Are Social Networking Personas Useful as Market Research Data?

CHALLENGE:
Marketers are increasingly using behavioral targeting and harvesting information on individuals found on the internet, such as Facebook and MySpace. But are social media participants creating false personas in cyberspace and are marketers creating invalid strategies due to their reliance on these data? Are marketers basing strategies on imagined personas? A study comparing Facebook personas with their real-world authors found a strong correlation between impressions created by personas and their real-world counterparts. Personas who were liked, were also liked in the real-world.

HOW THEY RESEARCHED IT:
Professors at the psychology department of Tufts University conducted the study comparing Facebook personas to real-life counterparts using 37 undergraduate volunteers. Undergrads were individually paired with one of six confederates in a four-minute “get-to-know-you” meeting. The confederates rated the undergraduate subjects on a number of dimensions related to likability. Undergraduates from another university viewed videos of the meetings and coded specific cues about the subjects’, non-verbal expressivity. Undergraduate subjects’ Facebook page was accessed by the researchers with the permission of the undergraduate subjects. Undergrads from a private university then rated the undergraduate subjects based on his or her Facebook page in terms of likability, and these ratings were combined to reveal a final “Facebook liking” score.

WHAT HAPPENED?:
Results from the survey indicate that impressions made through social media are similar to those attained through real-life interaction. The correlation between confederate liking and Facebook liking was statistically significant, and males and females were perceived similarly across all variables. Positive first impressions based on Facebook correlate to increased webpage expressivity and likewise positive first impression based on dynamic behavior correlate to increased non-verbal expressivity. In accordance with previous research the study finds no evidence of a linear relationship between self-disclosure and impressions of liking with relation to face-to-face interaction or personal web pages respectively. Other concluding evidence finds that online behavior is similar to that of personal interaction, for example people who disclose personal information and are expressive in face-to-face interactions tend to display the same traits on web pages. An interesting caveat of the study is that self-disclosure and expressivity are unrelated to one another, both online and in dynamic interactions. Overall concluding evidence shows that while there is some divergence between online and real-life personas, for the most part the two are very highly correlated.

WHY MANAGERS SHOULD CARE:
Marketers in today’s technologically driven business environment rely increasingly heavily on social media to provide a glimpse of what consumers want. The issue of whether or not social media accurately portrays consumer personalities is therefore an important concern for anyone using the Web to glean information about the consumer market. For marketers this study reveals positive news: searching Facebook sites is not for nothing. Nearly all Gen Y consumers update information on at least one social networking site, and older consumers are increasingly joining the trend. A high correlation between real-life and online personalities means that marketers can use the social networking sites to gather lifestyle information from consumers who may otherwise be unwilling to share, or instead of using costly and time consuming methods primary data collection methods. Social networking sites should not be the sole source of consumer research as there is some differential between dynamic interaction and online personas.
CAN YOU HELP?
Comment back by sharing how you have implemented data gained from social networking sites to improve marketing and promotional strategies. Does this study make you feel like you can rely on Facebook profiles or do you think more research is needed before you will rely on social website data? If you have been relying on social website profiles, have these profiles been efficacious?

From Max Weisbuch, Zorana Ivcevic, and Nalini Ambady “On being liked on the web and in the ‘‘real world”: Consistency in first impressions across personal webpages and spontaneous behavior,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45 (2009) 573–576

Should You PROACTIVELY Contact and Service Your Customer AFTER the Sale?

CHALLENGE:
Should you take the initiative and contact your customers to provide service after the sale or, should you leave well enough alone, be satisfied with the sale and if necessary, excel in “service recovery” when you fail? The answer is it depends.

How they researched it:
Post-sales activities can include helping customers use products, perform maintenance on purchased products, provide spare parts, etc. In this case, we are not including selling complementary products or service as part of post-sales activities. Professors Goutam Challagala, R. Venkatesh, and Ajay K. Kohli interviewed 94 managers from a variety of businesses, including B2B, B2C, service, and manufacturing firms in a focus group format. Note that this methodology constrains the research to posit hypotheses; generalizable conclusions are not possible. They compared proactive post-sales service (PPS) to reactive post-sales service (RPS) to see if PPS resulted in important strategic benefits to the seller. They asked the managers to identify how the seller might initiate customer contact to deliver PPS as opposed to the customer initiating contact for RPS, the consequences of the alternative philosophies, and the conditions when PPS may be more important.

What happened?
The researchers categorized PPS activities into three types: prevention, education, and feedback seeking. They concluded that proactive prevention, such as a real estate agent sending a reminder to file for homestead at tax time, can lead to great customer satisfaction and willingness to adopt new offerings from the seller. Further, proactive education, such as annual calls on customers to determine if there are latent dissatisfaction issues, can lead to greater product knowledge, usage and satisfaction on the part of the customer. Finally, proactive feedback seeking, such as informing customers of warranty privileges or expiration and asking about product or service results, can lead to the customer feeling they have greater “voice” in the purchase, leading to greater satisfaction.

But the value of PPS over RPS varies with customer characteristics and product/service characteristics. The researchers suggest proactive prevention and feedback seeking are more likely to lead to customer satisfaction when the customers are heavy users. This is because heavy users are more likely to suffer losses when things don’t work as expected and appreciate your acknowledgement of their heavy user value. Proactive prevention are less likely to be valued by heavy users because they are more user-educated. Importantly, sellers are more likely to extract greater value from PPS with heavy users because this customer group is more likely to generate ideas for new product/service ideas.

The researchers suggest that proactive prevention and education are more likely to lead to customer satisfaction if the focal product/service is in the intermediate or growth stage of its life cycle. When product/services are new, the types of customers attracted are those who are more venturesome and comfortable with early model glitches. By the time growth stage occurs, less venturesome and less tolerant customers come into the market, and they are in greater need for proactive support. When the product/service is new, proactive feedback seeking is expected to be more appreciated because the typical innovative buyer will be pleased to share their insights into a new product/service. Further, the seller is likely to benefit greater from feedback seeking when the product/service is newly introduced because the innovative customer is more likely to provide useful ideas for improvements and new products/services.

Finally, the transaction-extensiveness associated with the product/service will affect the customer satisfaction result. Some purchase situations, such as is typically found with services have greater and/or more frequent interactions between customers and the seller. The researchers believe that lower transaction extensiveness, such as is typically found with products, will lead to greater customer satisfaction when using proactive prevention, education, and feedback seeking. The reasoning is that low transaction purchase situations have inherently lower contact, customers are less likely to expect much contact nor know who to contact in case of trouble, and consequently, customer are going to be more appreciative when contacted.

How can you help?
Comment back on your REAL experiences. The above research findings are based on a limited sample in a focus group setting. Share your experience-based insights.

Goutam Challagalla, R. Vankatesh, and Ajay K. Kohli (2009), “Proactive Postsales Service: When and Why Does it Pay Off?” Journal of Marketing, Vol 73, March, 70-87.