Topics for Final Paper

My career of interest is brand marketing in industries like consumer goods (my first choice), luxury goods, or cosmetics. In my final paper, I would like to explore more about how to gain more customer insights through social media to identify possible business opportunities (either for new product development or for current product improvement) and how to create emotional bonds between the brand and the end consumers though social media to develop higher brand loyalty. Here are some thoughts about the topic in my mind.

Idea for the topic
1. The most prevailing/influential social media in the market place and their perspective characteristics (pros and cons).
2. How can we draw traffic (and maintain) to a newly-open social media sites. (for example, a new facebook fan page of our brand)
3. How do we maintain objectivity (therefore, make users feel the site is trustworthy place for them to freely express their true opinions/concerns and gain knowledge) but also deeply engaged with the users (not make them feel we just want to sell them something…etc)?
4. How do we manage negative posts well (both rational and irrational) and turn them into positive power for our brand?
5. What kind of extra resources may be needed to execute social media strategy effectively?
6. How do we leverage social media to create word-of-mouth? Who are the most influential users on social media, especially in terms of consumer goods brand?
7. How do we select among thousands of potential insights on social media and prioritize them for execution?
8. How do we build an emotional bond between a brand and end consumers through social media?
9. How do we measure our social media strategy?

Why is this topic interesting to you?
This topic is interesting to me for two reasons.

First, since social media becomes one of the main resources for people to connect and to share information, marketers cannot afford any loss by not using it. I worked for P&G Taiwan before joining McCombs in 2008. When I was there, we did not have social media strategies at all. But now, almost every brand has its fan page on facebook. Since CPG is the industry I want to work for again after my MBA, I would like to leverage the chances at school to explore more on how to develop effective social media strategy for a brand. I think CPG is definitely the industry that requires strong and intensive social media strategies since the market is so mature and highly-competitive. Consumers are overloaded by different kinds of commercials on TV which make it hard for them to filter our which information is trustworthy and which is not. Given the economic downturn, consumers cannot afford to make too many wrong choices. Therefore, word of mouth becomes one of the main resources for them to seek information for purchase decision and social media is indispensable for word of mouth.
Second, consumers become more and more demanding in the highly-competitive consumer goods market. It would be hard to keep loyal consumers by traditional offerings. So many companies are seeking out to build more emotional bond with the consumers to sustain their loyalty. One of the good examples is that Walmart is now trying every effort to build emotional bonds with its customers since it realize its relationships with customers which are built solely on low price are not sustainable. Social media is a great way to create two way communications and therefore increase the engagement of the company with consumers so that I am very interested in this tool.

What is the connection to the gathering and identification of customer insights and/or the design of valuable customer experiences?
1. From the users’ discussion/posts on social media, we may be able to identify unsatisfied needs. For example, on J. crew facebook fan page, the most frequent thing that is complained about is its unreasonably high shipping fee and high threshold for free shipping compared with its competitors (such as Banana Republic or Ann Taylor). If J. crew is able to take some actions to those complaints by offering flat rate shipping, then it may attract more customers. (or at least retain those unsatisfied customers to avoid their switch)
2. From gathering insights from social media, we marketers are able to validate if the message we are trying to convey to the customers is the same as what they capture/perceive. For example, in a website call fugal living, 49% of the people that are surveyed said they do not believe Walmart really save them money. This insight is so surprising since for a long time, Walmart has positioned itself as a budget keeper for all the US households. This insight would offer a good chance for Walmart to revisit its marketing message communication to regain trust/confidence from customers.

Cite and briefly describe at least one article that is related to your topic
eMarketer: Moms Online: more influential than ever (2009 June)
Since moms are the main purchaser of commodity and the main area of my social media research is targeting CPG firms, I think my focus will be more on moms than on the general public.