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Chapter 10 E-commerce: Digital Markets, Digital Goods 427

INTERACTIVE SESSION: MANAGEMENT

SOCIAL COMMERCE CREATES NEW CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

To most people, Facebook and Twitter are ways to lyze any kind of unstructured data it supplies. The
keep in touch with friends and to let them know company uses that information to gauge the success
what they are doing. For companies of all shapes and of promotions, which products are hot and which are
sizes, however, Facebook and Twitter have become duds, and the impact of advertising campaigns.
powerful tools for engaging customers. Location- Wrigleyville Sports is a small business with three
based businesses like gourmet food trucks can tweet retail stores and e-commerce sites selling sports-
their current location to loyal followers and fans. related clothing and novelties like a panini maker
Appointment-based businesses can easily tweet or that puts the Chicago Cubs logo on your sandwich.
post cancellations and unexpected openings. Larger The company has been building a Facebook follow-
companies run sweepstakes and promotions. And ing for over three years. Facebook page posts use
companies of all sizes have an opportunity to shape much of the same content as its e-mail campaigns,
the perception of their brands and to solidify rela- but the company’s Twitter campaigns have to be
tionships with their customers. condensed to 140 characters. Some Wrigleyville
Companies are rolling out ads that capitalize on promotions use all of these channels while oth-
the social media features of Facebook to achieve ers are more social-specific. For example, in 2011,
greater visibility. For example, many Facebook ads the company ran a Mother’s Day contest on its
feature the ability to ‘Like’ a brand, send a virtual Facebook page exhorting visitors to post a picture of
gift, answer a poll question, or instantly stream infor- Mom demonstrating why she’s the biggest Chicago
mation to your news feed. Twitter has developed Cubs fan. Wrigleyville tracks purchases related to
many new offerings to interested advertisers, like its promotions with its NetSuite customer relation-
‘Promoted Tweets’ and ‘Promoted Trends’. These fea- ship management system and is able to tell which
tures give advertisers the ability to have their tweets promotions yield the most profitable new customers.
displayed more prominently when Twitter users Wrigleyville knows which customers responded, how
search for certain keywords. much they spent, and what they purchased, so it
Levi’s was one of the first national brands to use can measure conversion rates, the value of keyword
Facebook and Twitter to allow consumers to socialize buys, and the ultimate return on campaigns.
and share their purchases with friends. The Levi’s Many companies are running online ads that
Facebook page has posted 500,000 Like messages focus less on pitching their products than on promot-
posted by friends sharing their favorite jeans. Within ing their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. The
the first week of its share campaign, Levis received ads feature menu tabs and allow users to click within
4,000 Likes. The company began using Twitter in the ad to see a brand’s Twitter messages or Facebook
2010 by creating a “Levi’s Guy,” 23-year-old USC grad- Wall posts in real time, or to watch a brand’s video
uate Gareth, to interest customers. He has over 6,000 content from YouTube—all within the Web page
followers and is responsible for responding to queries where the ad appears. Incorporating live content
and engaging in conversations about the Levi’s brand from Facebook and Twitter makes online ads appear
on Twitter. In 2011, the company created a personal- less “static” and more current than other content.
ized Friends Store where shoppers can see what their For example, a recent online ad for the Mrs.
friends Liked and bought. Meyers cleaning brand stating “Clean should smell
The all-purpose electronics retailer Best Buy has better” instructed users to “hover to expand.” When
4.6 million fans on Facebook and 200,000 followers a cursor was placed over the ad, it exposed an area
on Twitter. Best Buy uses a dedicated team of Twitter that displayed Facebook Wall posts, Twitter postings
responders, called the “Twelp Force,” to answer user about Mrs. Meyers, or a company video, all without
questions and respond to complaints. Because Best leaving the Web page being visited. Consumers spent
Buy has so many social media followers who are an average of 30 seconds interacting with the ad,
generating feedback on social networks and related compared to 11 seconds for other types of online
sites, the company uses text mining to gather these ads, according to Google. Consumers were also more
data and convert them to useful information. Best likely to click on a “Learn More” button to go to Mrs.
Buy has a central analytical platform that can ana- Meyers’ own Web site, with 35 of every 1,000 users

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