Identification of Snapchat Stakeholders

The Indian-American apps have changed the pace of life. The short-form stories and 24-hour entertainment, pictures are presented to the younger generation in a new app-Snapchat. One of the biggest names in app development is Evan Spiegel, Reggie Brown and Bobby Murphy-students of Stanford University. The app is originally developed with a unique concept of sharing pictures, discovering brands and permissible interaction with different users. The messages and images can be made accessible for a given period of time. The market valuation of Snapchat Inc. is expected to be approximately $20 billion. The stakeholders of the company seem to be enjoying good returns on investments. The major stakeholders including Benchmark, Lightspeed Ventures, Ex-CEO of Sony Entertainment Michael Lynton, Ex-engineering Director of Amazon-Timothy have made the path towards IPO (Gerlitz, 2015).

The Snapchat is a concept of instant messaging, which has a larger user base of 165 million people all around the globe. The different stakeholders act in different competencies for the firm’s interests. Unlike the conventional social media apps, the Snapchat Inc. has been able to generate USD1.6 billion in its first quarter of 2017.  The major stakeholders of the company can be recognized as follows (Makki et al., 2017)-

1. Shareholders-These are the key persons who make hefty investments in the shares of a company. Robert Murphy and Evan Spiegel are the CEOs of the company who owns more than 87 million shares. Evan Spiegel holds 82 million shares.
2. Managers- Turning an idea into a world-class phenomenon is a sole duty of a Manager. The Chief Strategy personnel for Snapchat-Imran Khan holds 9.2 million shares of the company. The unveiling of world-class app Snapchat into IPO is making its way gradually (Vaterlaus et al., 2016).
3. Competitors-Evan Spiegel is a billionaire, who has declined the deal of $3 billion dollars and have been continuously steering the growth of the company. By December 2012, the Snapchat has launched a new Android app and has beaten the social networking platform-Facebook for its Poke app.
4. Government-Validating the approaches, broadcasting the news and without any forces of responses, the government seems to favor the Snapchat app. Maximum communication with minimum violation of government rules and regulation is easily achievable.
5. Community-The common man has got a new platform through which, a story can be shared with the masses. Evan Spiegel has made it all possible through social media marketing. Connecting with global key personnel, female masses aged between 13-35 is an appealing feature of Snapchat. The content uploaded on Snapchat is visually engaging and interesting that attracts 70 percent of the target market (Utz, Muscanell and Khalid, 2015).
6. Employees-The real business of a company is determined through employees as key stakeholders in the company. The photo messaging, social media app is going to hold an IPO, which is bigger than Alibaba and Facebook. The company is in continuous discussions with the key investors of JP Morgan (Soffer, 2016).
7. Consumers-The key audiences and big conglomerates can interact with teams on a social media platform-Snapchat. The business operations and management professionals provide career opportunity to newcomers and students in a way that is appealing to masses. The Snapchat is a globally used multimedia messaging app that has unveiled new recruitment methods. The Snapchat Inc. has been able to create a spark in the banking industry.

The development of sustainable business operations and strategies is a social responsibility of Snapchat and its investors. In the above context, the stakeholder model can be summarized below-

1. Identification-The stakeholder model views the identification of relevant groups, people and organizations as necessary aspect (Patel, Bewley and Hodson, 2016).
2. Analyzing-The company understands the stakeholder interests and standpoint.
3. Mapping-Visualizing cross-cultural associations with company objectives and different stakeholders are important from the viewpoint of a company’s value and responsibility towards consumers.
4. Prioritizing-Providing rank to stakeholders and the identification of issues is a necessary concern for the managers (Alyahya and Kausar, 2017).

These four stakeholders as identified in offensive, defensive, hold and swing category are summarized below-

1. Offensive Category-Government-The Company needs to adopt right pathways towards the allotment of shares of common public. The company provides zero voting rights to the general public and therefore it is similar to giving up. The company needs to hold the shareholder meeting yearly and withdrawal from holding the internet meetings on a frequent basis. The company has seen the decline of the share prices by 20 percent (Fitrijanti, 2015).
2. Behavioral Analysis- the countries like UAE, Korea, Qatar and others have imposed restrictions on VoIP. Due to the severe competition upcoming from different social media apps, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other several groups, the company Snapchat Inc. needs to analyze its present mode of operations.
3. Motives-The company objectives lie in increasing its growth prospects and management of IT Infrastructure. The company believes to analyze its annual reports and records minutes and present it to the board of directors. The company believes to satisfy its customers with the continuous updates (Itzik, Reinhartz-Berger, and Wand, 2016).
4. Defensive Category-Shareholders-The Snapchat Shareholders Benchmark, Lightspeed Ventures, General Catalyst, Technology Partners is leading the path towards strategy and IPO.
5. Behavioral Analysis-the Snapchat company understands the growing demand for the privacy of messaging features. The company is promoting a formal messaging system in offices (Barkhatov, Nikolaeva and Pletnev, 2014).
6. Motives-The company objectives lie in enhancing the speed and bandwidth of its apps in different countries. The different service issues are being looked. The company plans to grow by its technological advancements.
7. Hold Category-Employees-Timothy leads the software engineering team of Snapchat and exercise voting rights in the company. The company Snapchat has carefully planned the viable strategies to focus on the different roles of employees.
8. Behavioral Analysis- The Snapchat Inc. has been successful in registering the tremendous growth in the retention of its employees. The Snapchat is valued at $28bn and is ready to make a big history in the tech industry (Agrawal, Kaushik and Rahman, 2015).
9. Motives-One of the top 5 companies in the Android App store, the company’s motives are to increase its target base through its secured mode of operations. The Company has presently 320 employees in its North America offices. The company believes to create a new era of capitalism.
10. Swing Category-Community-The Snapchat is exposed to large masses and has been engaging audiences with interesting games. Daily videos and immediate response of the audience towards the new social media campaigns initiated by Snapchat urges masses to experience the real world in different ways. The Snapchat policies allow different companies like GrubHub-An American dining company to market programs and change the conventional business styles.
11. Behavioral Analysis- The Company has been diversifying into different segments. The company works through an advertisement model and earns 75 percent of revenue through it. The company has the unique software, but privacy is a major concern for the target market. Snapchat has been able to engage the audience through visual aids.  
12. Motives-the Snapchat aims to inform all its stakeholders through newsletters and websites. The company professionals consult on different interest areas and consult regularly.  

The generic strategy programs of stakeholders for offensive, defensive, hold and swing category can be identified as below-

Offensive-

Encouraging the attendees and other shareholders to attend the meetings on a regular basis.

The Snapchat needs to publicize the events that are related to its business. Creating signage advertising is one of the options through which a company can be more prompt.

Defensive-

Snapchat Takeover-This is a strategy that relies on the existing network of Snapchat. The business can get connected to different platforms in a few seconds.

Generate more subscribers for through its mode of operations and providing the users with great tools (Dragomir, 2013).

Hold-

Snapchat questions and answers are one of the established platforms through which the company is able to generate sales.

The future of Snapchat marketing lies in its contests, defined through certain rules.

Swing-

Cross-promotion through different social platforms. The target audience can easily find and interact with different users.

Being consistent with the social platform handles is one of the swing strategies (Isa, 2012).

1. The Snapchat needs to comprehend the generic strategies as it is highly visible over the internet. The company can succeed with a larger user base. The Snapchat business will prosper through advertising, subscription fees and other transactions including subscription fees.
2. The Snapchat Company needs to focus on the internet of things. This is a generic strategy through which information and knowledge are visible to the target market. In order to achieve the differentiation, the network is of great impact.  
3. One of the important aspects that cannot be ignored is branding. There are a number of brands in the market that do not cost differentiation, leadership. Few brands existing in the market have a position of fame and affinity. In a few brands, there is very cost beneficial, no product differentiation and highly competitive substitute products. The Snapchat Company needs to focus on these aspects and develop numerous business opportunities that can help them generate worth millions.
4. The Snapchat Company can use new generic strategies that can act as a guidance tool in the digital transformation. The company can adopt different strategies through which it can pivot into different target segments. The Snapchat Company needs to focus on how they look especially when millions of users are engaging with different apps. The Snapchat Company needs to understand how to create value. The Snapchat needs to focus on engaging the employees in two or more networks.  The company needs to get into competition and must engage employees in various incentive programs. When customers will interact will brand and employees will be able to accomplish the business objectives. The company has been able to generate stories through Snapchat handle and allows mass interaction.  

Conclusion

Snapchat is one of the biggest platforms through which people can engage in interactive and innovative. The brands can relieve pressure and assume less risk. This is also dependent on the type of content that is made available to the audience. Marketers need to struggle less with the Snapchat platform as it offers user-friendly conversations. Snapchat has been including the direct features in its update and saves a lot of the time. Snapchat requires no investment in getting started. This is one of the best applications for a new brand. The users will be able to use the Snapchat personally and the marketing team can come up with new ideas and engage people. The company marketing team needs to utilize different efforts through which they can drive traffic to this platform (Erina, Ozolina-Ozola, and Gaile-Sarkane, 2015).

References

Agrawal, A., Kaushik, A. and Rahman, Z. (2015). Co-creation of Social Value through Integration of Stakeholders. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 189, pp.442-448.

Alyahya, T. and Kausar, F. (2017). Snapchat Analysis to Discover Digital Forensic Artifacts on Android Smartphone. Procedia Computer Science, 109, pp.1035-1040.

Barkhatov, V., Nikolaeva, E. and Pletnev, D. (2014). The Possibilities of Positive Use of Residual Control and Income Rights of Stakeholders in the Corporation. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 124, pp.521-527.

Dragomir, V. (2013). Who are the Participative Stakeholders? Insights from Corporate Social and Environmental Programmes. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 75, pp.553-562.

Erina, I., Ozolina-Ozola, I. and Gaile-Sarkane, E. (2015). The Importance of Stakeholders in Human Resource Training Projects. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 213, pp.794-800.

Fitrijanti, T. (2015). Index of the Company’s Stakeholders Welfare. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 211, pp.1023-1027.

Gerlitz, C. (2015). Whatsapp und Snapchat. POP, 4(1).

Isa, S. (2012). Corporate Social Responsibility: What can we Learn from the Stakeholders?. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 65, pp.327-337.

Itzik, N., Reinhartz-Berger, I. and Wand, Y. (2016). Variability Analysis of Requirements: Considering Behavioral Differences and Reflecting Stakeholders’ Perspectives. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 42(7), pp.687-706.

Makki, T., DeCook, J., Kadylak, T. and Lee, O. (2017). The Social Value of Snapchat: An Exploration of Affiliation Motivation, the Technology Acceptance Model, and Relational Maintenance in Snapchat Use. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 34(5), pp.410-420.

Patel, S., Bewley, S. and Hodson, N. (2016). Snapchat is not for sharing. BMJ, p.i1543.

Soffer, O. (2016). The Oral Paradigm and Snapchat. Social Media + Society, 2(3), p.205630511666630.

Utz, S., Muscanell, N. and Khalid, C. (2015). Snapchat Elicits More Jealousy than Facebook: A Comparison of Snapchat and Facebook Use. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 18(3), pp.141-146.

Vaterlaus, J., Barnett, K., Roche, C. and Young, J. (2016). “Snapchat is more personal”: An exploratory study on Snapchat behaviors and young adult interpersonal relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 62, pp.594-601.