Facebook Case Study free essay sample

Some might even use it to spy on their partners, triggered possibly by romantic jealousy (Darvell, Walsh and White, 2011; Elphinston and Noller 2011, 631). Others use it as a platform to advance various social and political causes by creating public Facebook pages. Lynas is an Australian listed company with ambitions to process rare earths in Malaysia. Concerned about the carcinogenic effects of the post production waste, multiple Stop Lynas Save Malaysia (SLSM in short) Facebook pages have been created by various Malaysian green groups (Stop Lynas, Save Malaysia Facebook page, 2013). The resultant groundswell and widespread publicity on mainstream media could have well contributed to the share price slide over the last two years (Lynas Corporation Price Quotes, 2013). This case as well as the iconic Arab spring uprising in Egypt Tunisia has clearly demonstrated the edge that Facebook has given to the small man on the street by conferring them a voice for their cause, even with limited cash (Chokoshvili 2011, 22-23). In a nutshell, Facebook is one of the top 4 new social media platforms (the thers being Youtube, Twitter and LinkedIn) that allows for users to interact, influence 2 and exchange information, with the aim to increase their social capital (Dutta and Fraser 2009, 2; Macnamara 2010, 7). The implications of Facebook users behaviour Millions of users are susceptible to potential data abuse by cybercriminals, identify fraud as well as identify thefts should their accounts be hacked (Richmond, 2010). Loss of privacy and bad publicity are also key issues when individuals tap on the social media highway. The recent cash-for-tweet saga by the South Australia Tourisms paid tweets to generate publicity for Kangaroo Island backfired, is a case in point (Ward, 2012, 39). Facebook addictions (Griffiths 2012, 518) seems to be a growing concern many have gone on digital breaks, Some users have even decided to flick the click permanently as life priorities changes (Kippist, 2013), while some users have complained about cyber bullying (Walker, Sockman and Koehn 2011, 35; Widdup 2010, 62). Facebook has somewhat returned some power to consumers as the millions of users brag, bag and promote brands voluntarily, acting like being a brand ambassador on a pro bono basis. Leveraging on this consumer to consumer power to influence purchasing decisions meant businesses need to rethink their 3 branding and marketing exercise to include a hybrid of brick and mortar and the click-and-Like mediums (Edelman 2010, 2; Mangold and Faulds 2009, 358). Its a paradigm shift where consumers are co-creators of the brand and hard selling shifts into two-way conversational selling. All these changes create opportunity for positive electronic word of mouth (also known as eWOM) to go viral very quickly (Chu 2011, 39). This can lead to a loss of control by businesses over the branding and marketing efforts. This lost of control is also a concern amongst government and private companies trying to control their employees access to SNS during their working hours (Bhagwat and Goutam 2013). Facebook will need to ensure that the privacy of users are not compromised as there are lots of data on its hands (Bhagwat Goutam 2013). This vast amount of data is rich pickings for potential hackers like the Comment Group from China who mines data from social networking site. It then sends out innocent looking emails to unsuspecting end-users for commercial espionage and sabotage intent (Lee 2013). Leverage Facebook for commercial returns (and the issue of company Facebook effectiveness). This blending of brick and click mixture (Mangold and Faulds 2009, 359) has created new platforms for businesses to channel resources and finances to ensure they are also seen, heard and accepted (Lusch 2011, 263). Corporations that know how to do it right (not necessarily the first time around) gets a bigger 4 piece of the share of voice, which hopefully will lead to greater electronic word of mouth (also known as eWOM) (Chu and Kim 2011, 48). Some have suggested an approach known as hypertargeting (Shih, 2009, 12), where companies can sharpen their customer centricity through specific targeting of potentials customers by personalizing marketing and CRM efforts as user generated data and data is matched to potential service offering and marketing campaigns (Shih 2009, 12). To monetize, some early adopter companies are setting up full scale versions of their brick and mortar business within Facebook. These companies, like the English cloth trading company , ASOS (which stand for as seen on screen) are targeting the moppers, a term used for shoppers with a mobile smart phone device that are now able to shop and pay online without leaving the SNS platform. Its a strategy that has yielded ASOS a healthy twelve percent pre-tax profit of $44. 5 million from a total sale of $371 million (Shannon and Kharif 2011, 22). Even traditional corporate bulwarks in the brick and mortar space are partnering Facebook to set up virtual SNS-based shopping experience – these include JC Penney, Delta Airlines as well as Tesco (Shannon and Kharif 2011, 22). Tescos approach goes a few steps extra in this click battle – customers are able to add to their virtual shopping basket simply by photographing a barcode of a specific product. Two other companies with fully integrated stores within the Facebook platform include British Young Designers and French Connection, whilst others like Dove is subcontracting their check out functions with the Facebook platform to third party sites like Bestbuy and Easyjet (McEleny 2011, 1). Even non profit outfits like the Australian Salvo have much success with their recently concluded I like Salvo Facebook campaign through a combo of paid and unpaid fan likes support that was executed by DGM Advertising. The bottom line too has increased, year on year by 6. 6 percent ( Marketing, May 2012, 4951). The role that FACEBOOK Platform play for both INDIVIDUALS and ORGANIZATIONS As seen from the examples from the paragraphs before this, Facebook Platform has been a cornucopia of opportunities for businesses. It has also been a boon to savvy apps and game developers to earn real bucks directly through micro transactions as well as indirectly through placements of advertisements into those apps/games environment (De Prato and Paul Simon 2011, 14). The improved version of Platform and Facebook Connect drives traffic to website and encourage other users to attract even more users to their websites. A clever third party cookie embedded through the Like button enables organizations and businesses to trace and track consumer behaviours, even if they dont click on the Like button (Roosendaal 2011, 7). With another 75 percent of website (Piskorski, Eisenmann and Smith 2012, 8) yet to implement the Like button on their websites, this could generate limitless opportunities for businesses to tap on 6 this one giant online ecosystem of consumer intelligence gathering in the months and years to come (Edelman, 2010, 6). With opportunities comes threats of litigation Facebook is being sued by Rembrandt Social Media whos claims that the Like button uses two patents from a dead Dutch IT programmer by the name of Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer (BBC News, February 11, 2013). Arresting revenue fall in Facebook stock price – options to boost revenue Strategy 1- Continual market penetration and Augmentation There are plenty of opportunities to increase revenue through social advertising for Facebook. 31 percent of Australian companies, big and small, still do not have any online social media presence at all (Paterson 2012, 40). Through a more personalized algorithms of consumers psychographics and demographics, Facebook can offer their corporate customers like Telstra, Virgin, Qantas and Optus (Paterson 2012, 40) a more personalized marketing and selling messages. To monetize revenue from users traffic, Facebook is already implementing Facebook Exchange, a tool that tracks users web habits when they visit nonFacebook websites, and then customized ads once they return to the Facebook page (Sengupta, 2012). Facebook could perhaps also monetize non-US markets 7 like Indonesia, Brazil India as these countries have some of the highest number of users outside of America (Piskorski, Eisenmann and Smith 2012, 14). Strategy 2 – Monetizing through mobile technology as in smart phones and tablets The mobile smart phone and tablet platform is where the money is for Facebook as consumers go mobile (Kim, 2012; Hogue 2013). Facebook could leverage on the many mobile platform-based companies it has acquired, for instance Instagram (mobile photo sharing, Tagtile (mobile customer loyalty service), and Karma (mobile gift-giving application) (Kim 2012). Tagtile, in particular has much potential to be a potential game changer think of it as a frequent flyer for retail consumers on steroids (Baxter 2012, 38; Bhagwat and Goutam 2013). Its a mobile based retail loyalty that rewards customers with free deals in exchange for their checking in, whilst the merchants get to know more about their customers through an electronic cube, similar to a Foursquare initiative (Adams 2012, 35; Vega 2011). Considering also that revenue from mobile advertisement for Facebook was zero two quarters ago, the current fourth quarters 23 percent of total advertising revenue in 2012 is an achievement, and should be leveraged for further growth in 2013 (Oreskovic, 2013). Facebook might even make a takeover bid on smaller operators like ExactTarget, a company with proprietary enabling technologies thats critical in helping the mobile advertisement to be even more profitable for Facebook (Hogue 2013). Strategy 3 –Monetizing through merchandizing and gifting 8 In the United States, Facebook is gradually rolling out actual gift cards that users can give to their friends. This, along with the ability to buy a gift to a friend on their friends special occasion like birthdays/anniversaries could help boost earnings (Weber, 2013). 9 References Adams, Yvette. 2012. 10 Digital Strategies for Aussie Tourism Marketers. Marketing April: 34-35. Baxter, Andrew 2012. Has Foursquare missed the retail boat, and will Facebook miss it to? Marketing June 2012, 38. Bhagwat, Shree, and Ankur Goutam. 2013. Development of Social Networking Sites and Their Role in Business with Special Reference to Facebook. Journal of Business and Management 6(5): 15-28. http://iosrjournals. org/iosrjbm/papers/Vol6-issue5/B0651528. pdf Chokoshvili, David. 2011. The role of the internet in democratic transition: Case study of the Arab Spring. Master’s thesis, Central European University. Chu, Shu-Chuan. 2011. 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