WOM Research #2.20
- Consumers Like Companies That Use Their Content
- Lines Between Real and Virtual Worlds Blurring
- Lack of Budget Hinders, WOM Helps, Brand Loyalty
- From the Archives:
The Relational Approach: Fishing for Complaints
 Tell a friend: http://www.womma.org/tell/
1> Consumers Like Companies That
Use Their Content
Making consumer-generated content part of the advertising mix is one way a company can boost its likeability, according to a December 2006 study conducted by the American Marketing Association and Opinion Research Corporation. The study found that most adults (consumers aged 25 to 64)prefer companies that market via consumer-generated media to those that market via professional advertising; those surveyed indicate that a company using customer-created ads is more customer-friendly (68%), creative (56%), and innovative (55%). Relatively few adults feel a company that uses consumer-created ads is less trustworthy (10%), less socially responsible (10%), and less customer-friendly (5%).
Young adults (consumers aged 18 to 24), however, are slightly more dubious of what consumer-made content says about a company's character -- 21% say they are less trustworthy, 20% say they are less socially responsible, and 13% say they are less customer-friendly.
Learn more (American Marketing Association)
Learn more (Back Channel Media)
2> Lines Between Real and Virtual
Worlds Blurring
A large portion (43%) of internet users in the United States who are members of online communities "feel as strongly" about their virtual communities as they do about their real world communities, according to the University of Southern California, Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future's sixth annual Digital Future study.
Other findings:
* 20.3% of online community members perform actions offline at least once a year that are related to their online community.
* Average respondents have met 1.6 of their "web acquaintances" in person, 40% are using the web to stay connected with people, and 37.7% say the internet is enabling them to communicate more with friends and family.
* 64.9% of online community members who participate in social causes online say they are involved in causes that were new to them when they started participating in social networks, while 43.7 % of online community members say they engage more in social activism since they started participating in online communities.
Learn more
3> Lack of Budget Hinders, WOM Helps,
Brand Loyalty
Senior level marketers say their loyalty efforts are hindered by insufficient budgets (48.8%), lack of leadership vision (41.6%), spotty customer service (33.7%), ineffective insight tools (32%), lack of top management support (28.2%), indifference to innovation (27.8%), poor product/service quality (23.4%), an insufficient database (23.4%), lack of loyalty programs (21.6%), and an over reliance on pure demographics (19.9%), according to a November/December 2006 Reveries.com survey.
In her analysis, titled "Loyalty, Harley Style," Dori Molitor, founder and CEO of the consultancy/agency WomanWise LLC, offers brand marketers a solution that bypasses a majority of these loyalty roadblocks. Molitor suggests that brand marketers should focus on effectively creating a "deep-soul connection" with consumers by feeding cultural values -- which can be accomplished with a variety word of mouth marketing techniques, including cause marketing (see examples). According to Molitor, using cultural values as a way to promote products "can enrich the lives of each and every one of their consumers, which in turn enriches the community, society, and the world at large."
Learn more
4> From the Archives:
The Relational Approach:
Fishing for Complaints
The "relational approach" is not just a strategy for customer retention, it's also valuable as a way of encouraging customers to voice their complaints, according to a September 1999 Journal of Market-Focused Management article by Isabelle Prim and Bernard Pras. The report, titled "'Friendly' Complaining Behaviors: Toward a Relational Approach," argues that using information derived from complaints, as well as providing the correct answers, is an essential part of making a relational marketing approach a vital part of the marketing mix. After all, it suggests, when a customer is satisfied by the response to his complaint, he becomes more loyal than other consumers. Complaints, in other words, can be a means for communicating with consumers, as well as for building and maintaining loyalty.
Learn more |
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