Challenges And Opportunities That Social Media Networks Offer Media Essay

Challenges And Opportunities That Social Media Networks Offer Media Essay Traditional media v/s new age media The availability of digital media such as satellite and mobile phones, the digital television and most importantly the internet, as a means for communication makes Internet Marketing (IM) very different from the Conventional Marketing. McDonald and Wilson (1999) elaborately highlighted the key difference between traditional media and new media. With particular emphasises on IM the authors proposed what they call ‘The 6 Is of e-marketing mix’. The authors posit that the relevance of the 6 Is are twofold – (i) they draw emphasis on the practical aspects of IM such as direct response and personalization and (ii) provide an understanding of strategic issues such as restructuring of the industry and the changes in the integrated channel communications. The 6 Is of e-marketing mix’ Interactivity In the case of traditional media the marketing message is predominately broadcasted from a company to its target audience, thereby im plying the existence of a ‘push factor’. This process of communication provides little scope for interaction with the customers. However, on the Internet, contact is initiated by the customer who, in most cases, is seeking information, implying the existence of a ‘pull factor’ (Deighton, 1996). Intelligence The internet renders itself as a cost effective means of conducting market research. The internet is an especially useful tool in gathering information about customer perceptions about the product/ service. Individualism (Fig 1.14) pg 30 As illustrated in the diagram above, new media forms allow marketing communications to be tailored to the individual that the message is meant for, unlike in the case of traditional media wherein communication is mass media and the same message is disseminated to its audiences. (Lasswell 1984, Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955) Further, the inherent feature of ‘personalisation’ that new media forms offer to marketers is an important building block in managing relationships with customers. Integration (diagram: A New Marketing Paradigm for Electronic Commerce) The conventional marketing communication model witnesses a fundamental alteration in the presence of a hypermedia Computer-Mediated Environment (CME) like the internet (Hoffman and Novak 1996). The internet enables an increased scope for an integrated marketing communication. The CME communication model provides a platform for consumers to interact with each other, the medium and the company itself. The most drastic departure from the traditional media is the opportunity for the consumers to generate content onto the medium. Hence, in the CME model the primary relationship is with the receiver and the CME, and not between the sender and the receiver, which is the case in traditional media.( Hoffman, 1996) The active role of the consumers makes it imperative for marketers to integrate their communication messages. Industry restructuring. Co ncepts such as ‘disintermediation’ and ‘reintermediation’ (Chaffey et al, 2003) are important considerations for companies that operate in a CME. Disintermediation refers to the process of eliminating conventional intermediaries such as agents and brokers, who previously linked the company to its customers. Reintermediation is the process of creating new age intermediaries between the company and its customer, given the presence of the internet. These new age intermediaries are often referred to as ‘cybermediaries’ (Shankar et al, 1996) and include virtual communities like forums, fan clubs and user groups, search engines like Google and Bing , virtual resellers like Amazon and eBay.