Over the years, our human civilization has evolved technologically. From the origins of the printing press to the first televised airdate to the creation of the internet, our society has begun a new era of innovative technology mediums. Our current generation has recently taken an interest in social media usage.
Now-a-days, companies have begun using various types of social mediums for several different reasons. Two main reasons revolve around obtaining insightful consumer information as well as creating a completely new experience for them. Personally, I think it is very important to look at social media in both contexts; in order to gain consumer insight, the individual or company must first create a unique experience for the consumer. I believe companies use their homepages to create a personable consumer experience. This homepage site allows consumers to explore various products of the company and gain a better understanding of its history and goals. I feel the company needs to exercise their most innovative skills on their homepage because this presents the opportunity to create a new experience for the consumer outside their physical locations. The consumer may be more attentive to various aspects they were oblivious to within the store. In addition, this can create a competitive advantage for the company, offering various benefits for the consumer their competitors lack thereof.
Furthermore, after creating the unique consumer experience, it is vital for the company to research and gain insights about their customers. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are examples of social media techniques both consumers and companies are using. These examples are personal devices for the consumer allowing them to express their interests and opinions about various topics. Companies can therefore, search through these mediums and gain a better understanding of products that have a strong correlation. The company is able to target a greater mass of consumers. Also, it presents the opportunity for the company to discover any complaints a consumer may have and directly address them about it. As we discussed in class, within in an hour of a posting of a negative comment, companies have contacted the consumer to address their complaint and create a solution benefiting both the consumer and company. Given how technologically savvy our society is now, I think these social media techniques are a good way to contact the consumer. A very important factor, I think, new social media creates, is more transparency within companies. Transparency is exactly what consumers look for and thrive on. I believe a company that is transparent with their consumers is able to create a more personable relationship as well as life-long customers. However, I think I will always praise the traditional approach, gathering consumer feedback in a face-to-face interaction, very highly. I think it is a stronger approach to interact with the customers on a face-to-face basis because the marketer may gather insightful information, such as facial expression, that social media lacks.
Moreover, after putting myself in the shoes of an actual marketer, I began my journey research the company General Mills. Personally, I have strong interest in the consumer market industry. At first, my ultimate goal was very broad. I wanted to get a very general idea of what consumers though about General Mill’s performance and its products. Using the blogsearch, I found only 2 blogs contained useful information. In fact, one of the articles discussed 2 specific social media tools: My Block Spark and Psssst, both inviting connected consumers to share their feedback about the company and its products. In addition, the article states the company hopes to build early awareness and involvement within their consumers, providing fast word-of-mouth when new products launch. An interesting finding I found was, the company solely used new social mediums to launch their Progresso Broth product, which now is doing well. The remaining results discussed very abstract subjects, barely referencing the company.
All in all, social media tools allows a company to create unique customer experience outside their physical store location and gain consumer insight based off those experiences.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
How Far is too Far?
Wal-Mart is one of the nation’s leading retail giant, contributing a whopping 2% of America’s profit. That said the company utilizes very valuable resources to gain a competitive advantage over its competitors. For example, the company began using “predictive technology.” After a natural disaster had occurred in a town, Wal-Mart took note of all the consumers’ buying history and began allocating their products appropriately to each individual store. The predictive technology allowed Wal-Mart to gain an insight scope on consumers’ true needs in a time of a natural disaster. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the company was able to realize that each Wal-Mart location requested different needs of a consumer from another location. Having this technology allows the company to gain a step ahead of its competitors and “start predicting what’s happening, instead of waiting for it happen.” In addition, Wal-Mart’s access to an enormous amount of data provides the opportunity for the company to have access to consumer insight oblivious to competitors such as, the importance of strawberry pop-tarts in a state of preparation for a natural disaster. In the end, Wal-Mart efficiently uses the data they collect in order to provide themselves with the best competitive advantage.
Furthermore, I became aware of the thin silver-lining between a customer’s intimate privacy and necessary data to a corporation after reading the article. I always knew a company was capable of obtaining consumer’s purchasing history of specific products within the company’s store; however, I was unaware of the extensive amount of personal information easily obtainable by the company. Personally, I feel there are few concerns of Wal-Mart having the ability to obtain very personal information from individuals. To begin with, the article mentions that the company uses systems that are custom built by their own employees. This is an immediate threat. Since Wal-Mart’s employees are creating their information systems, there is even less transparency in the type of information obtained. The employees created this system to hide their strategies and data from their competitors. However, they are also concealing very valuable information from consumers. For instance, Wal-Mart may have the capabilities to look at consumer’s credit card history and observe purchases consumers have made at other stores and create a trend from that. Although, that information is given in our credit card bills, that information is strictly private and between the consumers, the store they bought the product from and the credit card company. Also, since the system is created without any external help, there is the possibility the company is extracting personal information like bank account information, past credit history and possibly social security information. If Wal-Mart continued to partner with Information Resources Inc. and ACNielsen, allowing a third party to participate and be knowledgeable of information Wal-Mart is extracting, I would feel more comfortable with Wal-Mart’s ability to extract data.
Finally, I must acknowledge Wal-Mart’s success in obtaining a massive amount of data from its consumers. They have taken small steps to collect information regarding purchase trends of their products to knowing a full background history of the consumer. It is not fully known how Wal-Mart uses the immense data it collects from its’ consumers; however I feel they are utilizing the technology they have to its fullest. With the systems they have created within the company, Wal-Mart can gather extensive consumer insights and can use that to create the ultimate consumer experience within the store. However, I can always say there is room for improvement and exclaim there are better ways to utilize Wal-Mart’s technology and data collected to its fullest.
Thus, Wal-Mart efficiently uses the data they collect, however I must end this blog with a question of how far is too far in the amount and type of data the company collects?
Furthermore, I became aware of the thin silver-lining between a customer’s intimate privacy and necessary data to a corporation after reading the article. I always knew a company was capable of obtaining consumer’s purchasing history of specific products within the company’s store; however, I was unaware of the extensive amount of personal information easily obtainable by the company. Personally, I feel there are few concerns of Wal-Mart having the ability to obtain very personal information from individuals. To begin with, the article mentions that the company uses systems that are custom built by their own employees. This is an immediate threat. Since Wal-Mart’s employees are creating their information systems, there is even less transparency in the type of information obtained. The employees created this system to hide their strategies and data from their competitors. However, they are also concealing very valuable information from consumers. For instance, Wal-Mart may have the capabilities to look at consumer’s credit card history and observe purchases consumers have made at other stores and create a trend from that. Although, that information is given in our credit card bills, that information is strictly private and between the consumers, the store they bought the product from and the credit card company. Also, since the system is created without any external help, there is the possibility the company is extracting personal information like bank account information, past credit history and possibly social security information. If Wal-Mart continued to partner with Information Resources Inc. and ACNielsen, allowing a third party to participate and be knowledgeable of information Wal-Mart is extracting, I would feel more comfortable with Wal-Mart’s ability to extract data.
Finally, I must acknowledge Wal-Mart’s success in obtaining a massive amount of data from its consumers. They have taken small steps to collect information regarding purchase trends of their products to knowing a full background history of the consumer. It is not fully known how Wal-Mart uses the immense data it collects from its’ consumers; however I feel they are utilizing the technology they have to its fullest. With the systems they have created within the company, Wal-Mart can gather extensive consumer insights and can use that to create the ultimate consumer experience within the store. However, I can always say there is room for improvement and exclaim there are better ways to utilize Wal-Mart’s technology and data collected to its fullest.
Thus, Wal-Mart efficiently uses the data they collect, however I must end this blog with a question of how far is too far in the amount and type of data the company collects?
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