Introduction:
Companies after rising the speed of utilization of internet and social support systems by individuals decided to make use of social support systems to be and popular with regards to their banding strategies, positioning, marketing activities, customers services and feedbacks, implementation of e-CRM and alike. People use social support systems in order to communicate, share their ideas, and utilize the flow of information and other method of publishing information regarding themselves.
Although since 1990s, utilization of internet, many social support systems and internet tools had emerged, it was not popular. Recently, through the development of social network in friendly atmosphere and with less complexity with regards to functioning for individuals, this service (social network service) is becoming part of people's lives.
In terms of clarification of analysis on client satisfaction, customer retention, and customer relationship management and customer feedbacks, social support systems play a pivotal role. As a result companies have tried to work with Social network services in order to better serve customers and obtain other various objectives
Social network to promote yourself and business. Most companies recognized that social network sites (SNSs) like Napster, Facebook, and Twitter and etc are the best places for them in order to highlight their brand image whereby they can increase their market share, and sustainability.
What's a Social Network?
It is considered as a platform whereby social relations is likely to be built among people and information sharing is likely to be facilitated. Through social support systems sites personal information and relationships may be shared and users can stay in touch.
Most of SNSs provide a personal page for posting, ability to search for friends and other issues like updating profile and personal data and have the capacity to restrict and/or conceal the mentioned information by page owner from the eyes of public or specific people.
These Online facilities (SNSs) have improved the movements of individuals on online tasks, especially in the mentioned social support systems for the goal of maintaining friendships aside from distance (geographical limitation). Not only this but plus it enables people to get better jobs and partners.
Concerning the acceptance of the sites by people, companies have grown to be interested to get involved in this method whereby they can sell their products and services and better serve customer's needs and wants and through analysis of consumer buying patterns and their feedbacks they can fine tune their decision making process in addition to their strategies.
Below information reveals the fact that how rapidly number of social support systems increase since 1997.
1997:
1998: ---
1999: Asian Avenue, Live Journal, Black Planet
2000: LunarStorm (SNS relaunch), Migente
2001: Cyworld, Ryze
2002: Fotolog, Friendster, SkyBlog
2003: CouchSurfing, LinkedIn, MySpace, HI5,
2004: Orkut, Dogster, Flicker, Facebook (Harward only), Mixi, Piczo, Hyves, Catster
2005: YouTube, Zanga, Yahoo.360, Facebook (Highschool networks), Bebo, Ning, Asian Avenue & BlackPlanet (relaunched)
2006 till now: QQ, Windows Live Space, Facebook (Corporate Networks), Twitter, MyChurch, and then Facebook (Everyone)
Many companies during previous decade consequently of increasing the usage of these networks have decided to penetrate into SNSs in order to find the relevant information of people, elicit information and analyze them in order to make appropriate decision centered on market moves; not just with regards to customers but additionally with regards to competitors and rules and regulations. They aim at finding useful information in order to do external (Scanning, monitoring, forecasting, assessing), and industry analysis (5 forces of porter) in addition to competitor analysis.
Usefulness of Social Networks:
Considering SNSs as an advertising tool, they help companies to interact with customers and create online communities and pages,
Updating latest activity of companies, advertisements and providing customers with applications necessary or useful in order to increase the traffic of these page, blog or community,
Facilitate the process of being conscious of the organization, and promote ideas, products and services,
Skipping internet search engine optimizations rankings,
It helps to get feedback from customers and to better implement the style o electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM) and to classify valuable customers in order to serve them with value creating activities,
Focus on market, global reach, limitless number of customers who can be served, to better segment industry and customers,
Enables different model of advertising such recommendations, suggestions for specific group or niche and so on.
Fastest way to get information and finding opportunities,
Social Networking Sites and E-commerce Businesses:
Although other methods of communication exist, they are to some extent different comparing to SNSs. Social network is really a invest which individuals become fan of a full page, they see one another and based on their mutual interest they become effective at interacting with one another and make a residential area on their own.
The mentioned issue is the consequence of shifting the ability through utilization of SNSs from company to consumers. More social support systems get popular, the tougher is the implementation of business centered on traditional procedures therefore; companies must consider market moves in this case. Besides, by digging up the data available on these networks identification of valuable customers would be easier and a business can serve its valuable customers definitely better in this regard.
Concerning the accessibility of individuals to internet, companies moved from Brick and Mortar to Click and Mortar or to virtual the one which led to operational efficiency improvement in addition to generating revenue.
As companies are moving toward the aforementioned mentioned issue (adaptation of EC), they utilize several strategies to achieve success. They used various strategies in business and corporate level to lessen costs of transaction, reducing delivery time, to better serve the customers and to better manage them, and to better inform them about the existing activities performing by the business enterprise specifically for service companies. Accordingly, because of massive passion of individuals in the event of using social support systems like Facebook, twitter and etc, companies decided to lessen the gap between themselves and consumers by following consumers passion therefore, they started to utilize social support systems and possibly other web 2.0 applications on extend their businesses.
In this era, virtually all companies have websites and one of them, some have social network to better speak with customers which can be connected to a web site by the usage of social plugins. Consequently, it's highly suggested to businesses that if they're not being first mover in Social networks, at the least do never miss the opportunity of being late mover.
Impact of Social Networks on Marketing:
Since it is stated earlier, individuals is likely to be attracted to participate famous social support systems in order to produce a profile and relate solely to existing members or pages or businesses. Once a profile created, users can interact with one another; send invitation for others to join. By enough time a link shaped, communication to a buddy, group members become easy because users have a tendency to organize themselves by affinity, life stage, and psychographics which would be a great chance for targeted marketing.
Impact of Social Networks on Purchase Intention:
Through the usage of social network as discussed earlier members share their ideas, they might speak about different thing even such as the recent product they bought or a particular kind of service given for them or offered by a company. Lots of people around the world rely on conversing with other consumers in order to get the required information before purchasing for a great or service (a matter of trust factor-word of mouth). And nowadays consumers because of availability of information on the web they prefer to search online and when going online they more like to visit social support systems in order to find extra information from other customers, and what've been shared on social network pages of a certain company about certain kind of good or service.