Three reasons for the use of digital marketing

There are three reasons for the use of digital marketing.

  1. The Internet can be used to identify what customers need and want true market research.
  2. The Internet provides a platform where customers can buy goods with the help of information that they can access. Anticipating this demand is key in resource allocation to e-marketing.
  3. When participating in e-marketing customer satisfaction can be achieved by having an easy-to-use site that performs adequately, a high standard of customer service, and acceptable dispatch of products.

What is Digital Marketing? How digital marketing is related to different technologies? What are the key elements of Digital Transformation?

Digital marketing is best described as “the application of the internet and related digital technologies in conjunction with traditional communications to achieve marketing objectives”. The application of digital marketing is vital in order to be able to identify, anticipate and satisfy customer requirements. Not only is the internet essential in terms of market research and understanding consumers’ wants and needs, but it also provides consumers themselves with the necessary information in order to aid them in the decision-making process.

The internet plays an important role in the everyday life of millions of people. Since the turn of the century, the internet has become a daily necessity for billions of people worldwide. In 2018, internet access penetration was 54.4%, with the highest penetration in North America (95%) and Europe (85.2%). The development of 4G mobile coverage has allowed individuals to access the internet on the go, with three-quarters of the world having access to such technology. However, with the never-ending evolution of technology, the world is moving towards 5G. The introduction of 5g will enable internet users to download videos to mobile devices within seconds. Over 4 billion people can easily access the latest technologies as a result of easy internet access around the globe. Some of these evolutionary technologies include chatbots, automation, voice-led devices, as well as augmented and virtual reality.

In order for companies to ensure a steady stream of business improvements and keep up with the ever-evolving market they must incur some form of digital transformation. They must invest in such technologies in order to improve their efficiency. For a company or organization to digitally transform they must ensure the following: everyone in the organization must be involved, it is an ongoing process, meaning it will never end. It must be organization-wide and also be understood by everyone in the organization, It is necessary for the transformation to be cultural and not forced. Digital transformation includes the following key elements:

Big Data

Big data consists of a compilation of data and information from and about everything internal and external to the organization. The purpose of compiling such data is to enable companies to monitor customers and their communications along with allowing businesses to measure and manage the customer experience.

Reverse marketing

Reverse marketing is where consumers trust the opinions of other consumers as opposed to trusting to marketing messages pushed by organizations and brands, resulting in the customer essentially becoming the marketer. Conversations between customers on platforms such as Facebook, as well as customers posting reviews on platforms such as TripAdvisor are simple examples of reverse marketing

Mobile Applications

In recent times the mobile phone has become the preferred device in terms of internet usage, largely due to its convenience as opposed to a PC

The Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things can be best described as a network of physical objects and computers that are interconnected with the purpose of completing tasks without the need for human interaction.  Sensors, software, and other technologies are usually incorporated into such devices in order for this to be possible. Many of these devices are wearable and can be used to monitor health, along with athletic performance, Fitbit is an example of such.

The Automation of Business Processes.

The oldest element of digital transformation refers to the use of technology to automate processes. Examples of this may be a factory assembly line or computers doing administration work.

What’s going on with Facebook after the outage and whistle-blowing?

I did a Twitter analysis based on recent 6000 tweets. The text-mining results are provided below-

It appears from the following word cloud that it is not only the outage impacting this brand but also the whistleblower is impacting this brand image of Facebook.

Outage and whistleblowing impact on Facebook

From my analysis, I found that people are expressing surprise-type feelings related to Facebook on their tweets.

We can see from the following word cloud, these surprise feelings are related to WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, outage, and whistleblower.

Surprise Feelings related to Facebook

What shapes of robots are preferred by consumers in hospitality services?

From one of our research, we found that nonphysical robots, like artificial intelligence in smartphones (Please see photo 6 below), are the most easily identified and preferred shape (mean: 3.65). We can also see from the following pictures and statistics that trash bins (photo 2) or tray robots (photo 4) (mean: 3.49; 3.47, respectively) are also preferred by consumers in the hospitality industry. An interesting point is that Human-looking robots
(photo 1) appeared only one from the lowest preferred (mean: 3.35). It may be because it scares consumers and it requires more research to be done in the future to understand this situation. The spider shape robot was the lowest preferred (mean: 2.31) robot (photo 5) and it lacked hospitality service application.

In conclusion, we can say that human shape robots may not be preferred always in the service sector. Consumers may like nonphysical shape robots because they may provide consumers a sense of control instead of getting scared looking at their scary shapes such as spider robots.

To know more about this research, please visit our following published research in a TOP journal –

de Kervenoael R.;Hasan R.;Schwob A.;Goh E. (2020) ‘Leveraging human-robot interaction in hospitality services: Incorporating the role of perceived value, empathy, and information sharing into visitors’ intentions to use social robots’. Tourism Management, 78 [DOI][Details]

3 important tips to consider for your Influencer Marketing

The following three tips are based on our published research in a book chapter. The chapter details are provided later.

Tip 1:

The number of followers of influencers is overrated. Businesses need to understand that Number of followers is not the only factor defining an influencer. Micro-influencers with fewer followers may lead to higher sales than established influencers because consumers are well aware of the difference between sponsored and organic content.

Tip 2:

Consumers notice when an expert in the industry shares an opinion, even if this expert does not have a large popular following across social media platforms. Therefore, businesses need to consider using experts for their influencer marketing.

Tip 3:

Brands that engage an influencer who is not well-matched with the brand image can cause more damage than brands realize. So, it is very important for businesses to match the influencer with their brand.

To know more about these tips, please read my following published chapter-

Hasan, Rajibul; Billa, Malvika (2021) ‘Influencers’ Impact on Business Model Innovation in the Luxury Personal Goods Industry’ In Business Model Innovation. United Kingdom: Routledge. [DOI][Details]

Social Influences on Social Media and Its Influence on Consumer Behaviors.

Through social media, consumers can interact with Key Opinion Leader (KOL), publish User-Generated Content (UGC), and view products recommended by their network.

Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) on social media can influence a consumer’s purchasing decision process, the network community is an essential means of improving the learners’ cognitive level, and the learners’ implicit knowledge plays an essential role in this cognitive process.

Understanding these social media attributes and their influence on
consumers can help marketers better comprehend social media’s influence on consumer behavior and adapt their strategies to attract consumers. The following Figure demonstrates Social Influences on Social Media and Its Influence on Consumer Behaviors.

Social Influences on Social Media and Its Influence on Consumer
Behaviors.

To know more details, please visit my following research publication-

Hasan, Rajibul; Teng, Yulin; Shams, Riad (2021) ‘The Impact of Social Media on Business Model Innovation’ In: Business Model Innovation. United Kingdom: Routledge. [DOI][Details]

Text mining the tweets to understand peoples’ feelings towards a brand (Example: Ben & Jerry’s)

Is it possible to Text mine the tweets to understand peoples’ feelings towards a brand?

Yes, it is possible to understand what type of feelings people are expressing regarding any brand from the tweets of Twitter. I am going to demonstrate the example of Ben & Jerry’s below.

We have collected 6000 tweets from Twitter that use the keyword Ben & Jerry’s. the following picture is the word cloud result ( larger font size represents words more frequently used in this word cloud), which shows us what people are talking about Ben & Jerry’s.

Word Cloud of Ben & Jerry’s

We are going to demonstrate in the following picture what type of feelings consumers are expressing on Twitter related to Ben & Jerry’s.

People’s Feelings related to Ben & Jerry’s

From the above results of text mining, we can understand that people are expressing more joy and surprise feelings related to Ben & Jerry’s brand and it represents a good reputation for the brand.

Text Mining can be used to monitor social media

Measuring public opinion was always about extrapolating from surveys and hoping the small sample you selected was representative of the general public. Today, individual public opinion is ripe for the taking on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, WhatsApp, and whatever new product review or augmented-reality platform pops up next.

With the advancement of Artificial Intelligence, we can now analyze texts using different types of software.

For one of my research projects, We have analyzed 40,000 Amazon Reviews of Smart Wearable Devices like Fit Bit, Samsung Gear 2, and 3. The Following output provides us an idea, what people are talking about your brands or products. It may be difficult to go through 40,000 reviews because of a large volume of unstructured data. With the help of Automatic Content Analysis, you can easily understand what is important to your customers.

Deep Learning can be used to Investigate the Digital Behaviour of consumers

A picture can tell thousands of words. Can we analyze images posted on social media and review platforms? Yes, we can. With the advancement of the Artificial Intelligence area, researchers can use deep learning to understand images. We have used deep learning to Investigate the Digital Behaviour of consumers.

In this research, 4,000 photos of nine Chinese restaurants posted on Tripadvisor’s website were analyzed using image recognition via Inception V3 and Google’s deep learning network; this revealed 12 hierarchical image clusters. Two examples of these clusters are provided below-

Cluster Name: Atmospheric cluster
This cluster of images is generated through the help of deep learning.

Cluster Name: Decorations using lamps in Restaurants
This cluster of images is generated through the help of deep learning.

The above clusters provided us an idea of what type contents consumers are posting on social media. These will also help restaurants to formulate different strategies such as improving the atmospheric environment and decorating using lamps. Competitors can also learn about their competitors by analyzing the images posted by consumers on online platforms.

To know more about this research, please read my following article-

Hasan, M.R.Abdunurova, A.Wang, W.Zheng, J. and Shams, S.M.R. (2021), “Using deep learning to investigate digital behavior in culinary tourism”, Journal of Place Management and Development, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 43-65. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPMD-03-2020-0022

Pre-Purchasing and Post- Purchasing Travel Behavior of Consumers on Social Media-Tools for your Social Media Strategies

The following Figures represent consumers’ travel behavior on Social Media (SM). This can be used as a tool to formulate your social media strategies.

To know more details, read my following co-authored article-

ABDUNUROVA, A., USPANOVA, M., HASAN, R., SURAPBERGENOVA, Z., & KUDAIBERGENOV, N. (2020). Pre-Purchasing and Post-Purchasing Travel Behavior on Social Media: The Case of Kazakhstan. Journal of Environmental Management and Tourism, 11(6), 1475-1488.