Page 302 - Electronic Commerce

Social Networking, Mobile Commerce, and Online Auctions

social networking site and is designed to make interaction with location-specific resources
easy for mobile devices, many people use their Facebook or Google+ accounts to access
these services.

Business Uses of Social Networking
Business use of social media is still evolving and there are many opinions on what
companies should and should not try to do with social networking tools. Many companies
have been criticized for turning their social media interactions into thinly disguised
advertising programs. Although social media allows companies to do many of the same 277
kinds of things they can do with traditional advertising and promotion (building brand
awareness, establishing trust and credibility, announcing new products or services and so
on), most experts agree that social media should be managed differently from advertising
efforts. Managed effectively, social media engagement can provide much more information
about customers and potential customers.
As you learned in the chapter introduction, Starbucks does not use social media
to broadcast information about its products or build its brand. Instead, Starbucks
uses social media to learn from their customers and find new ways to engage them
with the company’s brand, products, and services. By intentionally avoiding active
participation in its own social media outreach, Starbucks’ social media efforts are
focused on listening to its customers’ discussions with each other and learning from
those discussions.
Brooks Running, a manufacturer of athletic shoes, expressly avoids using social media
to sell products directly. Since its primary customers are in the community of active
runners and are interested in health and fitness, Brooks participates in social media that
focuses on these interests. By showing how their interests align with those of their
customers, Brooks is able to enhance its brand image indirectly. By contributing to
discussions in the health and fitness social media, the company contributes to the online
communities that their customers inhabit and becomes known as a good neighbor, which
enhances perceptions of trust.
Campbell’s Soup has also been highly successful in developing a valuable social
networking presence. After a beginning in which it focused on its products and recipes
using its products, it found that the discussion areas devoted to what soup can do for
families generated the most participation and interest in the company.
By using social media to participate in the environment of an industry or product,
companies can interact with their customers (or suppliers) in ways that are different from
and more expansive than the roles traditionally taken in buyer–seller relationships.
Figure 6-3 outlines some of the ways in which companies can benefit from
participation in four types of social media. For each type of social media, the figure shows
how companies can convey information to customers (similar to traditional advertising
and promotion strategies), but can also receive information from customers and learn by
listening to customers communicate with each other.

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