stanbic social media research

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IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE PURCHASE

INTENTIONS OF CONSUMERS OF BANKING

PRODUCTS (STANBIC BANK)

Summary of Research conducted by Jerry Adu-Asare, MBA

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Social media (such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Whatsapp) has seen an

explosive growth and become the media of choice worldwide (Dong-Hun, 2010). The rapid

growth in the use of internet and social media has offered consumers many opportunities.

Consumers use social media to search for information and communicate with others without

boundaries (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014). Due to this phenomenon, firms are increasingly

using them as part of their marketing and brand building activities (Dickey and Lewis, 2010;

Gallaugher and Ransbotham, 2010). In short, social media provides the opportunity to connect

with customers using richer media with a greater reach (Thackeray et al., 2008).

This paper presents a summary of findings of a recent study that examined the impact of social

media marketing on the purchase intentions of consumers of banking products using Stanbic

Bank (Ghana) Limited as a case study. The mixed methodology was used to determine the key

factors that influence consumers to use social media as a means of communication and secondly,

to explore the impact of firm-generated and user-generated social media communication on the

purchase behaviour of consumers. A survey research design, through the administering of

questionnaire was used to gather data from 80 customers of the Achimota Branch of the bank.

One of the Marketing Managers of the bank was also personally interviewed.

2.0 DEFINITION OF TERMS

Social Media: A group of internet-based applications that is built on the ideological and

technological foundations of Web 2.0 and allow the creation and exchange of user generated

content (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010: 61).

Social Media Marketing: A form of marketing that involves the promotion of user-generated

and firm-generation contents on a digital platform like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc for the

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purpose of improving customer relationship, enhancing brand awareness and influencing the

purchase intentions of potential consumers”.

Types of social media campaigns include:

Call Back Campaigns

In this type of campaign, a business advertises a hash tag and a keyword to which an interested

customer can send a message. The sender then receives an auto-reply message through their

social media account and text message box- informing him or her that a company representative

will call back. This reply includes important contact company information.

Customers of the bank may receive a call back campaign in the form of notification when they

first register and join the fan page of Stanbic bank.

Example:

“Thank you for joining Stanbic Bank on Twitter. Enjoy an exciting experience. Feel free to

contact any of our branches for further enquiries”

Promotional Competitions

This type of campaign is used to grab the attention of new and existing customers. A company

could send out a personalized message to its customers informing them of a competition. The

customer, participating in the competition is encouraged to forward to a friend. This could also

be used to initiate a viral marketing campaign, i.e. a situation in which customers who have

received a message are persuaded to forward it to their friends and other users.

Example:

1. “How well do you know Ghana's history? Identify the figure and get free airtime.

Independence Day promotion

2. “Enjoy the freedom as you travel and shop with your MoneyWallet Multi Currency Card.

BANKING PRODUCT PROMOTION MARCH 5, 2015.

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3. “Predict the score and be part of the two lucky people to win airtime, as Arsenal takes on FC

Monaco tonight in the UEFA Champions League round 16”.

Conversational Marketing Campaigns

This type of campaign offers an interactive experience by providing free information (tips, tricks

and insights) as a way of giving value to customers. These pieces of information can be made

available using push or pull campaigns.

Push services provide a standard means to send data or a service to a user without an explicit

request from the subscriber at the time data is delivered.

Pull campaigns on the other hand, provide the required services in reply of customers’ service

orders. This can be seen as one of the ways of initiating a conversation with customers and

gaining valuable feedback on their needs.

Example:

1. “Don't give up, the beginning is always the hardest # StanbicBankGH # Motivation ”

2.“It's a blessing to be different , don't ever change # StanbicBankGH # TGIF ”

3.“Remind yourself every morning to dream big, work hard and stay

focused# StanbicBankGH # Motivation ”

4.“HAPPY EASTER...Enjoy the Easter Holidays with friends and

family# StanbicBankGH # EasterHolidays ”

Attitude:

A consumer’s attitude refers to an individual’s inclination to respond to a specific entity is as a

result of their favourable or unfavourable evaluation.

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Five types of attitude have been identified:

Informativeness

The ability of an advertisement to inform consumers of product alternatives so that purchases

yielding the greatest possible satisfaction can be made (Ducoffe, 1996: 22).

Trust

Trust (sometimes called credibility) can be defined as the extent to which the consumer perceives

claims made about the brand in the advertisement to be truthful and believable (Mackenzie and

Lutz, 1989:51).

3. Irritation

When advertising employs techniques that annoy, offend, or manipulate (Ducoffe, 1996).

4. Entertainment

People’s feeling of enjoyment associated with advertisements play the greatest role in accounting

for their overall attitudes toward them (Shavitt et al., 1998).

5. Monetary benefit/Incentives

Incentive based advertising is an approach that provides specific financial rewards to consumers

who agree to receive ads into their mobile phones (Pietz and Storbacka, 2007).

3.0 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The principal objective of this study is to investigate the impact of social media marketing on the

purchase behaviour of consumers of banking product, with specific reference to customers of

Stanbic Bank (Ghana) Limited. The study specifically;

i. Determined the key factors that influence consumers to use social media as a means of

communication.

ii. Explored the impact of firm-generated and user-generated social media communication on the

purchase behaviour of consumers.

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4.0 WHAT INSTIGATED THIS STUDY?

Not much work has been done on the adoption and usage of social media in the banking sector

especially in the African context (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014). Chikandiwa et.al (2013)’s

study for instance only explored social media adoption models and social media implementation

models being used by South African banks when adopting social media marketing. The study

however did not address the influence that social media marketing has on the purchase intentions

of customers.

This paper thus attempted to fill the void in literature, add new knowledge on the subject matter

and also create a foundation on how the banking industry in Africa and Ghana in particular can

also take advantage of the new media to enhance their performance.

5.0 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The findings of this study present managers of Stanbic Bank (Ghana) Limited new ways of

evaluating the success of their social media campaigns. The study also recommends strategies

that can be implemented to improve the current state of affairs of the social media marketing the

bank employs.

6.0 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING AND THE BANKING INDUSTRY

Banks have seen the need to integrate social media in their marketing communications and brand

strategies (Bonson and Flores, 2011; Ernest and Young, 2011; Gritten, 2011). The reasons are

varied yet most of the banks consider social media marketing because:

The viral diffusion of information through social media has a far greater capacity to

reach the public than “short tail” – media such as TV, radio, and print advertisements

(Keller, 2009).

Social media is regarded as a more trustworthy source of information than the traditional

instruments of marketing communications used by companies (Foux, 2006).

Consumers are turning away from traditional media (such as TV, radio, or magazines)

and increasingly using social media to search for information (Mangold and Faulds,

2009).

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The use of fan pages on social media (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn

etc.) has become a common phenomenon with financial institutions in Ghana. Like other

companies, Stanbic Bank (Ghana) Limited use the fan page to create relationship with millions

of online users in order to create traffic to the bank’s website which in turn, enhances brand

awareness (Fanion, 2011; New Media Age, 2010) and boost sales (New Media Age, 2010).

Campaigns that are generated by the banks are also evaluated by online users.

It is expected that consumers who access the firm-generated campaigns would talk to hundreds

or even thousands other consumers around the world about it. This may be done by word-of-

mouth and “liking” the page to create a positive brand evaluation. This means that bank is no

longer the sole source of its brand communication.

7.0 SUMMARY OF RESEARCH FINDINGS

The key findings that came out through the analysis of the data collected are presented as

follows:

Profile of Customers/ Respondents

The study shows that Stanbic’s clientele base is evenly distributed in terms of gender. Both

genders were included in the study to ensure that their opinions were widely represented. Most of

the respondents were either between 24-36 years or above 36 years. As much as 80% of the

respondents had saved with the bank for a period ranging from 1year to 9 years.

Assessment: Customers’ Awareness of Stanbic Bank’s Social Media Platforms

Less than 50% of the bank customers are not aware the bank is very active on social media

although most of the customers are members of some social media platforms. The few customers

who know about the bank’s activities on social media were largely informed through word-of-

mouth (i.e. interaction with the bank’s customer service staff and reference groups (friends and

family). Further, as low as 29% customers were informed about the bank’s social media

activities through digital platforms (i.e. text messages from the bank, search engines, and other

social media platforms).

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Assessment: Types of Campaigns that Stanbic Bank Sends Via Social Media

The bank is interested in building a long term relationship with its customers so it mostly posts

“conversational marketing campaigns” rather than “promotional competitions” on their social

media walls. The bank probably resorted to conversational marketing campaigns because this

type of campaign offers an interactive experience by providing free information (tips, tricks and

insights) as a way of giving value to customers.

The decision of refraining from having “a lot of product information” on social media is more of

a policy of the bank. Stanbic Bank believes that it is better to use social media for connecting and

community engagement than selling product; so they now hardly sell on social media, and make

noise about our products and services. The bank is working with a social media implementation

plan that prioritizes the achievement of the organizational objective.

Assessment: Key Factors that Influence Consumers to Use Social Media as a Means of

Communication

Majority of the respondents find social media marketing to be informative especially when it

alerts them about raffles and discounts, and the campaign is creatively composed and endorsed

by acquaintances.

Most of the customers participate in social media based on trust. Additionally, a lot of them

were also likely to back off if they were irritated by the frequency of social media messages and

in cases where they did not have control to personally choose its subject of the message and time

of alert. However, most of the respondents were likely to stay on social media if they anticipate

that they will receive monetary benefits at the end of the day. Most of the respondents also

appreciated social media contents which creative, funny, and culturally acceptable.

Assessment: Firm-Generated Campaigns Vs. User-Generated Campaigns

The campaigns generated by the bank do not influence the purchase decisions of consumers as

much as those generated by the users do. This is because the decisions of most consumers in

online purchases are highly influenced by their reference groups (Ofosu, et.al, 2013).

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8.0 CONCLUSION

A significant number of the bank customers were on social media yet they were not aware that

Stanbic Bank was very active online. The attitudes that mostly influenced consumers’ behaviour

on social media were informativeness of the message, trust, irritation, entertainment and

monetary benefits.

The study found that firm-generated content is less likely to influence the purchase decisions of

consumers in social media marketing. However, the purchase decisions of consumers are more

likely influenced by the recommendation of their acquaintances (families, friends, office and

school colleagues etc.). This is largely because social networks are often dominated by user-

generated contents where end users share their experiences with a product, service and customer

service. These experiences are mostly not censored and consumers use this to make their own

purchase decisions (Assaad and Gómez, 2011; Skul, 2008).

The findings of this study is consistent with other existing ones (Van der Waldt et. al, 2009;

Petrovici and Marinov, 2007; Ofosu et.al, 2013; Dimitris et. al, 2007).

In spite of the challenges associated with social media, the bank seems to have put in place

measures to curtail any difficulties. As remarked by one of the Marketing Managers of Stanbic

Bank:

“Social media is very unpredictable so it requires a lot of monitoring, a lot of tracking and a lot

of adjustments and initiatives…we are prepared for it [challenges]”.

9.0 RECOMMENDATIONS

With respect to the findings from the study discussed above, the researcher recommends the

following to the management of Stanbic Bank:

Stanbic Bank should adopt an implementation model that prioritizes the strategic objectives of

the bank and its audiences. This takes a more agile approach to social media adoption. It can help

the bank to prioritise its objectives, establish a governance system as well as define activities to

achieve both the organizational objectives and meet the needs of the customers online.

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The social media content of the bank should be short, straight to the point, creative and supply

the relevant information that are of great interest to the consumers. It should also be culturally

acceptable. Possibly, the bank should revise its policy of overly concentrating on “conversational

marketing campaigns” and initiate more “promotional campaigns” on social media since that is

what most of their customers are interested in.

Since most of the customers do not know about the existence of the bank on social media, the

bank should consider introducing new marketing or communication strategies that will create

enough public awareness about the bank’s social media activities.

The posting of messages should be timely but the frequency of the information per day should be

minimal to forestall the tendency of users’ being irritated. The bank should consider rolling out

initiatives on the use of reference groups to ensure viral marketing of campaigns. This is because

the study has confirmed that online consumers and particularly social media users often based

their purchase decisions on the experiences shared by consumers.

It will be advisable for the bank to include permission marketing in its strategies. Personalizing

the message increases its impact, acceptance while reducing the degree of annoyance or

irritation.

The bank should begin to use customer testimonials in all its marketing and communication

strategies. Quality video and audio contents should be created on social media and the

company’s website. A link should be created on each platform to direct more traffic and create

awareness of the brand the bank wishes to project.

The bank can also encourage the users to like or follow campaigns that are posted on the bank’s

social media platforms. The bank can create a promotional event around this by rewarding users

who will forward the highest number of marketing campaigns to others within a specific period

of time.

To win the trust of users, the bank should deliver on any promise they promote on social media.

For instance, terms and conditions should be explicitly spelt out and the initial stage of

promotions. An opportunity must also be given for online users to “opt-in and opt-out” out of a

group as and when they deem it fit. END.

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REFERENCES: Available upon request

RESEARCHER: Jerry Adu-Asare

EMAIL: [email protected]

CONTACT: +233245424644

RESEARCH SUPERVISOR: Dr. Adelaide Kastner, UGBS

PURPOSE: Research conducted in part fulfillment for the award of a Masters Degree in

Business Administration in Marketing and Customer Service at the University of Ghana

Business School.

mailto:[email protected]

stanbic social media research

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