Tài liệu SOCIAL MEDIA AND BRAND AWARENESS - A CASE STUDY IN THE FAST MOVING CONSUMER GOODS SECTOR docx

Others have argued that it is crucial for marketers to look to the Web for new ways of finding customers and communicating with them, rather than at them, that it is vital to create a di

2010:129

B A C H E L O R T H E S I S

Social media and brand awareness

- a case study in the fast moving consumer goods sector

Maria Johansson

Luleå University of Technology

Bachelor thesis Marketing Department of Business Administration and Social Sciences Division of Industrial marketing and e-commerce

SOCIAL MEDIA AND BRAND AWARENESS

A case study in the fast moving consumer goods sector

Maria Johansson 2010-06-09

Luleå University of Technology Bachelor Thesis (C-uppsats) Department of Business Administration and Social Sciences Division of Industrial Marketing, e-commerce and Logistics

Many thanks to the respondents of the company in the single case study for taking time and energy to participate in this study and in the interview, and to share valuable information so generously I would also like to thank my supervisor Lars Bäckström for his constructive support and assistance

We live in the midst of a global communications’ boom where the use of social media between individuals for personal and professional use is widespread It has been predicted that 2010 is the year when the use of social media for branding purposes will really take off

in the corporate sector The purpose of this thesis has been to look at how social media can create brand awareness The specific area of fast moving consumer goods was chosen This study is of an exploratory, descriptive and qualitative character, and by looking at a single case, it has been possible to withdraw necessary primary and secondary data The most important findings were that the theoretical framework does explain how the company in the case study uses social media to create brand awareness The great challenge that came up in the case study was for the company to find the right balance between providing contents of great interest for the audience, while at the same time respecting what kind of information the company can really go out with- it is about being relevant in social media and in all other channels of communication This means a constant need for learning and developing new knowledge, for measuring and following up Regarding the different degrees of brand awareness however, it was difficult to show to what extent the real case builds on the theoretical framework; that there exist a clear strategy for how to reach the different stages of brand awareness, from the weakest (recognition) to the strongest (word-of-mouth) What was considered more important by the company in the case study was to integrate social media in the total communications and PR-strategy, a task which is actually being performed at this very moment

Vi befinner oss mitt i en global kommunikations-boom där användningen av sociala medier mellan individer för personligt och professionellt bruk är mycket utspridd Det har förutspåtts att under 2010 kommer användningen av sociala medier i varumärkes-byggande syfte att ta fart bland företagen Syftet med denna C-uppsats var att titta på hur sociala medier kan skapa brand awareness, framförallt inom marknaden för snabbrörliga konsumentvaror Detta arbete

är av utforskande, beskrivande och kvalitativ karaktär, och genom att studera ett single-case har det blivit möjligt att få fram nödvändiga primär och sekundärdata De viktigaste

resultaten visar på att det teoretiska ramverket kan förklara hur företaget i fallstudien

använder sociala medier för att skapa brand awareness Företaget lyfter fram att utmaningen ligger i att vara relevant i sociala medier och i alla andra kommunikationskanaler, vilket handlar om att hitta den räta balansen mellan att presentera intressant material för läsarna, samtidigt som hänsyn tas till vad företaget verkligen kan och vill gå ut med Detta betyder ett konstant behov av lärande och att utveckla ny kunskap, av att mäta och följa upp Beträffande

de olika graderna av brand awareness, visade det sig emellertid svårt att visa på i vilken utsträckning företaget i fallstudien bygger på det teoretiska ramverket, att det existerar en tydlig strategi för hur man skall uppnå de olika stadierna av brand awareness, från det

svagaste (recognition) till det starkaste (word-of-mouth) Vad som bedömdes mer viktigt av företaget i fallstudien, var att integrera sociala medier i den totala kommunikations och PR-strategin, en uppgift som är under utarbetande vid denna tidpunkt

 

Chapter 1 Introduction   1  

1.1 Background   1  

1.1.1 Social media   1  

1.1.2 Brand and Branding   2  

1.2 Empirical area   4  

1.3 Research problem   5  

Chapter 2 Literature review   6  

2.1 Definitions of social media   6  

2.2 Social media and marketing  7  

2.3 In which phases of product life cycle can social media be used?   8  

2.4 Social media and branding   8  

2.5 Brand and branding in general, branding in fast moving consumer goods sector   9  

2.6 Brand strategy   12  

2.7 Brand equity and brand awareness   12  

2.8 Managing the brand portfolio   14  

2.9 Summary   16  

3 Conceptual framework  research questions and frame of reference   18  

3.1 Research problem and research discussion   18  

3.2 Frame of reference   19  

3.3 Delimitations  21  

3.4 Summary   21  

Chapter 4: Methodology   22  

4.1 Research Purpose   22  

4.1.1 Exploratory studies   22  

4.1.2 Descriptive studies   22  

4.1.3 Explanatory – Casual studies   22  

4.2 Research Approach   22  

4.2.1 Inductive versus Deductive   22  

4.2.2 Quantitative versus Qualitative   23  

4.3 Research Strategy   24  

4.3.1 Case study   24  

4.3.2 Survey   24  

4.3.3 Experiment  25  

4.4 Sample Selection  25  

4.5 Data Collection Methods   26  

4.6 Data analysis   26  

4.7 Reliability versus Validity   27  

4.8 Summary   28  

Chapter 5 Empirical data   29  

5.1 The purpose of  using  social media to create brand awareness   29  

5.2 How can the social media activities used to create brand awareness be described?   29  

5.2.1 The use of social media to create various levels of brand awareness   30  

5.2.2 Measuring of brand awareness   31  

5.3 Advantages in using social media to create brand awareness   31  

5.4 Disadvantages in using social media to create brand awareness   31  

Chapter 6: Data analysis   33  

6.1 The purpose of using social media to create brand awareness   33  

6.2 How can the social media activities used to create brand awareness be described?   34  

6.3 Advantages in using social media to create brand awareness   35  

6.4 Disadvantages in using social media to create brand awareness   35  

Chapter 7: Conclusions and suggestions   37  

References:   39    

Appendix A Interview guide English 

Appendix B Intervjuguide svenska

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION  

Marketing managers have predicted that 2010 will be the year when social media are integrated in the organizations and really start to become useful for companies and become important tools in the communication (Carlsson 2010) Others have argued that it is crucial

for marketers to look to the Web for new ways of finding customers and communicating with them, rather than at them, that it is vital to create a dialogue with the customers, and various

kinds of social media are the most promising way to reach new customers (Weber 2009)

At the same time, one of the most prominent names in research about branding and related subjects, David Aaker, has said that with the multitude of new medias developing, it is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to raise awareness for their brand The only way forward in managing this complexity, is for companies to be able to coordinate messages and their marketing efforts across all medias (Aaker 1996)

The combination of coordinating your branding messages across all medias including the social media, the great impact that social media (as an example the social network Facebook with more than 400 million active users) has for both individuals and companies, the speed with which things move in this domain, and the relative scarcity of existing research about this area all are reasons why this study was initiated With regards to the discussion above, this study will be about how social media influences branding

1.1 BACKGROUND 

In studying how social media influences branding, we need to look at what social media is, what it is composed of and what existing literature says about the correlation between social

media and branding Branding per se is a vast and widespread area, where opinions diverge

concerning the basic definitions, such as brand equity for example We need to clarify which parts of branding that we will focus on in this context

1.1.1 SOCIAL MEDIA  

What is social media? Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, p 60) define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” Web 2.0 is platform on which social media is based (Carlsson 2010)

Social media can take many different forms, including social networks, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, micro blogging, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Weber, 2009). Weber also includes search engines

in the definition of social web, and describes them as reputation aggregators with the task of aggregating sites with the best product or service to offer and usually put things in order of reputation (Weber 2009).  

Weber approaches the question of branding in the social web He defines this as the dialogue you have with your customer, and claims that the stronger the dialogue is, the stronger the

brand is, and vice versa Actually he questions the very core concept of traditional marketing and branding, and means that rather than broadcasting messages to audiences and target groups, in the era of social web that we live in today, branding and marketing is about participating in social networks to which people want to belong, where dialogue with customers and between customers can flourish (Weber 2009)

According to a study made in 2010 in the United Kingdom amongst 30 companies (which are early adopter business and perhaps not representative of the mainstream UK businesses), the importance of participating in social networks in order to develop the brand and build relationships with key customers is in fact recognized by the companies It is argued that online communities will play a key role in the future of marketing because they replace customer annoyance with engagement, and control of the content with collaboration The authors of this study, Harris and Rae, claim that the prosperous businesses of the future will

be those who embrace the social media and who see change as an opportunity (Harris and Rae 2010)

1.1.2 BRAND AND BRANDING  

What is brand and branding and why do we need to look into this more deeply? According to Czinkota and Ronkainen (2010), brands are important because they shape customer decisions and ultimately create economic value Brand is a key factor behind the decision to purchase

in business to consumer operations, and thanks to strong brands, it has been showed possible

to charge a 19 percent higher price (Czinkota and Ronkainen 2010)

What specific aspects and dimensions in branding are we particularly interested in?

In order to get a necessary overview of the state-of-the-art in branding literature, it has been deemed necessary to look closer into brand strategy, brand equity and assets that underlie brand equity which are brand awareness, perceived quality, brand loyalty, brand association and other proprietary brand assets

1.1.2.3   B RAND STRATEGY   

One definition of brand strategy is the following: “Your brand strategy is how, what, where, when and to whom you plan on communicating and delivering your brand messages Where you advertise is part of your brand strategy, so are your distribution channels and your verbal and visual communication” Consistent branding strategy leads to a strong brand equity, which means the added value brought to your company's products or services that allows you

to charge more for your brand than what identical, unbranded products command (www.entrepreneur.com Retrieved 100424)  

The brand and marketing consultancy Prophet.com highlights the following elements in the branding strategy: to build a brand positioning, to manage your brand portfolio, to build your brand architecture and naming, and to consider possible brand extensions (www.prophet.com Retrieved 100424) This proposition takes the perspective of looking into the management of several brands at the same time

The definitions of brand equity can be broadly classified into two categories; either as financial considerations and the value of the brand equity for the firm, or based on the consumer perspective which looks as brand equity as the value of a brand for the consumer (Brasco and Mahajan in Pappu et al 2005)

Aaker conceptualized brand equity as a set of five assets: brand awareness, perceived quality, brand loyalty, brand association and other proprietary brand assets Brand awareness is an important component of brand equity, it deals with the strength a brand’s presence has in consumer’s minds

It is predicted by Aaker that with the multitude of new media that have developed and that are likely to develop in the future, it is constantly becoming more challenging to create this brand awareness, and that the winners in the battle of raising brand awareness will be those who are able to coordinate their branding messages through all medias (Aaker 1996)

Weber (2009) holds a diverging view on brand equity, and means that it is not interesting to look at how well the customer remembers a brand, but one should consider that the social media arena changes the marketing mindset, and that brand equity is a living thing and should

be measured by to what extent the customer is prone to highly recommend the brand to others

There exist different degrees of brand awareness according to Aaker, and it is measured through analysis of how well the customer recalls the brand The scale starts off from the weakest level:

recognition (the customer has been exposed to the brand)

recall (which brands within the product group that the customer can retain)

top of mind (the first brand the customer can recall)

dominant (the only brand the customer can recall) (Aaker 1996)

To create brand awareness in a successful way considering that consumers everyday are bombarded by more and more marketing messages, two things are needed according to Aaker: first, it is necessary to have a broad sales base This is because it is expensive and often impossible even to support brands with relatively small unit sales and short lifecycle This is the reason why many firms reduce the number of their brands and focus only on a few brands Second, firms need to acquire the knowledge of operating outside the traditional media channels (Aaker 1996)

There is also a close connection between brand awareness and brand positioning In a positioning statement, the benefits a brand offers a specific target audience in order to satisfy

a particular need are addressed (Elliott and Percy 2007) Brand positioning can be thought of

as the element that tells the potential customer what the brand is, who it is for, and what it offers (Elliott and Percy 2007)

Considering the great importance that brand awareness has in the creation of brand equity, and that recent research take into account also how social media influence brand awareness, brand awareness is the aspect of branding that this thesis will focus on The approach will be

a combination of Weber’s and Aaker’s ideas: the strongest form of brand awareness will be considered to be word-of-mouth (Weber 2009), that the customer has such a high brand awareness that she/he recommends the brand to others This stage is preceded by weak brand awareness (recognition), medium brand awareness (recall), strong brand awareness (top-of-mind, the brand is the first the customer come to think of) and very strong brand awareness (dominant, the brand is the only one the customer can remember) (Aaker 1996)

1.2 EMPIRICAL AREA 

Up until now, it is mainly within business to consumer market that social media have been used for the sake of strengthening the brand and to reach new customers (Wikberg, 2010) Apéria and Back (2004) claim that it is within the fast moving consumer goods sector (FMCG) that only the strong brands, either own brands or the supplier’s brands, survive

Fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) are defined as products that are sold quickly at relatively low cost Though the absolute profit made on FMCG products is relatively small, they generally sell in large quantities, so the cumulative profit on such products can be large (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_moving_consumer_goods retrieved 100424)

The strong brands are defined as those with strong support from customers To ensure their brands survival, the brand owners have to seek an ever greater understanding of what the consumer and customers want and to develop a relationship between them and the brand

Since existing research about social media so strongly emphasize that branding in the era of the social web is about creating a dialogue with your customer, the choice of the empirical base in this study is a medium sized company, company X, within the FMCG which is one of the 300 strongest brands in business to consumer market in Sweden The company had a turnover in 2008 of 750 MSEK

1.3 RESEARCH PROBLEM 

It seems clear that we are currently living in the midst of the boom of the use of social media Social networks such as Facebook with some 400 million active members represent a larger community than most individual countries But research is somewhat lagging behind this rapid development, and it is difficult to find relevant up to date studies on how social media are to be part of the branding process, how this relates to the strategy that companies have with the use of social media- if they are to be used to strengthen the brand, increase sales, find new customers, recruit more competent staff, to improve the support-function, to be part

of the product development and/or to improve the internal communication (Carlsson, 2010) Also the question of how companies create brand equity through brand awareness has been debated with the upsurge of social media “Traditional” marketers such as Aaker, claim that brand awareness is about the strength the brand’s presence has in consumer’s minds (Aaker 1996)

Social media guru Weber is of the opinion that brand awareness is to be measured not in brand recall but by dynamic measures such as customer word-of-mouth (Weber 2009)

These are the contents that will be looked into in this thesis With regard to this, the research problem of this study can be formulated as:

To increase the understanding of the role of social media for the creation of

brand awareness

In addition to the definitions given in section 1.1.1, Wikipedia defines social media as:

“media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues They support the democratization

of knowledge and information and transform people from content consumers to content producers” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media Retrieved 100420)

Social media are distinct from industrial or traditional media, such as newspapers, television, and film They are relatively inexpensive and accessible to enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information, compared to industrial media, which generally require significant resources to publish information

Social media technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media Retrieved 100420)

Weber uses the term “social web” instead of social media, and defines the social web as “the online place where people with a common interest can gather to share thoughts, comments and opinions It includes social networks such as MySpace, Gather, Facebook, BlackPlanet, Eons, LinkedIn, and hundreds more It includes branded web destinations like Amazon, Netflix and eBay It includes enterprise sites such as IBM, Best Buy, Cisco and Oracle The social web is a new world of unpaid media created by individuals or enterprises on the web and they include:

-Reputation aggregators: search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Ask and Live They aggregate sites with the best product or service to offer and usually put things in order of reputation

-Blogs: online journals where people can post ideas, images, and links to other web pages or sites Some appear on personal or corporate sites, while others are hosted on Blogger, BlogHer (for women), Weblog, Tumblr, and other blogging sites (Weber 2009)

-Microblogs: Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users

to send and read messages known as tweets Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140

characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who

are known as followers Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by

default, allow open access (http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/76460 Retrieved 2010-04-25 http://blog.twitter.com/2009/10/theres-list-for-that.html Retrieved 2010-04-25)

-Topic-specific e-communities are generally advertising supported although some are free Hewlett Packard for example has communities on its website, and there are communities involving sports such as KayakMind for people who enjoy kayaking Password-protected e-communities are growing especially quickly

-Social networks are places where people with a common interest or concern come together

to meet people with similar interests, express themselves and communicate In addition to the ones abovementioned are also for example Xanga, Stumbleupon Some sites are devoted specifically to image-sharing, such as Flickr, and some to video-sharing, YouTube serves 10 billion videos a month to U.S viewers alone (Weber 2009)

2.2 SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARKETING  

According to Weber, marketing to the social web means to adopt a completely new way of communicating with an audience in a digital environment Instead of continuing as broadcasters, marketers should become aggregators of customer communities It is not about broadcasting marketing messages to an increasingly indifferent audience Instead, when marketing to the social web marketers should participate in, organize and encourage social networks to which people want to belong Rather than talking at customers, marketers should talk with them (Weber 2009)

The task of aggregating customers is done in two ways: by providing compelling content on your web site and creating retail environments that customers want to visit, and by going out and participating in the public arena (Weber 2009)

Marketing to the social web is not only for the largest multinational corporations; it may be easier and more effective, argues Weber (2009), for a relatively small or medium-size company to take maximum advantages of the social media

Also the way of segmenting changes radically with the advent of the social web Demographics like gender, age, education and income, lifestyle factors have become less relevant, and what really counts is segmenting according to what people do and feel- their behaviour as well as their attitudes and interests The goal for the marketer is to identify groups of customers within the larger market that can be reached and affected through the marketing (Weber 2009)

Harris and Rae (2010) have looked at the role of social networking in establishing an integrated marketing strategy They argue that online communities have evolved considerably since the early days of news groups and chat rooms For example Cisco has put forward a customer community which allow customers to help themselves to technical support information via web communities After Cisco put the technical support function online,

customers began to compete with each other to answer queries that had been posted by other customers This strategy contributes towards the creation of a community of people with similar interests who will trust and act upon the recommendations of others in the group (Harris and Rae 2010)

Harris and Rae claim that businesses are recognising the potential of generic online social networking such as Facebook and Myspace for the development of their brands and to build relationships with key customers, but that this is a very recent trend in the UK (which the data comes from) and that it is difficult at this stage to draw conclusions on how successful companies have been in using social networks in the marketing work (Harris and Rae 2010)

2.3 IN WHICH PHASES OF PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE CAN SOCIAL MEDIA BE USED?   

Weber suggests that the social web can play a role throughout the entire life cycle of product development, market introduction and market adoption He exemplifies by stating that blogs, wikis (A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki Retrieved 100420) and communities can be used during the development phase on various product features

During market introduction, podcasts and webinars (a seminar conducted over the web, designed to be interactive) to engage and educate potential customers about the new product’s benefits and applications may be used And as the product begins to sell, the social web can be used for trouble-shooting, problem solving and customer service and support, plus the important word-of-mouth to build that buzz (Weber 2009)

2.4 SOCIAL MEDIA AND BRANDING 

Weber compares the traditional way of looking at brand equity (which will be examined in section number 2.7) in terms of brand recall- and points to that in the era where social networks have become an important media channel, brand equity is a living thing and should

be measured not in terms of brand recall but by dynamic measures such as customer mouth

word-of-A strong brand ought to be based on the dialogue you have with your customers and prospects- the stronger the dialogue- the stronger the brand The social web allows companies

to have these kinds of dialogues more efficiently and less expensively than in the past (Weber 2009)

Weber’s (2009) view on how the blog should be used as a marketing tool, is that through this means of communication it is not possible to control your message But you can present your

view on a specific matter, and by that you are able to become part of the conversation Blogs can be used for different reasons

For small start-up companies, to have a blog is a way for an executive in the firm to talk about the industry, to talk about the market space, to establish credibility, to get the search engines going All this helps not only with customers, it helps with media and PR efforts since reporters and writers look through the blogs all the time for people to quote and interview Blogs are used as references (Weber 2009)

If then you are an executive and want to raise your profile and the company’s profile, a blog

is a great way to help secure speaking engagements, contributed articles, and quotes in major media All of that adds credibility, which eventually can lead to the interest of new customers, who may be used to buying other brands, products or services but may feel more comfortable with you An executive may also want to blog to get a feel for what is taking place in the field, and get a direct line with your customers (Weber 2009)

2.5 BRAND  AND  BRANDING  IN  GENERAL,  BRANDING  IN  FAST  MOVING  CONSUMER  GOODS  SECTOR  

Why is branding interesting to look at in this study? There is a great variety of concepts relating to brands and branding From the beginning, a brand was used to mark ownership of cattle (Aaker in Bertilsson 2009) In modern times, brands functioned as symbols that enabled consumers to identify and separate one producer from another, with the ability to trace one good back to the manufacturer holding it responsible for its quality (Koehn in Bertilsson 2009), but they are today ascribed with almost divine characteristics serving as a strategic business asset essential for firms to develop if they are to compete successfully (Aaker and Kapferer in Bertilsson 2009) This leads to the conclusion, that when looking at how social media affects marketing in a broader perspective, it makes sense to concentrate on the area of branding within marketing

But branding in itself is as mentioned above, a large area containing many concepts and dimensions and diverging definitions Therefore, it has been deemed necessary in this study

to make an overview of key concepts in marketing, and to on the basis of this analysis, choose which concepts within branding to focus on The areas which will be looked into in this section besides brand and branding following right hereafter, are brand strategy, brand equity and brand awareness and managing the brand portfolio

The traditional definition of a brand used in brand management literature was formulated by the American Marketing Association in 1960 and identifies a brand as a kind of differentiating device “ distinguishing name and/or symbol (such as a logo, trademark or package design) intended to identify the goods or services of either one seller or groups of sellers, and to differentiate those goods or services from those of competitors ” (Aaker 1991, Bengtsson 1996)

A central concept in classical brand management presented by de Chernatony and Riley (1997) is that “as a result of augmenting the core offering with consumer relevant added values, consumers will be prepared to pay a price premium”

It is also pointed out, that a brand consists of a set of perceptions which serve to differentiate the product from the competition (Aaker 1996) The brand strength depends on the extent to which these perceptions are consistent, positive and shared by consumers To improve the brand strength, managers need to shape this set of perceptions so that the target audience will think of the brand in positive terms (Aaker 1996)

According to de Chernatony and Riley (1997), it seems that from the brand managers’ perspective, the brand is to be regarded as a name to be exploited to satisfy short-term sales and goals But for the consumer, the purpose to consume the brand might be the meanings the brand brings to the consumer, or as put by Heilbrunn (in Bengtsson 1996): “A brand may be viewed not solely as a sign added to products to differentiate them from competing goods, but

as a semiotic engine whose function is to constantly produce meaning and values”

De Chernatony and McWilliam (1989) and McWilliam (1991) identify four complementary views of brands from the consumer’s perspective: a visual identifier, a guarantee of consistent quality, a shorthand device, an expression of self-concept The idea behind is that brands can speed up and simplify consumers’ choices, and that they might reduce any believed performance risk (de Chernatony and Riley, 1997) A fairly similar view is taken by Bengtsson (1996), who states that from the consumer point of view, a brand can be understood as a multidimensional construct that represents a variety of elements which consumers consider to represent the brands

Melin in Apéria and Back (2004) has looked at another angle of brand and branding He states that brand building is a process which takes place both within the company and in consumers’ minds A central part of the brand building process, according to Melin, is the concept of core value; that is the brand’s primary differentiation advantage which provides the basis for the brand’s positioning The basic argument is that unique core values should be developed to give the brand an ability to compete In all cases Melin investigated, the consumer and her or his needs were in the centre for choices of core value (Melin in Apéria and Back 2004), and this is very similar to the traditional view of branding from 1960

In literature about brands, it is often stated that the company appreciates strong brands because they are an asset which contribute to strong profitability, and consumers appreciate them because they reduce uncertainty Apéria and Back (2004) however, bring forward the

importance of branding for the distributors in fast moving consumer goods sector (FMCG);

for them, strong brands create sales in the shops

Weber approaches the question of branding relating it to the consequences for branding considering the emergence of the social media He defines branding as the dialogue you have with your customer The stronger the dialogue- the stronger the brand and vice versa Actually he questions the very core concept of traditional marketing and branding, and means that rather than broadcasting messages to audiences and target groups, in the era of social

web that we live in today, branding and marketing is about participating in social networks to which people want to belong, where dialogue with customers and between customers can flourish (Weber 2009) He means that transparency is critical if you want customers and stakeholders to trust you and engage in dialogue with you The objective is to have customers invite you to deliver the message to them Messages can’t be “forced” through (Weber 2009)

Yet another way of looking at what a brand is, is that the brand is your promise to your customer It tells her/him what to expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from that of your competitors Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be (www.entrepreneur.com Retrieved 100424)

Aaker (1996) is of the opinion that contemporarily, it is hard to build a brand One of the factors causing this, is the fragmenting markets and media today compared to 30 years ago With a limited number of media options and only a few national media vehicles, being consistent across media and markets was easy The media world today consists of a lot of possibilities; advertising on the Internet, interactive television, event sponsorship etc Coordinating messages across these media without weakening the brand is a real challenge, argues Aaker

In addition, companies are dividing the population into smaller and more refined target markets, often reaching them with specialized media and distribution channels It is tempting

to develop different brand identities for some or all of these new target segments But, developing and managing multiple identities for the same brand presents problems for both the brand and the customer Since media audiences invariably overleap, customers are likely

to be exposed to more than one identity relating to the same brand (Aaker 1996)

Considering that since Aaker wrote this book in 1996, a lot of new media channels have emerged such as social networks, on-line communities etc, see sections 2.1-2.4 for an overview of this area Thus, the media market has become even more fragmented, and hence

it is reasonable to think, following Aaker’s arguments, that it has become increasingly more difficult to build and manage a brand These trends are very recent, so studies about social media are, as mentioned previously, fairly rare

In FMCG products, it is argued by researchers that well-known brands are much more likely

to enjoy good distribution, which helps maintain high market share The competition for shelf space amongst FMCG products is very strong, and strong brands have a clear advantage here The pull-strategy focuses on mass communication tools, mainly advertising and aims at creating a strong consumer demand for branded products, and distributors and retailers have very strong incentives to carry the brand (Elliott and Percy 2007, Czinkota and Ronkainen 2010)

Brand strategy can be defined as follows: “Long-term marketing support for a brand, based

on the definition of the characteristics of the target consumers It includes understanding of their preferences, and expectations from the brand” (http://www.businessdictionary.com Retrieved 100424)

The brand and marketing consultancy Prophet.com defines the following parts in a branding strategy: build a brand positioning, manage your brand portfolio, build your brand architecture and naming, consider the possible brand extensions (http://www.prophet.com Retrieved 100424)

Kapferer identifies branding strategy as the term used for decisions on: the number of brand levels to be implemented; one, two or even three and the role of the corporate in the product value communication; should it be absent, strongly present or hardly present He also considers the relative weight of these brands, and the graphic arrangement of their coexistence on all the documents, packaging and products but also industrial sites, offices and business cards of salespersons and managers as well as the degree of globalisation of the architecture as bearing elements of the branding strategy (Kapferer 2008)

2.7 BRAND EQUITY AND BRAND AWARENESS   

As mentioned in section 1.1.2.4, there is little consensus on what exactly brand equity means and there are numerous definitions for brand equity in the literature (Park and Srinivasan in Pappu et al 2005) In marketing it has for a long time been considered that brands add value

to a product, but it was not until the large wave of mergers and acquisitions in multinational corporations with large and well-known brands in the 1980’s that this value was measured in the asset value of companies Besides the traditional way of considering asset value and net income, also “goodwill” was to be included (Elliott and Percy 2007) Even if accepted accounting procedure did not permit considering the added value of a brand name on the balance sheet, it was nevertheless being counted as part of the net value of the firm The term brand equity stems from this context

There exist many definitions of brand equity, defined mainly from two perspectives, either as financial considerations or as consumer perceptions of a brand Here are some examples: “A set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, it’s name and symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to firm’s customers” (Aaker 1991)

Aaker’s point of departure in his studies on brand equity, is a consumer perspective based on consumer’s memory-based brand associations He has provided a comprehensive definition

of brand equity, namely: a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firm’s customers (Aaker in Pappu et al 2005) The five assets underlying brand equity identified by Aaker are: brand awareness, perceived quality, brand loyalty, brand association, other proprietary brand assets

Aaker predicts that with the multitude of new media’s that have developed and that are likely

to develop in the future, it is constantly becoming more challenging to create this brand awareness Aaker (1996) predicts that the firms skilful in operating outside the “traditional” media channels and who can coordinate messages across all medias (advertising in newspapers, TV, radio, the Internet, event sponsorships, direct marketing, trade shows) are those that will be the winners in the battle of raising brand awareness (Aaker 1996)

Weber (2009) argues against the “traditional way” of looking at brand equity in terms of brand recall- and instead claims that contemporarily, with a new marketing mindset adapted

to the social media arena, brand equity is a living thing and should be measured not in terms

of brand recall but by dynamic measures such as customer word-of-mouth Instead of creating brand awareness through brand recall, it is about how likely customers are to highly recommend the good or service to others Instead of creating brand awareness through brand recall, it is about how likely customers are to highly recommend the good or service to others (Weber 2009)

There is also a close connection between brand awareness and brand positioning For a brand

to be successful, it is not enough to reach brand recognition, a brand must occupy a salient position (top-of- mind recall or dominant recall) within the target audience’s consideration set (Elliott and Percy 2007) A brand must be positioned in its marketing communication in such

a way that when the need for such a product occurs, that brand comes to mind Then the brand must be linked to a benefit that provides a motivating reason to consider it It is this link between the brand and the benefit that lies at the root of building positive brand attitude, which in turn builds positive brand equity (Elliott and Percy 2007)

According to Kotler (2003), positioning is about enabling a brand to occupy a “distinct and valued place” in the mind of the target consumer In a positioning statement, the benefits a brand offers a specific target audience in order to satisfy a particular need are addressed Brand positioning can be thought of as the element that tells the potential customer what the brand is, who it is for, and what it offers (Elliott&Percy 2007 p 229)

Considering the great importance that brand awareness has to create brand equity, and that recent studies are questioning the traditional way of looking at brand awareness, taking into account how it is affected by social media, this is the aspect of branding that this study will focus on, and the approach will be to look at brand awareness in the way that Aaker has done

Amongst the other 4 assets underlying brand equity, perceived quality is defined by Aaker (1996) as a brand association that is elevated to the status of a brand asset for a number of reasons: among all brand associations, only perceived quality has been shown to drive financial performance and perceived quality is linked to and often drives other aspects of how

a brand is perceived (Aaker 1996)

Brand loyalty: Aaker (1996) defines the third dimension of brand equity as brand loyalty, which is not recognised by some researchers Keller for example (1992) defines consumer-based brand equity in terms of brand knowledge and unique brand associations

The importance of including brand loyalty as a fundamental asset underlying brand equity is according to Aaker that a brand’s value to a company is largely created by the customer loyalty it commands He also believes that considering loyalty as an asset, encourages and justifies loyalty-building programs which can then help to create and enhance brand equity

Another definition of brand loyalty, is arguing that a highly loyal customer base can be expected to generate a predictable sales and profit stream A brand without a loyal customer base is usually vulnerable or has value only in its potential to create loyal customers (Aaker 1996)

This is true also because it is much cheaper to retain customers than to attract new ones, the costs can be 5 times higher to gain a new client than keeping an old one (http://gmj.gallup.com/content/745/constant-customer.aspx Retrieved 100419)

The brand loyalty of existing customers also constitute an important barrier of entry towards competitors, the costs of attracting customers to change loyalties is often high (Aaker 1996) Frequent-buyer programs and the possibility to use database marketing thanks to customer data that becomes available through the joining of frequent- buyer programs are ways to strive for higher brand loyalty (Aaker 1996)

Brand associations: deals with the fact that brand equity is supported in great part by the associations that consumers make with a brand; it may be product attributes or a particular symbol Brand associations are driven by the brand identity, what the organization wants the brand to stand for in the customer’s mind A key to building strong brands is to develop a brand identity (Aaker 1996)

Other proprietary brand assets cover assets such as channel relationships and patents that are attached to the brand (Aaker 1996)

2.8 MANAGING THE BRAND PORTFOLIO    

What is managing brand portfolio strategy about? Aaker’s approach to this area is that it supports a company's business strategy and profoundly affects the firm's profitability He claims that understanding and managing the brand portfolio can be a key to both the development of a winning business strategy and its successful implementation The first key element of brand portfolio management is to make sure that each brand has a well-defined scope and role or set of roles to play in each context in which it is expected to contribute

Second, a portfolio view can ensure that the brands of the future get the resources they need

to succeed, instead of that high potential brands get starved of resources, in part because their business is still small

Third, strategic growth challenges can be addressed through portfolio Usually that means entering new markets, offering new products or moving into upscale or value arenas The portfolio task is to design the optimal brand strategy which can include leveraging existing brands to support such growth options

Fifth, an offering can get complex and confusing for both the customers and even employees

In the face of competitive pressure, a cohesive, well-defined brand portfolio becomes imperative (http://www.prophet.com Retrieved 100419)

According to Kapferer (2008) it is due to historical reasons that most companies have to manage a large portfolio of brands The natural trend during the growth of firms has been to add new brands each time they wanted to penetrate new market segments or new distribution channels This was done in order to avoid conflict with former segments and channels which could have endangered their old brands The vogue of company mergers and acquisitions in the 1990’s brought additional brands that managers were reluctant to dispose of or merge with other brands The size of brand portfolio therefore grew to increased complexity (Kapferer 2008)

There has been a rupture of this trend however, argues Kapferer, and today the trend particularly in the FMCG industry, is to reduce the size of portfolios as soon as possible The reasons are that it is considered difficult to promote several brands to retailers at the same time, there is simply not enough shelf space A few brands will be promoted to gain sufficient market share, and the others will be abandoned

Furthermore, Kapferer highlights that the concentration of the distribution trade has reduced the number of retailers and has even almost suppressed certain retail channels and small businesses Brands that were previously uniquely handled by specific distribution channels and sold only in certain stores, may now be found in a single wholesale or purchasing group This tends to lead to a reduction in the numbers of brands Another strong trend in the FMCG industry is the creating of distributors’ own brands This, together with the fact that supermarket shelf space is limited, leads to the reduction of the space allocated to the other brands

There is also a concentration of industrial production International competition has put the emphasis on high productivity and low costs and has led to the regrouping of production units and R&D activities There is less justification for large brand portfolios when the products, even if they are varied, come from the same factories or even the same production lines

Finally consumers show signs of being overwhelmed and confused by the multitude of brands A response from manufacturers is to rationalise the number of brands

Brand internalisation and the abolishing of national barriers is also a reason to the reduction

of the number of brands in the brand portfolio, according to Kapferer In Europe for example, class, lifestyle and consumer needs are no longer exclusive for a single country The investment required to establish a significant global presence means that firms can only maintain a small number of brands, or even one single brand for companies with a mono-brand strategy such as Siemens, Mitsubishi and Philips (Kapferer 2008)

A brand portfolio reflects, as claimed by Elliott and Percy (2007), the various brands marketed by a company within a particular product category, and a brand line is all of the products marketed under a single brand name They also suggest that brands may be thought

of in terms of a hierarchy A corporate (or company) brand identifies the parent company, brands like Daimler-Benz A group brand is a brand name that is used in more than one category, brands like Yamaha that are used to market diverse products such as pianos and motorcycles At the bottom of the hierarchy are single brands, where the name is restricted to

a single product category (Elliott and Percy 2007)

Brand portfolio has been defined as the mix of brands and sub-brands owned by an organization This portfolio should be actively managed to ensure effective brand management For example, Procter & Gamble and Unilever both have a large portfolio of brands; General Motors manages Buick, Cadillac, Dodge and other brands; Hallmark manages the Hallmark, Shoebox, and Crayola brands among other (Error! Hyperlink reference not  valid.

O’Donnell argues that a well-orchestrated brand portfolio strategy needs to be fully integrated with the company’s business model, and mix well with such economic factors as pricing policies, manufacturing scale and distribution policies (Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.)

In Wikipedia, three key levels of managing the brand portfolio are identified:

- Corporate brand/umbrella brand/family brand

These are consumer-facing brands used across all the firm's activities, and this name is how they are known to all their stakeholders- consumers, employees, shareholders, partners, suppliers and other parties Examples include Virgin Group and Heinz

- Endorsed brands, and sub-brands

These brands include a parent brand which may be a corporate brand, an umbrella brand, or a family brand as an endorsement to a sub-brand or an individual product brand The endorsement should add credibility to the endorsed sub-brand in the eyes of consumers Examples are Nestlé KitKat, Sony PlayStation

- Individual product brand

The individual brands are presented to consumers and the parent company name is given little

or no prominence Other stakeholders, like shareholders or partners, will know the producer

by its company name Examples are Procter & Gamble’s Pampers or Unilever's Dove (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_architecture Retrieved 100425)

2.9 SUMMARY 

The aim of this chapter was to review and explain the relevant literature in the field of social media on one hand and branding in general and brand equity and brand awareness in particular on the other hand; in order to present to the reader the state-of-the art research in this domain In the following chapter, this literature review will serve to create a suitable

theoretical framework to solve the research problem, and in order to do this, the precise research questions will be formulated

3  CONCEPTUAL  FRAMEWORK   RESEARCH  QUESTIONS  AND  FRAME  OF REFERENCE   

The aim of this chapter is to, based on the introduction and the literature review, formulate the research questions which will enable the data collection and the analysis of this to be done in a proper way to solve the research problem

3.1 RESEARCH PROBLEM AND RESEARCH DISCUSSION 

The research problem in this thesis, as formulated in the introduction in chapter 1 is: “To

increase the understanding of the role of social media for the creation of brand awareness”

Considering that the use of social media to create brand awareness and ultimately to create brand equity in the forms of increased sales is a very recent trend, we need to find answers to the following research question of an exploratory character:

Research question 1: What is the purpose of using social media to create brand awareness?

Carlsson (2010) claims that social media can be very valuable for creating long term relations and for building brand awareness There are a variety of social media activities that can be initiated to build brand awareness according to Carlsson (2010), the using of a company blog for example gives the possibility to spread the corporate philosophy and to show the soul of the company It gives the possibility for fans to further spread the company culture YouTube

or Facebook may be used in the same way Social media also give the possibility to position the company or the brand within a specific category

With regard to the arguments presented by Carlsson, I will be looking at what purposes company X, which constitutes the case study in this thesis, has by using social media to create brand awareness

Research question 2: How can the social media activities used to create brand awareness

be described?

As mentioned in chapter 1, many professionals within marketing predict that in 2010, social media will really become integrated in the operations of companies and truly become important tools in the communication Carlsson (2010) is of the opinion that it is not a good enough reason to be active in social media simply because everybody else is The early stage

of development of this media leads to the assumption that there might be a discrepancy between what the goal is of using social media to create brand awareness and how it is actually used in reality to create brand awareness Therefore the case study will deal with this matter, and I will ask company X how they actually use social media activities to create brand awareness

Research question 3: What advantages are there in using social media to create brand awareness

Weber (2009) argues that the social media offers the company a possibility to create dialogue with the customer, social media may lead to creating the strongest brand awareness possible, word-of-mouth-, the stage in which the customer recommends the brand to another person In this thesis, an investigation will be made concerning whether or not the company X in the case study can distinguish any advantages in using social media to create brand awareness, and if so, how these advantages are built up

Research question 4: What disadvantages are there in using social media to create brand awareness?

Aaker (1996) is of the opinion that the growing number of media makes it increasingly difficult for companies to create brand awareness Getting involved in social media brings with it an opening up of the company and increased transparency (Carlsson 2010) Each company should consider, before becoming involved and active in social media, how open the company wants to be, which type of information the company wants to share and why It

is also important to create understanding and acceptance internally for the use of social media It is necessary to find the balance between what feels good for the company and what

is interesting for the reader A too strict information policy probably leads to that the contents are not interesting and that nobody reads them Questions that may arise with the starting up

of getting involved in social media are: what risks does the openness entail? What happens if competitors imitate us and make use of our openness? What if somebody steals our company’s ideas? (Carlsson 2010) Considering the above-mentioned issues, the last research question deals with if the company in the case study can identify any disadvantages in using social media to create brand awareness, and if so, what these disadvantages these are

3.2 FRAME OF REFERENCE 

The frame of reference has been defined by the dictionary Merriam-Webster as “ a set of ideas, conditions or assumptions that determine how something will be approached,

perceived or understood” (Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.)

This thesis aims at providing an increased understanding of how social media create brand awareness, and a presentation of the theoretical framework for marketing with the use of social media and brand awareness will now be presented:

Concerning how to manage marketing with the use of social media, the analysis will be based

on the findings of Weber Weber argues, as previously mentioned, that marketing within social media means to adopt a completely new way of communicating with an audience in a digital environment Instead of continuing as broadcasters, marketers should become

aggregators of customer communities It is not about broadcasting marketing messages to an increasingly indifferent audience, but about participating in, organizing and encouraging

social networks to which people want to belong The catchword should be talking with customers instead of at them

The task of aggregating customers is done in two ways: by providing compelling content on your web site and creating retail environments that customers want to visit, and by going out and participating in the public arena Also the way of segmenting changes radically, demographics like gender, age, education and income, lifestyle factors are less relevant, and what really counts is segmenting according to what people do and feel- their behaviour as well as their attitudes and interests The goal for the marketer is to identify groups of customers within the larger market that can be reached and affected through the marketing Weber (2009) suggests that the social web can play a role throughout the entire life cycle of product development, market introduction and market adoption

As regards brand awareness, the analysis will be based on a combination of the traditional view defended by Aaker concerning brand awareness, and the new perspective that Weber presents This leads to the following assumption: the strongest form of brand awareness will

be considered to be word-of-mouth, i e that the customer has such a high brand awareness that she/he recommends the brand to others This stage is preceded by very strong brand awareness (dominant, the brand is the only one the customer can remember), strong brand awareness (top-of-mind, the brand is the first the customer come to think of), medium brand awareness (recall) and weak brand awareness (recognition)