Social Media Influences on Brand Awareness

S.Fathima beevi , III BBA, Department of Business Administration

Theivanai Ammal College for Women (Autonomous), Villupuram.

Abstract

We live in the mildest of a global communications' boom where the use of social

media between individuals for personal and professional use is widespread. It has been

predicted that 2014 is the year when the use of social media for branding purposes will really

take off in the corporate sector. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how social media can

create brand equity through brand awareness. The specific area of FMCG was chosen. This

study is of an exploratory, descriptive and qualitative character, and by looking at many

existing articles and reviews, the secondary data was used for analyzing facts and discussion

about how companies create brand equity through brand awareness has been debated with

the upsurge of social media. The most important findings were that the social media to create

brand awareness: that there exists a clear strategy for how to reach the different stages of

brand awareness, from the weakest (recognition) to the strongest (word-of-mouth).

Key words: Social media, Brand equity, Brand awareness, FMCG, Communication

Introduction

Marketing managers have predicted that 2014 will be the year when social media are

integrated in the organizations and really start to become useful for companies and become

important tools in the communication (Carlsson 2010). Others have argued that it is crucial

for marketers to look to the Web for new ways of finding customers and communicating
with them, rather than at them, that it is vital to create a dialogue with the customers, and

various kinds of social media are the most promising way to reach new customers (Weber

2009).

At the same time, one of the most prominent names in research about branding and

related subjects, David Aaker, has said that with the multitude of new Medias developing, it

is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to raise awareness for their brand. The only

way forward in managing this complexity, is for companies to be able to coordinate

messages and their marketing efforts across all Medias (Aaker 1996).

The combination of coordinating your branding messages across all medias including

the social media, the great impact that social media (as an example the social network

Facebook with more than 400 million active users) has for both individuals and companies,

the speed with which things move in this domain, and the relative scarcity of existing

research about this area all are reasons why this study was initiated. With regards to the

discussion above, this study will be about how social media influences branding.

Social media

What is social media? Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, p 60) define social media as "a

group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological

foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content".

Web 2.0 is platform on which social media is based (Carlsson 2010).

Social media can take many different forms, including social networks, Internet

forums, weblogs, social blogs, micro blogging, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and
social bookmarking (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Weber, 2009).

Weber uses the term "social web" instead of social media, and defines the social web

as "the online place where people with a common interest can gather to share thoughts,

comments and opinions. It includes social networks such as MySpace, twitter, youtube,

Gather, Facebook, BlackPlanet, Eons, Linkedln, and hundreds more. It includes branded web

destinations like Amazon, Netflix and eBay. It includes enterprise sites such as IBM, Best

Buy, Cisco and Oracle. The social web is a new world of unpaid media created by

individuals or enterprises on the web.

Weber approaches the question of branding in the social web. He defines this as the

dialogue you have with your customer, and claims that the stronger the dialogue is, the

stronger the brand is, and vice versa. Actually he questions the very core concept of

traditional marketing and branding, and means that rather than broadcasting messages to

audiences and target groups, in the era of social web that we live in today, branding and

marketing is about participating in social networks to which people want to belong, where

dialogue with customers and between customers can flourish. (Weber 2009).

Twitter, facebook, orkut, linkedin, printerest and google+are the largest social

networks with more than 1 billion active users. Users sign up for a free account and then

make connections with other users on the service by sending a “friend request.” If the request

is accepted, you can see that person’s profile information, status updates, photos, and more

(which is why you may not want to be friends with someone you don’t actually know). Users

who you accept as a Friend can, in turn, see your profile, status updates, and photos. If you

don’t want to share all your information with the public or all your friends (for example, if
you connect with coworkers or family members), there are privacy settings available to limit

who can see what information you post or is posted about you on your Timeline, these social

network has seprate name for your personal profile. it is a great place to connect with your

own friends, family, and colleagues, but it has also become an incredibly powerful platform

for businesses and organizations to build community, engage with prospects, and encourage

customers and members to spread its message to a larger network.

Brand Awareness

Considering the great importance that brand awareness has in the creation of brand

equity, and that recent research take into account also how social media influence brand

awareness, brand awareness is the aspect of branding that this thesis will focus on. The

approach will be a combination of Weber's and Aaker's ideas: the strongest form of brand

awareness will be considered to be word-of-mouth (Weber 2009), that the customer has such

high brand awareness that she/he recommends the brand to others. This stage is preceded by

weak brand awareness (recognition), medium brand awareness (recall), strong brand

awareness (top-of-mind, the brand is the first the customer come to think of) and very strong

brand awareness (the brand is the only one the customer can remember) (Aaker 1996).

Branding in fast moving consumer goods sector

In modern times, brands functioned as symbols that enabled consumers to identify

and separate one producer from another, with the ability to trace one good back to the

manufacturer holding it responsible for its quality (Koehn in Bertilsson 2009), but they are

today ascribed with almost divine characteristics serving as a strategic business asset

essential for firms to develop if they are to compete successfully (Aaker and Kapferer in
Bertilsson 2009). This leads to the conclusion, that when looking at how social media affects

marketing in a broader perspective, it makes sense to concentrate on the area of branding

within marketing.

In FMCG products, is argued by researchers that well-known brands are much more

likely to enjoy good distribution, which helps maintain high market share. The competition

for shelf space amongst FMCG products is very strong, and strong brands have a clear

advantage here. The pull-strategy focuses on mass communication tools, mainly advertising

and aims at creating a strong consumer demand for branded products, and distributors and

retailers have very strong incentives to carry the brand. (Elliott and Percy 2007, Czinkota

and Ronkainen 2010).

Research problem and Methodology

It seems clear that we are currently living in the midst of the boom of the use of social

media. Social networks such as Facebook, twitter, orkut, youtube and google+ with some

400 million active members represent a larger community than most individual countries.

But research is somewhat lagging behind this rapid development, and it is difficult to find

relevant up to date studies on how social media are to be part of the branding process, how

this relates to the strategy that companies have with the use of social media- if they are to be

used to strengthen the brand, increase sales, find new customers, recruit more competent

staff, to improve the support-function, to be part of the product development and/or to

improve the internal communication (Carlsson, 2010).

Social media guru Weber is of the opinion that brand awareness is to be measured not

in brand recall but by dynamic measures such as customer word-of-mouth (Weber

Advantages in using social media to create brand awareness

One of the most important advantages Weber (2009) has put forward in this area, is

the possibility to create dialogue with the customer and through this to create the strongest

brand awareness. This is exactly the item that the company mentions as the most important

advantage with social media, to talk to customers and to influence what is being said about

the company and the products in social media. It is particularly underlined, that the company

in this paper has a strong reputation and that they have a lot to gain from being present in

social media.

The upsurge of social media have changed the way in which the company works with

brand awareness, the company both has to be active in social media and wants to be active in

social media. FB sees clear advantages, but also sees no alternative to not using social media:

"The discussion about our brand goes on in social media whether we choose to become

involved or not. If we are actively involved in social media we can have an influence on what

is being said and an influence in questions that are important to us in different ways.

Social media are also used in the launch of new products, and in different stages in

the product development social media are used. Although this is true, it does not seem as if

all the possibilities that Weber (2009) mentions are used, to use podcasts and webinars and

wikis for example. One explanation could be that these methods are not yet so common on

the Swedish market.

The most important message that comes across from the analysis and discussion with

this study, is that the great challenge that the respondents see, is for the company to find the

right balance between providing contents of great interest for the audience, while at the same

time respectingwhat kind information the company can really to out with it is about being

relevant in social media and in all other channels of communication. This means a constant

need for learning and developing new knowledge measuring and following up.

It would be very interesting to make a more quantitative study looking at now that

everybody with an internet access can participate in social media, why is it not yet used in a

more systematic way in the corporate sector? What parts in the communications, making use

of the social web, generate costs? It is clear how much an ad costs per line, but how does one

estimate the costs of having rapid and responsive communications from a company?

In conclusion, the knowledge about the research problem ought to be greater with the

findings presented in this paper.

References

 Aaker, D. A. (2008). Strategic Market Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

 Aperia, T. and Back, R. (2004). Brand Relations Management- Bridging the Gap

Between Brand Promise and Brand Delivery. Copenhagen Business School Press

 Maria Johansson(2010). Social media and brand awareness a case study in the FMCG
 sector, Lulea University of technology press. ,

 De Chernatony, L. and F.DallOlamoRiley(1997. The Chasm between managers and

consumers views of brands: the perspectives.journal of strategic marketing vol.5,2

 Harris, L and Rae .A(2010) The online connection : transforming marketing strategy

for small business. Journal of business strategy, Vol 31, nr2.

 Lin, C. H., & Kao, D. T. (2004). The impacts of country-of-origin on brand equity.

Journal of American Academy of Business, 5(1), pp. 37- 40.

 Arruda-Filho, E., Cabusas, A. J., &Dholakia, N. (2010). Social behavior and brand

devotion among iPhone innovators. International Journal of Information

Management,30(6), 475- 480. doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2010.03.003

 Brodie, R. J., Hollebeek, L.D., Juric, B., &Ilic, A. (2011a). Customer engagement:

ConceptualDomain,fundamental propositions, and implications for research.Journal

of Service Research, 14 (3), 252-271. doi: 10.1177/1094670511411703

 Chakrabarti, R., &Berthon, P. (2012). Gift giving and social emotions: experience as

content,Journal of Public Affairs, 12 (2), 154-161.doi: 10.1002/pa.1417

 ComScore (2012). It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social

Networking andWhere It’s Headed. Retrieved from www.comscore.com

 Cova, B. (1997). Community and consumption: Towards a definition of the “linking

value” ofProduct or services. European Journal of Marketing, 31 (3/4), 297-316.

Retrieved from http://www.emeraldinsight.com