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had a similar disruptive e ect in the past – people could call their neighbors over the phone, and talk to their friends and relatives across the country. e telephone thus, displaced conversations in person or by mail due to sheer convenience.
Social media is likely to give rise to brand alter- ation. Consumers can take liberty with a brand
and the company will have a hard time enforcing
its intellectual property rights. In the worst-case scenario, there is the possibility of brand alteration going out of control. is in turn would have an impact on marketing, advertising agencies and brand management in general. is impact will be nonlinear by nature and di used, and thus, may not be easily measured. And this, in turn, could create anxiety amongst the marketers. What we have, essentially, is a black box scenario. is is the nature of the di used impact of WOM on social media.
The future of Marketing
ere are two types of shi s in traditional mar- keting due to the rise of social media. First, from mass communication (one to many) relationships, marketing has shi ed
media, marketers are now adopting digital mar- keting tools to market their products and services anytime, anywhere and anyhow. Whereas traditional marketing was limited by location and time, digital marketing has e ectively became location and time agnostic.
impact on Marketing
As explained above, marketing is being deeply impacted by the advent and widespread adoption of social media. Social media is not merely a platform for social interactions; rather, it is transforming the way businesses work. Marketers are increasingly leveraging social media to in uence customer deci- sion making. Some of the speci c instances of the impact on marketing are shown in the gure below. What follows is an elaboration of each of these areas of impact:
➤ no more Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP)
One of the most important concepts in mar-
towards the more apt and convenient peer to peer network relation- ships. Second, traditional marketing is passive for the audience whether it is print, voice or video, while social media is more interactive. Tra- ditional marketing is rmly situated in the one-to-many paradigm: it follows the broadcast- ing model, wherein it transmits the message it wants to convey through either broadcast or cable television, print, radio
keting is Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning
(STP) for any product/ brand. Together, these enable a marketer to: a) determine the di erent types of customers, b) select one of the group
of customers that can be served best, and c) com- municate with the targeted group in the best possible manner. It is, hence, a “sniper” approach, because a “shotgun” approach can prove far too expensive and ine ective in tradi- tional marketing.
In the digital age, how- ever, a product/brand has
a worldwide reach. e internet is also a very rich and a ordable medium. erefore, the question arises whether STP will still hold ground or will it
or signage. Traditional
marketing is, thus, limiting in creating customer engagement as is done in social media marketing.
With the shi to the more interactive social
fig. 5: impact of social Media on Marketing
social MeDia
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