Theories for Analysis: Switching Behavior, Social Power, and Media Richness Theory
Discuss about the Interactive Marketing for Microsoft and Google.
The purpose of this literature is to find out the effect of social media in the daily life of people and its power to revolutionize them. Researchers have used different theories and created conceptual frameworks with a structural literature review. All the factors were analyzed to for extracting the conclusion easily. This paper will consider three different theories based on relevant articles for further research and analysis.
According to Zhang et al., (2009), social media and specially blogs, has become an increasingly important form of networking technology in the contemporary world. Most of the technological giants such as Microsoft and Google have started providing their blogs on different services such as Bloggers for easy establishment of the blogs. According the article ‘Multichannel service providers’ strategy: Understanding customers’ switching and free-riding behavior.’ by Chou,et al.(2016), the difference in adoption and dispersion of blogs is hard to find and therefore it is suggested to study the post- adoption attitude of the bloggers. Their intention to switch the blog services is dependent on the studies of marketing and IS model Social power (social behavior)
According to Wei (2009) social behavior of consumers have great influences on social power. The upper class people show more specific behavior and they usually consume high-involvement products which are expensive. They usually display these social power using social networking sites and blogs. They display their premium lifestyle and expensive assets to show their social power. They write personal blogs where they advertise their newly acquired power and purchases. For example, Samsung Real-estate makes premium properties and civil construction structures. The upper class people purchase these properties and advertise them on their blogs. This shows that social power and their high-end life style. These filter blogs highlights the political knowledge on the part of the bloggers. Contemporary bloggers mainly focus on writing personal blogs. According to Greenberg and Cohen (2014), the researcher has carried out the study to recognize the difference in knowledge of the bloggers through their blogs. Knowledge is considered as a critical factor in the social behavior of people and the aim of the research was to analyze if there is difference in social power with different levels f political knowledge in blogs.
Koo, Wati and Jung (2011) have mentioned in his research that the increasing impact of social media technologies in the contemporary organizations has become the new trend. With the application of media richness theories and social theories, studies have verified the manner in which technologies are used by the employees in social media. As per ‘Media richness and information acquisition in internet recruitment.’ written by Badger, Kaminsky & Behrend, 2014), it can be suggested in this case that, the social media attitude and relationship of employees have leveraged the media usage in the workplace environment. With the use of five media such as phone, email, video conferencing, blog and instant messaging and a hierarchical approach, the association between social factors and media usage was evaluated. For employees of different business organisations post pictures of their professional acquisitions like awards and recognitions. They communicate a great deal of information on the social media sites, through email, video streaming and mobile phone with their professional and personal acquaintances. This shows that the media is used at a high rate to communicate with colleagues and friends.
Blogs as a Platform for Marketing and Creating Better Customer Relationships for Businesses
After analyzing the three theories in different articles, it was found out that there were similarities in the form of the increasing impact of social media in the contemporary organizations. The number of people joining the social networking sites is increasing day by day. Their regular use of social media, especially blog reading has become a booming industry in the current days. There is no scope of the social media rage going to end soon; therefore, the contemporary organizations need to take full advantage of that. The similarity of the theories was related with the growth of social media at peak and it is mandatory for every business to make proper use of social media channels in order to get the benefit. Businesses should take the advantage because not only it is trendy but also the target market can be best reached in this manner. The bloggers are using this scope to engage the public with their favorite brands and create a strong connection. Businesses not only grow with the touch of social media but also create a good relation with the customers (Ngai, Tao & Moon, 2015).
The differences in the theories were found in the form of ‘filter blogs’ in one of the articles. Only the theory of social power used this aspect to analyze the scenario of the bloggers in the social media technology. The study on filter blogs used the national survey data to identify the reason of difference in knowledge production through different blogs. The difference was found out in the form of high socio- economic strata to implement more filter blogs for social influence. The outcome was different from other articles, which suggested that knowledge production gap seeks scholarly attention (Koo, Wati & Jung, 2011).
Social media and blogs are an influential factor in the heart of the society but it has both positive and negative impact. It has given the business an opportunity to stay connected to their target market. On the other hand, increasing use of social media by the employees is affecting their performance in the business. Blogs are major factors in influencing the people by spreading their personal opinions and knowledge to the people. Most of the people get affected by the message and opinions spread by the bloggers, which might pose huge impact on the business performance (Ngai, Tao & Moon, 2015).
Blogs are write-ups on different topics and purposes for the increase of popularity and increase in the number of audiences. Blogs and social media are used to drive traffic or audiences in to the desired platform or website. Blogs helps in the increment of brand awareness and the brand value among the audiences. Multinational companies like Samsung Real-estate use blogs and its social media handles to attract suppliers like vendors, contractors and customers. Being a company engaged in mostly B2B business like building civil construction structures for clients, the company uses its social media presence to attract high profile business customers. The customers like HNI clients purchase properties developed by Samsung to show their social power. The social media richness enables the real-estate giant poach customers of its competitors and affect their personal behavior towards purchasing properties developed by Samsung. Social media and blogs are directly related to each other as they are used as a platform for marketing and develop better customer relationship of the company. Well- written blogs can alter the brand’s position in the market as a leader among the competitors. Social media being a mode of digital communication is very much popular around various age groups globally. According to Shiue, Chiu and Chang (2010), 70% of the world’s population uses at least one social media platform. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat are the top three platforms used worldwide by the users. Due to the growing popularity of the social media platform, it is easier for the brands to accumulate customers regarding different age groups and class. The conclusive function of the blogs and posts over websites and social media is to boost the sales of the company and increase the number of customer retention compared with other brands (Brinker, Gastil & Richards, 2015)..
Figure 1: Data of social media users
(Source: Chaffey, 2016)
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded from this paper that the three theories of switching behavior, social power and media richness theory is greatly affected by the power of blogs and social media technology. Information and communication technology has found their way to integrate with business organization for production of knowledge and influencing the society. The similarities and differences among the theories were analyzed with the application of different articles.
References
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Chaffey, D. (2016). Global social media research summary 2016. Smart Insights: Social Media Marketing.
Chou, S. Y., Shen, G. C., Chiu, H. C., & Chou, Y. T. (2016). Multichannel service providers’ strategy: Understanding customers’ switching and free-riding behavior. Journal of Business Research, 69(6), 2226-2232.
Greenberg, J., & Cohen, R. L. (Eds.). (2014). Equity and justice in social behavior. Academic Press.
Hansen, E. C., Battaglia, D., Spiegler, A., Deco, G., & Jirsa, V. K. (2015). Functional connectivity dynamics: modeling the switching behavior of the resting state. Neuroimage, 105, 525-535.
Koo, C., Wati, Y., & Jung, J. J. (2011). Examination of how social aspects moderate the relationship between task characteristics and usage of social communication technologies (SCTs) in organizations. International Journal of Information Management, 31(5), 445-459.
Badger, J., E. Kaminsky, S., & S. Behrend, T. (2014). Media richness and information acquisition in internet recruitment. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 29(7), 866-883.
Ngai, E. W., Tao, S. S., & Moon, K. K. (2015). Social media research: Theories, constructs, and conceptual frameworks. International Journal of Information Management, 35(1), 33-44.
Saat, R. M., & Selamat, M. H. (2014). An examination of consumer’s attitude towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) web communication using media richness theory. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 155, 392-397.
Shiue, Y. C., Chiu, C. M., & Chang, C. C. (2010). Exploring and mitigating social loafing in online communities. Computers in Human Behavior, 26(4), 768-777.
Wei, L. (2009). Filter blogs vs. personal journals: Understanding the knowledge production gap on the Internet. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(3), 532-558.
Zhang, K. Z., Lee, M. K., Cheung, C. M., & Chen, H. (2009). Understanding the role of gender in bloggers’ switching behavior. Decision Support Systems, 47(4), 540-546.