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Web 2.0 in a Relationship Marketing Context: Conceptualising a SocialMedia Marketing Framework

Introduction

Rapidly advancing Internet technologies, which helped Web 1.0 to evolve into Web 2.0, haveresulted in a phenomenal increase in social media usage across the globe. Today, social mediaplatforms receive over 1.5 billion visits everyday worldwide (Universal McCann, 2010). Thisuptake of social media by consumers opens up new challenges as well as vast opportunitiesfor industry and marketers. Developments in mobile technology enable social media accessto be anywhere and at any time, making the efforts of businesses to keep up even moreimportant. Social media enables marketers to reach and interact with consumers to providevalue with relatively less cost and more impact than traditional media channels. However, italso poses great threats by taking control over the creation and dissemination of content awayfrom companies. Most organisations have yet to understand the impact of social media ontheir operations making them vulnerable to these threats. This paper aims to conceptualisesocial media from both a philosophical and also a functional perspective in order to providean integrated framework, which identifies the drivers, antecedents, actions, and consequencesof a successful social media marketing effort. The conceptual framework which we proposehere is developed from existing literature on interactive marketing, online consumerbehaviour, and Web 2.0. Taking relationship marketing and Service-Dominant Logicperspectives as theoretical underpinnings, we explore the elements of social media marketingand link these elements together.

Despite the phenomenal increase in social media use by consumers and corporations,academic research is limited on the commercial use and value of social media. Mostly due tothe staggering speed of evolution in the field, academic research struggles to keep up with thepractices in the business world. Existing past research focussed mainly on disparate elementsof social media marketing such as researching in Web 2.0 (Casteleyn, Mottart, and Rutten2009 and Comley 2008), consumer behaviour in social media (Bhagat, Klein, and Sharma2009), word of mouth through Web 2.0 (Kozinets et al. 2010), Web 2.0 applications (Yakel,2006 and Craig, 2007), or the issue of measurement in social media marketing (Fisher 2009;Hoffman and Fodor 2010). Therefore, although some of the individual elements of socialmedia marketing have been researched, there has not been an academic effort to bring theseelements together in order to offer a complete framework for business. This conceptual paperoffers a key contribution to relationship marketing research by providing an integratedframework which identifies the drivers, antecedents, actions, and consequences of socialmedia marketing.

What is Web 2.0 and Social Media

Web 2.0 as a term was first coined in 2004 by O’Reilly to describe the new way in whichWorld Wide Web was used as a platform where content and applications are not only createdand published by individuals but are also modified and shared by networks of users in aparticipatory and collaborative fashion (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). O’Reilly defined Web2.0 as “a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively form the basis for thenext generation of the Internet – a more mature, distinctive medium characterized by userparticipation, openness, and network effects (Musser and O’Reilly, 2006, p.4). However,since O’Reilly, there have been numerous definitions of Web 2.0 and there is still a lack ofconsensus over what the term identifies. According to Hoegg et al. (2007) most of thesedefinitions only describe the symptoms of Web 2.0 and do not incorporate its underlying

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philosophy. According to Beer (2008) this overarching use of the term and the lack of anaccepted and agreed upon definition led to an analysis of Web 2.0that misses the details ofcultures, contents, agendas and infrastructures of different participants leading to anoversimplified understanding of the developments. This paper, thus takes up Beer’s (2008)suggestion that it is now necessary to work towards more developed understandings of thecultures, contents, agendas and infrastructures underlying the use of Web 2.0 and explore howthese different elements influence social media marketing.

If Web 2.0 is the new ideological and technological ways in which the World Wide Web isnow being utilised by networks of users, then Social Media can be defined as the group ofInternet-based applications that build on the foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow thecreation and exchange of User Generated Content (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). According toConstantinides and Fountain (2008) these open source and interactive applications are aimedat expanding the experiences, knowledge and market power of the users as participants inbusiness and social processes, by allowing generation, dissemination, and sharing of content.Social media applications encompass a range of channels including forums such as blogs,consumer rating/review websites, social networking websites, content sharing sites, virtualworlds, business networking sites, and collaborative sites. In the midst of all this variety oftools, sometimes the ‘media’ aspect of social media is heralded as having an overratedimportance (Drury 2008), yet it is the ‘social’ side of social media that makes it unique andvaluable to both consumers and businesses alike.

Theoretical underpinning

Relationship Marketing can be defined as the cooperative and collaborative activities andprograms with customers for the purpose of creating and/or enhancing mutual value (Shethand Parvatiyar 1995; Ballantyne, Christopher, and Payne 2003; Gronroos 2004). Although,Relationship Marketing from a philosophical point of view always emphasised this dualbalance between the marketer and the consumer, its practical applications have been highlycriticised as favouring the marketer (Evans 2003). Web 2.0 and social media applications, byallowing the consumers the market power they previously lacked, offer a fairer playground inwhich Relationship Marketing principles can be actually realised for all participants.

Palmer and Koenig-Lewis (2009) offer an extended view of Relationship Marketing wherethe principles are played out in a triad of relationships between the marketer, the customer,and the customer community situating value within the whole consumer experience ratherthan the individual relationships between actors. Value here is co-created through pastinteractions and constantly updated through dialogue (Varey and Ballantyne 2005).Traditional marketing separates this dialogue from interaction and strips relationships of theirsocial aspect, rendering the relationship to be valuable only for the dominant party, themarketer (Varey and Ballantyne 2005). Relationship Marketing with a Service DominantLogic (Vargo and Lusch 2004) on the other hand, elevates the importance of co-creation ofvalue in marketing theory. Web 2.0, in this service dominant world, proliferates both thedepth (content, quality, and speed) and the width (from a dyadic relationship to a network ofrelationships) of value co-creation.

As the power of authority has been shifting from the marketer to the consumers (Firat andVenkatesh 1995), ‘me-to’ efforts of companies in the social media space can be viewed asefforts to try and keep up with their relationship partners. However, this view (as in atraditional view) lacks a full conceptual understanding of what relationship marketing is allabout. In order to establish a truly dialogical marketing environment, we should alsounderstand the value co-created by social media platforms for the marketer. This paper,

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therefore explores the elements of value in social media interactions and dialogues asmanaged and perceived by businesses in a truly networked relationship marketing context andconceptualises an integrated framework, which identifies and links together the drivers,antecedents, actions, and consequences of social media marketing (see Figure 1, p.6).

Drivers

Web 2.0, for better or worse has deprived companies of the full control over theircommunications channels. (Eikelmann et al., 2008). Marketing messages from fellowconsumers are now deemed to be far more influential and trustworthy according to a recentglobal online consumer survey1. Bickart and Schindler (2001) attribute this trend to theperceptions about the motives of the source, the relevance of fellow consumers’ experiencesas they use products and services in their daily lives, and the empathy created by sharing ofexperiences. Social media is here to stay and companies need to move away from reproducingtraditional communication strategies and move towards facilitating conversations around theirbrands. Consumers are now developing their own perspective on companies and brands,which can often be in conflict with the image marketers wish to convey (Christodoulides2009). This contextual market reality is driving the need for businesses to have a social mediamarketing strategy. Practitioner as well as academic literature offers a wealth of marketingobjectives that can drive companies’ social media marketing efforts. Examples include marketresearch, PR, direct marketing, lead generation, reaching new influencers, recruitment,customer co-creation and creating relevant customer experiences (Christodoulides 2009, Beer2008, Casteleyn et al. 2009, and Baker 2009). These marketing objectives, emanating fromthe irrefutable infusion of social media into the social and business world, drive social mediamarketing. But in order for these social media marketing efforts to be successful they need tobe supported by certain organisational characteristics.

Antecedents

The antecedents of social media marketing for businesses can be classified into two mainthemes, which are closely linked together.

Organising

As social media marketing is increasingly adopted, responsibility of managing varioustouchpoints throughout the value network should be divided between multiple functions(Court et al. 2002). Bernoff and Li (2008) identify these as Listening (R&D), Talking(Marketing), Energising (Sales), Supporting (Customer services), and Managing (Operations).They conclude that in order to effectively manage interdependencies, organisations need tohave strategic frameworks in place, organising the flow of roles and responsibilities acrossdifferent functions. In due course, as social media applications become mainstream,boundaries between functions will ultimately recede in organisations (Bernoff and Li 2008).

Managing

In order to have a strong presence in consumers’ minds it has always been important to have aunified and consistent message across all touchpoints. However, social media makes thismuch harder for businesses to attain due to fragmentation of media channels. Leaders, in thiscontext, must accept the fact that just as they lose control over the message outside theorganisation they also do so within. Therefore, without giving in to the temptation of

1 Source: Nielsen online global survey, April 2009, conducted in conducted in 50 markets across Europe, Asia-Pacific, North and Latin America, and the Middle East.

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controlling, leaders should allow employees at different touchpoints to engage in open andauthentic conversations, based on the clearly defined strategic frameworks discussed above(Gory and Westbrook 2009). The overwhelming amount of dialogue and interactions withconsumers can only be managed by a strategic approach involving monitoring, scenarioplanning, and rapid responses, which should be structured by a clear social media policyallowing employees freedom to participate in conversations. Of course, this will mean thatorganisations will need technical and managerial expertise at all levels of the organisation.This new way of managing, coupled with the flexible and integrated approach to organisingwill also help business to have a more humanised image and tone of voice in social mediamarketing interactions (Gonzalez-Herrero and Smith 2010).

Actions

Having in place a strategic social media framework organising the various functions in thebusiness and a social media policy delegating and framing managerial roles, businesses canstart on acting on social media platforms. Two approaches to social media marketing effortscan be distinguished as passive actions and active actions.

Monitoring

One key activity that organisations need to engage in is monitoring the real-time data andinformation flow in the social media platforms that have relevance to their business. Listeningto what is being said about the organisation and its business is an essential monitoringactivity. In order to create strong connections with consumers marketers should not only payattention to what is being said, but also to who is saying it and why. This understanding isalso important for the active actions that follow, as businesses need to understand and managethe communal and commercial tensions inherent in social media marketing (Kozinets et al.2010). Monitoring should also be a continual activity and fed back to reinforce or adapt socialmedia marketing drivers and antecedents as well as brought forward to continually stayrelevant to consumers in their interactions.

Interacting

Monitoring is an essential but passive element of social media marketing, which should becomplimented with active participation by interacting with various agents in the relationshipnetwork. This interaction should strike a balance between the commercial messages pushedthrough social media and the valuable and relevant experiences provided in the communalcontext of these platforms (Kozinets et al 2010). Therefore best actions in social mediaplatforms will be hybrids between products and services, both addressing a need in acommercial sense and also carrying a social element to motivate engagement with the brandand other consumers (Martin and Todorov, 2010).

There are a vast number of social media applications businesses can choose from and thenumber is rising every day. Marketers should pick the right medium for their organisationbased on the strategic marketing objectives driving the social media marketing. The differentsocial media platforms utilised by companies should also be aligned and integrated to ensure asynergistic, coherent, and consistent interaction with consumers.

Consequences

Content generated and disseminated through social media marketing can have either positiveor negative consequences for businesses, due to its highly fragmented many to manytouchpoints. According to Berthon et al (2008), there are four alternative ways in which

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organisations can react to these consequences ranging from active to passive; disapprove,repel, applaud, and facilitate. No matter which stance organisations choose to take, thedecision should be based on measuring the perceived impact of the negative or positiveconsequence.

Measuring

Marketers often adopt traditional metrics to fit social media regardless of their effectiveness.Also, social media marketing requires qualitative measures rather than quantitative, whichmakes it even more difficult to explore and justify. According to a recent poll, quoted byFisher (2009), this seeming inability to establish effective measures is identified by managersas one of the most significant barriers to the adoption of social media marketing in businesses.

The recent Social Media Research by Universal McCann (October 2010), surveying morethan 95,000 Internet users in 59 countries, reported that nearly half of respondents have joinedbrand communities on social media platforms. Of those who joined brand communities, 72%think more positively about the brand, 66% feel more loyal to the brand, and 63% wouldrecommend others to join. This study shows the impact of social media marketing oncustomer loyalty and reputation. In order to understand this impact it is important to monitordiscussions relevant to your business, and also to identify metrics that can measure thenumber of people involved in these discussions and what they feel about them. This involvesaccording to Fisher (2009) a number of dimensions incorporated into the metrics businesseschoose to use, including not only web analytics such as number of visitors, conversation size,and audience profile, but also measures of the opinions, voices, and experiences of peoplewho are interacting with the business. Most importantly, as with all traditional metrics, socialmedia metrics need to speak to what drives social media marketing in the organisation andshould measure and provide feedback to the strategic marketing objectives that have been set.

Implications/Future research programme

As social media creeps into both social and business everyday life the traditional model ofmarketing based on domineering push strategies needs to be exchanged with relationalmarketing strategies based on participation, involvement, and co-creation. Market value isnow being increasingly created for both the seller and the consumer through interactionsbetween networks of business communities and consumer communities. This transition is,however, not occurring seamlessly as most businesses struggle to walk the fine line betweentheir commercial intentions and consumers’ communal norms. Although practitioner literatureis providing guidelines for businesses in their social media marketing endeavours, these aremostly based on personal observations and ad hoc narrative accounts. Academics have startedto explore the impact of social media on businesses, however these studies predominantlyfocus on the impact of social media as it occurs outside of the organisation and have yet toprovide a wholesome proactive social media marketing framework. This paper provides aconceptual social media marketing framework for businesses detailing the drivers,antecedents, actions, and the consequences of social media marketing as well as identifyingthe linkages between these interdependent elements. This framework contributes to theacademic knowledge by establishing the missing linkages between existing knowledge on thedisparate elements of social media marketing and provides practitioners with a guideline inplanning, managing, and buying for social media marketing. The paper is a precursor to anongoing in-depth, qualitative, evidence based research aimed at exploring the dynamics oforganisational perceived value of social media marketing in a relationship marketing contextand grounding the conceptual model in the real life context of thought leaders from a widerange of industries.

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Figure 1 Social Media Marketing Framework

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