The New York Times reports that companies such as Frito-Lay and Walmart have turned to social media to garner ideas for new products. Frito-Lay has a Facebook app that encourages consumers to suggest new flavors and vote on them. Walmart uses text mining to monitor trends in order to introduce new products into stores at the regional level.
I'm very interested in text mining, and companies such as Radian6 (owned by SalesForce) and Crimson Hexagon are enabling brands to listen in on the online consumer's conversation. I think social media can be a very useful tool to gaining consumer insights. However, it's just one tool in the marketing researcher's toolbox, and I don't think it will ever replace traditional proven research methods such as surveys and focus groups. It helps to add to the big picture, but it's not the end-all-be-all.
For one thing, using social media to monitor consumer activity is only useful to a brand if their target consumer uses social media. According to the New York Times, Kohl's most responsive fans on Facebook are more heavily in the 18-24 age group than their overall customer base. This is great if Kohl's is trying to market products to the 18-24 year-old customer base. But what about the 40-something suburban moms? Even though "everyone" is on Facebook, that doesn't mean everyone is on social media, and it doesn't necessarily mean they're willing to interact with brands.
I have a feeling that marketers are using social media as a research tool primarily to reach younger potential buyers. In traditional research, it can be difficult to find teenagers and pre-teens who are willing to sit in on a focus group and whose parents are willing to give their consent. It can be even more difficult to engage these young people during the focus group. Social media allows brands to passively listen to a more candid conversation happening in this hard-to-reach group.
Every marketing research method has its strengths and weaknesses, and the same can be said of using social media for research. As long as brands understand this, I believe they can play to the strengths and gain valuable insights.
Read the entire article here.
1 comment:
It will be interesting to see how Google's acquistion of Wildfire will influence Google's analytics abilities with social media. Combining the information available on Google analytics with further social media information that may be accessible through companies like Wildfire may enhance the capabilities of marketing research.
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