Social Media Are Giving
a Voice to Taste Buds
Social media is transforming the way that consumer research
is conducted. More than focus groups, research and trend analysis, social media
is enabling marketers to go directly to the source – to the people. Frito-Lay
is one example of this as they ask visitors to Facebook to vote. This provides
a lot of useful data including geographic data (if certain taste preferences
prevail in certain regions.)
This is just one example of many companies soliciting feedback
via Facebook and utilizing the copious amount of data available through social
media. This eliminates speculation. Wal-Mart considers this so important that
they acquired social media company Kosmix due to its ability to extract trends
from social media conversations. It utilizes buzz to determine when interest in
certain products are trending high to enable Wal-Mart to know what products to
stock and when and where. When Starbucks
launched cake-pops, Wal-Mart detected the buzz around it and decided to stock
cake-pop makers – which became a huge success.
Not only is there a lot of data but it is from a broader
audience than may be in focus groups. Focus groups and customer panels may
self-select as participants may not necessarily be young fad followers. Through
social media, marketers are getting data on the preferences of a younger
audience.
Given heightened privacy concerns, this could face challenges,
but for the time being, it seems like marketers are swimming in a sea of data
to better inform their decisions.
1 comment:
Social media is a quick and dirty way to get real time information. It can provide quantative support very easily- provided you understand the caveats of the methodology, namely who is your audience, what are their natural tendencies, etc.
It's a fun way to engage your customers and consumers. I would easily vote for a new chip flavor. Is Cheetos ever going to sell their hot/spicy version on the east coast? However, I would hesitate to make large business decisions just on social media research alone.
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