How Social Media could be a storehouse for CONSUMER INSIGHTS

Normally, when a brand manager wants to find out consumer reactions towards his brand, how does he go about it? The conventional route is that he conducts research by interviewing consumers. When any consumer is posed with a question what are the chances of him speaking his mind or actually giving the right opinions? There are so many conditions to this aspect-Is it the right time to speak to him ? Is he saying what the interviewer wants to hear? How is interpreting the question? Does the interviewee reminds him of someone and whether that could shift his mood to the answer? There are so many combinations and possibilities. As a researcher, I have faced this, so the best way to overcome these limitations is to have a large sample size. This irons out some of the concerns mentioned above. However, this does not guarantee that the inputs that one gets would be useful to the brand manager. Social media has the potential to throw inputs which could be just perfect for the brand manager. When we say, SM is all about observing conversations, we are allowing the consumer to speak his mind at his convenience, the time he wants to speak and in the habitat he deems perfect. In an environment like this what are the chances of a consumer speaking his mind on a cell phone that he intends to buy? What is the likelihood that he would voice his concerns which could well be besides price so on and so forth. I think as a researcher these inputs would be very useful to a brand manager than a conventional research which can, at times be confrontational and put the respondent on the defensive.Social media is an excellent medium which has the potential to provide consumer insights which could really drill down on consumer needs.

Who owns the BRAND?

Really, its a matter of interest that who owns the brand? Is it the Institution that "created" it or is it the consumer? The institution obviously spends millions in shaping up a brand, conducts market research, creates advertisements, makes it available for the user, so on and so forth. But if the user does not buy all of that-more importantly its "proposition" which as most marketers know, is intangible, whats the point of it all? Lets take an example of an iconic brand, Nike which is synonymous with its famous tag line, "Just Do it". Would the institution be happy if its tag line was appreciated by everybody without anybody finding the need to "buy" it or is it happy today that when someone reads/recollects the punch line, he/she is empowered and kind of gets into action right away? I think thats in a sense ownership of the consumer who gets impacted and gets into action by the brand/tag line recall. Another example is that of people refusing to buy any other alternative beverage when another strong brand in the Indian market, Thums Up was pulled off by Coke for a brief period when it bought the brand.At this point of time, the consumer felt the need to have the brand that it rightfully owned. He resisted other brands and was demanding.Coke had to give in and get back Thums Up in the market again.Marketers may go miles and spend buckets but if they cannot create a brand ownership for the consumer, its no use. I also feel that when marketers really start giving ownership to their consumers, thats when they are successful and in away create world class brands. Otherwise, its just ego pampering and living in an Utopian world.

Integration and Aggregation is the KEY

With so many SNS,blogs,communities,wikis etc.the key for any marketer is to identify conversations relevant to his brand/products that are going on , how to track them and respond to them. Thats the whole essence of SM marketing and its growing importance. Since this industry is still in its nascent stage,its a long haul when one would see an army of Social Media Managers managing all of it,lets say, a Facebook or a Twitter community completely on his own. At the moment, you would have SM agencies set up accounts for their clients and ask them to manage them.So whats needed is to use tools which aggregate all relevant information on one single platform and integrates in a way that one would like to use. This would make things simpler and manageable. Presently, there are tools which are being introduced with some of them having useful features like generating statistics so that you can analyse this information.

Relevance of Social Media in INDIA

Application of Social media has been in India for quite some time and this community is quite large in terms of social networking, blogging, videos and wikis. Users of this media are quite active and the numbers are sizeable and still growing. If one compares usage of social media in India vis-à-vis the world, Indian market definitely has impressive numbers. While traditional media is effective, there are certain limitations associated with it. It is largely fragmented, costly and in effect shuns a small/startup company, fails to engage consumers and is un measurable. Unfortunately, for the marketer, there is not too much he can do if he wants to go mass and still have a “brand driven” marketing strategy. Social media overcomes all the above mentioned limitations and personally, I feel its key gains in the Indian context are that it is cost effective and measurable. It is an excellent olive branch to all those marketers who still believe in the power of building brands and yet do not wish to spend buckets in traditional media. Being a marketer myself I have quite often been stone walled by this dilemma and now, social media offers a way out. It may not completely replace traditional media but is an excellent alternative to marketers to shuffle their media budgets and apportion some for this new age media.