Defining Social Marketing

1. Social marketing is defined as the processes that involve designing, implementing, controlling, and monitoring programs that are measured and calculated to influence the reception of social ideas that require considerations in terms of pricing, product planning, distribution, market research, and communication (Furrer et al. 2020: p.p. 299-316). Other researchers have also defined social marketing as the type of marketing that is not only rapidly enhancing currently but also has a significant potential to influence the reduction of consumption among the customers. Therefore, in terms of academic research, social marketing can be considered as an effective approach that is utilized by companies to develop activities that aim at maintaining, monitoring, or changing the behavior of the masses to benefit themselves and society as a whole. Several researchers have also presented an argument in which they said that even though the aim of both these activities are similar, corporate social responsibility is the process of dedicating the resources of the company for social benefit, however, social marketing is the process of using marketing tools to change white social attitudes there are unacceptable and change these behaviors into acceptable ones (Wang et al. 2016: pp.534-544).

However, there exists several challenges to conducting a strong social marketing campaign. The first is creating a social marketing strategy that is relevant in the market. On many occasions, companies fail to create a road map to bring about the best accomplishments in a particular amount of time. The company fails to establish the aim of social marketing along with a strategy that includes the utilization of resources and time, the marketing tools and channels, the content, the decision making, and the metrics. Brands often fail to create a strong impact among the audience. This is mostly because of the high competition and most of the brands talking about the same thing (Epstein, Elkington and Herman 2018: pp.45-90). Therefore, it is often difficult for the companies to organically position an effective message that would resonate strongly among the audience.

Several researchers have defined customer value as the perceived preference of the consumer in terms of evaluating the attributes of the product, attribute performances, and the positive and negative consequences of utilizing the brands’ products and services to fulfill the goals and purpose of the customers (Lintula, Tuunanen and Salo 2017: p.p.1632-1641). Therefore, from a market research perspective, customer value is the measure of the worth of the product or service when compared with its market alternatives. This is a major determinant of how the customer feels in terms of the reception of value and usefulness. It is extremely important to build a strong reputation in terms of service quality among the customers. This will build a relationship of trust between the brand and the customers. If the customers are unable to perceive a brand positively or trust them, they will not value their social marketing efforts. Therefore, customer value is responsible for enhancing the social marketing impact.

Challenges of Conducting a Strong Social Marketing Campaign

Co-production is the process in which the customer of a business must be open to exposing their existing knowledge base and sharing it with the service provider. Researchers have revealed that service providers can only maximize the benefits of their services through open and free access to customer knowledge and expertise (Zainuddin and Gordon 2020: p.p.347-361). Therefore, this popularizes the concept of Co-creation. This emphasizes the fact that value creation is a joint venture that is done by the contributions of both the customers and the company in which the customers are equally responsible for Co-constructing the experience of the services to suit their benefits and context. Therefore, several researchers have explained that from the point of view of a customer, value code destruction or loss of resources can occur in four main scenarios which include the unexpected non-fulfillment of the expected resource offered by the provider, loss of more resources by the customers than expected, when the expected resources are not achieved, and an amalgamation of all the scenarios they mentioned above. It has been revealed through expensive research that social marketing services are aimed at contributing towards the customers well being, held, and fulfillment. However, with value destruction, the user experience of the services can often be destroyed, thus further leading to an agreement in the well-being of the users. This is one of the major implications of value destruction. apart from that, it can also remove the pathway for behavioral and social change in society.

Therefore, to solve the issue of service valid destruction to improve the retail services marketing strategy, marketers must identify and study the consumer and the industrial market in detail. The consumer market includes the buyers that use the service for their personal use and benefit, and the industrial market includes the buyers that use the services for producing further products and services (Järvinen and Taiminen 2016: pp.164-175). The next step is to segment the market so that it becomes easier for the brand to set a target market by dividing the entire market into small parts. The company also set its marketing mix to establish a strong product strategy, place strategy, promotional strategy, and pricing strategy. The last step will be to conduct thorough market research through surveys, focus group discussions, and personal interviews so that useful insights can be gained to conduct effective branding of the company.

2. The two retail service businesses that have been chosen for this answer are Amazon and Starbucks. Amazon.com is a multinational technology organization based in America that focuses on E-commerce, digital streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (Sandeep and Pohutezhini 2019: pp.33-39). Starbucks corporation is a multinational coffeehouse chain and roastery reserves that are based in Seattle, Washington (Sakal 2018). It is one of the largest coffeehouse chains across the globe and has more than 33,000 stores across 80 nations. The company also offers services like mobile payments, gifting, and many more.

Customer Value and Its Importance in Enhancing Social Marketing Impact

According to the SERVQUAL model, There exist five gaps which include the listening gap, the design, and standards gap, the performance gap, the communication gap, and the customer gap (Tan, Hamid and Chew 2016: pp.99-115). The listening gap rises when the service providers do not listen to the demands and requirements of the customers. The design and standards gap rises when the perceived quality of a customer is high and the company is unable to live up to their perceived expectations. The performance gap includes the procedures of the service delivery. The communication gap lies when the post-purchase actions of the brand are inadequate. Lastly, comes the customer gap and it stems from the amalgamation of all four gaps. When a company is unable to meet these gaps, they ultimately lose the customer leading to the customer gap. In a service encounter with Amazon, There are several inventories as well as logistics issues with the company. Customers are faced with wrong delivery of orders or misplacement of products. This can lead to huge customer gaps. Therefore, in this experience with Amazon, the customers are highly unsatisfied and there exists a high listening gap where the order placements are not catered to. This further leads to a design and standards gap where the customer had initially perceived to receive a particular product that they had ordered, and either received a wrong one or add destroyed one. As one of the leading companies across the globe, the company is also socially responsible to its stakeholders, the environment, and society. In the era of climate change and environmental degradation, the company was expected to curb the use of plastic and instead use paper packaging for sustainability. However, the company has failed to do so. This further leads to the performance gap where the company is unable to live up to the market performance standards. In terms of refund or complaints, the brand also tends to ignore or not act upon the customers’ needs which further leads to an unsatisfied customer.

In terms of Starbucks, issues like wrong pricing, wrong food, and high wait time in the restaurants create service gaps. The listening gap arises when the customer places a particular order and their food is not delivered accordingly (Hwang and Seo 2016). The design and standards gap lie in the quality of the coffee or other food items that are served. If this differs from the perceived or expected quality of the customer, the standard and design gap remains. Similarly, Starbucks must use paper straws instead of plastic straws and paper bags in place of plastic bags. The Starbucks coffee shops are not well maintained in terms of electricity and water conservation and this adds up to the unfulfilled social responsibility of the company. This further leads to the performance gap in which the company fails to perform up to the mark. If the customer’s issues get resolved, the communication gap can be resolved. However, the overall experience of the service encounter can lead to a major customer gap.

Co-Production and Its Significance in Value Creation

In the case of Amazon, service value can be added or Co-created when the company registers the complaints of the customer and gives back a refund or other possible resolutions are agreed upon by the customer. This can improve the customer satisfaction experience again help in building the trust of the customers by fulfilling the social responsibilities (Cheung and To 2016). Similarly in terms of Starbucks, adding a personal touch like writing the name of the customer on the coffee glasses or customizing the coffee as per the needs of the customer can enhance the added value and the co-creation of the service encounter.

Any gap in service can lead to service value destruction not only in terms of losing customers but also in terms of losing resources (Castillo, Canhoto and Said 2021: pp.900-925). In terms of the wrong delivery of a product by Amazon, the company will have to spend more resources in exchanging or returning the product. Similarly, in the case of Starbucks, when coffee or a food item is not prepared as per the needs of the customer, they might want to refund or a better preparation of the same. In this case, not only is the value of the service is destructed but also a customer gap enhances. Therefore, the brand must take the first step of understanding the customers and their needs through online searching in the case of Amazon and requirement communication in terms of Starbucks. They must also ensure that they are unique value propositions are maintained while still maintaining the quality of their product and service. That aim should be to provide the best possible customer service to minimize value destruction. 

References

Castillo, D., Canhoto, A.I. and Said, E., 2021. The dark side of AI-powered service interactions: exploring the process of co-destruction from the customer perspective. The Service Industries Journal, 41(13-14), pp.900-925.

Cheung, F.Y.M. and To, W.M., 2016. A customer-dominant logic on service recovery and customer

satisfaction. Management Decision.

Epstein, M.J., Elkington, J. and Herman, B., 2018. Making sustainability work: Best practices in managing and measuring corporate social, environmental and economic impacts. Routledge.

Furrer, O., Kerguignas, J.Y., Delcourt, C. and Gremler D.D. (2020) “Twenty-seven years of service research: a literature review and research agenda”, Journal of Services Marketing, 34/4, p.p. 299-316

Hwang, J. and Seo, S., 2016. A critical review of research on customer experience management: Theoretical, methodological and cultural perspectives. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

Järvinen, J. and Taiminen, H., 2016. Harnessing marketing automation for B2B content marketing. Industrial Marketing Management, 54, pp.164-175.

Lintula, J., Tuunanen, T. and Salo, M. (2017) “Conceptualizing the value co-destruction process for service systems: literature review and synthesis”, Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, p.p.1632-1641

Sakal, D.V., 2018. COMPANY ANALYSIS OF STARBUCKS CORPORATION.

Sandeep, V. and Pohutezhini, B., 2019. The e-commerce revolution of amazon. com. Splint International Journal of Professionals, 6(4), pp.33-39.

Tan, L.H., Hamid, S.R. and Chew, B.C., 2016. Service quality audit based on conceptual gaps model of service quality: a case study of top three largest local bank in Malaysia. International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 18(1), pp.99-115.

Wang, H., Tong, L., Takeuchi, R. and George, G., 2016. Corporate social responsibility: An overview and new research directions: Thematic issue on corporate social responsibility. Academy of management journal, 59(2), pp.534-544.

Zainuddin, N. and Gordon, R. (2020) “Value creation and destruction in social marketing services: a review and research agenda”, Journal of Services Marketing, 34/3, p.p.347-361