brand. Most participants
referred to Facebook and Twitter immediately and the
overall aspect of interactivity was alluded to. The
participants with a sophisticated interpretation of the
uses of SM within their organisation seemed to hold a
more considered and detailed definition of what SM was
comprised of for them. This was evident in their
consideration of ‘owned’ assets beyond the public SM
sphere, such as email, CRM and website-enabled
communications such as corporate blogs, as contributing
to their SM presence. This indicated that SM was
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integrated in their marketing communication programs but
further to that, in their consideration set when
strategising.
The marketer’s purpose for SM was inherent in the way
they spoke about it. When the participant for Confectionary
described SM as ‘quite a confusing area for the brand at
the moment’, it was difficult for them to look beyond
their issues with SM to discuss its purpose for their
organisation. In contrast, Retail Food defined the exact
elements of their IMC program that they considered to be
SM, beyond the basic definitions of ‘two-way
communications’ and popular platform types (e.g. Facebook
or Twitter). The implications of this indicated that the
participants were either seen as having been active
seekers of benefits from SM within their organisation, or
they were passively participating with less immediate
utility from the uses of SM. The level of strategic use
for SM was apparent but not entirely uncovered by these
initial conversations.
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TABLE 4.2: DEGREES OF DETAIL IN SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINITION GIVEN BY PARTICIPANTS
Platforms
Two-WayComms
Integrated
DigitalTechnology
UserGeneratedContent
OtherInteractiveMediums
Basic X XIntermediate X X X X
Sophisticated X X X X X X
TABLE 4.3: DEGREES OF SOPHISTICATION IN SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINITION GIVEN BYPARTICIPANTS
Basic Definitions of Social Media
For our brand, we define it by the mediums we use which areFacebook, Instagram and Twitter. Those would be ours. It then doeslink into EDM's and our websites, but I would classify those threeas our main social media tools. –Retail Fashion
I guess we have got a very passionate brand, in fact one of themost passionate brands you could imagine worldwide and because ofthat, the sheer love that these people have for the brand, theyessentially just want one platform (Facebook) that will allow themto communicate and verbalise their love for brand and really bringto life the passion and adoration they have for #Dairy 2 … Therole that we play in that is obviously providing a bit of two-waycommunication. –Dairy 2
I think I would define it as indirect communications about thebrand. For example, in traditional marketing often it is brandtalking to target market; and I would define social media as moreindirect communication where a consumer talks to another consumerabout the brand or an influencer, so it is kind of less direct, ifthat makes sense. –Dairy 1
As something that we all recognise is critically important, but weare not exactly sure how to participate. I would define it asquite a confusing area for the brand at the moment …We are justgoing through a process at the moment of trying to understand whatto do with that audience because we are not doing anything veryeffectively at the moment. –Confectionary
Intermediate We would define it as another integrated part of thecommunications plans for everything we do. It is part of the full
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Definitions of Social Media
picture. –Skincare
Social media for me is any two-way conversation we have with ourconsumers. That can incorporate a number of different forums, orplatforms across the digital spectrum. –Condiment
I would define social media as media using social platforms tocommunicate with consumers. By social platforms, I wouldn’tparticularly include LinkedIn with social media platforms, butthings like, of course, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram etcetera, which are built on social networking and social sharing. –Wine
SophisticatedDefinitions of Social Media
...it is your traditional social media platforms that are set up bythird parties, …any kind of sharing website where consumers arecontributing their own kind of content …I also think it can bedefined as any digital platform that can be an owned asset aswell. If it is a website that you have the ability for consumersto interact, post and talk on that, just because it is nottraditionally defined as a social media platform by the media orby other people, I think it is an interactive digital portal. So Iclass some of our own digital assets as social media because itfalls into the same kind of thing where we are having aconversation or something interactive with consumers. –Retail Food
4.4 Proposal of a modified IMC Framework
Based on the findings of this study we propose to adapt
the IMC framework to incorporate the unique
characteristics of SM. This new framework would be the
basis of future research, as well as suggesting
implementation guidelines for practitioners. The
following IMC framework incorporates SM as a dynamic
aspect within the IMC process, affecting the fundamental
and implementation decision-making stages and creating
new implications for the program outcomes.
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FIGURE 4.1: THE SOCIAL INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS FRAMEWORK
4.5 Thematic Analysis
SM for these organisations represented a multitude of
applications, as with traditional media. The
wide-ranging detail of the responses from these eight
participants illustrated that the SM implementation
problem is complex and affected by some interdependent
factors. The data was manually coded and arranged into
themes based on recurrent issues in the participants’
responses. The following discussion looks at six themes
which emerged from the phenomenological data analysis
process (Moustakas 1994).
The major contribution of the study reflected the unique
characteristics of social media and three themes were
drawn from the findings; Listening, Engagement and
Agility. Conversely three themes that emerged from the
analysis were concepts identified in theory in the
original decision-making framework for IMC (See
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Appendix A). Those were; Strategic Fit, Resources and
Integration.
4.5.1 Listening The fact that information control now lies with the
customer (Mangold & Faulds 2009), has expanded the
marketers’ decision-making scope to include listening to
the brand ‘noise’ on SM (Stringfellow 2013b). The unique
characteristics of SM; interactivity, user-generated
content, multiple touch points with consumers, all
require a new approach to communicating and co-creating
messages with customers. In the traditional IMC
framework, this element is not identified. In the Social
IMC Framework, listening is part of the decision making
activities for SM within the IMC mix. Listening is an
important element for making social media the interactive
forum it has been conceptualized to be (Schultz, D &
Peltier 2013). SM marketing research requires listening
to the conversations and sentiment online about brands,
where those conversations are taking place and with whom:
Before we started playing in social media we did quite alot of listening for probably a good several months totry to understand what is the noise and where should weplay, because we were not overly experienced. There werea couple of myths that that debunked. –Dairy 1
The two-way communication facilitated by SM resembles
that of a conversation, and therefore it changes the way
messages are communicated, delivered and received.
Further the interactivity and ‘always on’ aspect of SM
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requires constant monitoring of user-generated content
for customer experience and potential brand damage.
We are all checking our social media channels on theweekends and if a marketer isn’t, they are morons. Youhave just got to do it, stuff happens, and if you are notdoing it, you have got to be paying someone else to doit. –Retail Food
Brand personality, values and appeal of the brand must be
conveyed in their communications via SM platforms. The
transparency of communications on SM means that the users
are aware if the brand is not interactive and interested
with those with whom they are holding the online
conversation:
I think the key thing with social media is that you havegot to have that consumer insight passion, and wanting toknow who is doing what and why and behaviour. –Wine
MonitoringListening for these marketers involved listening to their
online brand noise for potential sources of positive and
negative brand messages:
We are, not just us but the agency, continually searchingagainst our search terms and hash tags… –Retail Food
Traditionally you do your focus group or you do your bigquant study, and you spend a month getting it ready, amonth doing it and then a month getting it. That is allgreat and that has a role, absolutely, but this is justdynamic information that you can just jump online anyminute, any day and it is evolving, it snowballs, and youcan just be really connected with your brand, and even ifit is not your brand, the issue, and then even moreimportantly, just them as people. I think that isprobably one of the most useful aspects of it. –Dairy 1
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SM implementation requires listening as a function, but
was also seen as a direct source of knowledge and direct
access to the consumers of the product:
Yes, ‘If we did want to go in and do some more thoroughresearch, what can we learn here?’. I think it is reallyunder utilised from that perspective as well. And I thinkthe other thing is, it is really useful in issueidentification; things that are popping up… –Dairy 1
Looking for new behavior rather than planning to the
platform’s abilities is a benefit of listening; ‘You need
to reorient your business around people, not technology.
Don’t have a Facebook strategy or a Twitter strategy or a
Foursquare strategy. Map to human behavior and not to
technology.’ (Keller, E & Fay 2013).
The brands interviewed who considered themselves to have
implemented SM campaigns effectively, used SM in the
planning and testing phases for the entire IMC strategic
effort:
It adds more value to the execution, I guess, and it
allows us to react quicker, it allows us to engage more
people, it allows us to measure and track a lot quicker.
… It allows us to really set key objectives and KPIs, and
it allows us to adjust our plans quicker as well, so we
can very quickly change things up if we can see that we
are putting a banner out on (a Blog) and no one is
converting through it, that banner ad is not working; or
that people are clicking through onto the banner but not
doing anything else, then we know that we are not
verifying those conversions when they come in so let us
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quickly put up something else. It allows us to really
start to be a bit smarter with what we are doing. –Skincare
If brands allow consumers to post photos with no
oversight, they take the risk of creating a virtual
presence that is dissimilar from their target segment and
see brand evaluations suffer among new consumers as a
result (Naylor, Lamberton & West 2012). Wine refers to
the ‘right kind’ of brand conversations and highlighted
what they considered power in SM to build a brand’s
value.
At the end of the day, he comes down to sales, but healso understands the power of, if we say PR, but it isbrand buzz and brand conversation, and the right kind ofbrand conversation. He understands that. It is verypowerful, it is very strong. –Wine
The two-way nature of SM communications was brought up
multiple times to illustrate the usefulness of feedback
to a brand’s management:
Social media gives you instant feedback on anything yousay and do, even if it isn’t something you have directlycommunicated about. It might be something that hashappened with the use of your brand. For us at Retail Food,a customer in-restaurant seeing or doing or experiencingsomething good, bad, negative or whatever is instantlyreplayed. It is a media for pushing out and talking topeople, and also getting instant replay and feedback frompeople as well. –Retail Food
We have had instances where people have perhaps gone andsaid something negative about Wines, and then other peopleget on and defend the wine. We do assess each situationbecause sometimes we are best just to step back and saynothing at all, and to let our engaged brand customersfight for our brand, which I just love to see. There aretimes when we do need to step in. –Wine
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A balance between listening and moderating SM
conversations appeared to be the underlying goal of most
participants’ SM policy. Finding out where the customer
chooses to discuss your brand was important to gauge the
SM effectiveness for Wine:
Surprisingly Twitter has been very successful for us,however, we have one person tweeting and that is Wine’sowner. What we have found is that Twitter is an olderaudience, and it tends to be very highly engaged in thewine category. A lot of industry people, media, winejournos and that type of thing, so it is a very differentaudience to Facebook. –Wine
CrowdsourcingListening was also an efficient way to ‘crowdsource’ for
new ideas, customer service issues and product
development. The participant for Condiment even mentioned
that in itself, the feedback was a measurement of the
channels success for them:
For us, when we see a successful post it is very muchwithin the comments or within the interaction fromconsumers. It is, ‘I have just had Condiment this morning’and that means that channel, that social media is playingthe role that we want it to be. –Condiment
I think we could do more product development-type postsinside and be utilising our fans for those kinds ofthings. And then also giving more of a story behind theproduct and doing those kinds of posts… –Retail Fashion
At some point you got to hand it over and trust people,rather than try to control the whole gamut. I think whatwe were looking at, from memory, was controlling up to apoint. –Condiment
Potentially, in that sense, do a much larger trawl of allsocial media to understand where else the conversationsare, that we might be having. We use it as a bit of a redflag issue. –Confectionary
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The participants who found these aspects useful were
resourced to effectively use the information gathered to
the brand’s advantage.
DistributionListening also translates to direct sales as theparticipant from Dairy 2 explained:
So you get a little bit of feedback there, and then wewill notice that, we will pick up on that and we willsometimes either contact them directly or I will take alittle screenshot of that and shoot it through to our(Supermarket) business manager and say, ‘Can you have alook at what our distribution is like at (Supermarket)Wagga Wagga, and try to understand what the order ratesare and why this product is never on the shelf.’ –Dairy 2
In summary, listening is a unique activity facilitating
effective SM implementation. Listening as an element of
the IMC construct enables a marketer to use their SM
presence for sales, customer service and product
development. In the Social IMC framework, this is a
fundamental decision to be made when implementing SM.
4.5.2 EngagementBrands that foster a close relationship with their
customer enable the creation of a unique brand identity
and differentiate themselves from the competition
(Michaelidou, Siamagka & Christodoulides 2011).
Establishing a connection with consumers was frequently
cited by the participants as an important benefit of
their SM activities, ‘you can just be really connected
with your brand’ (Dairy 1). This was established using
some traditional IMC decision making and engaging in some
SM specific activities. Within the theme of engagement,
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the driving elements that emerged were advocacy, word of
mouth (WOM), sentiment and content strategy. Expected
consequences of having highly engaged (and positively
disposed) consumers include greater brand equity, share
of wallet, retention, ROI and proactive word of mouth
(Schultz, D & Peltier 2013; Vivek, Beatty & Morgan 2012).
AdvocacyOf the brands interviewed, there were positive responses
based around the engagement levels reached by a brand
with its customers on SM. As a communications platform
used to deepen connections with loyalists and brand
advocates, SM was regarded as highly effective:
I think it is important to maintain a strong, loyal baseof consumers, but in doing, so we believe that throughthose consumers we can reach other consumers throughadvocacy and sharing and things like that. –Condiment
However not all brands had been able to find the
connection linking loyalists to new customers via SM:
…we tend to continuously talk to our brand advocates andthose who are already loyal. The challenge really is howto increase reach. The biggest slice of pie for us, froma commercial perspective, is engaging and drivingincreased loyalty with our non-loyalists, with ouroccasional buyers. You can imagine they are by far thebiggest portion of people numbers wise, so trying toengage with them is a real challenge, and we haven’treally cracked how to do that. –Confectionary
Condiment looks to SM as an advocacy avenue to maintain
brand equity through established loyalists:
What we are looking to do with our social media, sort ofif you look at that community as a whole, and thataudience, so that reach that we are generating - is tryto identify and work with advocates within that. Thereason why, I guess, we are investing money into that is
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probably twofold. One is, I think it is important tomaintain a strong, loyal base of consumers, but in doing,so we believe that through those consumers we can reachother consumers through advocacy and sharing and thingslike that. –Condiment
The benefits of brand advocates were mentioned by nearly
all participants, for the advantages are one of the most
frequently referenced in SM literature (Edosomwan et al.
2011; Kaplan & Haenlein 2010; Schultz, D & Peltier 2013;
Vuori 2012). The participants were at odds as to how to
attract and utilise these advocates in some instances:
…if you can get the right person, they can open you to anew audience, but your current audience also loves themas well. –Retail Fashion.
We have got a very captive audience. We are just goingthrough a process at the moment of trying to understandwhat to do with that audience because we are not doinganything very effectively at the moment. –Confectionary
To Confectionary, the role of SM is quite clear in creating
engaged, loyal consumers:
I suppose, in summary, it would be trying to deepen therelationship with loyalists, announcing new news aroundthe brand or the products or initiatives, and then justusing it, as I said, it is a bit of a watch out and a redflag for issues. –Confectionary
To most brands interviewed the role of advocacy was at
the helm of SM’s role for their brand. Dairy 1 used SM to
‘drive credibility in trial’, via bloggers and
influencers, and the flow through was to increase
peer-to-peer advocates for the brand.
Internally, some brands discovered the role of advocacy
in shared learnings from the growth experienced from
previous SM initiatives. Once successfully implemented,
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some key structures could be reapplied to other brands in
a portfolio to a proven SM campaign model. What was
interesting was where SM advocacy came into the strategic
consideration process for Dairy 1:
…so there was awareness, trial, repeat, and thefourth one was advocacy. How do you start to getpeer-to-peer referral and specialist-to-peerreferral ... And then really starting to think aboutsocial media kind of more at the back end of thefunnel, so how do you get people coming back formore. –Dairy 1
Dairy 2 took over their Facebook page from a fan of the
brand, as did Retail Fashion with their Instagram account. A
brand trading their earned assets with consumers is
indicative that the power of engagement is important for
managers to have awareness to harness and utilise to
their brands advantage.
The key is to develop a deep understanding of the essence
of your brand and exactly what makes your customers tick.
Stringfellow (2013a) uses a similar example of Coca-Cola
as a brand that did it right. Coca-Cola didn’t create
the company’s Facebook page at all—-two enthusiastic fans
started it.
Word Of MouthWOM drives customer engagement on SM platforms and is
frequently cited as the most useful attribute of SM
itself (Blackshaw & Nazzaro 2004; Kaplan & Haenlein 2010;
Kimmel & Kitchen 2013; Palka, Pousttchi & Wiedemann 2009;
Schultz, D & Peltier 2013; Shin, Song & Biswas 2013;
Trusov, Bucklin & Pauwels 2009).
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...the zero moment of truth, is the share, and that iswhat we are more interested in, is that is advocacy froma consumer perspective as well, and after they havepurchased or after they have trialed, are they talkingabout it in a good way and sharing that information withtheir circle of influence? –Skincare
WOM marketing on SM platforms has been linked to new
customer acquisition (Trusov, Bucklin & Pauwels 2009).
Dairy 2 referred to sales acquisitions and expansion of
their brand interstate being enabled by SM feedback and
WOM:
Yes, word-of-mouth certainly is quite powerful, and thendirecting people to certain areas where Dairy 2 is onspecial. –Dairy 2
Mere social presence is not enough to get people talking;
rather the best way to have an online WOM impact is to
create content that consumers will want to share or, in
the popular vernacular, something that is ‘talkable’
(Wetpaint & AltimeterGroup 2009).
SentimentBrand knowledge is not the facts about the brand – it isall the thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images,experiences and so on that become linked to the brand inthe minds of consumers (individuals and organisations)(Kevin Lane Keller 2009, p. 142).
Social engagement on SM is a challenging area for
marketers. The reason is that their lack of control
leads to uncertainty, the risks are greater than with a
traditional media message and the benefits are unlimited
if they can foster the right relationship with their
consumers. The need for people to connect with each
other drives the two-way communication of SM and the
marketer must strive for connection with their consumer.
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Instead of sales and marketing, exchanges follow the arc
of relationships: romance, struggle, commitment and
co-creation. Connection supersedes control. (Berkman
2013, p. 3). The close connection that can be fostered
between a brand and its consumers via SM was seen to
contribute to the perceived value placed on SM in the IMC
mix. The trustworthiness of online content is key to
whether that content positively affects attitudes toward
and intentions to read eWOM (Kimmel & Kitchen 2013, p.
11).
Content strategyInstead of trying to take control and dictate the
message, Coca-Cola decided to empower its consumers.
Today, the Coca-Cola brand has one of the most followed
and most successful Facebook Pages in existence
(Stringfellow 2013a). By delivering powerful content
that resonates with your audience, your customers will
literally become your brand ambassadors. And for a small
business on a tight budget, few things are better than
free marketing
Social media relies heavily on the quality of yourcontent. If you have got average content, you are goingto get an average reach because people aren’t going toshare it, they aren’t going to like it and you are notgoing to get that viral effect of it being passed around.–Retail Food
‘We need to be adaptable and by having that plan, youhave got an idea in place, but it changes quite a bit. …there is not too much strategy behind it, which isprobably our weakness.’ –Retail Fashion
I still believe content is still king. If you do not haveoriginal, unique, new content, and you are not sustaining
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it and you are not keeping the momentum, it is verydifficult for an organisation with a traditionalstructure to just switch on a whole content person. –Skincare
Retail Food, Dairy 1, Confectionary, Wine and Dairy 2 all identified
the new currency of creative content. The careful
combination of creative elements with newsworthy appeals,
that also drive the brand message beyond the share, the
like or the tweet was most desirable:
The core thing I think, although you come back to sellingproduct and building brand awareness, the actual tweet upon the day is a one-day activity, but what it did aroundit was that we worked with a lot of media, we worked withretailers and we got such a buzz. We got everybodytalking about rosé on multiple platforms, in multiplemedia. I think we ended up with something like$3.2 million of print media value through editorials andthat type of thing. It was a ripple effect, and it gotpeople talking about it. –Wine
It was also a case of perfecting the content strategy and
aligning it with the brand values and character:
It is hard to get to a place where what we are doing isso newsworthy that it is worth viral sharing. –Confectionary
When we are going through the creative phase or creativedevelopment, just sense checking that constantly andrigorously against our brand DNA, brand positioning. Weare quite fortunate that we have got really tight DNA andreally tight positioning so that if you are constantlymeasuring it against the brand aesthetics, the brandpersonality or the brand icons and seeing if we haveticked all of those boxes, it actually again comes backto providing that really tight framework, as opposed toif we are on track with the brand or off track. –Dairy 2
The brands with this approach to SM strategy were seen to
be tailoring messages to suit the platform, and
identifying shifts in audiences on different SM
platforms:
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What we are trying to do is move that another step to saythat we are not just plastering the same messageeverywhere, and that we are trying to tailor and enableconsumers to be able to experience different chapters ofthe story…–Confectionary
Over the past few years, SM, in all its ‘forms and
incantations, has drawn the lion’s share of interest from
consumers, marketers, media, in short, the whole
marketplace’ (Schultz, D & Peltier 2013, p. 3). This is
because of the assumed value that consumer and brand
engagement provides a brand (Schultz, D & Peltier 2013).
Although the co–creation of brand engagement remains a
key element of the IMC mix and traditional touch points
of the brand, goals in SM implementation could, for
example, be to increase brand awareness or to try to
engage customers with the brand (Hoffman, D & Fodor
2010).
The Social IMC framework uses the theme of engagement to
plan a SM strategy and tactical execution that will
create brand advocates, positive eWOM and sentiment and
deliver strong content. The ongoing value that
engagement provides to the brand is a fundamentally
important aspect of SM and its role in the IMC mix. The
Social IMC framework accounts for the importance of
engagement in the strategizing and tactical execution of
IMC programs, although further testing of its utility as
a research tool is required.
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4.5.3 AgilityThe companies ability to react to changes in the SM
environment emerged as a potential point of competitive
advantage in some of the interviews. We will refer to
this function as ‘agility’, in that the companies with
quick reactions to and from the SM environments within
which they operate indicates their ability to achieve
perceived success with SM. The theme of agility emerged
from the data as a new function of the IMC framework that
did not previously exist.
The agility displayed by a company is underpinned by a
complex orchestration of strategy formulation, planning,
resources and timing. The different examples we
uncovered illustrated how the effects of reaction times,
effective allocation of resources and creative uses of
content could determine SM implementation success. The
ability of a brand to interact on SM was frequently cited
as a combination of speed, timing and nimble
capabilities. The agility displayed by a company to
respond to activity in the SM environment became apparent
as a competitive advantage. The perceived drivers of
agility were timing, reactions and reach.
TimingOne key issue raised throughout the interviews centered
on the timing of any communications via SM. The crucial
timing involved with the real-time consumption of SM
means that the user is capable of sharing well-received
content across the Internet in a very short space of
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time, and likewise, bad experiences can be spread virally
through many forms of eWOM (Shin, Song & Biswas 2013).
The company’s ability to react to positive and negative
feedback is a key driver of SM utility in an IMC mix.
This issue was apparent mostly in regards to response
times from the brand’s SM mediators when faced with
negative sentiment regarding a service or product.
Secondly, the ability to produce timely, relevant
communications by or about the brand was deemed as SM
‘success’ by most participants in the interviews.
One participant identified their concern for maintaining
a rigid response policy with defamatory or unwanted
negative comments on their brands SM pages and platforms
after an experience with negative feedback on their
Facebook fan page:
What we did not do there was to respond quickly enoughand so it escalated before we could get it under control.…and that was our core learning: let us just deal with itstraight away –Skincare
ReactionsReaction times to online conversations are a vital
component of successful SM implementation strategy for
any brand. Some companies had a set protocol and time
frame within which to respond to their customers’
inquiries online:
…We are like ‘Drop us a line at this’ which is a dedicated feedbackemail address, which is addressed as higher priority social media, andthen we get them offline and we deal with it really quickly. Everyonehere is trained for that. …so if it is a complaint about operations, if it isa complaint about a training material, or whatever, everyone knows
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that if you get a feedback that is marked with social media, it is a24-hour maximum response time.
–Retail Food
Likewise, approval of content can impede the timing of
reactions to SM activity and reduce the effectiveness of
the medium;
I feel like, within the freedom of the company, we havebeen nimble enough to acknowledge the role of socialmedia so a lot of the decision rights around content justfalls to the brand team within guidelines given by legaland corporate affairs. –Condiment
The ability to harness the positive power of electronic
word of mouth (eWOM) was also driving the SM strategy for
some marketers interviewed:
Social media for Retail Food is one of our center,critical marketing channels that we use primarily becausewe rely on Retail Food’s word-of-mouth to promote ourbusiness. –Retail Food
ReachSM can reach many consumers due to the real-time,
interactive nature of Web 2.0 but unlike traditional
media, it is consumed differently:
I think a lot of people think that you can then justshift everything to social media, but there is a lot ofthings that social media can’t do that traditional mediacan still do, and traditional media still has the abilityto reach a lot of people very quickly, whereas socialmedia relies heavily on the quality of your content. Ifyou have got average content, you are going to get anaverage reach because people aren’t going to share it,they aren’t going to like it and you are not going to getthat viral effect of it being passed around. – Retail Food
Their goals were to increase reach and frequency of the
occasional users of their product via existing consumers:
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Our strategy of hitting and trying to reach light andmedium buyers, but it is through those heavy and mediumbuyers that there is the opportunity to reach people whomay be light buyers that can be exponential, based onutilising that audience, for us. – Condiment
In summary, the organisation’s ability to harness the
reach of SM by reacting in a timely and effective manner
created agility. The agile organisation will be better
prepared to implement SM effectively. This is due to the
unique nature of two-way communication and the
interactivity of Web 2.0 and SM. Companies that respond
in a timely manner to the online conversations about
their brands will reap the cost effective benefits of SM.
Agility is a consideration for the proposed Social IMC
framework decision making process. It is a new factor
effecting the successful implementation of SM and is
determined by the timing, reactions and strategic use of
reach by the organisation.
4.5.4 Strategic FitAn overarching theme of strategic purpose emerged when
the participants were asked about their uses of SM. The
interviews revealed that SM raises similar questions to
existing IMC implementation issues with regards to
strategic goals. Positioning, targeting and segmentation
efforts by the brand were closely linked to their brand
objectives for SM implementation success. This mirrors
the traditional IMC framework in that these are
fundamental decisions to be made when creating IMC
programs. Decision making and planning for the SM
component of their IMC programs was either an added
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element at the end of strategic formulation, or a
preliminary consideration when coordinating their IMC
program. Skincare and Condiment were pursuing the latter:
From the very beginning everything is planned together. –Skincare
Once you have got a really clearly defined strategy for abrand, it makes it a lot easier across those differentchannels to say yes or no, does this fit with thestrategy, and therefore execute off that. – Condiment
Conversely, Dairy 1 was considering SM more at the end of
their process during communication strategy planning.
This constitutes the same type of approach to a
traditional IMC strategy:
I guess the decision processes for what channel, for whatpurpose in our funnel comes down to reach, efficiency,credibility and target are probably the main drivers …Sothere was awareness, trial, repeat, and the fourth onewas advocacy. How do you start to get peer-to-peerreferral and specialist-to-peer referral ...And thenreally starting to think about social media kind of moreat the back end of the funnel, so how do you get peoplecoming back for more. –Dairy 1
The marketers were either performing SM activities as an
‘add on at the end’ (Retail Fashion), or as ‘another
integrated part of the communications plans for
everything we do’ (Skincare). The alignment with company
objectives was disparate but many acknowledged the need
to plan ahead. Condiment intended to strategise for SM
alongside organisational goals based on learning from
previous years:
Going into 2014 planning at the moment, to try to bringit (SM) into the sort of thinking (about it) at the verybeginning about what we are trying to achieve. That isprobably where I think there is still room for
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improvement as a company and as a brand as well. –Condiment
Brand strategies often preclude SM strategies, as the
participant from Dairy 1 mentioned:
…it is seldom a digital brief. It is a, ‘Here is thebrand challenge; what is the right channel?’ (but)…youstill get ‘Hey here is an idea to do something in thissocial space’ which may or may not be directly linked toour brand challenge. It is still really evolving from myperspective –Dairy 1
This was a common theme in the literature, with the
majority of organisations giving little or no strategic
thought into their SM planning, in an attempt to compete
in this new communications space (Schultz, D & Peltier
2013).
PositioningThe brands with a strong position statement could define
their SM activities in terms of where their
communications were most effective. The participant for
Condiment went on to discuss how important alignment
between SM and overall brand strategy had become for
them:
We had an example where this year, one of the digitalactivations we had planned was developed parallel to theoverall IMC due to time constraints. It became evident asthe activity was developed that it was not consistentwith the overall communications strategy so even thoughit was well developed and an excellent tactical campaign,we took the decision not to proceed because it wasn’taligned to the brand strategy. –Condiment
The brands with strong positioning were likewise better
placed to identify the appropriate SM platform to suit
their consumers. The participant for Dairy 2 stated that
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the positioning work done for their brand ‘avoids you
getting wrapped up in an idea’, implying that the SM
campaign must fit the position of the brand and not the
reverse.
A niche product could find their brand characteristics
better suited to SM. When Wine launched a new, smaller
range of boutique products entirely on SM, they did so to
suit the positioning of the brand identity:
Wine: The new Wine range is the first time where abrand has been launched and the core communicationplatform is Facebook; no website, no nothing like that. Interviewer: It has purely been launched on social.Wine: Purely on social media. Social media anddistribution through our sales teams, so that is all.That is also part of the discovery of a new brand, too.We don’t want to be overt with our advertising.
SM implementation can become a strategic goal in itself,
adding value to an IMC program if it is seen to be a
‘social’ product. The literature identifies the
connection between innovative companies, CEOs and
successful SM implementation (Michaelidou, Siamagka &
Christodoulides 2011). The company’s ability to utilise
SM to differentiate their brand and hold a unique
position in the market will support their positioning
strategy and improve their competitive advantage.
TargetingSome brands identified their consumer’s behavior on SM as
being complementary to reach out to their target market.
…with digital you have got such a big broad choice ofwhere you target that and how you make it work for you …
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it is so much more targeted that we can make that moneywork so much harder for us. –Skincare
It was interesting to note that some of the marketers
interviewed were positive of their target market’s SM
habits and yet many had conflicting observations as to
what demographic actually exists on the most frequented
SM platforms, such as Facebook. The participant for Wine
remarked:
Yes, definitely Facebook, I guess because of the size ofFacebook. Wine and our brand, we have other products thatsuit other categories, but Wine tends to have an olderaudience, let’s say 35 to 65, which really is the bigheartland of Facebook. That is why Facebook is our core.–Wine
Conversely, one participant stated that:
The main focus for us has always been Facebook. Wehaven’t actually extended beyond that to any great level,at this point. When we look at our core consumer, theyare essentially 25 to 40-year-old blue-collar Aussieblokes. I think when you look at where social media,particularly Facebook, Twitter and the likes, it reallyover indexes with that younger demographic, so there is alittle bit of an interesting mix whereby our coreconsumers aren’t necessarily au fait with what socialmedia is this day and age. –Dairy 2
The lack of differentiation between platforms by the
participant for Dairy 2, alludes to the possible strategic
decisions he made not to participate in many of the
social spaces reporting that to his knowledge their known
consumers do not spend time on these platforms. The
participant from Dairy 1 spent time observing various SM,
blogs, forums and Facebook to inform her strategic
decision making with regards to targeting:
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So we had to not too tightly, because you end up withnothing, but reasonably tightly define the territorywhere we thought we would be relevant, and then very muchset a strategy about how we will communicate in thoseenvironments. –Dairy 1
The Social Media Report of 2013 (Stelzner 2013) shows
that many marketers selection of SM platforms change over
time, based on years of experience. This fact proposes
the idea that experience with SM implementation
facilitates better knowledge of the appropriate platform
types for their brand position and target markets.
Social SegmentationThe brands that identified SM as an effective
communications tool for their brand appeared naturally
‘close’ to their consumers due to the social nature of
their product. The proximity of the product type to
consumers’ social lifestyle deemed the appropriateness of
SM as a strategic communication tool to suit their
audiences. Further, it seemed that the effectiveness of
SM as a promotional tool, like other traditional forms of
advertising, was affected by the category of product.
The participant from Wine found that their online
audiences responded to personal posts and tweets from the
brands owners with regards to their lifestyle, travel and
style advice. The Retail Fashion brand said the greatest SM
response (in terms of likes and shares) always came from
product related content, such as arrival of new garments
to the bricks and mortar stores.
Wine : If you said, of all our communication onthe Wine website, what is promotional based versus
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communication, I would probably say 5 per cent or 10 percent is promotion based, and that is largely because weare very lucky in that with wine we kind of get aninstant entry into that social space because for mostpeople food, wine, entertaining, socialising fits in thesocial space. If you were selling something like, toiletpaper for example, which is not really…Interviewer: You won’t get on Facebook to have a chatabout it.Wine: No, and it is not really a social experiencethat you share, whereas people love to share about foodand wine. I think we are very privileged in that we getaccess in there, and we are very careful that we usethose social platforms to build relationships and buildengagement with our brand, and not be really promotionfocused. There is nothing worse than being hammered for1 million promotions when you just want to learn, engageand be a part of it.
Some participants were concerned that the messages must
be tailored to suit the platform and therefore the
consumer segment of that platform:
Our strategy for those two platforms (Facebook andTwitter), are not to have one broad-brush strategy acrossall social media. … We are pushing them and challengingthem (our agency) to be more, not reactionary, butproactive in that space. –Condiment
In a 2011 study, it was found that attracting new
customers prevailed as the most important reason for
using social networking sites, however the measurement of
this goal was relatively low (Michaelidou, Siamagka &
Christodoulides 2011). The inconsistency between goals
of SM and the metrics used to assess this, illustrate the
need to rethink SM implementation from the strategy
formation decisions right through to measurement of the
programs outcomes.
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Some current industry thoughts state that strategic
capabilities must be focused on the networks of people
with shared interests and goals if they are to capitalise
on the social aspects of their offer (Merchant 2012).
This could take the form of the approach to the varying
purposes for SM; sales promotion, brand awareness,
engagement and acquisition. The ability of the marketer
to recognise the best way to interact on SM with their
target was a strong indicator of the ‘fit’ that brand
would make with SM. This social ‘fit’ of the brand, its
offer and the purpose for SM could be coordinated using
the suitable platform. The purpose of the marketing
activity needed to be aligned with the product type, the
social aspects of online conversation and SM ‘sharing’
culture.
In summary, although strategic fit was part of the
original IMC framework it differed in nature with regards
to the characteristics of social media. To implement SM
effectively in IMC programs, positioning, targeting and
the social segmentation of brand strategies must be
effectively considered when strategising. Traditionally
these aspects of IMC would need to be aligned to create a
consistent message. With the inclusion of SM in the
marketing communications mix, the positioning is
important to guide all decisions about media and
messages, and yet targeting and segmentation may be based
on different factors.
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4.5.5 ResourcesOne theme that emerged immediately was resources. This
concept exists in the original IMC framework as Budgeting
(See Appendix A). What surfaced was the common thread of
resourcing in organisations as dictating what level of
execution was possible in terms of SM implementation.
Budgeting in the original IMC framework as a broad term
fails to acknowledge the importance of human resources
and technological capability as fundamental decisions.
When financial accountability in organisations is
strictly monitored, marketing departments are required to
streamline their spending on internal infrastructure and
communications campaigns. When the question was asked,
‘what do you do (as an organisation) to hinder the
implementation of SM?’, every participant’s response
centered on resources; ‘Resources are the biggest
barrier’ (Retail Fashion). Frequently cited in the
literature (Edosomwan et al. 2011; Michaelidou, Siamagka
& Christodoulides 2011; Montalvo 2011; Schultz, D &
Peltier 2013), it is a major determinant of successful SM
implementation. Resources that were deemed to be
contingent for success were human resources,
technological resources and allocation of marketing
budgets to allow the production of good content, in a
timely fashion.
Human ResourcesI think it comes down to the logistics of having oneperson working across the platforms who is key, and oneperson who understands the difference between the
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different platforms, the different consumers and how theyare interacting with the audience and what they want. –Wine
The human resources required to execute SM strategies are
marketing managers, content managers, social media
specialists or digital agencies equipped with a deep
understanding of the brand and its personality,
I think overall, in all industries, the biggest thingthat is hindering social media usage is content managersand having enough budget for dedicated content managersbecause, as much as it is a really old fashioned kind ofthing, I still believe content is still king. If you donot have original, unique, new content, and you are notsustaining it and you are not keeping the momentum, it isvery difficult for an organisation with a traditionalstructure to just switch on a whole content person. –Skincare
Similarly, Retail Food expressed the conundrum the company
found in deciding whether they could create an in-house
marketer with SM expertise and justifying the costs of
doing so;
…do we have the structured kind of cover that we think weneed from a customer relations point, but also do I haveenough creative brains, resources or content to thenmanage us owning it internally as well? –Retail Food
The issue here appeared to be the unknown territory of SM
being a cause for concern among senior management across
the board. The dedicated resources required for an SM
manager were difficult to acquire yet the need expressed
by the participants mostly prevented them from achieving
full integration, consistency and successful
implementation. The underlying motivation was to bring
the control over SM close to the marketing team to
maintain authority and authenticity. The potential
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benefits to a company with dedicated SM human resources
are evident but putting the structures in place must
prove profitable first. Confectionary is a global company
that shares their SM learnings across different business
units and compared what is possible with dedicated human
resourcing for SM and digital marketing communications in
their offshore operations;
The UK structure is quite different inasmuch as they dohave quite specifically a digital media manager in houseand a social media manager in house, which obviously justfundamentally step changes what they are able to do. …they liaise strongly with agencies, but it just meansthat there is a much keener focus on social media anddigital per se within the organisation, and given thefact that you have got dedicated resource there, they areconstantly looking, they are attending all the big socialmedia events, all the big digital events and there isjust much more focus. –Confectionary
Influencing and maintaining the brand equity, building
awareness and engaging consumers requires numerous
capabilities. Management of SM requires strategic,
analytic, technological and creative competencies. SM
management requires a high degree of collaboration and
access to management and company resources (Montalvo
2011). Organisations face a decision to allocate their
resources and knowledge capital to enhance their SM
implementation if they are to achieve success.
TechnologyCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) systems,
proprietary dashboards and listening software
applications such as Radian6 were seen as necessary to
some organisations to implement and measure their SM
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activities. These can be expensive tools and the cost
can be prohibitive to some marketing department budgets.
Further, the data can be collected using disparate
metrics and making results inconsistent and difficult to
make comparisons. For a company such as Retail Food,
with 70 stores, this kind of technology was essential to
their management function, however, gaining concise,
comparable data from SM remained elusive:
We built a social media tab on our Facebook page tofacilitate entries to that competition, and that thentied into our CRM, so the entries went through onto ourCRM and then we could see them populating on that CRM.That is an example of linking it, but not in terms oftracking likes or tweets or anything like that. That isdone separately through our online tracking tool calledRadian5 or Radian6. –Retail Food
Retail Food went on to say ‘I wouldn’t say at this point we
have a perfect system in terms of measuring return on
investment, but that is changing as Retail Food grows …our
marketing budget grows’. The relationship between
budgets and measures were inextricably linked.
Confectionary was undertaking a testing phase of a new SM
tracking tool that measured SM in terms of traditional
metrics for other media forms. They said they hoped it
would help to gain more control over their SM activities
and audience.
Depending on which agency you work with, they report onit differently, right, so there is very little ability totransfer learnings from one brand to another becauseevery little digital agency is looking at things slightlydifferently and reporting differently. –Confectionary
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The need to measure SM by the same metrics as traditional
forms of communication was a capability gap for many of
the organisations interviewed;
…what we have also tried to do is bring social media intoline with all our other media channels and measure it interms of the same measurements we put on our TV or ourprint or other advertising. –Condiment
BudgetingConvincing management of the need to spend on SM came
down to timing and sales results;
We haven’t spent the proper time on it, and I think it ishard to convince the higher powers that you need theextra resources when they see it is ticking along. Theyjust see that it is happening, we are getting goodresponse, getting good engagement, but they don’tunderstand we could go so much further if we actuallyinvested more effort and more money into it, to get aperson to concentrate solely on it. – Retail Fashion
…our budget is not huge, even though we are a big brand,we have got quite limited budget. It is always a trade-off about how much we invest in different mediums inorder to get the greatest return. …We have been veryconcentrated in our spend to ensure that we could be asefficient as possible and not spread ourselves too thinlyacross multiple channels.’ –Condiment
Management requires accountability for the marketing
budget assigned to SM programs and therefore the results
must be measured and evaluated however it was difficult
to ascertain whether investment in SM was conservative to
avoid losses or vice versa. Retail Fashion noted that
‘the Facebook advertising is $50 here and there, so it is
not big dollars’. Accounting for SM results can be done
in terms of qualitative or quantitative measurement via
computer aided tools, reporting systems and constant
monitoring of the environment within which the brand
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operates. IMC programs are typically reviewed in light
of measures such as return on investment (ROI), impact,
reach, frequency, acquisition, conversion and retention
(Chitty et al. 2011; Murdough 2009; Schultz, D E 2011).
Let’s just say it appeared that there was a bit of aconflict because there were certainly what I thought wasexcessive amounts of money being put into what we werestill seeing as reasonably speculative and trial basedbecause if you haven’t done a lot of social it is veryhard to directly correlate the ROI. –Dairy 1
However, SM created opportunities for savings when other
traditional media costs are high, and the results and
measures can be more gratifying as the participant for
Wine noted;
…this year we have changed our strategy quite a bit, andit is largely for, I guess, budgetary reasons. It istough in the industry at the moment. We have pulled backon quite a lot of our print advertising, and we weredoing quite a bit of digital and radio. We are stilldoing probably a little bit of radio and print, but themajority of what we are doing is social media. Largely,the two core reasons behind that is that it is a mucheasier platform to build our relationships because it istwo way. We can certainly measure it. –Wine
They then later remarked;
…if we were spending millions of dollars, you would wantto make sure that you were utilising the best toolspossible to make sure that you are getting the most outof your millions. We are not spending millions ofdollars, so it is all basic measures –Wine
It appeared that the correlation between spending on
measurement and analytical tools, and spending on SM
advertising and promotion inhibits the successful
implementation of SM. The implications of these findings
suggest that the marketers were faced with the question
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of making a fundamental change to their decision making
in terms of budgeting and resourcing. In terms of the
IMC framework, budgeting or resources were still a
fundamental decision and consideration in these drivers
of successful implementation and were primary in
achieving SM integration.
In summary, although budgeting was represented in the
original IMC framework it differed in nature to the new
framework due to the unique characteristics of social
media. In the traditional IMC framework, budgeting was a
criterion of IMC programs, usually executed in a similar
way for all forms of media being used. The new Social
IMC framework requires specific human resources and
technology as well as budgeting considerations. The
success of implementation was contingent on these
aspects.
4.5.6 IntegrationIntegrated SM was dependent on the coordination of media,
consistency planning and marketing-centric control over
SM. The question of how integrated SM was in the
participants’ organisations was not explicitly asked and
yet it emerged as a theme in the data. This was due in
part to the interview questions’ implied isolation of the
SM topic, that some marketers struggled to separate SM
from a general discussion of marketing communications,
alluding to the fact that it was indeed fully integrated
for them;
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I guess the difficulty with this, specifically talkingsocial …is that we do not see it as a stand-alone,separate activity. It is just another communicationplatform that forms part of the bigger, broaderintegrated campaigns. – Skincare
It is absolutely integrated and for us it is a means toan end, it is not the solution. At the end of the day,the way we think about it is, what is the brand and whatdo we want to achieve with this brand? How are we goingto do that? And then comms strategy is a tool forachieving that as opposed to the solution, which Ifundamentally believe is the right way to approach itbecause otherwise the tail is going to wag the dog. –Dairy1
The participants spoke of integration within the wider
marketing communications mix and as a component of their
media strategy;
It was all integrated, so there was always mention ofsocial media in print; a little bit in radio, and you areobviously very restricted by what you could do. Buteverything was cross-referenced. If you were running aprint campaign, we would make sure that that was alsorepresented, communicated on the Facebook channel. –Wine
Integration within marketing communications is an
implementation decision in the original IMC framework,
represented by Mixing Elements and Selecting Media (See
Appendix A). The coordination of proliferated media
sources were approached differently by each participant.
This reflects the traditional approach to implementing SM
in IMC as evidenced in Chapter 2. Implementation
decisions based on the level of integration afforded to
SM are made for vastly different reasons. The purpose
for integrating SM for many was to amplify and extend on
the traditional media offerings;
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In terms of that general organic awareness, I think it isactually probably the best tool we have got in terms ofdriving that level of interest in the brand. Because ofwhat we represent in these new markets though, I don’tthink the digital space or the social media space does agood enough job at really telling people what the brandis about in a broad sense. When we utilise our media, wecertainly see through the home media, being TVC,out-of-home, radio and those sorts of traditional types,probably play a better role in actually telling peoplewhat this brand is about. –Dairy 2
Yes, it is also a great amplifier of an idea. I think themost successful marketing campaign is when you canactually cover a multitude of channels. When we have donea PR campaign, for example, that has got mainstream mediapress, we have put it in through our owned digitalassets. We have activated it through an event orexperiential and then we have blasted it through socialmedia. Those are the campaigns that, when they do well onall of those media, are the ones that seem to really workbecause you are hitting lots of different people in lotsof different ways and repetition of the same message, butthrough all different devices and channels. If you getsocial media right, if you get a great idea in PR and youcan amplify it with social media, I think social mediaworks really well as an amplification effect to acreative idea.’ –Retail Food
The participant from Retail Food saw the broadcasting nature
of SM as yet another channel to release messages
advertising the brand. This did challenge the
interactive nature of the medium but also capitalized on
the reach of SM for relatively low cost. Condiment saw
their brand as fully integrated and yet the use of ATL
agencies reduced the effectiveness of the integration
achieved;
I also think from an integration point of view, we havetried really hard to bring it (SM) into the front of ourthinking about campaigns. I mean it is everything we do.But I don’t think we are quite there in terms of working
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with our, say above-the-line agencies et cetera to reallythink about it. – Condiment
The participant for Confectionary had coined a term, to
describe the way in which they had begun to incorporate
the consumer behaviour driving the need to establish an
integrated role for SM among the media mix.
What we are doing is focusing very much as we moveforward on what we are loosely calling a ‘transmedia’strategy. We are really trying to get to grips with themultiscreen behaviour and trying to get better at, notjust using digital per se and social media to push out amessage that we have already got happening on TV, butrather to actually customise the message so that it isanother chapter of the story. –Confectionary
The concept of interactivity and the shift in the nature
of digital communications has been reported in the
literature as a ‘hypermedia’ environment (Hoffman, DL &
Novak 2009). This new media environment will create a
more complex task for marketers when decision making to
coordinate media types and create consistency of
messages.
ConsistencySome brands were strict about integration between all
communications elements for coordination and to ensure
consistency;
We have had a really concentrated effort through oursocial media platforms to ensure that our conversationalcalendar and the content we are generating online isaligned to our strategy and ATL communications inachieving objectives. – Condiment
I think there are two things around consistency, for me,aside from the actual content that one is posting. One istone of voice, and the other one is a visual consistency,which we have been shocking at. If you look at the likes
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of (Global Biscuit Brand), there is a beautiful visuallanguage that is used throughout all of their posts thatis just remarkable, and that is because they spend a lotof time focusing on it. It is beautifully designed, andtheir photography is exceptional. –Confectionary
We are a fairly small team, a small organisation, and sowe don’t have a huge requirement for specific writtenguidelines for social media, for how it looks and feels,because we control that. –Wine
The organisations with a marketing-centric structure were
able to create and maintain consistency. Tight control
over tone of voice, position, brand image and character
was demonstrated by marketing departments that isolated
and controlled the decision making in their chain of
command. The closer the SM decisions were to the brand
managers and marketing managers, the more control over
the SM presence they could exert. This was contrasted by
the companies that suffered from a lack of coordination
within the company or when outsourcing to digital media
and advertising agencies;
…that loss of control I can see applying to any kind ofsocial and digital media when you don’t have amarketing-centric company that has control over all thoseaspects. –Retail Food
By not letting everyone get onto it …everything that weget posted is run by at least me …I will always check itwith my general manager who looks after the brand acrossall areas of marketing anyway –Retail Fashion
Consistency was hindered by regulatory requirements of
some brands, in that they were obliged to alter their SM
activity to ensure legal and governmental requirements
were covered, in the case of Skincare it created pressure
to conform to guidelines;
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…It is also quite difficult as well, particularly in aregulated industry like where we have got registeredproducts and TGA, to brief a third party to be able to dothat for you and make sure that they do the right thing.It is about resources. …It is also about balance between, when all the socialmedia sort of exploded, and it was about transparency,and being authentic, and allowing people to complain onyour site, and acknowledging the good with the bad. It isnow about balancing that with making sure that we arecovered legally and that we are covered responsibly. –Skincare
Brands that created and utilised a definitive set of
guiding brand principles, in the form of brand DNA
documents, human resources and strict codes of conduct
and regulations, increased their ability to successfully
implement SM consistently within IMC programs. Condiment
used strict guidelines to maintain a consistency in all
branded activities and this extended to SM.
…we have also created sort of a brand-new brand styleguide or we call it brand DNA book. The role of thebrand DNA guide is to ensure consistency of how the brandshould talk, what it should look like; and within thebook there is examples of how to execute. – Condiment
Confectionary, Retail Fashion and Wine all expressed the desire
to have more structured approaches to a brand guideline
to inform their strategic and tactical decisions for
consistency. Retail Fashion noted that a small team allowed
for tighter control over the tone of voice and brand
personality. If they were to open up SM input to involve
a wider range of people internally, brand guidelines
would be necessary.
Most brands interviewed struggled to reconcile the quest
for consistency and internal technical capability in SM.
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The maintenance of consistency across content and
platforms, and possessing the right technical
capabilities to perform on the same platforms challenged
how they could fully represent their brand authentically
in the SM sphere. The decision to outsource their
digital needs (including SM) was sometimes driven by the
need to stay abreast of the technological trends, of
which some marketers believed the digital and social
media agencies were more capable. The participant for
Retail Food was concerned about staying in touch with
industry trends on SM;
The challenge for owning it completely internally is thatyou do need specific expertise in that area to remainplugged into trends, like how is Tumblr going? Is Yelpreally going to overtake Urbanspoon? What are theindustry trends? Because if you cut off external agenciescompletely, that is what they actually have knowledgeinto, they have that expertise. That was one of thequestions that was brought up in that spot. What I’mtrying to work out is how we internalise it but also keepour hand in on what is happening. You know, my God, isno-one using Facebook anymore? Facebook has been indecline for a while now. –Retail Food
One participant found that the agencies were less likely
to understand and react appropriately as the brand’s
online ‘personality’;
…there is the tone-of-voice side, which is probably alittle bit more difficult for the agencies because it isvery intuitive. When you work on a brand day in and dayout, and for many years, you get to know it like it is apersonality, right, so there are fairly often instancesin which I will read something from the agency and go,‘What were you thinking?’ –Confectionary
The participant for Confectionary went on to discuss their
New Zealand counterpart’s success in achieving
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authenticity in integration by keeping SM moderation in-
house;
…they have had remarkable success as a result because ofthe fact that I think it has become apparent to consumersthat there is an individual who cares, that is respondingto posts, and listening, and talking, and perpetuatingthat conversation, as opposed to a company that has beenemployed to post twice a week at X time. It is a verydifferent story. –Confectionary
In summary, integrated SM is dependent on coordination of
media, consistency planning and marketing-centric control
over SM. In terms of the IMC framework this theme bore
resemblance to the traditional decision-making framework.
SM is still required to integrate among the media chosen
to achieve campaign goals and organisational objectives.
4.6 Chapter Summary
The findings of the exploratory qualitative analysis were
presented and discussed in this chapter. The major
contribution of three new concepts relevant to social
media were identified and included in the original IMC
framework. While six themes came from the eight in-depth
interviews with senior marketing managers, three were
similar to existing components of the IMC framework.
However they did differ slightly in nature or character,
with regards to the integration of SM within the IMC
environment. On the other hand the three new themes
derived from the interviews reflected the interactive,
immediate and intimate nature of SM and required
modifications to the IMC framework. The addition of these
variables changes the framework by ensuring SM is
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addressed in the planning of managers in the following
way:
Consideration of the interdependent role of SM
within the larger IMC program;
Dedicated strategic, resourcing and integration
decisions are made with regards to SM; and
Managers undertake listening, engagement and agility
measures to successfully implement SM within IMC
planning.
Those issues were critical to the marketers’ perception
of successful SM implementation. Because of the unique
characteristics of SM and recent inclusion of SM in IMC,
the original IMC framework required updating. The next
chapter provides an overall summary of this research
project, its contribution to the literature as well as
recommendations for research and marketing practitioners.
As mentioned earlier, in the literature more focus is
needed on understanding if and where social media might
fit in an IMC mix (Schultz, D & Peltier 2013).
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CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS
AND LIMITATIONS
5.1 Introduction
The previous chapter discussed themes derived from the
interviews with senior marketers concerning their
experiences implementing social media (SM). This chapter
concludes the findings and presents a modified framework,
which integrates social media strategy into the
traditional integrated marketing communications (IMC)
framework. Initially the chapter will review the
research problem, and research. Next it will integrate
the contribution of this study into the existing
integrated marketing communication literature. We will do
this by presenting a new IMC framework based on the
findings and discussion of the previous chapter. The
chapter concludes with recommendations for future
researchers and managers, and finally, an identification
of the limitations of this study.
5.2 Review of the Research
The aim of this study was to identify the current issues
marketers face in implementing social media in their
organisations. At its core, this research is unpacking,
examining and questioning the issues and discussions
regarding the inclusion of SM in IMC programs. Using an
exploratory methodology, this study aimed to provide a
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wide ranging snapshot of current issues faced by
marketers in the B2C sector when implementing and
operating Social Media within their IMC programs. The
aim of the interviews conducted was to identify the
benefits of, and barriers to successful implementation of
social media in the IMC mix.
This thesis provides the ‘essence’ (Moustakas 1994) of
key issues faced by senior marketers implementing SM in a
B2C context. Using the data collected from the eight
marketers interviewed, the rich description of their
experiences informed the conclusions discussed in the
subsequent section. The themes that were highlighted in
the data collected during the interviews are reflected
upon in the following section, and address the research
question and sub–questions:
RQ: What is the experience of integrating Social
Media into the traditional IMC mix for marketing
executives in B2C companies?
SQ1: What is the role of SM within IMC?
SQ2: What are the perceived benefits of SM
implementation to IMC?
SQ3: What are considered the determinants of
successful implementation of SM in IMC programs?
5.3 Conclusions
The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences
of senior marketers since the inclusion of SM in IMC
programs for their brands. The issues arising are
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important to note given the growth in both academic and
industry attention SM has received. This study made a
contribution to the evidence as to how SM has altered the
IMC-driven environment of B2C marketing. It was found
from the eight in-depth interviews that the current
mindset of these marketers is one of discovery, trial and
experimentation.
Schultz, D and Peltier (2013) suggested that the course
of human history has been changed significantly and argue
that interactivity and interconnections between consumers
and marketers will provide the dominant paradigm for a
new interactive communication model going forward. The
IMC Framework (Chitty et al. 2011, p. 10) provided an
appropriate model of the IMC process, however its rigid
nature has been challenged by the inclusion of SM in the
IMC mix.
This study provided a number of significant findings
during the course of the interviewing process:
The unique characteristics of SM, such as
interactivity, require the organisation to listen to
the conversations, opinions and trends presented on
various SM platforms. Monitoring the online brand
discussion, crowdsourcing for ideas and flagging
sales and distribution opportunities via SM
channels, drove the theme of listening. The
benefits to successful SM strategy were increased
sales, customer experience and product development.
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Developing methods of determining how brand
engagements are created and nurtured across the
multiple SM touch points will determine a
competitive edge for organisations (Schultz, D &
Peltier 2013). The drivers of engagement are
advocacy, WOM, sentiment and content strategy. The
level of engagement companies achieve in SM will
determine a positive brand experience and will
support brand equity (Edosomwan et al. 2011). Other
benefits to marketing communications programs who
seek brand engagement with their consumers are;
share of wallet, customer retention, ROI and
proactive WOM. (Schultz, D & Peltier 2013; Vivek,
Beatty & Morgan 2012).
A nimble and proactive approach to SM
implementation, allowed for a conversation with
consumers not previously afforded by traditional
media. A company must dedicate time and effort to
review and respond to customers’ responses.
Determinants of an agile SM strategy were timing,
reactions and reach. Benefits of creating brand
agility were: superior competitive advantage in the
marketplace, cost savings and potential reach to
more consumers than was possible with traditional
media.
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Social Media plays a role by providing a cost
effective method of marketing and advertising
(Edosomwan et al. 2011). Effective combinations of
human resources, technology and marketing budgets
drove the theme of resources. The benefits to an
organisation were the ability to create and execute
timely content at a low cost. Possessing the
knowledge and capabilities to produce highly
engaging content in a timely fashion created many
advantages for the participants organisations as
discussed in the previous chapter. Further,
measurement of SM outcomes facilitated program
evaluation and superior performance within SM
strategies.
The strategic fit of the SM campaign was largely
attributed to the positioning, targeting and social
segmentation. This was evident in the participants
who achieved what they perceived to be success in SM
implementation. The benefits arising from strategic
fit were creating deep connections with niche
targets of customers. Self-segmentation often
occurred and personalized offers were possible with
more attention paid to the matching of SM strategy
and implementation.
When asked what is Social Media? Don Schultz and
James Peltier (2013) report that it is not just
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another channel for marketers to unleash their
communication activities. The level of integration
afforded to SM activities within IMC can have
profound effects on the level of implementation
success. A complex balance of media coordination,
consistency planning and marketing-centric control
of SM activities were perceived to achieve
integration.
Some final conclusions can be drawn from the outcomes and
discussion of the data analysis with regards to the
research questions. The analysis of the participants
responses uncovered three new themes within SM;
Listening, Engagement and Agility. These concepts are
new to the IMC process and infer that the two-way nature
of communication in SM needs to be accounted for in IMC
program decision making. The academic significance of
this research is to enhance and deepen the body of
knowledge on SM implementation issues and provide
research avenues for the future.
5.4 The Social IMC Framework
Based on the findings of this study it appears that the
new IMC framework incorporating the unique
characteristics of SM is needed. This new framework
would be the basis of future research, as well as
suggesting implementation guidelines for practitioners.
The new Social IMC framework includes SM as a dynamic
aspect within the IMC process, affecting the
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decision-making stages and creating implications for the
program outcomes (See Appendix A).
5.5 Recommendations for Managers
Marketers must leverage content across multiple channels
to allow for fuller implementation of social media
initiatives beyond pure ‘short term promotion’ or sale
promotion efforts (Schultz, D & Peltier 2013, p. 12).
The unique characteristics of SM must be accounted for,
from the strategic planning at the outset, to the
creation of content for SM platform use. Organisations
that find social media at the top of the agenda when
strategising will find it easier to maintain a consistent
voice and represent the core values of the business
(Maplestone 2013). This study found that effective SM
implementation is contingent upon strategic and tactical
consideration of SM when forming IMC programs. Utilising
the resources, level of integration and strategic fit of
SM with the brand to suit IMC planning will determine
successful SM implementation. Companies must acquire the
skills of listening, engagement and agility if they are
to develop and deploy successful SM strategy within the
wider context of IMC.
5.6 Recommendations for Future Research
SM is the fastest growing interest area in marketing
journals, with nearly 200 articles published in the last
two years alone (Schultz, D & Peltier 2013). The research
must move beyond use and usage, tools and tactics, and
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more focus must be given to questioning where SM fits
into the IMC mix. The research conducted here has
illuminated some opportunities for further study of SM,
namely within the context of IMC as a concept, and as a
process in and of itself. Although this study narrows
the SM Implementation theory-practice divide, there are
still gaps existing between the current research and what
organisations are doing in practice. This study mirrors
what has been identified in the literature in that
respect.
Perceptions of SM Integration: Further research could
look deeper into how companies integrate social media,
why they do so and how they feel they perform in social
media, both from an objective and a subjective view. It
could also be interesting to understand how companies
measure their performance in social media, both
objectively and subjectively. If it was possible to
follow companies for a longer time, in the beginning of
their integration, a longitudinal measure of the change
in performance could be gained objectively. If timing
restricts, further research of this area could be to
conduct more interviews and in that way get a deeper
understanding about how some companies work with
integration and how they measure performance.
New Social IMC Framework: Gaps in the current IMC
literature remain contingent on the validity of IMC
measurement tools used, inclusive is the need to test
instruments that could be used to evaluate IMC in
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organisations. The new IMC framework could be tested to
identify the dynamic and amplifying effect of SM in IMC,
but further inquiry into its validity is required. This
could be further developed through alternative research
methods, such as case studies and action research.
Product Category Differences: Further studies could
include a quantitative study into the product category
and level of social media implementation success, in
relation to level of integration within the organisation.
Variables could be based around the resources invested in
SM implementation, human, technology and budget and the
subsequent levels of integration and implementation
successes achieved.
New Measurement Dimensions: Another possible quantitative
study could incorporate the dimensions of SM measurement
devised by (Murdough 2009) and propose new ways to
measure SM that attempt to create a link between TM and
SM measurement and accountability. The link between
strategy formation, measurement and successful IMC
programs is yet to be fully explored in academic research
and this is where most senior managers are seeking
answers to fundamental implementation issues.
5.7 Limitations and Challenges of the Study
While an effort to contribute to progress in resolving
issues of conceptual and theoretical development of the
IMC construct is required, this study moves beyond the
ongoing argument to identify the role of SM in the IMC
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landscape and its impact therein. The iterative process
of developing an all-pervading definition of IMC, to
accumulate and add to the knowledge base in incremental,
positive steps continues. It is a long-term undertaking
that will involve many contributions to this field of
research to arrive at a truly universal representation of
the IMC paradigm and it’s many facets (Lee & Park 2007;
Reid 2005; Valos, Ewing & Powell 2010). The arrival of
SM in the IMC mix creates further developmental issues
for research in this field for the many reasons mentioned
throughout this thesis.
In regards to this study, the parameters of an Honours
thesis time frame dominated many aspects of the study,
imposing limits on the ability to test a research problem
to its fullest extent. As such, this allowed arrival at
the ‘essence’ of the problem to emerge but raised as many
new questions as it answered.
Although this exploratory study was limited to a narrow
band of participants, their relative homogeneity allowed
for a holistic look at how they execute SM within their
IMC activities. The study would have benefitted greatly
had there been time for more in-depth questioning of the
participants, a quantitative follow up and scope to
report the findings in a more conclusive and exhaustive
manner perhaps incorporating a grounded theory approach
to data collection and analysis (Galman 2013). Despite
these limitations, the strengths of the methodology were
gaining rich personal insights from the marketers via
141
in-depth interviewing. The challenges and successes
experienced by the participants were appropriately
captured as a result of the interviews and methodological
approach.
General limitations experienced were: gaining access to
the appropriate participants, the small sample size and
limited time for data collection and analysis. The
participants themselves were generous with their
information, but there was an inherent conflict of
interest, in that most marketers interviewed were assured
anonymity and therefore some information could not be
shared due to the public nature of the brand’s profiles.
It could be said that had the data been more anonymously
collected, via survey for example, that the participants
might have been more inclined to give more detail in
their answers in terms of results, successes and
failures.
142
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APPENDIX B: SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
When responding to the following questions, we would liketo focus on one brand where SM has a significant role toplay in your IMC.Q1: How do you define SM for your brand?Q2: Which SM platforms do you use for Brand X:
FacebookTwitterPinterestInstagramGoogle+LinkedInYouTubeBlogsOthers
Q3: What marketing activities do you do through orwithin these SM platforms? Q4: What is the purpose of these activities? What do youhope to achieve by performing these activities?Q5: Do you see the benefits of SM as being different totraditional marketing communication media?Q6: What traditional media do you employ for Brand X?Q7: Does the purpose of SM differ from the purpose ofother elements of traditional media, i.e. such astelevision and newspaper?Q8: What do you do as an organisation to facilitate theimplementation of SM for Brand X?Q9: What do you do as an organisation to hinder theimplementation of SM for Brand X?Q10: How do you ensure brand consistency within your SMactivities? Is it harder? Why?Q11: Do the methods you use to ensure brand consistencyusing social media differ from methods used to ensurebrand consistency within traditional media?
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Q12: What is your SM measurement strategy? Do the methodsyou use differ from those used to measure theeffectiveness of traditional IMC?Q13: Is there any other issue that we haven’t raisedthat is relevant to the implementation of SM as part ofyour IMC mix for Brand X?
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Backup question for quick interviews:Q14: How does SM affect decisions around:
PositioningTargetingSetting objectivesBudgetingMixing elementsCreating messagesSelecting mediaEstablishing momentum.
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APPENDIX C: SAMPLE TRANSCRIPTION
Participant: Retail Food
Interviewer: Vanya Maplestone
Participant: Retail Food, compared to where I wasworking before at (Softdrink Brand), which was massiveTVs, billboards, advertising, massive budget, Retail Foodhas a reasonable budget but our brand ethos is to get bigwithout appearing big, so we have actually, to thispoint, shunned traditional media and gone really hard ondigital but also PR, so generating awareness through newscurrency and newsworthy events. So PR, digital and thensponsorship and events are probably our three mainbuckets with the way that we talk to consumers.Interviewer: Okay, so you don’t do a lot of print?Participant: Not a lot, a bit, but not heaps, andif we do print we will target it towards street press andstreet cool magazines, rather than your broadsheets andall those kinds of traditional channels.Interviewer: Okay, that is interesting. I think wehave sort of covered this, but your purpose for socialmedia over traditional, like you said, is more to get thebrand message out?Participant: Yes, it is also a great amplifier ofan idea. I think the most successful marketing campaignis when you can actually cover a multitude of channels.When we have done a PR campaign, for example, that hasgot mainstream media press, we have put it in through ourowned digital assets. We have activated it through anevent or experiential and then we have blasted it throughsocial media. Those are the campaigns that, when they dowell on all of those media, are the ones that seem toreally work because you are hitting lots of differentpeople in lots of different ways and repetition of thesame message, but through all different devices andchannels. If you get social media right, if you get agreat idea in PR and you can amplify it with socialmedia, I think social media works really well as anamplification effect to a creative idea.
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Interviewer: Yes. When you say the same message,do you mean the same voice? From the same perspective?Participant: Yes, the same tone, same message.There could be a different aspect to the message. If youthink about it, very straight, one of my big PR successeswas creating a (promotional food item and launch event)that we did for a stunt around Australia Day. That didincredibly well. We got massive mainstream media coverageto that, like TV as well like Today Show, Project, Channel 7news and then all the broadsheets; News Ltd newspaperspicked it up as an exclusive, so we got that push. Butagain, that is a push with not much feedback, which isgreat, by the way.
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APPENDIX D: BRAND IDENTIFIER MATRIX
INTERVIEW PRODUCT TYPE JOB TITLE OF PARTICIPANT(S)Brand A Skincare Marketing Manager & Marketing
Services ManagerBrand B Condiment Senior Brand ManagerBrand C Dairy 1 Marketing and Innovation ManagerBrand D Retail Food Marketing ManagerBrand E Dairy 2 Brand ManagerBrand F Wine National Marketing ManagerBrand G Confectionar
y
Marketing Manager
Brand H Retail
Fashion
Public Relations and Retail Manager
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APPENDIX E: GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS
ATL – Above the Line Media
BTL – Below the Line Media
B2B – Business to Business
B2C – Business to Consumer
EDM – Electronic Direct Mail
eWOM – Electronic Word of Mouth
FMCG – Fast Moving Consumer Goods
IMC – Integrated Marketing Communications
KPI – Key Performance Indicator
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
SM – Social Media
TGA – Therapeutic Goods Administration
TVC – Television Commercial
WOM - Word of Mouth
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APPENDIX F: PLAIN LANGUAGE STATEMENT & PARTICIPANT
CONSENT FORM
PLAIN LANGUAGE STATEMENT AND CONSENT FORM
TO: Participant
Plain Language Statement
Date: Full Project Title: Integrating social media into marketing communications strategy: senior marketers perspectives Principal Researcher: Dr. Michael ValosStudent Researcher: Ms Vanya MaplestoneReference Number: BL-EC 24-13
Dear Sir/ Madam, Plain Language StatementYou are invited to take part in this research project.This Plain Language Statement contains detailedinformation about the research project. Its purpose isto explain to you all the procedures involved in thisproject so that you can make a fully informed decision
163
whether you are going to participate. Feel free to askquestions about any information in this document.
Participation in the interviews is voluntary. If you donot wish to take part you are not obliged to. If youdecide to take part and later change your mind, you arefree to withdraw from the interview at any stage. Anyinformation obtained from you to date will not be usedand will be destroyed.
Your decision whether to take part or not to take part,or to take part and then withdraw, will not affect yourrelationship with Deakin University. Once you have readthis form and agree to participate, please sign theattached Consent Form. You may keep this copyof the Plain Language Statement.
For your kind information, this research aims to studyhow businesses are currently integrating social mediainto existing marketing communications. It mainlyinvestigates how organisations coordinate a consistentmessage across media types, how its outcomes are measuredand the implications for future research. Due to thelack of research regarding social media implementation inbusiness to consumer contexts and experiences of socialmedia utilisation, this study takes an exploratoryapproach. The interview questions will follow a semi-structured style to guide the discussion and someexamples are as follows:I. How do you define SM for your brand?II. Which social media platforms do you use for brand X?
III. What marketing activities are conducted on these social media platforms?
IV. What is the purpose of these marketing activities? The research will be conducted with ten individuals.The results of this study will contribute to a betterunderstanding of the social media phenomenon and itsimpact on marketing communications. The outcomes of thisstudy would appear to be useful to both academics andpractitioners who are evaluating the strategic uses ofsocial media within organisations. It also providesvaluable information on current practices of
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social media implementation within Australian FMCGorganisations.
Your participation in the project will involve a face-to-face interview. Each interview will last up to 1.5 hoursand will be recorded only after receiving your consent.You are free to withdraw the voice recording at anystage. To further clarify issues discussed during theinterview, you might also want to share some additionalrelevant information by allowing us to inspect socialmedia platforms and other marketing communication mediumsand materials currently in use by your organisation.This might include some relevant documents as well. Allvoice resordings will be transcribed verbatim andtogether with our notes and any other relevantinformation that you may give to us would then beanalysed for research purposes. The information that weobtain from you and your organisation, will not be usedfor any other purpose except for the stated/explainedresearch purpose. The findings of this research studywill be published as part of an Honours thesis.
Please note that, no identifiable informationwill be published without your permission. Anyinformation obtained from you and your organisation willbe stored at Deakin in a locked filing cabinet, and allelectronic copies of documents will be stored on apassword protected computer. All data will be stored fora period of 5 years after final publication after whichtime the data will be destroyed. Upon completion of thisresearch project, you will be sent (on request) a copy ofany resulting publications.
This project will be carried out according to theNational Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research(2007) produced by the National Health and MedicalResearch Council of Australia. This statement has beendeveloped to protect the interests of people who agree toparticipate in human research studies. The ethicalaspects of this research project have been approved bythe Human Research Ethics Committee of Deakin University.
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ComplaintsIf you have any complaints about any aspect of theproject, the way it is being conducted or any questionsabout your rights as a research participant, then you maycontact:
The Manager,Research Integrity,Deakin University,221 Burwood Highway,Burwood Victoria 3125,Telephone: 9251 7129,research-ethics@deakin.edu.auPlease quote project number BL-EC 24-13.
Further Information, Queries or Any Problems If you require further information, wish to withdraw yourparticipation or if you have any problems concerning thisproject, you can contact either of the researchers:
Michael Valos – SupervisorEmail: Michael Valos michael.valos@deakin.edu.au
Vanya Maplestone – Student ResearcherEmail: vlm@deakin.edu.auTelephone: 0438585026
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PLAIN LANGUAGE STATEMENT AND CONSENT FORM
TO: Participant
Consent Form
Date: 25 June 2013
Full Project Title: Integrating social media into marketing communications strategy: senior marketers perspectives
Principal Researcher: Dr. Michael ValosStudent Researcher: Ms Vanya MaplestoneReference Number: BL-EC 24-13
I freely agree to participate in this project according to the conditions in the Plain Language Statement.
I agree that this interview is to be voice recorded according to the conditions in the Plain Language Statement: YES NO
I would like to review/edit my interview transcript and provide the necessary clarification to the researcher: YES NO
I would like to share some additional relevant information such as: Social media reports
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Other marketing materials currently in use by my organisationRelevant documents I have been given a copy of the Plain Language Statement and Consent Form to keep. The researcher has agreed not to reveal my identity and personal details, including where information about this project is published, or presented in any public form.
Participant’s Name (printed) ……………………………………………………………………Signature ……………………………………………………… Date …………………………
Please email or post this form to:
Dr Michael ValosSchool of Management and Marketing Deakin University 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC 3125 Email: michael.valos@deakin.edu.au Tel: 0408 598 824
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PLAIN LANGUAGE STATEMENT AND CONSENT FORM
TO: Organisations
Organisational Consent Form
(To be used by organisational Heads providing consent forstaff/members/patrons
to be involved in research)
Date: 25 June 2013
Full Project Title: Integrating social media into marketing communications strategy: senior marketers perspectives
Reference Number: BL-EC 24-13
I have read, and I understand the attached Plain LanguageStatement.
I give my permission for [staff/members/patrons] of [name of organisation] to participate in this project according to the conditions in the Plain Language Statement. I have been given a copy of Plain Language Statement and Consent Form to keep.The researcher has agreed not to reveal the participants’identities and personal details if information about thisproject is published or presented in any public form.
I agree that
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1. The institution/organisation MAY / MAY NOT be named in research publications or other publicity without prior agreement.
2. I / We EXPECT / DO NOT EXPECT to receive a copy of the research findings or publications.
Name of person giving consent (printed) ………………………………………………………
Signature ……………………………………………………… Date …………………………
Please email or post this form to:
Dr Michael ValosSchool of Management and Marketing Deakin University 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC 3125 Email: michael.valos@deakin.edu.au Tel: 0408 598 824
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