CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION

It is clear that organizations have started using tools of the collaborative web to commence an
interaction with the consumers. By increasing this interaction, greater product and brand
visibility can be achieved, and a mechanism for carrying messages to the consumer to develop a
relationship between brand and consumer can be created. This channel can also be utilized to
solicit feedback from the consumer and use the same for product improvements and
incorporation of feedback for better value creation and response management. These channels
can further be employed for monitoring and altering the consumer expectation level and shaping
perceptions regarding product or brand.
6.1. Interactivity
After studying the usage of a corporate blog to enhance interaction with the consumer, the
following conclusions can be drawn.
As the reach of a blog is indicative of the number of global internet users visiting a site,
increasing the reach would be in line with any efforts of an organization directed towards
increasing web presence and directing more traffic to the online site. A positive relationship
between reach and interactivity score clearly outlined the need to maximize the interactivity
score. Further a negative correlation between interactivity score and the traffic rank of a blog is
indicative of a blogs rank improving as the interactivity score goes up. It is also seen that there
exists a positive correlation between the interactivity score and Technorati authority of a blog,
which is indicative of popularity or volume of consumer generated media. Considering a high
volume of CGM to be indicative of higher levels of consumer engagement, maximizing the
interactivity score to help increase the Technorati authority of a blog, is the right organizational
thought.
From a user perspective, collection of feedback from users is the most significant purpose of
presence of interactivity in an online tool. The structural features related to interactivity in a
corporate blog, however significantly cater to the function of building a brand relationship.
Further, there exists a positive relationship between the Interactivity Score of a corporate blog
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and the Reach of the blog, which is indicative of volume of brand communication. A similar
result is observed between the interactivity score and the Technorati authority which is indicative
of the popularity of a blog. Maximizing the interactivity score helps an organization in its goals
towards building greater brand awareness and popularity. In this context, having maximum
interactive features catering to a consumers quest for information is a feasible alternative for any
organization, followed by features catering to the function of building a relationship with the
brand. Organizations are in the process of using blogs as tools for marketing and fostering
consumer relationships. Focusing on the right combination of key structural features in these
online tools which will be beneficial to the organizational goals will be the right strategy for any
organization.
Further, while studying the dimension of interactivity, the blog traffic using the Alexa Traffic
tool is available for measuring traffic on blogs which have not been hosted on company domains.
Hence clear traffic figures are available only for a few blogs. Further figures for Technorati
Authority are also available only for a few blogs. It is important to note that the volume of traffic
on a blog will also be a function of the longevity of the blog in terms of date of establishment of
the same. The same has been ignored here as the idea is to use the available data to justify the
importance of maximizing the Interactivity score in the interest of the activities of the
organization directed towards increasing web presence and consumer engagement and not to go
into a detailed analysis of traffic figures.
6.2. Brand Communication
Conclusions
(i)Brand communication content created by an organization can be classified on the basis of the
objective of the communication under Organizational, Relational and Promotional
categories.
(ii) A significant correlation between no. of posts and no. of comments indicates that the volume
of the organizational efforts can stimulate consumer engagement as represented by the volume of
comments on the blogs. An increased organizational effort in terms of repeated contacts with the
consumer through increased no. of posts in a virtual environment can create an e-relationship
between organization and consumer by stimulating consumer interest and achieving his
participation by inducing him to comment on the posts hosted by the organization.
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(iii) Relational posts appear to induce a higher degree of consumer engagement as measured by
volume of comments on the posts, thereby indicating that organizations should host greater
volume of relational posts. The content attractiveness of the relational posts appears to strike an
emotional chord with the consumer enticing him to engage with the organization, thereby
showing that corporates can achieve success in these endeavors.
(iv) An incremental growth trend between posts and comment, with comments increasing per
unit increase in post, as demonstrated in the case of the General Motors Blog is indicative of the
success of an organizational blog towards building consumer engagement.
Discussion
The emotional appeal and

immediacy generated by a relational post, especially with those

responding to controversies or soliciting feedback from consumers strikes an instant chord with a
consumer, enough to make him establish contact with a corporate blog, thus achieving
engagement and exposing him to a wide range of brand content. Organizations aiming at
soliciting consumer engagement through the virtual world, can address a consumers cognitive
thought process, his pre and post purchase confusion and dissonance by posting content which
will reassure the consumer. A regularity in posting, leading to increased consumer contacts aids
in strengthening brand recall and develops a brand relationship, thereby inducing participation
and leading to consumer involvement, and an increased perception of value in the
organization/product. Engagement leads to purchase intent, and brand loyalty thereby enabling
the organization to achieve the twin CRM goals of

Customer acquisition and Customer

retention.
Limitations and scope for future study
(i)One primary reason for lack of observed correlation in the case of Dell could be certain server
changes they instituted in 2007 where consumer comments were barred for a particular duration.
(ii)The blogs have been taken from the Auto, IT, Hospitality and Airline industries. Further
scope of study is visible in observing patterns in specific industry verticals.
(iii)Page views on a blog are a function of a series of other factors as well, specially other
promotional activities which give greater visibility to an organization. However, comments and
hence consumer engagement appear to be a function of content type.

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6.3. CRM and Campaign Management

I have explored the usage of Corporate Blogs by organizations for Campaign Management, by
using the organizational posts for delivery of outbound promotional campaigns to consumers,
and further extracting consumer related information from the comments posted by consumers in
response to these posts. The consumer comments can be mined to gauge consumer sentiment and
to serve as a decision support system for better segmentation and response management by
creation of metadata through the use of folksonomies and tagging. Using tag clusters as vectors
representing individual campaigns, studies pertaining to campaign effectiveness and
intercampaign similarity can have applications in the field of customer response prediction for
campaign optimization. This way a corporate blog can be used as a CRM 2.0 tool to be utilized
for contributing to the CRM functionalities of Campaign Management, Customer Service and
Support, and support to Marketing Communication and Product Development for response
modeling and aiding the organization in developing consumer targeting strategies.
Conclusions
Segmentation of consumers is a significant approach to be followed for Customer Acquisition.
Similarly, customer attrition is an important issue for any company, especially important for
mature industries where the initial period of exponential growth has been left behind.
Organizations can make use of the information available about their prospective and current
customers by structuring and mining the vast volumes of data available on the web and formulate
strategies for consumers by segregating them on the basis of some factors like the sentiment
score represented in the discussion above. While consumers depicting a positive sentiment
polarity can be grouped on the basis of their sentiment featuring on the continuum between
liking and involvement, consumers with negative sentiment polarity, who are most likely to
defect from the company, can be subjected to a well directed retention campaign. Usage of a
blog as a CRM tool can be achieved by routing the outcomes of the campaigns, represented by
individual blog posts to the other organizational functions. By routing the aggregated consumer
responses to functions of customer support, marketing etc., organizations can frame responses to
the consumers or develop appropriate targeting strategies. Leveraging Consumer Generated
Media (CGM) and channelising it appropriately has become critical for organizations for
understanding and managing market performance, product positioning and driving brand
reputations.

Studies of intercampaign similarity can help predict consumer responses to

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successive campaigns, while a quantitative tag analysis can aid in gauging campaign
effectiveness. Potential of Corporate Blogs as Web 2.0 tools to become parts of successful CRM
initiatives in organizations is hence proven. The low cost attributes of adaptability and scalability
can have long term applications in the marketing and CRM functions in organizations of today.
As per Neilsen Buzzmetrix, the high impact of the ability of CGM to generate incremental
publicity for certain products, enough to affect their commercial prospects has prompted
marketers to formulate a significant role for CGM in the Marketing Mix as there appears a strong
correlation between buzz (CGM) and sales as buzz also helped in generating accurate forecasts.

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