AN EXAMINATION OF TWITTER BAN ON DIGITAL MARKETING
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.1 INTRODUCTION
Our focus in this chapter is to critically examine relevant literature that would assist in explaining the research problem and furthermore recognize the efforts of scholars who had previously contributed immensely to similar research. The chapter intends to deepen the understanding of the study and close the perceived gaps.
2.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networksUsers typically access social media services via web-based technologies on desktop computers, and laptops, or download services that offer social media functionality to their mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablet computers). When engaging with these services, users can create highly interactive platforms through which individuals, communities and organizations can share, cocreate, discuss, and modify user-generated content or pre-made content posted online. They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between businesses, organizations, communities and individuals. Social media changes the way individuals and large organizations communicate. These changes are the focus of the emerging field of technoself studies. Social media differ from paper-based media (e.g., magazines and newspapers) or traditional electronic media such as TV broadcasting in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, interactivity, usability, immediacy, and permanence. Social media operate in a dialogic transmission system (many sources to many receivers). This is in contrast to traditional media which operates under a monologic transmission model (one source to many receivers), such as a paper newspaper which is delivered to many subscribers or a radio station which broadcasts the same programs to an entire city. Some of the most popular social media websites are Baidu Tieba, Facebook (and its associated Facebook Messenger), Gab, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter, Viber, VK, WeChat, Weibo, What sApp, Wikia, and YouTube.
EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media have evolved through Web 2.0, a term coined to describe a new wave of Internet innovation that enables users to publish and exchange content online Kaplan and Haenlein (cited in Eun 2011:6). Social media encompass a wide range of electronic forums, including blogs, microblogs (e.g., Twitter), social networking sites (e.g., Facebook), creative work-sharing sites (e.g., YouTube), business networking sites (e.g., LinkedIn), collaborative websites (e.g., Wikipedia), and virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life). Among these social media, social networks and microblogs are the most popular, accounting for 22.7% of all time spent online in the United States ACNielsen (cited in Eun 2011: 6). According to Dominick (2009:283) Web 2.0 is the idea of a second generation Internet that is highly participatory, allowing users to improve it as they use it. Social media contents are primarily written and published by their users and not owners or employees of the site. For instance, most adverts, videos and pictures on Facebook and Twitter are uploaded by visitors of the sites. Jenkins et. al (cited in Stagno: 2) observe that Web 2.0 has been growing tremendously as it facilitates the production and dissemination of information, allows for the involvements in participatory culture to share individual expressions or creations and bring people with similar interests and goals to connect with each other on blogs, social networking sites and others. Few years ago, websites were quite static and passive. There was no much interaction going on as they were mostly corporate websites. The only way an individual could participate online was to send an email or form to the owners or web master of the website and hope that they would get back to him. This type of arrangement was called Web 1.0, referred to as “first generation Web where users generally consumed content. The audience went to web pages and looked at content provided by the website owner” Dominick (2009:283). But today, users have become producers which mean that they simultaneously consume and produce information (Bruns, cited in Stagno 2010:1). Igbinidu (2011:26) explains that the first exploitation of the potential of the social media especially to spread a candidates message, gain support and get the public engaged was through the 2008 presidential campaign by the then Senator Barack Obama who eventually became American president. The Obama campaign reached five million people on 15 different social media platforms. As at November 2008, Obama had approximately 2.3 million Facebook supporters; 115,000 Twitter followers and 50 million viewers of his YouTube videos. Facebook is a social network for connecting people with those around themfriends, family, coworkers, or simply others with similar interests. Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 alongside his roommates and fellow computer science classmates Eduardo Saverin, Austin Maskovitz and Chris Hughes at Harvard University in the U.S (Locke cited in Nnaane 2011:15). Initially, Facebook membership was restricted to Harvard students but later extended to other colleges in Boston and Stanford University all in the U.S. “Since 2006, Facebook has expanded beyond Harvard to other schools, corporations, businesses and any user across the world” (Dunay & Krueger 2010:27). Zuckerberg, cited in (Nweze, 2009:41) explains that advertising on Facebook is an opportunity for companies to reach their exact audience and connect real customers to their business. Facebook allow users to connect and share information in a variety of ways. Facebook allow users to post photos, videos and customize their profile content. Facebook has added a number of features over the past few years, including instant messaging/chat and apps (and their developer platform).Users communicate with one another through different methods, for instance, private messaging as well as writing on another user’s wall. Wall posts are visible to that user’s friends, but usually not to the general public. Users can also change their privacy settings to allow different users to see different parts of their profile, based on any existing relationships (the basic privacy settings are “only friends”, “friends of friends”, and “everyone”). Users can post notes that are visible to all of their friends. Users can also comment on or, more recently, “like” the posts of their friends, and conversations often occur within the comment sections among multiple people (Dunay & Krueger2010:27). Facebook pages are online location for businesses, organisations, public figures, entertainers, professionals of all types and individuals with the intention of marketing themselves to the Facebook community. Facebook Pages provide a powerful set of online tools for engaging with customers (or, as they are called in Facebook, fans). Every day, 3.5 million people become fans of a Facebook Page. According to eMetric’s February 2009 Facebook Usage Metrics Worldwide Study, although popular consumer brands enjoy large installed fan bases, smaller brands, business-to-business (B2B) companies, consultants, and personalities can also build a loyal following by using Facebook Page (Dunay & Krueger2010:27). He notes further that if Facebook were a country, it would be the sixth most populated nation in the world. This is because the site has grown to be perhaps the most popular all over the world with a user base of over 660 million (Amaefule 2011:20). The number of users continues to grow steadily.
Tyler (2010: para 3) explains that there are currently 1.7 billion Internet users worldwide, almost 57% of them have joined a social network, 66% of all Internet users visit social networks, Facebook is used more than 80 million hours daily and that close to 15million photos, wall posts, links, news, notes etc. are shared on Facebook every day. According to Idaresit (cited in Ofose, 2010) about 39.6 percent of all Internet traffic from Africa is from Nigeria and 29.8 percent of the population access the Internet. As at 2009, there were 30 million Nigerians on Facebook. Of this figure, 67% were males while 33% were females. These figures have changed since then. Lagos alone now has about two million subscribers to Facebook (Ogunbayo, 2011: 44). Supporting the above, Solaja and Odiaka (2010:32) state that “such a large population naturally offers a good basis for the adoption of the platforms for marketing purposes”. Facebook offers targeted communication initiative to select customers groups for product development as well as service enhancement and also be able to engage their customers and non-customers on platforms they are comfortable with while recovery real-time feedback on what they have to say about their brand, products and services (Wmworia (2010, February 11). In Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan boasts of the highest fan base with 97,000 Nigerian Facebook users. Both local and international brands would consider placing an ad on the presidents Facebook fan page as traffic to the site is unbelievably high Adebija (cited in Ofose 2010:4). Twitter was launched in 2006 and founded by Dorsey Jack, Biz Stone and Evan Williams as a free microblogging social network that enables users to post short messages known as tweets that could be viewed by other subscribers, more commonly referred to as followers. Tweets of not more than 140 characters can be sent from and received by almost any kind of electronic equipment, including desktop computers, laptops, Black Berrys, iphones, and other mobile devices (Farhi 2009). According to D’Monte (cited in Nnaane 2011:16) Twitter has gained popularity worldwide and is estimated to have 200 million users, generating 65 million tweets a day and handling over 800,000 search queries a day. Message brevity, in contrast with lengthy e-mail marketing messages, has been hailed as an asset of microblogs; which enables consumers to browse a large amount of updates efficiently (Zhao and Rosson, 2009). Aided by increases in smart phone sales and the continued rollout of Internet and mobile network infrastructure, Twitter is poised for even more growth (Wauters, 2010). Users broadcast messages to the masses, without visiting a particular person's profile to do so. By following other users, people automatically receive messages on their own Twitter home pages tweeted by those whom they are following. Even though some Twitter accounts are kept private, and some users require that they offer approval to people who wish to follow them, messages exchanged on this microblog are public by default, thus everyone can read and comment on a Twitter message (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Chiang (2011) explains that visitors increased by 1,382, to 7 million in February 2009, up from 475,000 in February 2008, “making it the fastest growing social media site for that month” (McGiboney, 2009).
DIGITAL MARKETING
Digital marketing is an activity to promote and sale a brand using digital media such as internet. Moreover, it will lead to mobile marketing. Mobile marketing as any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device (Kaplan A. 2012). Digital marketing today is the most popular strategy that is used most of marketers across the globe. This is due to the impact of worldwide internet and technology, so that the internet becomes the most promising market to achieve. In another word, digital marketing is the combination of marketing activity conducted by electronic media or internet. In accordance with that fact, (Coviello N. & Brookes R. 2001)state that digital marketing is the use internet facilities and the use of other interactive technologies to connect the identified consumer and company. The increasing number of consumers and their spread in all over the places is almost impossible to reach by using conventional marketing. Digital social media brings several advantages to firms. Web can be used for publishing, online sales, market research, and customer sup- port.
Moreover, according to (T. L. Ainscough, T. L. A 2006 ) the existence of social media can strengthen the digital marketing strategy since it can be used to spread the product information through text, picture, audio, and video between the company and consumer or vice versa. By using internet as digital marketing media, marketers hope that the marketing scope will be wider and so will the brand awareness of the product.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
"Social media are web-based services that allow individuals, communities, and organizations to collaborate, connect, interact, and build communities by enabling them to create, co-create, modify, share and engage with user-generated content that is easily accessible" as explained by Sloan & Quan-Haase (2017, p. 17). In addition, this content can be distributed through many social platforms in several kinds of forms including blogs, discussion forums, images, films, etc. Social Media networks have become the most influential phenomenon in communication in recent decades (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). In them, the interaction between a community is allowed and facilitated, which helps build trust and a “common feeling” among their members (Leimeister, Sidiras, & Krcmar, 2006). It offers people new ways to build and maintain social networks, create relationships, share information, create and edit content, or even participate in social movements; all through a virtual platform (Lorenzo-Romero, Constantinides, & Alarcóndel-Amo, 2011). This interaction between its members can include text, images, audio, videos or any other type of communication format (Ryan & Jones, 2009, p. 152). According to Fuchs (2008, p. 239-240), some of the most important characteristics of “virtual communities” in social media are their continuous voluntary interaction between its members, their shared interests and topics, the existence of formal and informal conventions, and the global dimension and speed with which relationships develop. Currently, social media platforms are considered of great importance, both for individuals and for companies; since they help maintain existing social ties and encourage the development of new connections between users (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). These platforms have become an interactive medium that allows the development of direct and personalized communication between the company and clients as well; without geographical or temporary limitations. In addition, social media networks make possible different types of interactions with customers; such as advertising and information, presales, order configuration, purchases, after-sales services, etc (Kim, & Ko, 2012). As the direction of communication between the company and customers is bidirectional, businesses can take advantage of these social media marketing tools to build relationships with their clients in a more direct, effective, and controllable way (Sashi, 2012).
BRAND AND SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE
Companies, seeing the growth of social media usage among consumers, are starting to use them in their marketing strategy due to their low cost and their popularity. These platforms are being used to build their brand, increase awareness, measure their reputation from customer relationships (Harris & Rae, 2009), for brand management (branding) (Christodoulides, 2009), to communicate with their customers (Jansen, Zhang, Sobel & Chowdury, 2009). However, there are different ways to use social media in the business world. Companies can obtain data from user’s natural behavior and activity. This allows the exploration of behavior patterns from friend requests, follows, likes, or tweets (Hogan, 2008). This way, it allows businesses to approach consumers quickly and directly, at a relatively low cost, and with greater efficiency than traditional marketing tools. As observed, social media platforms are not only relevant for large companies but also for SMEs, profit and non-profit organizations, or the government (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). And even though companies can measure some elements of interaction with their customers through statistics offered by social media networks or from specialized computer programs; it is still unclear whether the strategic or tactical impact is high or low. In fact, there is a consensus among marketing professionals that there is a complex problem when measuring and monetizing marketing activities in social networks (Clemons, 2009). In this new social media universe of user-generated content, businesses play a fundamental role in it, as consumers share their enthusiasm about their favorite brand through these platforms (Hennig-Thurau, Malthouse, Friege, Gensler, Lobschat, Rangaswamy, & Skiera, 2010), by commenting on its products and services (Chan & Ngai, 2011). Although the influence of social media marketing on business’ performance remains an unknown topic, there is no doubt that they play a key role in the future of marketing (Harris & Rae, 2009). Confirming Lindgreen, Palmer, & Vanhamme (2004), who anticipated that electronic and interactive marketing, as well as network marketing, would have greater development in the upcoming years. It should be noted that not everything related to internet advertisement can be considered as positive. There can be privacy or data security problems which suggest that social networks require structural control; otherwise, their attractiveness, credibility, and content value may decrease significantly (Otto & Simon, 2008).
Despite the negative sides aforementioned about internet advertisement, Öztamur & Karakadılar (2014) emphasize their importance in online marketing since this type of advertisement has increased for small and medium businesses. They mention companies have to be present where the consumer is and carry out their marketing strategies accordingly. Now, the usage of social media has become popular among consumers, therefore, companies have to develop their strategies there in a more planned and structured way to make them more effective. Social media marketing has modified the way to attract and keep new customers; some features may include having an attractive content and environment, where the public can obtain information (Öztamur, & Karakadılar, 2014). An essential element in social media marketing is that it must be focused on the consumers; there must be an interaction between the promotional campaign and the consumers that receive it. Moreover, social media marketing represents a dramatic, but beneficial change when it comes to searching and purchasing goods and services regardless of advertising, marketing campaigns or messages; with it, customers make decisions on their own terms, relying on trusted networks to form opinions of a brand (Paquette, 2013). As previously stated by Katona et al. (2011) it is necessary that companies have a professional presence in the main social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. whose main objective is not the sale of products and services, but their exposure to the public; creating a community of users with an emotional link with the brand (Iankova, Davies, Archer-Brown, Marder, & Yau, 2019). Therefore, as Lorenzo-Romero et al. (2011) implied, the main goal of social media networks for companies’ brands is to convert strangers into friends, friends into customers and customers into brand evangelists. For this reason, having social media platforms have become an excellent marketing tool for businesses. After all, as advertised by many popular social media networks, creating an account would not represent any investment since they are absolutely free of cost. However, it is worth mentioning that businesses can still find paid advertising within social media networks if they wish to.
ROLE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Millions of people around the globe through social networking are recently building online local, regional and global communities to communicate their shared interests and activities, disseminate information and interact through a variety of webbased tools (Eid & Ward, 2009:1). While the Internet is changing the ways companies design and implement their entire business and marketing communication programmes (Belch & Belch, 2009:22), “companies need to see potential and existing clients on social media as communities to be built and nurtured rather than just customers who are potential purchasers of goods and services” (Fyfe, 2009:181). He maintains that while social media collectively can be considered interactive communication vehicles, corporate communicators must learn to distinguish the components of various social media, each of which has unique strengths. According to Sandberg (2010, para3), on Facebook, people do everything from remembering their friends' birthdays to reuniting with old classmates. In a more connected world, advertisers are social too. This gives individuals the chance to connect to the companies and brands they like and learn more about their products and services. Arens, Weigold and Arens (2011:525) remark “online media enable businesses and other organisations to nurture and develop relationships with their customers and other stakeholders, in a way never before available on a global scale at very efficient cost”. Saverin (2010:3) agrees that “as the Web increasingly democratises innovation and costs, anyone can showcase a product on Facebook.
According to Dunay & Krueger (2010:34) Facebook offers Business to consumer marketers (B2C) an excellent brand-building environment because of its viral marketing capabilities and “offers relevant and integrated advertising opportunities to engage a client’s target audience” (Nweze, 2009:41). Facebook allows companies to interact with their customers to gain valuable consumer insight thus “marketers interact with people in the same way that people interact in real life, users will expect to interact and engage with brands in the same way they interact with each other” (Schaffel, 2009:36). A Facebook page improves a company’s search engine rankings. This is made possible because, Facebook pages are publicly available to everyone, (personal profiles can also be made available to public search engines via search engine privacy, regardless of whether the viewer is a Facebook member or not. This last point is important because public availability of Facebook pages means that search engines, such as Google, can find and index these pages, often improving a company’s positioning in search results. Facebook Pages are used by brands and are equivalents to user profiles. A page is the location on the site where entrepreneurs/companies write all about themselves. Some of the most powerful social targeting features become useful when such companies have a large number of Page members or users”. (Zarrella & Zarrella, 2011: 223). He notes further that although some brands attract millions of fans to their Facebook Pages through paid advertisement, “there are also some brands that their marketing strategies take advantage of the viral power of Facebook, relying on fan participation to generate a stream of news feed stories, which in turn create word-of-mouth awareness and attract new fans to the page”. Special events such as symposium, trade fare, seminar etc. can be created by a company on their page and “invites” sent to their network of friends (Fans). While commercial messages posted on a company’s Facebook page and their events are restricted to their Fans, the paid advertisement appears on the right hand side of a Facebook page whose owner falls within the target market of the advertiser as indicated during the creation of the advertisement. Pages can help a company promote their business on Facebook through the following:
Wall
The Wall tab serves as the central component of a Facebook page and is similar to a personal profile. The Wall allows an organisation and their fans to upload content, such as photos, videos, and notes. These actions generate updates (called stories on Facebook) and often display as stories on a fans’ News Feed.
News Feed
News Feed displays these stories and publishes any new social action that takes place on an organisation’s Page to their fans. For example, an addition of a new photo to an organisation’s Page is reported as a story on their News Feed.
Status Updates
If a company wants to push out a message, the addition of status updates is a welcome tool in the Facebook marketer’s toolbox. Like in personal profiles where users update their status by typing any kind of message, Pages allow a Page administrator of an organisation to send a limitless stream of updates (short messages up to 160 characters in length), which, in turn, appear in their fans’ News Feeds. These messages can be information about their products/services or their recent activities.
Discussions
Discussions are another standard feature that allow anyone to create a new topic of conversation and permit follow-up comments. Members can add to any discussion by typing their comments in the appropriate box and clicking the Post Reply button. Facebook helps build relationships regardless of whether an organisation is selling to businesses or individuals. Twitter users share observations on their surroundings, information about an event, or opinions regarding a certain topic (Smith 2010), and they choose what information they want to receive (e.g., news, links) and which brands to follow (Parr 2010). When they follow another account, Twitter automatically pushes single tweets by a consumer or marketer onto the users' main home page with text-like messages such as those communicated by mobile telephones Kaplan and Haenlein (cited in Eun2011:7). A recently added feature also allows Twitter users to locate full conversations by clicking on a tweet with a chat bubble icon (Siegler 2010: 4), similar to a feature on Facebook. Twitter further enables the public to see what people are saying and follow conversations centering on a particular topic, using hashtags (e.g., #trendingtopics, #tangled) before the word or phrase to indicate trends (Boyd, Golder, and Lotan 2010:9), which can be useful in the context of announcing or promoting events or products and monitoring conversations among consumers (Chang 2010:3). By beginning a sentence with conventions such as "@username" in reply to another user or "RT" on a tweet, Twitter users both directly address specific users and refer to them by dispersing messages throughout a network of interconnected users (Boyd, Golder, and Lotan 2010:93). Twitter can be relatively faster, less expensive, and geographically unbounded (Dickey and Lewis 2009:183). As a real-time information network, Twitter connects consumers to the latest information about topics they find relevant and interesting (see Twitter.com). These benefits enable marketers to connect online with consumers who are motivated to engage with their brands. In a sense, Twitter enables marketers to personify brands and help build and maintain consumer relationships by engaging in conversations (Eun 2011: 11). The interconnectedness of Twitter users provides a distinctive channel for marketing communication. The structural and interactive features of Twitter, as opposed to those of a traditional corporate website, foster ongoing conversations between marketers and consumers for all three stages of the marketing process: pre purchase (i.e. marketing research), purchase (i.e., sales promotions), and post purchase (i.e. customer services). For instance, during the introduction of VIA instant coffee in October 2009, Starbucks actively listened to and participated in conversations about VIA on Twitter. This communication helped get samples of the new product into people's hands for trials, and this made it possible for consumers to move beyond their common initial reaction that instant coffee must be distasteful (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010b).
Because Twitter can be used in conjunction with other media outlets, marketers potentially achieve a synergetic effect that increases brand awareness and drives more traffic to the brand or product. Heaps (2009:20) also indicates that distributing information through Twitter can increase traffic to company websites, which eventually allows the companies to "tell their story" better and connect at a deeper level through more detailed content and information about events and alerts. Likewise, marketers have used Twitter as a communication tool to connect directly with consumers (Williamson 2010; Zhao and Rosson 2009). Therefore, while establishing their presence on social media and engaging in more conversations, advertisers ultimately try to enhance brandconsumer relationships and increase sales. The case study below further shows the benefits of social media.
CONCEPT OF BRAND
According to Kotler & Keller (2005, p.549), a brand is `` name, term, sign, symbol, design or a combination of these that identifies the markers or seller of the product or services‟. According to this definition, name, sign or symbol is used to represent a business product or service from competitors of the organization as it also includes the intangible, and intangible values that are the source of reputation in the market (Kotler et al., 2005). Furthermore, a brand is separate from the service or the product as products and services can be anything that a business offers to the audience and can be change according to the demand or change in time and change in trend of market as these are for use or consume to meet the needs or wants of consumers to obtain satisfaction (Kotler et al., 2005). Doyle & Stern (2006) mention that brands have a different value for the business, and a different value from the product. Value of brand is important from a consumer's perspective as it helps them to get specific brand into consideration and it can be intangible since it varies depending on a person’s level of satisfaction. Good will of the brand is created and developed because of both experiences that are emotional and functional experiences of the brand which plays a vital role in consumer’s purchasing behavior and decision (Doyle & Stern, 2006).
BRAND AWARENESS
In marketing, brand awareness refers to the strength with which any brand is present in a consumer's mind (Pappu, Quester, & Cooksey, 2005); it occurs when there is an association between the brand and the type of product, where the potential consumer recognizes or associates the brand as a member of a certain product category. With that, awareness can be simply from brand recognition to brand recall or just a memory of the product; being dominant, if it’s the only brand remembered by the consumer (Hakala, Svensson & Vincze, 2012). Although many do not consider this concept as a source of brand value creation, Aaker (1992) states that many firms already see this dimension as important. Brand awareness has been studied extensively by many authors who recognize its benefits and repercussions for brands, focusing mainly on their measurement and taxonomy. However, there are different perspectives of this concept, but the ones that stand out the most are: its usefulness as an advertising approach (Miller & Berry, 1998), and its influence on consumer behavior (Ratneshwar & Shocker, 1991). The existence of a specific brand that offers specific kind of products and market audience must be aware of it is known as brand awareness (Kotler et al., 2005). According to Jin & Villegas (2007), they define that brand and product have a link between them because it makes the consumer to get capacity of recognition or remembering a specific brand, only because of brand awareness that it is differentiated between a brand from others in the market. Furthermore, they talk about the importance of brand awareness in brand equity as it is an important component (Jin & Villegas, 2007). They stated further that purchasing intention and attitude towards brand is developed only through brand awareness (Aaker, 1991). Moreover, he discussed the factors that add awareness values in different ways that include establishing further linkage/ partnership, rapport building, dedication and brand to undertaker. All these factors add values when brand becomes top-of-mind among the customers (Gautam & Shrestha, 2018).
According to Sasmita & Mohd Suki (2015) brand association affects the brand images that are valuable for any business in the market and helps to add value in brand awareness. Moreover, establishing a link to get recognition when a new product is introduced in the market, because there are less chances for being purchased by consumers without having knowledge about the new release as without having any identity. Huang, Rong & Sarigollu (2014) argue it would be difficult for consumers to become aware of the characteristics of the product; only possible to have good recognition in the market by providing or adapting a brand switcher and creating product trials from previous experiences. This will help enhance brand awareness and an identification to a new product in order to develop relationships between them. Kumar & Moller (2018) claim, brand familiarity motivates customers to adopt the brand products when they release something new with brand name. It is common that customers like to be familiar with the products as people have their experiences and have better knowledge about the product or service because brand knowledge and past experiences of the consumers make the brand and product well known (Kumar & Moller, 2018). It is mostly common when consumers are familiar with the product, they make decisions without knowing about other products because of their preferences (Aaker, 1991). However, commitment with brand adds value to brand equity which is also linked to brand awareness.
As Tuskej, Golob & Podnar (2013) claim, there is a relationship between brand commitment and brand values as it has a positive influence on customers to keep themselves loyal to the brand. This happens after having the awareness in the customers about the product of the company as consumers will continue to buy the product even if they do not have better knowledge about it. Because of the better awareness about the brand and its product, consumers become committed and loyal with the brand name of the company (Tuskej et al., 2013). Furthermore, it is natural in consumers’ buying mentality that when it comes to purchasing a product, they consider three or four different brands as they have different experiences with them in the past. Wang & Zhang (2009) explain that customer behavior towards selecting a brand is influenced by the level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction from past experiences from their point of view.
ACHIEVING BRAND AWARENESS
Every business wants to reach to the higher brand recognition in the market. It is important to achieve awareness of the product and the link with the brand for its consumer market when the product is newly launched by the business (Kumar & Moller, 2018). There are many ways but according to Aaker (1991), he discussed many factors that can be helpful for a brand to achieve maximum brand awareness: The most important factor in achieving better awareness about the brand is to have a different and unique slogans that represent the brand and its image to the customers as it helps them to get a clear image of the brand instantly and identification whenever they find out or read it somewhere (Till, Baack & Waterman, 2011). According to Aaker (1991) it is important to have product differentiation from the brand class as there can be the risk of similarity in the way of communication and product feature, to avoid such conditions, it has to be unique in order to remain in the mind of the customer and not forget about the brand. Furthermore, brand associations add valuable effect on brand value because it helps to identify the difference and meaning of brand image to its potential customer (Till, et al. 2011). A brand symbol helps its potential customers to recall or remain in their minds as they can memorize the visible design of the brand because logos show the link between brand and product as it plays a vital role in developing and maintaining brand awareness (MacInnis, Shapiro, & Mani, 1991). Moverover, the most convenient and effective way of enhancing and creating better brand awareness in the marketing to use the promotions and advertisement as it is one of the most important ways of getting awareness for a brand in the consumer market (Jalleh, Donovan, GilesCorti & Holman, 2002). Promotional tools that organizations use to spread awareness about their brand can gain better publicity among the consumers, because advertising influence brand equity value in a positive way (Osman & Subhani, 2010). Sponsorship in events is another helpful way to provide, create, increase, and maintain awareness about the brand; this is an efficient and less time-consuming way to spread the awareness in specific areas (Jalleh et al., 2002). Event sponsorship plays a vital role to enhance value in brand equity (Kim, 2010). Stegemann (2006) claims this is a useful technique in order to enhance brand awareness in the market by associating the same brand with other product lines as there can many manufacturing products by the same brand name and wide range of products in the market for customers. These changes in brand extension help brand growth rapidly in the market and gain competitive advantage in the consumer market (Stegemann, 2006). Unique and different packaging plays a significant role for a brand to create and show brand image in the mind of the consumers as well (Till et al. 2011). If there is a logo or wrap of the packaging missing that represents a specific brand’s name and the consumer notices it, means that the company's brand name has greater awareness in the consumer market (Aaker,1991). It can be that there is high competition in the market so the customer may mix the brand images from different companies in their mind. It is easier to create and provide awareness about the brand in the market to its potential customers, however, it is difficult to remain in customers minds so they can recall the brand later on (Dauphinee, Doxey, Schleicher, Fortmann, & Henriksen, 2013). Therefore, it is necessary for a brand to be more outstanding to get remembered by its customers (Aaker, 1991). Furthermore, advertisement strategies have influence on branding and shows involvement on brand recall of specific products (Dens & Pelsmacker, 2010). According to Osman & Subhani (2010) a competitive advantage for a brand is to maintain a top position in the market by the continuous advertisements and promotions in order to create brand awareness, while on the other hand it also affects its brand competitive to face decrease in recall of their brands in the market. Moreover, awareness can bring fast communication and consumer engagement and the main objective for serving brand marketing in the market is to obtain awareness and brand recall for those established brands (Weinberg & Pehlivan, 2011).
Twitter is an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and retweet tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through its website interface or its mobile-device application software ("app"), though the service could also be accessed via SMS before April 2020.The service is provided by Twitter, Inc., a corporation based in San Francisco, California, and has more than 25 offices around the world. Tweets were originally restricted to 140 characters, but the limit was doubled to 280 for non-CJK languages in November 2017.Audio and video tweets remain limited to 140 seconds for most accounts (D'Monte, Leslie 2009).
Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 and launched in July of that year. By 2012, more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day,and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day.In 2013, it was one of the ten most-visited websites and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet". As of Q1 2019, Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users.Twitter is a some-to-many microblogging service, given that the vast majority of tweets are written by a small minority of users( twitter search team 2011).
In April 2014, Twitter underwent a redesign that made the site resemble Facebook somewhat. On June 4, 2014, Twitter announced that it would acquire Namo Media, a technology firm specializing in "native advertising" for mobile devices. On June 19, 2014, Twitter announced that it had reached an undisclosed deal to buy SnappyTV, a service that helps edit and share video from television broadcasts.The company was helping broadcasters and rights holders to share video content both organically across social and via Twitter's Amplify program.In July 2014, Twitter announced that it intended to buy a young company called CardSpring for an undisclosed sum. CardSpring enabled retailers to offer online shoppers coupons that they could automatically sync to their credit cards in order to receive discounts when they shopped in physical stores. On July 31, 2014, Twitter announced that it had acquired a small password-security startup called Mitro. On October 29, 2014, Twitter announced a new partnership with IBM. The partnership was intended to help businesses use Twitter data to understand their customers, businesses and other trends.
On February 11, 2015, Twitter announced that it had acquired Niche, an advertising network for social media stars, founded by Rob Fishman and Darren Lachtman. The acquisition price was reportedly $50 million. On March 13, 2015, Twitter announced its acquisition of Periscope, an app that allows live streaming of video. In April 2015, the Twitter.com desktop homepage changed.
TWITTER BAN AND EFFECT ON DIGITAL MARKETTING
In every business, marketing take a crucial role in it. A business with an ordinary product can be a successful product just because of marketing strategy conducted by the company. On the other hand, business with high quality product will not have a good sale when there is no good marketing strategy. Marketing is activities to promote, inform, and bargain products or services managed by a certain company as an activity to enhance its product selling. As the matter of fact, without any series of marketing strategy, people will never recognize the product that the company produced. Eventually, marketing will always enhance its quality of connectivity to the consumers so that they aware of the company products or services. The proliferation of social media has transformed the strategies firms use to interact and engage with existing and potential customers (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). Firms are increasingly using social media, especially by operating pages on social networking sites, to interact, share information, develop long lasting relationships with devoted customers, attract new customers who would otherwise be out of reach (Yoshida, Gordon, Nakazawa, Shibuya, & Fujiwara, 2018). In this way, social media have become a new strategic marketing tool that enables firms to promote better their brands (Kozinets, de Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010) and through which customers can acquire and share information, and interact with their favorite brands . Social media have allowed firms to establish their own brand communities, a virtual environment where firms and users can stay in touch, easily share information about products and services, provide customers with real-time support, and boost brand performances (Laroche, Habibi, & Richard, 2013; Swani et al., 2017). With the popularity of Internet and mobile technologies and the wide spread reliance on online social media brand preferences, the sharing of consumer experiences and brand information has become a new field of brand marketing. Therefore, the development of social groups has become more efficient. Even among group members who have never met each other, a good sense of community can take shape. Communities that collect goods and services of a specific brand are called virtual brand communities By optimizing the use of internet marketing, company will spend a minimum budget and have wide range of its promotion hence digital marketing is the use internet facilities and the use of other interactive technologies to connect the identified consumer and company.
Building and enhancing brands’ presence in social media provide firms with greater access to customers’ information, needs and opinions. Thus, firms are increasingly interested in using social media in a complementary mode to generate, disseminate, integrate, and respond to information obtained from social media interactions (Agnihotri, Dingus, Hu, & Krush, 2016; Trainor, Andzulis, Rapp, & Agnihotri, 2014) in order to develop effective brand building activities (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014). Hence, social media complete traditional communication tools to engage customers with the brand. In this context, joining social media platforms such as Twitter provides a unique opportunity for firms to strengthen their brands, helping in increasing business value such as creating brand awareness, brand reputation and brand loyalty (Alberghini et al., 2014).
The ban on Twitter usage in Nigeria has resulted to a big blow on companies who uses the platform for advertisement and marketting of their product. The restriction of network access to the platform by the telecommunication companies in Nigeria on the order of the Federal government of Nigeria has denied Nigerians access to the platform.
On 4th June 2021, the Nigerian government officially put an indefinite ban on Twitter (BBC 2021) restricting it from operating in Nigeria after the social media platform deleted tweets made by the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari warning the south eastern people of Nigeria, predominantly Igbo people, of a potential repeat of the 1967 Biafran Civil War due the ongoing insurgency in Southeastern Nigeria. The Nigerian government claimed that the deletion of the President's tweets factored into their decision but it was ultimately based on "a litany of problems with the social media platform in Nigeria, where misinformation and fake news spread through it have had real world violent consequences".
In a an editorial by PREMUIM TIMES (2021), the described twitter-ban in Nigeria as a real risk to our economy on few notions thus:
The ban constitutes an unwarranted attack on the corporate, business and professional interests of organization and individuals legitimately managing their affairs on Twitter, including but not limited to the media, entrepreneurs, researchers, educational institutions, NGOs and CCSOs. As at the third quarter of 2020, Twitter accounted for 61.4 per cent of Internet users in Nigeria, coming after WhatsApp and Facebook messenger, according to ‘Statista’, while ‘Quora’ estimates the number to be about seven million. Even if the number of users is considerably less, it still does not justify a ban that is jeopardizing the means of business and social communication of citizens.
The ban further underscores the investor community’s growing concern over the unpredictability of the domestic policy environment. The consequences of a subsequent attenuation of investment for an economy whose recovery from the initial stages of the pandemic has been described as “fragile” are better imagined.
With this ban, brand and different companies can no longer post adverts on the platform and their product consumeres will also have no access to the platform hence some brand s may go obsoleted because digital marketing through the platform has been impeded. This has gone a long way of reducing the volume of sales these companies, reduce their revenue and patronage m as well affect their profit margin and profitability.
2.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The Uses and Gratification Theory
The Uses and Gratification Theory was propounded in 1974 by Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler and Michael Gurevitch. “The theory was developed to explain why audiences do not passively wait for media messages to arrive, but actively and deliberately seek out forms of content that provide them with information that they need, like and use” ( Kur, 2003:34). Folarin (2005: 65) observes that the theory perceives the recipient of media messages as actively influencing the effect process, he selectively chooses, attends to, perceives and retains the media messages on the basis of his needs and beliefs. This implies that “members of the public will actively select and use specific forms of media content to fulfill their needs and to provide gratifications of their interests and motives Defleur & Dennis (1994:559). The uses and gratifications perspective takes the view of the media consumer. It examines how people use the media and the gratification they seek and receive from their media behaviours. Uses and gratifications researchers assume that audience members are aware of and can articulate their reasons for consuming various media content (Wimmer and Dominick 2003: 403). Consequently, when applied to this study, social media allow for participation as they give the advertisers and customers the opportunity to interact with each other on a one-on-one basis. The implication is that business organisations or entrepreneurs who use social media are active as they willingly create their Facebook page or Twitter account. The business organisation chooses social media as a means to fulfill their wants and goals over other sources. Basically, the business organisation/entrepreneur sign up an account on Facebook or Twitter for a particular purpose. That is, the need to connect with customers to promote a product/service. For other users, it could be the need to connect interpersonally with friends or the need to patronise a product/ service advertised on those social platforms or just to know an organisation they are interested in the better. The assumption is that those who decide to patronise adverts on Facebook and Twitter may be doing so because of the gratification they hope to derive from those messages. While those who do not patronize the messages, may not have seen any gratification in the messages. Debatin, Lovejoy & Horn (2009:87) explain that social media users are found to expose higher risk-taking attitudes than individuals who are not members of an online network. It can therefore be assumed that the expected gratification motivates the users to provide and frequently update very specific personal data that most of them would immediately refuse to reveal in other contexts.
2.3 EMPIRICAL FRAMEWORK
According to Return on Investment Research 2011, social networking accounts for one of every six minutes spent online. There are 750 million active Facebook users across the globe and 31% of Facebook users are on the site multiple times every day. Edison Research revealed that 24% of consumers consult their Facebook friends before making a purchase. More than one in three consumers say they are likely to purchase from a company they follow on Facebook and Twitter (eMarketer). 53% of Facebook users would recommend a brand or company's product to friends (Facebook Success Summit 2011). In a result of their seventh annual survey on social media marketing adoption released by integrated marketing services provider- Alterian on Jan 21, 2010, the survey revealed that, 66 percent of respondents will be investing in social media marketing in 2010. Of those, 40 percent said they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards funding their Social media activities. The survey also revealed that more than 36 percent of respondents are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools. Nearly half of respondents (42 percent), however, said they do not currently incorporate clickstream and web analytics data into their customer and e-mail database. The research also revealed that over half of respondents (51 percent) are placing a ‘fair’ or ‘significant’ amount of effort on moving from a campaign-centric direct marketing model towards multichannel customer engagement. In fact, only 7 percent make no effort at all. The survey covered 1068 marketing professionals worldwide, 98% North America and Europe and 2% Asia Pacific and other region (Wauters, 2010: 3). In a study by Anderson Analytics and Marketing Executives Networking Group titled “Marketing Trends 2010” the report revealed some interesting insights in the minds of marketing executives. When marketing executives were asked to choose the most important trends and buzzwords to pay attention to in 2010, getting a good return on marketing efforts was number one with 58% saying it was the most important trend to keep an eye on. But what is even more interesting is that social media made the top 10 list with 42% choosing it as one of the top trends to watch. In addition, 72% said they work for companies that are planning social media initiatives in 2010 (Porterfield 2010, March 29). This survey corroborates the findings by eMarketer which revealed that 92% of marketers use Facebook and 75% of marketers plan to increase their use in 2011 (2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report). A study jointly conducted and released by Nielsen and Facebook took a good look at Facebook and the value of ads campaigns. The study titled, “Advertising Effectiveness: Understanding the Value of a Social Media Impression,” analysed data from over 800,000 Facebook users and more than 125 Facebook ad campaigns across 70 different brands. This study used 3 criteria to determine the value of ad campaigns on Facebook; Brand Awareness, Purchase Intent and Ad Recall and also determined how paid media, “earned” and peer-to-peer advocacy contribute to ad campaigns. Nielsen defined “Earned Media” as advertising that is shared among friends and beyond. Nielsen looked at 14 Facebook ad campaigns that used “Become a Fan” as the engagement point, or call to action, and then determined the effectiveness in 3 ways: Lift from a standard Homepage Ad, Lift from Homepage Ads with Social Context and Lift from Organic Ads. The study showed some great insights regarding how peer-to-peer advocacy and recommendations affect social media ad campaigns. The findings revealed that people who viewed ads with social contexts had higher response rates than people who viewed the same ads without social context. Ad recall grew from 10% to 16%, awareness doubled from 4% to 8%, purchase intent jumped from 2% to 8%. The result proved that social media users had a direct impact on other users when it comes to ads, and that social media are fast and effective way to advertise products or services (Brooke 2010: 11). In another study, “The State of Small Business Report,” sponsored by Network Solutions, LLC and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, the study results showed that social media usage by small business owners increased from 12% to 24% in just the last year, and almost 1 out of 5 actively uses social media as part of their marketing strategy. Here is a breakdown of what the small businesses reported as the main uses of social media marketing. 75% have a company page on a social networking site. 69% post status updates or articles of interest on social media sites, 57% build a network through a site such as LinkedIn, 54% monitor feedback about the business, 39% maintain a blog, 26% tweet about areas of expertise and 16% use Twitter as a service channel. According to the study, different industries are adopting social media marketing at different rates, and while many industries have started using social media marketing in their efforts to reach more customers, many still have not positioned it as their top priority. The work also measured small businesses expectations of social media. While 58% feel that social media “met expectations,” 12% feel it has “exceeded expectations,” while 25% feel social media have “fallen short of expectations”. Some of the reasons given by respondents for social media’s shortfalls were that, 50% of the respondents feel that social media have used up more time than expected. 19% believe social media have lost them money while 17% feel that social media have allowed people to criticise their business (Porterfield 2010: 15). Another study by Invoke Solutions reveals that active social networkers find benefits of social media use beyond just staying connected with friends and family. Active social networkers say an important driver of social media use is sharing and gathering information and learning about new products. 63% of the respondents said that sharing information with network is very or somewhat important, 59% explained that gathering information from network is very or somewhat important, while 58% said that to learn about new products is very or somewhat important. Given that active social media users are looking for information about products and brands online, how well do they think companies are leveraging social media to these ends? The study revealed a room for improvement, with 46% saying that companies are not doing well using social media to listen to customers.46% said companies are not doing well using social media to deliver better customer service.50% said companies are not doing well using social media to learn about unmet customer needs. In a 2010 survey by Marketing Profs and Junta42 that asked marketers which social networks they are currently using: 55% said they are using Twitter, 54% said they are using Facebook and 51% said they are using LinkedIn. The study found that social media marketing is dominated by the “big three” networks: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Being that the network that will be most effective for a brand depends on the audience and the strength of the brand’s efforts on each site, Facebook has been the most effective site for B2C (Business to Consumers) marketers according to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Marketing 2011 Report, which notes that: 67% of B2C marketers reported acquiring at least one customer from Facebook, compared with 41% of B2B (Business to Business) marketers. According to the report, one way to assess which social networks your customers and prospects favour is to check your web analytics data and survey their social media fans and followers to ask whether they also subscribe to their company newsletter or email promos. For instance, according to a Marketing Sherpa Case Study, when the baking accessory company, Wilton surveyed its email and social media audiences, it discovered that about half of its Facebook fans and Twitter followers were also subscribers to the company’s email Newsletter. Wilton followed up its audience surveys with a campaign to convert Facebook fans who had not yet opted-in to the company’s email newsletter. The marketing team created a Facebook wall post that encouraged fans to join the email list, and as a result, saw a 225% increase in newsletter subscriptions (The Definitive Guide to Integrating Social Media and Email Marketing:5) According to Exact Target survey, the key to making social sharing buttons work is providing “sharable” content. But people have different reasons for following brands on each social network, which affects the type of content they will deem most sharable. Here is a breakdown of major reasons people cite for subscribing to and following brands through different channels and what that means for an advertiser’s content strategy. Facebook users said that they become fans of a brand to receive discounts and promotions and also to show support for the company, to stay informed about the company’s activities to get updates on future products for fun or entertainment. active Twitter users say the reasons why they follow brands include: - To obtain new, authentic perspectives on companies and to find out what they really stand for - To receive insider information about upcoming products and services. - To get to know the personalities behind a company. - To see how a company responds when its brand is publicly criticized. Although 43.5% said that special offers and deals are the top reason why they follow brand in a recent Get Satisfaction/Column Five study. (The Definitive Guide to Integrating Social Media and Email Marketing:14). Facebook updates, tweets, and other social media posts can be used to build awareness for an upcoming event, special promotion or product launch. For example, Wilton used email and social media to promote the launch of its annual “yearbook” of cake decorating ideas. The team posted weekly Facebook updates about the upcoming book release and responded to customer questions about the product on their Facebook page. At the same time, they used Twitter to tease the book’s content, including a “guess the cover image” contest. Finally, they launched the product with an email campaign. The results: a 65% increase in year-over-year book sales. (The Definitive Guide to Integrating Social Media and Email Marketing: 16). In another study, Triumvirate, an environmental services company attributes $1.2 million in revenue to search engine optimization, blogs, and social media. Triumvirate had been doing Google Ad words but was spending too much money, not knowing how to optimize their complex campaigns. They launched a network of internal blogs to match their diverse service offerings and attract relevant search traffic to each business unit. Added calls to action on their blog pages, including a phone number and free resource download behind a lead form. Used Twitter and Facebook to share industry news and drive more visitors back to their content, leveraged interns and employees outside of marketing to participate in social media. The company has seen some great results from integrating content creation and social media into their marketing mix. According to Mark Campanale, marketing manager and new media trainer at Triumvirate, consistency is key - dedicate the time to social media and the rewards will make the investment worth it (The Definitive Guide to Integrating Social Media and Email Marketing: 17).