Social media and brand awareness

Chapter 1 Introduction

Marketing managers have predicted that 2010 will be the year when social media are integrated in the organizations and really start to become useful for companies and become important tools in the communication (Carlsson 2010). Others have argued that it is crucial for marketers to look to the Web for new ways of finding customers and communicating with them, rather than at them, that it is vital to create a dialogue with the customers, and various kinds of social media are the most promising way to reach new customers (Weber 2009) At the same time, one of the most prominent names in research about branding and related subjects, David Aaker, has said that with the multitude of new medias developing, it is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to raise awareness for their brand. The only way forward in managing this complexity, is for companies to be able to coordinate messages and their marketing efforts across all medias (Aaker 1996)

The combination of coordinating your branding messages across all medias including the social media, the great impact that social media (as an example the social network Facebook with more than 400 million active users) has for both individuals and companies, the speed with which things move in this domain, and the relative scarcity of existing research about this area all are reasons why this study was initiated. With regards to the discussion above, this study will be about how social media influences branding.

Background

In studying how social media influences branding, we need to look at what social media is, what it is composed of and what existing literature says about the correlation between social media and branding. Branding per se is a vast and widespread area, where opinions diverge concerning the basic definitions, such as brand equity for example. We need to clarify which parts of branding that we will focus on in this context.

Social Media

What is social media? Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, p 60) define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content”. Web 2.0 is platform on which social media is based (Carlsson 2010).

Social media can take many different forms, including social networks, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, micro blogging, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Weber, 2009). Weber also includes search engines in the definition of social web, and describes them as reputation aggregators with the task of aggregating sites with the best product or service to offer and usually put things in order of reputation (Weber 2009).

Weber approaches the question of branding in the social web. He defines this as the dialogue you have with your customer, and claims that the stronger the dialogue is, the stronger the brand is, and vice versa. Actually he questions the very core concept of traditional marketing and branding, and means that rather than broadcasting messages to audiences and target groups, in the era of social web that we live in today, branding and marketing is about participating in social networks to which people want to belong, where dialogue with customers and between customers can flourish. (Weber 2009)

According to a study made in 2010 in the United Kingdom amongst 30 companies (which are early adopter business and perhaps not representative of the mainstream UK businesses), the importance of participating in social networks in order to develop the brand and build relationships with key customers is in fact recognized by the companies. It is argued that online communities will play a key role in the future of marketing because they replace customer annoyance with engagement, and control of the content with collaboration. The authors of this study, Harris and Rae, claim that the prosperous businesses of the future will be those who embrace the social media and who see change as an opportunity. (Harris and Rae 2010)

What is brand and branding and why do we need to look into this more deeply? According to Czinkota and Ronkainen (2010), brands are important because they shape customer decisions and ultimately create economic value. Brand is a key factor behind the decision to purchase in business to consumer operations, and thanks to strong brands, it has been showed possible to charge a 19 percent higher price. (Czinkota and Ronkainen 2010) What specific aspects and dimensions in branding are we particularly interested in? In order to get a necessary overview of the state-of-the-art in branding literature, it has been deemed necessary to look closer into brand strategy, brand equity and assets that underlie brand equity which are brand awareness, perceived quality, brand loyalty, brand association and other proprietary brand assets.

One definition of brand strategy is the following: “Your brand strategy is how, what, where, when and to whom you plan on communicating and delivering your brand messages. Where you advertise is part of your brand strategy, so are your distribution channels and your verbal and visual communication”. Consistent branding strategy leads to a strong brand equity, which means the added value brought to your company’s products or services that allows you to charge more for your brand than what identical, unbranded products command. (www.entrepreneur.com. Retrieved 100424)

The brand and marketing consultancy Prophet.com highlights the following elements in the branding strategy: to build a brand positioning, to manage your brand portfolio, to build your brand architecture and naming, and to consider possible brand extensions. (www.prophet.com. Retrieved 100424) This
proposition takes the perspective of looking into the management of several brands at the same time.

Brand Equity and Brand Awareness

Despite the availability of numerous definitions for brand equity in the literature, there is little consensus on what exactly brand equity means, claim Park and Srinivasan in Pappu et al. (2005). Nor is there a general agreement among researchers at the conceptual level about what brand equity comprises. The broad meaning attached to the term “brand equity” is similar to the definition provided by Farquhar in Pappu et al. (2005), as the value endowed by the brand to the product. A product is something that offers a functional benefit (for example toothpaste, a life insurance policy, or a car)” (Farquhar in Elliott and Percy 2007).

The definitions of brand equity can be broadly classified into two categories; either as financial considerations and the value of the brand equity for the firm, or based on the consumer perspective which looks as brand equity as the value of a brand for the consumer (Brasco and Mahajan in Pappu et al. 2005).

Aaker’s point of departure in his studies on brand equity, is a consumer perspective based on consumer’s memory-based brand associations. He has provided a comprehensive definition of brand equity, namely: a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firm’s customers (Pappu et al. 2005).

Aaker conceptualized brand equity as a set of five assets: brand awareness, perceived quality, brand loyalty, brand association and other proprietary brand assets. Brand awareness is an important component of brand equity, it deals with the strength a brand’s presence has in consumer’s minds.

It is predicted by Aaker that with the multitude of new media that have developed and that are likely to develop in the future, it is constantly becoming more challenging to create this brand awareness, and that the winners in the battle of raising brand awareness will be those who are able to coordinate their branding messages through all medias (Aaker 1996). Weber (2009) holds a diverging view on brand equity, and means that it is not interesting to look at how well the customer remembers a brand, but one should consider that the social media arena changes the marketing mindset, and that brand equity is a living thing and should be measured by to what extent the customer is prone to highly recommend the brand to others.

There exist different degrees of brand awareness according to Aaker, and it is measured through analysis of how well the customer recalls the brand. The scale starts off from the weakest level:
recognition (the customer has been exposed to the brand) →recall (which brands within the product group that the customer can retain)

To create brand awareness in a successful way considering that consumers everyday are bombarded by more and more marketing messages, two things are needed according to Aaker: first, it is necessary to have a broad sales base. This is because it is expensive and often impossible even to support brands with relatively small unit sales and short lifecycle. This is the reason why many firms reduce the number of their brands and focus only on a few brands. Second, firms need to acquire the knowledge of operating outside the traditional media channels (Aaker 1996)

There is also a close connection between brand awareness and brand positioning. In a positioning statement, the benefits a brand offers a specific target audience in order to satisfy a particular need are addressed (Elliott and Percy 2007). Brand positioning can be thought of as the element that tells the potential customer what the brand is, who it is for, and what it offers (Elliott and Percy 2007).

Considering the great importance that brand awareness has in the creation of brand equity, and that recent research take into account also how social media influence brand awareness, brand awareness is the aspect of branding that this thesis will focus on. The approach will be a combination of Weber’s and Aaker’s ideas: the strongest form of brand awareness will be considered to be word-of-mouth (Weber 2009), that the customer has such a high brand awareness that she/he recommends the brand to others. This stage is preceded by weak brand awareness (recognition), medium brand awareness (recall), strong brand awareness (top-ofmind, the brand is the first the customer come to think of) and very strong brand awareness (dominant, the brand is the only one the customer can remember) (Aaker 1996).

Up until now, it is mainly within business to consumer market that social media have been used for the sake of strengthening the brand and to reach new customers (Wikberg, 2010). Apéria and Back (2004) claim that it is within the fast moving consumer goods sector (FMCG) that only the strong brands, either own brands or the supplier’s brands, survive. Fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) are defined as products that are sold quickly at relatively low cost. Though the absolute profit made on FMCG products is relatively small, they generally sell in large quantities, so the cumulative profit on such products can be large (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_moving_consumer_goods retrieved 100424). The strong brands are defined as those with strong support from customers. To ensure their brands survival, the brand owners have to seek an ever greater understanding of what the consumer and customers want and to develop a relationship between them and the brand.

Since existing research about social media so strongly emphasize that branding in the era of the social web is about creating a dialogue with your customer, the choice of the empirical base in this study is a medium sized company, company X, within the FMCG which is one of the 300 strongest brands in business to consumer market in Sweden. The company had a turnover in 2008 of 750 MSEK.

It seems clear that we are currently living in the midst of the boom of the use of social media. Social networks such as Facebook with some 400 million active members represent a larger community than most individual countries. But research is somewhat lagging behind this rapid development, and it is difficult to find relevant up to date studies on how social media are to be part of the branding process, how this relates to the strategy that companies have with the use of social media- if they are to be used to strengthen the brand, increase sales, find new customers, recruit more competent staff, to improve the support-function, to be part of the product development and/or to improve the internal communication (Carlsson, 2010). Also the question of how companies create brand equity through brand awareness has been debated with the upsurge of social media. “Traditional” marketers such as Aaker, claim that brand awareness is about the strength the brand’s presence has in consumer’s minds (Aaker 1996).

Social media guru Weber is of the opinion that brand awareness is to be measured not in brand recall but by dynamic measures such as customer word-of-mouth (Weber 2009). These are the contents that will be looked into in this thesis. With regard to this, the research problem of this study can be formulated as:

To increase the understanding of the role of social media for the creation of brand awareness

Chapter 2 Literature Review

The purpose of this chapter is to establish a theoretical outline. The literature presented in this chapter deals with research findings on social media; and theories relating to branding in a broader sense, and brand awareness more specifically. All the literature is described and explained in order to build a theoretical background for this study.

Definitions of Social Media

In addition to the definitions given in section 1.1.1, Wikipedia defines social media as: “media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. They support the democratization of knowledge and information and transform people from content consumers to content producers” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media. Retrieved 100420). Social media are distinct from industrial or traditional media, such as newspapers, television, and film. They are relatively inexpensive and accessible to enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information, compared to industrial media, which generally require significant resources to publish information.

Social media technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Many of these social media services can be integrated via social network aggregation platforms like Mybloglog and Plaxo (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media. Retrieved 100420). Weber uses the term “social web” instead of social media, and defines the social web as “the
online place where people with a common interest can gather to share thoughts, comments and opinions. It includes social networks such as MySpace, Gather, Facebook, BlackPlanet, Eons, LinkedIn, and hundreds more. It includes branded web destinations like Amazon, Netflix and eBay. It includes enterprise sites such as IBM, Best Buy, Cisco and Oracle. The social web is a new world of unpaid media created by individuals or enterprises on the web and they include:

Reputation aggregators: search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Ask and Live. They aggregate sites with the best product or service to offer and usually put things in order of reputation. Blogs: online journals where people can post ideas, images, and links to other web pages or sites. Some appear on personal or corporate sites, while others are hosted on Blogger, BlogHer (for women), Weblog, Tumblr, and other blogging sites. (Weber 2009) -Microblogs: Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who re known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access (http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/76460. Retrieved 2010-04-25. http://blog.twitter.com/2009/10/theres-list-for-that.html. Retrieved 2010-04-25). -Topic-specific e-communities are generally advertising supported although some are free. Hewlett Packard for example has communities on its website, and there are communities involving sports such as KayakMind for people who enjoy kayaking. Password-protected ecommunities are growing especially quickly. -Social networks are places where people with a common interest or concern come together to meet people with similar interests, express themselves and communicate. In addition to the ones abovementioned are also for example Xanga, Stumbleupon. Some sites are devoted specifically to image-sharing, such as Flickr, and some to video-sharing, YouTube serves 10 billion videos a month to U.S. viewers alone (Weber 2009).

Social Media and Marketing

According to Weber, marketing to the social web means to adopt a completely new way of communicating with an audience in a digital environment. Instead of continuing as broadcasters, marketers should become aggregators of customer communities. It is not about broadcasting marketing messages to an increasingly indifferent audience. Instead, when marketing to the social web marketers should participate in, organize and encourage social networks to which people want to belong. Rather than talking at customers, marketers should talk with them (Weber 2009).

The task of aggregating customers is done in two ways: by providing compelling content on your web site and creating retail environments that customers want to visit, and by going out and participating in the public arena (Weber 2009).

Marketing to the social web is not only for the largest multinational corporations; it may be easier and more effective, argues Weber (2009), for a relatively small or medium-size company to take maximum advantages of the social media.

Also the way of segmenting changes radically with the advent of the social web. Demographics like gender, age, education and income, lifestyle factors have become less relevant, and what really counts is segmenting according to what people do and feel- their behaviour as well as their attitudes and interests. The goal for the marketer is to identify groups of customers within the larger market that can be reached and affected through the marketing (Weber 2009).

Harris and Rae (2010) have looked at the role of social networking in establishing an integrated marketing strategy. They argue that online communities have evolved considerably since the early days of news groups and chat rooms. For example Cisco has put forward a customer community which allow customers to help themselves to technical support information via web communities. After Cisco put the technical support function online, customers began to compete with each other to answer queries that had been posted by other customers. This strategy contributes towards the creation of a community of people with similar interests who will trust and act upon the recommendations of others in the group (Harris and Rae 2010).

Harris and Rae claim that businesses are recognising the potential of generic online social networking such as Facebook and Myspace for the development of their brands and to build relationships with key customers, but that this is a very recent trend in the UK (which the data comes from) and that it is difficult at this stage to draw conclusions on how successful companies have been in using social networks in the marketing work (Harris and Rae 2010)

Weber suggests that the social web can play a role throughout the entire life cycle of product development, market introduction and market adoption. He exemplifies by stating that blogs, wikis (A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor.

Retrieved 100420) and communities can be used during the development phase on various product features.
During market introduction, podcasts and webinars (a seminar conducted over the web, designed to be interactive) to engage and educate potential customers about the new product’s benefits and applications may be used. And as the product begins to sell, the social web can be used for trouble-shooting, problem solving and customer service and support, plus the important word-of-mouth to build that buzz (Weber 2009).

Weber compares the traditional way of looking at brand equity (which will be examined in section number 2.7) in terms of brand recall- and points to that in the era where social networks have become an important media channel, brand equity is a living thing and should be measured not in terms of brand recall but by dynamic measures such as customer word-ofmouth. A strong brand ought to be based on the dialogue you have with your customers and prospects- the stronger the dialogue- the stronger the brand. The social web allows companies to have these kinds of dialogues more efficiently and less expensively than in the past (Weber 2009).

Weber’s (2009) view on how the blog should be used as a marketing tool, is that through this means of communication it is not possible to control your message. But you can present your view on a specific matter, and by that you are able to become part of the conversation. Blogs can be used for different reasons.

For small start-up companies, to have a blog is a way for an executive in the firm to talk about the industry, to talk about the market space, to establish credibility, to get the search engines going. All this helps not only with customers, it helps with media and PR efforts since reporters and
writers look through the blogs all the time for people to quote and interview. Blogs are used as references (Weber 2009).

If then you are an executive and want to raise your profile and the company’s profile, a blog is a great way to help secure speaking engagements, contributed articles, and quotes in major media. All of that adds credibility, which eventually can lead to the interest of new customers, who may be used to buying other brands, products or services but may feel more comfortable with you. An executive may also want to blog to get a feel for what is taking place in the field, and get a direct line with your customers (Weber 2009).

Why is branding interesting to look at in this study? There is a great variety of concepts relating to brands and branding. From the beginning, a brand was used to mark ownership of cattle (Aaker in Bertilsson 2009). In modern times, brands functioned as symbols that enabled consumers to identify and separate one producer from another, with the ability to trace one good back to the manufacturer holding it responsible for its quality (Koehn in Bertilsson 2009), but they are today ascribed with almost divine characteristics serving as a strategic business asset essential for firms to develop if they are to compete successfully (Aaker and Kapferer in Bertilsson 2009). This leads to the conclusion, that when looking at how social media affects marketing in a broader perspective, it makes sense to concentrate on the area of branding within marketing.

But branding in itself is as mentioned above, a large area containing many concepts and dimensions and diverging definitions. Therefore, it has been deemed necessary in this study to make an overview of key concepts in marketing, and to on the basis of this analysis, choose which concepts within branding to focus on. The areas which will be looked into in this section besides brand and branding following right hereafter, are brand strategy, brand equity and brand awareness and managing the brand portfolio. The traditional definition of a brand used in brand management literature
was formulated by the American Marketing Association in 1960 and identifies a brand as a kind of differentiating device “…distinguishing name and/or symbol (such as a logo, trademark or package design) intended to identify the goods or services of either one seller or groups of sellers, and to differentiate those goods or services from those of competitors…” (Aaker 1991, Bengtsson 1996).

A central concept in classical brand management presented by de Chernatony and Riley (1997) is that “as a result of augmenting the core offering with consumer relevant added values, consumers will be prepared to pay a price premium”. It is also pointed out, that a brand consists of a set of perceptions which serve to differentiate the product from the competition (Aaker 1996). The brand strength depends on the extent to which these perceptions are consistent, positive and shared by consumers. To improve the brand strength, managers need to shape this set of perceptions so that the target audience will think of the brand in positive terms (Aaker 1996).

According to de Chernatony and Riley (1997), it seems that from the brand managers’ perspective, the brand is to be regarded as a name to be exploited to satisfy short-term sales and goals. But for the consumer, the purpose to consume the brand might be the meanings the brand brings to the consumer, or as put by Heilbrunn (in Bengtsson 1996): “A brand may be viewed not solely as a sign added to products to differentiate them from competing goods, but as a semiotic engine whose function is to constantly produce meaning and values”. De Chernatony and McWilliam (1989) and McWilliam (1991) identify four complementary views of brands from the consumer’s perspective: a visual identifier, a guarantee of consistent quality, a shorthand device, an expression of self-concept. The idea behind is that brands can speed up and simplify consumers’ choices, and that they might reduce any believed performance risk (de Chernatony and Riley, 1997). A fairly similar view is taken by Bengtsson (1996), who states that from the consumer point of view, a brand can be understood as a multidimensional construct that represents a variety of elements which consumers consider to represent the brands.

Melin in Apéria and Back (2004) has looked at another angle of brand and branding. He states that brand building is a process which takes place both within the company and in consumers’ minds. A central part of the brand building process, according to Melin, is the concept of core value; that is the brand’s primary differentiation advantage which provides the basis for the brand’s positioning. The basic argument is that unique core values should be developed to give the brand an ability to compete. In all cases Melin investigated, the consumer and her or his needs were in the centre for choices of core value (Melin in Apéria and Back 2004), and this is very similar to the traditional view of branding from 1960. In literature about brands, it is often stated that the company appreciates strong brands because they are an asset which contribute to strong profitability, and consumers appreciate them because they reduce uncertainty. Apéria and Back (2004) however, bring forward the importance of branding for the distributors in fast moving consumer goods sector (FMCG); for them, strong brands create sales in the shops.

Weber approaches the question of branding relating it to the consequences for branding considering the emergence of the social media. He defines branding as the dialogue you have with your customer. The stronger the dialogue- the stronger the brand and vice versa. Actually he questions the very core concept of traditional marketing and branding, and means that rather than broadcasting messages to audiences and target groups, in the era of social web that we live in today, branding and marketing is about participating in social networks to which people want to belong, where dialogue with customers and between customers can flourish. (Weber 2009) He means that transparency is critical if you want customers and stakeholders to trust you and engage in dialogue with you. The objective is to have customers invite you to deliver the message to them. Messages can’t be “forced” through.(Weber 2009)

Yet another way of looking at what a brand is, is that the brand is your promise to your customer. It tells her/him what to expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from that of your competitors. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be. (www.entrepreneur.com. Retrieved 100424)

Aaker (1996) is of the opinion that contemporarily, it is hard to build a brand. One of the factors causing this, is the fragmenting markets and media today compared to 30 years ago. With a limited number of media options and only a few national media vehicles, being consistent across media and markets was easy. The media world today consists of a lot of possibilities; advertising on the Internet, interactive television, event sponsorship etc. Coordinating messages across these media without weakening the brand is a real challenge, argues Aaker.

In addition, companies are dividing the population into smaller and more refined target markets, often reaching them with specialized media and distribution channels. It is tempting to develop different brand identities for some or all of these new target segments. But, developing and managing multiple identities for the same brand presents problems for both the brand and the customer. Since media audiences invariably overleap, customers are likely to be exposed to more than one identity relating to the same brand (Aaker 1996). Considering that since Aaker wrote this book in 1996, a lot of new media channels have emerged such as social networks, on-line communities etc, see sections 2.1-2.4 for an overview of this area. Thus, the media market has become even more fragmented, and hence it is reasonable to think, following Aaker’s arguments, that it has become increasingly more difficult to build and manage a brand. These trends are very recent, so studies about social media are, as mentioned previously, fairly rare.

In FMCG products, it is argued by researchers that well-known brands are much more likely to enjoy good distribution, which helps maintain high market share. The competition for shelf space amongst FMCG products is very strong, and strong brands have a clear advantage here. The pull-strategy focuses on mass communication tools, mainly advertising and aims at creating a strong consumer demand for branded products, and distributors and retailers have very strong incentives to carry the brand. (Elliott and Percy 2007, Czinkota and Ronkainen 2010)

Brand Strategy

Brand strategy can be defined as follows: “Long-term marketing support for a brand, based on the definition of the characteristics of the target consumers. It includes understanding of their preferences, and expectations from the brand” (http://www.businessdictionary.com. Retrieved 100424).

The brand and marketing consultancy Prophet.com defines the following parts in a branding strategy: build a brand positioning, manage your brand portfolio, build your brand architecture and naming, consider the possible brand extensions (http://www.prophet.com. Retrieved 100424)

Kapferer identifies branding strategy as the term used for decisions on: the number of brand levels to be implemented; one, two or even three and the role of the corporate in the product value communication; should it be absent, strongly present or hardly present. He also considers the relative weight of these brands, and the graphic arrangement of their coexistence on all the documents, packaging and products but also industrial sites, offices and business cards of salespersons and managers as well as the degree of globalisation of the architecture as bearing elements of the branding strategy (Kapferer 2008).

Brand Equity and Brand Awareness

As mentioned in section 1.1.2.4, there is little consensus on what exactly brand equity means and there are numerous definitions for brand equity in the literature (Park and Srinivasan in Pappu et al. 2005). In marketing it has for a long time been considered that brands add value to a product, but it was not until the large wave of mergers and acquisitions in multinational corporations with large and well-known brands in the 1980’s that this value was measured in the asset value of companies. Besides the traditional way of considering asset value and net income, also “goodwill” was to be included (Elliott and Percy 2007). Even if accepted accounting procedure did not permit considering the added value of a brand name on the balance sheet, it was nevertheless being counted as part of the net value of the firm. The term brand equity stems from this context.

There exist many definitions of brand equity, defined mainly from two perspectives, either as financial considerations or as consumer perceptions of a brand. Here are some examples: “A set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, it’s name and symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to firm’s customers” (Aaker 1991)

Aaker’s point of departure in his studies on brand equity, is a consumer perspective based on consumer’s memory-based brand associations. He has provided a comprehensive definition of brand equity, namely: a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firm’s customers. (Aaker in Pappu et al. 2005) The five assets underlying brand equity identified by Aaker are: brand awareness, perceived quality, brand loyalty, brand association, other proprietary brand assets.

Aaker predicts that with the multitude of new media’s that have developed and that are likely to develop in the future, it is constantly becoming more challenging to create this brand awareness. Aaker (1996) predicts that the firms skilful in operating outside the “traditional” media channels and who can coordinate messages across all medias (advertising in newspapers, TV, radio, the Internet, event sponsorships, direct marketing, trade shows) are those that will be the winners in the battle of raising brand awareness (Aaker 1996). Weber (2009) argues against the “traditional way” of looking at brand equity in terms of brand recall- and instead claims that contemporarily, with a new marketing mindset adapted to the social media arena, brand equity is a living thing and should be measured not in terms of brand recall but by dynamic measures such as customer word-of-mouth. Instead of creating brand awareness through brand recall, it is about how likely customers are to highly recommend the good or service to others. Instead of creating brand awareness through brand recall, it is about how likely customers are to highly recommend the good or service to others (Weber 2009).

There is also a close connection between brand awareness and brand positioning. For a brand to be successful, it is not enough to reach brand recognition, a brand must occupy a salient position (top-of- mind recall or dominant recall) within the target audience’s consideration set (Elliott and Percy 2007). A brand must be positioned in its marketing communication in such a way that when the need for such a product occurs, that brand comes to mind. Then the brand must be linked to a benefit that provides a motivating reason to consider it. It is this link between the brand and the benefit that lies at the root of building positive brand attitude, which in turn builds positive brand equity (Elliott and Percy 2007). According to Kotler (2003), positioning is about enabling a brand to occupy a “distinct and valued place” in the mind of the target consumer. In a positioning statement, the benefits a brand offers a specific target audience in order to satisfy a particular need are addressed. Brand positioning can be thought of as the element that tells the potential customer what the brand is, who it is for, and what it offers (Elliott&Percy 2007 p 229). Considering the great importance that brand awareness has to create brand equity, and that recent studies are questioning the traditional way of looking at brand awareness, taking into account how it is affected by social media, this is the aspect of branding that this study will focus on, and the approach will be to look at brand awareness in the way that Aaker has done. Amongst the other 4 assets underlying brand equity, perceived quality is defined by Aaker (1996) as a brand association that is elevated to the status of a brand asset for a number of reasons: among all brand associations, only perceived quality has been shown to drive financial performance and perceived quality is linked to and often drives other aspects of how a brand is perceived (Aaker 1996).

Brand loyalty: Aaker (1996) defines the third dimension of brand equity as brand loyalty, which is not recognised by some researchers. Keller for example (1992) defines consumerbased brand equity in terms of brand knowledge and unique brand associations. The importance of including brand loyalty as a fundamental asset underlying brand equity is according to Aaker that a brand’s value to a company is largely created by the customer loyalty it commands. He also believes that considering loyalty as an asset, encourages and justifies loyalty-building programs which can then help to create and enhance brand equity. Another definition of brand loyalty, is arguing that a highly loyal customer base can be expected to generate a predictable sales and profit stream. A brand without a loyal customer base is usually vulnerable or has value only in its potential to create loyal customers (Aaker 1996).

This is true also because it is much cheaper to retain customers than to attract new ones, the costs can be 5 times higher to gain a new client than keeping an old one. (http://gmj.gallup.com/content/745/constant-customer.aspx. Retrieved 100419) The brand loyalty of existing customers also constitute an important barrier of entry towards competitors, the costs of attracting customers to change loyalties is often high (Aaker 1996). Frequent-buyer programs and the possibility to use database marketing thanks to customer data that becomes available through the joining of frequent- buyer programs are ways to strive for higher brand loyalty (Aaker 1996).

Brand associations: deals with the fact that brand equity is supported in great part by the associations that consumers make with a brand; it may be product attributes or a particular symbol. Brand associations are driven by the brand identity, what the organization wants the brand to stand for in the customer’s mind. A key to building strong brands is to develop a brand identity (Aaker 1996). Other proprietary brand assets cover assets such as channel relationships and patents that are attached to the brand (Aaker 1996).

What is managing brand portfolio strategy about? Aaker’s approach to this area is that it supports a company’s business strategy and profoundly affects the firm’s profitability. He claims that understanding and managing the brand portfolio can be a key to both the development of a winning business strategy and its successful implementation. The first key element of brand portfolio management is to make sure that each brand has a well-defined scope and role or set of roles to play in each context in which it is expected to contribute. Second, a portfolio view can ensure that the brands of the future get the resources they need to succeed, instead of that high potential brands get starved of resources, in part because their business is still small.

Third, strategic growth challenges can be addressed through portfolio. Usually that means entering new markets, offering new products or moving into upscale or value arenas. The portfolio task is to design the optimal brand strategy which can include leveraging existing brands to support such growth options.

Fifth, an offering can get complex and confusing for both the customers and even employees. In the face of competitive pressure, a cohesive, well-defined brand portfolio becomes imperative (http://www.prophet.com. Retrieved 100419).

According to Kapferer (2008) it is due to historical reasons that most companies have to manage a large portfolio of brands. The natural trend during the growth of firms has been to add new brands each time they wanted to penetrate new market segments or new distribution channels. This was done in order to avoid conflict with former segments and channels which could have endangered their old brands. The vogue of company mergers and acquisitions in the 1990’s brought additional brands that managers were reluctant to dispose of or merge with other brands. The size of brand portfolio therefore grew to increased complexity (Kapferer 2008).

There has been a rupture of this trend however, argues Kapferer, and today the trend particularly in the FMCG industry, is to reduce the size of portfolios as soon as possible. The reasons are that it is considered difficult to promote several brands to retailers at the same time, there is simply not enough shelf space. A few brands will be promoted to gain sufficient market share, and the others will be abandoned.

Furthermore, Kapferer highlights that the concentration of the distribution trade has reduced the number of retailers and has even almost suppressed certain retail channels and small businesses. Brands that were previously uniquely handled by specific distribution channels and sold only in certain stores, may now be found in a single wholesale or purchasing group. This tends to lead to a reduction in the numbers of brands. Another strong trend in the FMCG industry is the creating of distributors’ own brands. This, together with the fact that supermarket shelf space is limited, leads to the reduction of the space allocated to the other brands.

There is also a concentration of industrial production. International competition has put the emphasis on high productivity and low costs and has led to the regrouping of production units and R&D activities. There is less justification for large brand portfolios when the products, even if they are varied, come from the same factories or even the same production lines. Finally consumers show signs of being overwhelmed and confused by the
multitude of brands. A response from manufacturers is to rationalise the number of brands. Brand internalisation and the abolishing of national barriers is also a reason to the reduction of the number of brands in the brand portfolio, according to Kapferer. In Europe for example, class, lifestyle and consumer needs are no longer exclusive for a single country. The investment required to establish a significant global presence means that firms can only maintain a small number of brands, or even one single brand for companies with a monobrand strategy such as Siemens, Mitsubishi and Philips (Kapferer 2008).

A brand portfolio reflects, as claimed by Elliott and Percy (2007), the various brands marketed by a company within a particular product category, and a brand line is all of the products marketed under a single brand name. They also suggest that brands may be thought of in terms of a hierarchy. A corporate (or company) brand identifies the parent company, brands like Daimler-Benz. A group brand is a brand name that is used in more than one category, brands like Yamaha that are used to market diverse products such as pianos and motorcycles. At the bottom of the hierarchy are single brands, where the name is restricted to a single product category (Elliott and Percy 2007).

Brand portfolio has been defined as the mix of brands and sub-brands owned by an organization. This portfolio should be actively managed to ensure effective brand management. For example, Procter & Gamble and Unilever both have a large portfolio of brands; General Motors manages Buick, Cadillac, Dodge and other brands; Hallmark manages the Hallmark, Shoebox, and Crayola brands among other (Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.

O’Donnell argues that a well-orchestrated brand portfolio strategy needs to be fully integrated with the company’s business model, and mix well with such economic factors as pricing policies, manufacturing scale and distribution policies (Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.). In Wikipedia, three key levels of managing the brand portfolio are identified: – Corporate brand/umbrella brand/family brand.

These are consumer-facing brands used across all the firm’s activities, and this name is how they are known to all their stakeholders- consumers, employees, shareholders, partners, suppliers and other parties. Examples include Virgin Group and Heinz. – Endorsed brands, and sub-brands

These brands include a parent brand which may be a corporate brand, an umbrella brand, or a family brand as an endorsement to a sub-brand or an individual product brand. The endorsement should add credibility to the endorsed sub-brand in the eyes of consumers. Examples are Nestlé KitKat, Sony PlayStation.

Individual Product Brand

The individual brands are presented to consumers and the parent company name is given little or no prominence. Other stakeholders, like shareholders or partners, will know the producer by its company name. Examples are Procter & Gamble’s Pampers or Unilever’s Dove. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_architecture. Retrieved 100425)

Summary

The aim of this chapter was to review and explain the relevant literature in the field of social media on one hand and branding in general and brand equity and brand awareness in particular on the other hand; in order to present to the reader the state-of-the art research in this domain. In the following chapter, this literature review will serve to create a suitable theoretical framework to solve the research problem, and in order to do this, the precise research questions will be formulated.

Conceptual Framework Research Questions and Frame of Reference

The aim of this chapter is to, based on the introduction and the literature review, formulate the research questions which will enable the data collection and the analysis of this to be done in a proper way to solve the research problem.

Research Problem and Research Discussion

The research problem in this thesis, as formulated in the introduction in chapter 1 is: “To increase the understanding of the role of social media for the creation of brand awareness” Considering that the use of social media to create brand awareness and ultimately to create brand equity in the forms of increased sales is a very recent trend, we need to find answers to the following research question of an exploratory character: Research question 1: What is the purpose of using social media to create brand awareness?

Carlsson (2010) claims that social media can be very valuable for creating long term relations and for building brand awareness. There are a variety of social media activities that can be initiated to build brand awareness according to Carlsson (2010), the using of a company blog for example gives the possibility to spread the corporate philosophy and to show the soul of the company. It gives the possibility for fans to further spread the company culture. YouTube or Facebook may be used in the same way. Social media also give the possibility to position the company or the brand within a specific category.

With regard to the arguments presented by Carlsson, I will be looking at what purposes company X, which constitutes the case study in this thesis, has by using social media to create brand awareness.

Research question 2: How can the social media activities used to create brand awareness be described?
As mentioned in chapter 1, many professionals within marketing predict that in 2010, social media will really become integrated in the operations of companies and truly become important tools in the communication. Carlsson (2010) is of the opinion that it is not a good enough reason to be active in social media simply because everybody else is. The early stage of development of this media leads to the assumption that there might be a discrepancy between what the goal is of using social media to create brand awareness and how it is actually used in reality to create brand awareness. Therefore the case study will deal with this matter, and I will ask company X how they actually use social media activities to create brand awareness.

Research question 3: What advantages are there in using social media to create brand awareness Weber (2009) argues that the social media offers the company a possibility to create dialogue with the customer, social media may lead to creating the strongest brand awareness possible, word-of-mouth-, the stage in which the customer recommends the brand to another person. In this thesis, an investigation will be made concerning whether or not the company X in the case study can distinguish any advantages in using social media to create brand awareness, and if so, how these advantages are built up.

Research question 4: What disadvantages are there in using social media to create brand awareness? Aaker (1996) is of the opinion that the growing number of media makes it increasingly difficult for companies to create brand awareness. Getting involved in social media brings with it an opening up of the company and increased transparency (Carlsson 2010). Each company should consider, before becoming involved and active in social media, how open the company wants to be, which type of information the company wants to share and why. It is also important to create understanding and acceptance internally for the use of social media. It is necessary to find the balance between what feels good for the company and what is interesting for the reader. A too strict information policy probably leads to that the contents are not interesting and that nobody reads them. Questions that may arise with the starting up of getting involved in social media are: what risks does the openness entail? What happens if competitors imitate us and make use of our openness? What if somebody steals our company’s ideas? (Carlsson 2010) Considering the above-mentioned issues, the last research question deals with if the company in the case study can identify any disadvantages in using social media to create brand awareness, and if so, what these disadvantages these are.

The frame of reference has been defined by the dictionary Merriam-Webster as “ a set of ideas, conditions or assumptions that determine how something will be approached, perceived or understood” (Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.) This thesis aims at providing an increased understanding of how social media create brand awareness, and a presentation of the theoretical framework for marketing with the use of social media and brand awareness will now be presented:

Concerning how to manage marketing with the use of social media, the analysis will be based on the findings of Weber. Weber argues, as previously mentioned, that marketing within social media means to adopt a completely new way of communicating with an audience in a digital environment. Instead of continuing as broadcasters, marketers should become aggregators of customer communities. It is not about broadcasting marketing messages to an increasingly indifferent audience, but about participating in, organizing and encouraging social networks to which people want to belong. The catchword should be talking with customers instead of at them.

The task of aggregating customers is done in two ways: by providing compelling content on your web site and creating retail environments that customers want to visit, and by going out and participating in the public arena. Also the way of segmenting changes radically, demographics like gender, age, education and income, lifestyle factors are less relevant, and what really counts is segmenting according to what people do and feel- their behaviour as well as their attitudes and interests. The goal for the marketer is to identify groups of customers within the larger market that can be reached and affected through the marketing. Weber (2009) suggests that the social web can play a role throughout the entire life cycle of product development, market introduction and market adoption. As regards brand awareness, the analysis will be based on a combination of the traditional view defended by Aaker concerning brand awareness, and the new perspective that Weber presents. This leads to the following assumption: the strongest form of brand awareness will be considered to be word-of-mouth, i e that the customer has such a high brand awareness that she/he recommends the brand to others. This stage is preceded by very strong brand awareness (dominant, the brand is the only one the customer can remember), strong brand awareness (top-of-mind, the brand is the first the customer come to think of), medium brand awareness (recall) and weak brand awareness (recognition).

How, then, can one reach the strongest form of brand awareness? In this thesis it is assumed, following Aaker’s ideas, that building a brand contemporarily is hard, and that the winning concept is to coordinate messages across all the different media. To create awareness is a process with different layers, ranging from weak brand awareness to the strongest form of brand awareness.

The first steps in the process are for firms, besides having a broad sales base, to acquire the knowledge of operating outside the traditional media channels. The highest layer of awareness can be created through acting as aggregators of customer communities and participate in, organize and encourage social networks to which people want to belong instead of broadcasting marketing messages to an increasingly indifferent audience.

In this study, focus is put on business to consumer market in general and fast moving consumer goods in particular. The business to business market has not been a primary subject of the study. This has made it possible to create a deeper understanding of the relevant area.

The aim of this chapter was to present the theoretical frame of reference for this study. This can be summarized as follows: the aim of this thesis is to provide an understanding of the role of social media for the creation of brand awareness. The theoretical base in this area is fairly scarce. This study will however as concerns social media, be based on the findings of Weber. Concerning brand awareness, a combination of Aaker’s model and Weber’s finding has been made. It describes various degrees of brand awareness as in the picture above. Focus in the study is limited to business to consumer markets and in particular fast moving goods sector. In the following chapter, the research methodology choices will be discussed and
justified.

Chapter 4: Methodology

This chapter presents the methodology planned to be used in this study. Diverse alternatives for research approaches, designs, strategies, sample selection, data collection methods and data analysis are discussed and the specific choices made in this research proposal are clarified. Finally, critical questions about how to handle reliability and validity of the study are presented.

A research purpose provides the basic direction for carrying out the research. Basically, in social research, there are three categories of research purpose: exploration, description, and explanation (Saunders et al. 2009). These categories differ in several aspects including the way research questions or hypotheses are formulated, and the way data are collected.

This type of research is typically used when a researcher examines a new interest or when the subject of study itself is relatively new. The major emphasis of exploratory research is on the discovery of ideas and insights (Saunders et al. 2009). The research questions or assumptions might be difficult to understand because the phenomenon of interest is considerably new and unfamiliar to the researcher. More information is needed to clarify the concept and scope of the study and to make the researcher understand the problem better. The exploratory research could be conducted through a number of techniques including literature review, interviews, focus group and case study.

Descriptive research is employed to provide an accurate snapshot of some aspect of the observed persons, events, situations, and environments. Descriptive research is conducted to describe situations and events. The researcher observes and then describes what was observed (Babbie 2004). This type of research purpose is frequently used when a problem is well structured.

The focus of this research purpose is on studying a situation or a problem in order to explain the relationships among variables (Saunders et al. 2009). It is concerned with determining cause-and-effect relationships. Explanatory research aims to develop precise theory that can be used to definitively explain the phenomena, which leads to the generalization from the research. Does a change in one event bring about a corresponding change in another event? Since little prior knowledge of the relations between social media and branding exists, the research purpose is exploratory and descriptive.

Inductive Versus Deductive

The inductive approach typically moves from specific observations to broader generalizations and theories. The researchers may begin with specific observations and measures, to detect patterns and regularities, and then formulate some tentative hypotheses that they can explore. They might end up by developing some general conclusions or theories. The study of a small sample size of subjects might be appropriate (Saunders et al. 2009). In contrast, a deductive approach commonly works from the more general to the more specific. Researchers might begin by examining theories related to their topic of interest. They then narrow those theories down to more specific research questions or hypotheses that can be tested. Then, the researchers answer questions or confirm hypotheses through a number of research methods, mainly in quantitative ways in order to be able to generalize the findings (Saunders et al. 2009).

These two approaches are different ways to conduct research. In short, the difference between two approaches is that one is building the theory (inductive) while the other one is testing the theory (deductive). The selection of approach depends on the extent to which existing knowledge and theories are available related to the topic of interest. The research problem was formulated based on existing theory, and the intention is to create more knowledge about specific factors. For this reason, a deductive approach has been adopted in this thesis.

There are two major research methods, quantitative and qualitative. Each method is considerably different in the way data are collected and analyzed. Both methods are widely used in business research. A quantitative method means that the data collection techniques and data analysis procedures that generate or use numerical data. In contrast, qualitative method refers to any data collection techniques and data analysis procedures that generate or use non-numerical data (Saunders et al. 2009). It is the research problems and purposes that determine which method is more appropriate.

For quantitative study, the vital skills needed for the researcher are the ability to develop proper hypotheses, test them with proper statistical techniques, and interpret statistical information into descriptive information. A large sample size is preferred and it should be possible to generalize from the findings.

In most qualitative research there are, in contrast to quantitative research, no statistical calculations aimed at establishing correlations between certain stated variables, with the ambition to give an exact representation of an objective reality “out there”. It is possible to use a variety of qualitative techniques such as interviews, observations, and analysis of texts and documents. Using different techniques and combining them within
one study gives a possibility to cover multiple perspectives of the phenomenon under study (Yin 2009). When examining the research problem in this thesis, a qualitative research method has been chosen. The reason is that there are complex connections between various factors that can not be quantified numerically, and there is a need to create a deeper understanding of the situation.

The research strategy refers to the research procedure used to answer research questions and fulfil the purposes of the research. The choice of research strategy is guided by the research questions and objectives, the extent of existing knowledge, the amount of time and other resources available, and the researcher’s philosophical foundation (Saunders et al. 2009). There are several research procedures that can be labelled as research strategies including case study, survey and experiment.

If the phenomena to be investigated are complex and deeply embedded in the organisational context of a company, the case study can be chosen as a suitable research strategy (Yin (2009). When conducting a case study, a natural question is whether to focus on one case or go for multiple cases. Yin (2009) argues for choosing one case if it represents a unique or extreme case of the studied phenomenon. Usually, one case implies a one case company, although Yin (2009) discusses the embedded case design, where the main case can contain several intertwined sub-cases. For example, one and the same company in different markets can become the embedded case with local markets as sub-cases and the corporate one as an umbrella case.

A case study is most often used in exploratory and explanatory research with the ability to answer the question ‘why’ as well as ‘what’ and ‘how’ (Saunders et al. 2009). Both quantitative and qualitative techniques can be applied for data collection in case study research (Yin 2009).

The survey research strategy is the most popular and common strategy for social research, including business disciplines (Saunders et al. 2009). This strategy can be used to answer “who”, “what”, “where” and “how” questions and is mainly used in descriptive and exploratory research. It is generally associated with the deductive research approach. In addition, a survey strategy allows researchers to collect a large amount of data from a substantial population at a very low cost. The data are typically quantitative and gathered by questionnaire. The data can be easily compared and analyzed using various statistical techniques.

Survey is usually the preferred research strategy for researchers who are interested in collecting original data to describe a population that is too large to observe directly. Careful probability sampling provides a group of respondents whose characteristics may be taken to reflect those of the larger population, and carefully constructed standardized questionnaires provide data in the same form from all respondents (Babbie 2004). Questionnaires are not the only data collection technique in the survey research strategy. Structured observation and interviews can also be employed in survey research, but the questionnaire remains the most commonly used tool in survey.

Experiment

Experiment is used in both natural and social science research. Experiment tends to be used in exploratory and explanatory study to answer “how” and “why” questions (Saunders et al. 2009). Two groups are set and members in each group are basically similar in all aspects. The researcher uses one group as the experimental group and another one as the control group. At the beginning, the dependent variable is measured for both groups and the two measurements are compared with each other. Then, the researcher places some form of planned intervention or manipulation only to the experimental group. The intervention or manipulation is the independent variable. Finally, the dependent variable from each group is re-measured. The researcher is now able to compare the results before and after the manipulation of the independent variable for both the experimental and the control group. This allows the researcher to see if there is a causal relationship between the independent and dependent variables. This experimental research strategy can be conducted in either laboratory experiments or field experiments (Saunders et al. 2009). In business disciplines, an experiment strategy could be used in several ways but this research strategy is typically expensive and complicated.

This research will be conducted as a single case study, of how the selected company X uses social media to create brand awareness. The reason why this case was chosen, is that company X has one of the 300 strongest brands in the business to consumer sector in Sweden, their products classify amongst the fast moving consumer goods industries, and initial research indicates that company X uses social media currently. The intention is to create a deeper knowledge about the case in question, and to investigate deeply into the organizational context of this case. The choice was made to make an in-depth study of one case, instead of looking at several cases in a more superficial way.

Sample Selection

For some research, it might be possible to collect and analyze data from every possible case or member of the whole interested population if such research focuses on a small group. However, most research needs to employ sampling procedures because the group of interest is typically large, containing too many cases or members which make it impossible to collect data from all of them. Sampling techniques are divided into two broad categories, probability and non-probability.

In probability sampling, each unit or element in the sampling frame has an equally known chance of being included in the sample, which allows for statistical inferences. This allows researchers to answer research questions and to achieve research purposes that require them to estimate statistically the characteristics of the population inferred from the sample. Probability sampling is often associated with survey and experimental research strategies.

In contrast, in non-probability sampling, it is not possible to make valid inferences about the population. All non-probability samples rely on personal judgment somewhere in the process, which implies that such samples derived from non-probability sampling are not necessarily representative of the entire population. Researchers may still be able to generalize from nonprobability samples about the population, but not from a statistical standpoint. Nonprobability sampling is more generally used in case study research (Saunders et al. 2009). In this study, the intention is to gather information about how social media create brand awareness. This research will be conducted using non-probability sampling. A judgmental selection has been used to choose the company that will be investigated and the employees that will be interviewed.

Data Collection Methods

There are two types of data collection methods. The critical distinction between the types of data is that primary data is collected by the researcher specifically for the purpose for which the data are required. Secondary data have been collected for another primary purpose e.g. all secondary data were primary data for another study. Both primary and secondary data sources can yield quantitative or qualitative data (Babbie 2004).

Primary data is collected through the use of observation, interviews or questionnaires. Secondary data include both raw data and published summaries, it may include data collected by other organisations, governments, or data gathered by research organisations. Routine data collected by institutions participating in an activity (e.g. schools, health centres) are exceptionally good sources of secondary data which could not be replicated by primary data collection without unreasonable expense. The use of secondary data can result cost and time savings (Saunders et al. 2009).

In this study, it is important to get information directly from the persons responsible for information and branding of the company chosen and to gather their views and opinions. But since it is a very recent phenomenon we are looking at, it has also been deemed necessary to build on secondary data (the secondary data has been collected through search on the company’s website); i e data collected for other purposes, in combination with using primary data collection, where the method used will be semi-structured interview.

With regard to data analysis, quantitative analysis is the numerical representation and manipulation of observations for the purpose of describing and explaining the phenomena that those observations reflect while qualitative analysis refers to the non-numerical examination and interpretation of observations for the purpose of discovering underlying meanings and patterns of relationships (Babbie 2004).

Qualitative analysis begins with the raw data generated by first-hand observations, in-depth interviews or other types of non-numerical data. The key step in processing such data for analysis is coding, classifying or categorizing pieces of data in terms of theoretical concepts (Saunders et al. 2009). Qualitative data processing means spending hours reading and rereading the data files, creating and assigning codes. This is not distinct from data analysis, as the act of coding data will give rise to insights as to patterns in the phenomena under study (Babbie 2004).

When analyzing the interviews, it will most likely not be possible to give numerical description to the answers. Instead they will be categorized using a qualitative data analysis.

Reliability estimates the extent to which data collection technique will yield consistent findings, similar observations would be made or conclusions reached by other researchers or there is transparency in how sense was made from the raw data – or more simply the degree to which an instrument measures the same way each time it is used in under the same conditions with the same subjects. Validity, on the other hand, estimates the extent to which data collection method accurately measure what they were intended to measure, the degree to which you are measuring what you are supposed to (Saunders et al. 2009).

Source: Columbia Centre for New Media Teaching and Learning 2009 Figure 4: above shows three possible situations. In the first one, the target is hit consistently, but the centre of the target is missed. We are consistently and systematically measuring the wrong value for all respondents. This measure is reliable, but no valid – that is, it is consistent but wrong. The second situation shows hits that are randomly spread across the target. We seldom hit the centre of the target but, on average, we are getting the right answer for the group. In this case, we get a valid group estimate, but we are inconsistent. The third scenario shows a consistently hit at the centre of the target. The measure is both reliable and valid. The intention in this study is to use measurement tools that are both reliable and valid as shown in situation three above. To increase the reliability in this study, questions were sent beforehand to enable the respondents to prepare the questions and provide more complete answers. It was the goal to make this interview with the persons in charge of information and branding at the company, and very much due to the good will of the respondents it was possible to make the interviews.

Summary

The aim of this chapter was to present the methodology used in this study. It can be summarized as follows: The study is exploratory and descriptive, the approach deductive and qualitative, the strategy a single case study, the sample selection based non-probability samples, the data collection method is primary and secondary data, the data analysis used qualitative data analysis and careful attention has been given to create high reliability and validity in the study.

Chapter 5 Empirical Data

In this chapter the most important parts of the interview with representatives will be highlighted regarding how they use social media to create brand awareness. The headings follow the research questions identified to answer the research problem. The identity of company X is kept hidden, following the request of the respondents. It is a medium sized company within the FMCG, and the company’s brand ranks as one of the top 300 brands in business to consumer market in Sweden. There are two respondents, the head of information (HI) and the head of branding (HB).

The purpose of using social media in the process of creating brand awareness is that social media are a part of the company’s communications and branding. According to HB, the company needs to build credibility by being good at listening and by being relevant. In general terms, the way in which company X views social media and brand awareness is that social media are important in the communications with the consumers. The respondents describe social arenas on the net as digital ecosystems. This is where conversations about the company take place, whether the company wants it or not. By listening, participating and contributing the company can find new ways to strengthen the brand.

How Can the Social Media Activities Used to Create Brand Awareness Be Described?

HB describes that the way in which brand awareness is created traditionally in the company is a combination of communication in traditional media, through strong presence in the stores close to the customers, through PR, the brand is one of the strongest in Sweden and has in interesting history and owners’ structure which create a lot of media attention. Sponsoring is also used, corporate social responsibility and other channels too. The company’s proactive social media involvement includes the company site and the running of the company’s own blog. The company does not run a company page at Facebook. The reactive social media involvement builds on following what is said about the company and the products on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, digital newspapers/digital journals etc. If the company can find opinions/views or information or similar items about the company and/or the products, an evaluation of this piece of information is made, and often the company responds and comments to the opinion/information. In that way, the company can contribute in creating a deeper knowledge about the issue subject of the debate. At the same time, the company gets a picture of how the consumer sees the company brand. In the launching of new products social media are used in different ways in the communication. Social media are used for improving communication with the customers, to maintain a good dialogue and to learn what customers are interested in and what they like.

This is the way social media are used today. The company is currently revising the working methods concerning social media. According to HI, it is not possible to distinguish any particular kind of social media that is more important than others, what is interesting is the whole flow.

There are also other purposes of using social media. One is to increase sales, where social media can be one way to increase sales, in particular in connection with product launching campaigns. Social media are also used to find new customers, in the sense that when the company creates a dialogue around the brand, this paves the way for new consumers wanting to test the products. Social media are also used for recruitment purposes, to collect information. In product development, there are elements of social media that are included. The main areas within product development where social media come in are to collect information, to follow trends (including international trends), to make analyses, to follow research results, to follow interesting dialogues and finally active bloggers are invited to give direct input in the product development. HI predicts that within an 18-month period, the company will be even more active and will measure and follow up in a more structured way than is done today. Moreover, a PR-strategy including social media will be developed.

The Use of Social Media to Create Various Levels of Brand Awareness

The company uses social media to create recognition by establishing dialogue with the consumers. One way of establishing this dialogue is the company blog. The company has used the blog to create PR in connection with the launch of new film commercials.

HB responds that social media are used to create brand recall for new products and subbrands under the corporate brand. One example is in connection with the launch of a product directed to parents with smaller children. Different bloggers within the industry spread the product news to blogging parents, who were invited to receive the product for free and also received material and a knitting description for a soft toy with the same name as the product. Images were put on the web by knitting parents, and were spread to others and through this we created a “buzz” around the product, it was talked about and discussed in different places on the net.

This is used to a limited extent, according to HB. At this very moment, plans concerning this are being elaborated, for example by connecting the PR-strategy to all other communication, i e social media are one piece of the puzzle in the total strategy for communications. Concerning social media and the strongest forms of brand awareness, dominant and word-ofmouth, this is used to a limited extent, the company is currently revising how to develop the strongest forms of brand awareness.

Measuring of Brand Awareness

Brand awareness considering traditional media is measured through VM-tracking and other market researches and relevant analyses. (author’s note: VM-tracking means varumärkestracking. With the increased number of media, it has become more difficult to know if the investments in marketing give the wanted result. VM-tracking can include interviews with representatives from the target group, concerning their knowledge and feelings for the company’s brand and competitors’ brands. These interviews are compared with how large investments in marketing that have been made, which media have been used etc. The analysis gives an indication of what effect the investments should have lead to, given the investments made [www.demoskop.se. Retrieved 10-05-22])

Measuring brand awareness considering the use of social media is done with the use of a media agency and a web agency and their tools of analysis in connection with campaigns and activities.
What is measured and how it is measured depends on the activity or campaign. It may be number of visits, showing of pages, number of comments, number of fans, subscribers etc, number of sites and blogs that links to the company’s proactive contents, search-words and search phrases in search engines, the number of people writing about the company blog, the industry, a certain type of products or particular words, sales/turnover. Other comments from HB regarding measuring of brand awareness, are that a keyword for the company is the importance of being relevant in the channels where the company wants to be, including in social media. HB says that this is the reason why it is essential to continuously develop the company’s skills to assure that the information ranks high on search-engines and is interesting for the consumers. Also, the following up and the evaluation of social media will be done in a more in-depth way in the following 18-months period.

Advantages in Using Social Media to Create Brand Awareness

The upsurge of social media have changed the way in which the company works with brand awareness, the company both has to be active in social media and wants to be active in social media. HB sees clear advantages, but also sees no alternative to not using social media: “The discussion about our brand goes on in social media whether we choose to become involved or not. If we are actively involved in social media we can have an influence on what is being said and an influence in questions that are important to us in different ways. Our company holds a strong reputation and has a lot to gain from being present in social media and to build credibility and to create a positive dialogue where great parts of our target group are and where they talk about us”.

Disadvantages in Using Social Media to Create Brand Awareness

The respondents are not pointing at explicit disadvantages in using social media to create brand awareness, but they emphasize that there is no alternative for them to not being active in social media. The things that are mentioned, are that the company constantly needs to assure that they remain relevant within social media, and to really consider what the purpose is by the involvement in social media.

Chapter 6: Data Analysis

In the following chapter, the collected data will be analyzed building on the theoretical framework outlined in chapter 3.
The overarching goal of this thesis is to build up an answer to the research problem: “To increase the understanding of the role of social media for the creation of brand awareness”. The literature review served to provide an overview of what current literature says about various parts that are explicitly and implicitly implied in the research problem. The current concepts were introduced: social media, social media and marketing, phases in the product life cycle in which social media may be used, social media and branding, brand and branding in general and branding in fast moving consumer goods sector, brand strategy, brand equity and brand awareness, the management of brand portfolio. The area of branding is widespread and leads into several directions. The aim was to cover the central concepts related to branding which justify which aspects of branding are the most important ones when it comes to social media.

In this study, the aspect of branding that has been deemed central is brand equity –the value added to the product- and brand awareness –which by Aaker has been considered the most important element building the brand equity.

The essential parts of the literature review has then boiled down to the frame of reference, where the theoretical framework that this study is based upon is presented. Parts of the frame of reference are based upon the findings of Weber (2009), and parts are based upon Aaker’s studies (1991, 1996, 2004, 2008).

Weber (2009) claims that marketing within social media is to adopt a completely new way of communicating with the customers. It is not about broadcasting marketing messages, but about participating in, organizing and encouraging social networks. The marketing function should act as aggregators of customer communities, instead of as broadcasters (Weber 2009). The task of aggregating customers can be done in two ways according to Weber (2009), by providing compelling content on the company website, and by going out and participating in the public arena.

The single case study looks at how company X can help us to increase our understanding of how social media create brand awareness, and thanks to the good will of the respondents, important information about how these questions are tackled in real business operations has become available and presented in chapter 5. As regards the purposes of using social media to create brand awareness, it seems clear that the company’s purposes to a large extent are based on the studies of Weber. The company states their purpose of using social media to create brand awareness is that this channel is important in the communications with the consumers. The respondents have described that they view social media as digital ecosystems. For good and bad, this is the place where people talk about the company, whether the company wants that or not. By listening, participating and contributing, the company can find new ways to strengthen the brand.

The company’s purposes coincide to a relatively large extent with what is stated by theory, although the company does not go so far as theory. The company is currently revising their communication strategy in which consideration of how the whole flow of social media play a part in the total strategy. The company does not seem to be in a stage where they completely choose a new path for their marketing and communications functions and become solely aggregators of customers, they do seem to keep the traditional way of marketing through the broadcasting of marketing messages.

It should be noted here, and that is true for the whole study on social media, that this is a very recent phenomenon, and that the company subject for the empirical study here, is also currently revising their overall goals and strategy for how to use social media to create brand awareness.

How Can the Social Media Activities Used to Create Brand Awareness Be Described?

Aaker (1996) argues that there exist various levels or degrees of brand awareness, ranging from weak brand awareness to the strongest brand awareness. The lowest degree of brand awareness is weak, recognition, where the customers has been exposed to the brand. Then follows brand recall, medium brand awareness. The customer can recall certain brands within a product group. After this comes top-of-mind, strong brand awareness, it is the first brand the customer can recall. Dominant is very strong brand awareness, it is the only brand that the customer can recall (Aaker 1996). The strongest form of brand awareness is word-of-mouth, the customer recommends the brand to another person (Weber 2009). Carlsson (2010) is of the opinion that it is not a good enough reason to be active in social media because everybody else is.

As regards the way in which the company in the case study uses social media activities to create brand awareness, and to what extent different degrees of brand awareness is created, one remark could be that it is yet too early
to clearly define what steps are made to reach various degrees of brand awareness. The methods used in the reaching of the weakest form of brand awareness is the blog, where the intention is to create a dialogue. The company wants to reach brand recall for example in connection with the launch of new products and sub-brands under the corporate brand. It seems that in general the way in which social media are used, are to create a dialogue with the customers, and to create some form of brand awareness, be it weak, medium, strong, very strong or the strongest form. It seems like the company wants to create a “buzz”, that the company gets talked about, rather than making clear plans for how they can maximize the number of personal recommendations of the brand to other people etc.

Once again it is true that we are currently in the early stage of the use of social media, and the company empirically studied is revising their communications strategy in which social media will play a part. Hence, the combination of the models of Aaker and Weber on various degrees of brand awareness that was presented in the frame of reference, seems to have relatively little bearing in the case studied. Aaker (1996) says that to reach high brand awareness, it is important to have a broad sales base and the knowledge of operating outside the traditional media channels. Considering this, it seems that the company in this case study has the possibilities of really reaching and maintaining the strongest brand awareness by the use of social media; the company has a steadily increasing turnover rate, and underlines themselves the importance of learning more about how to make the best use of social media related to branding. In contrast with the argument of Carlsson, it does not seem like the company is involved in social media because everybody else is, but the company wants to listen and take part in the dialogue with consumers in social media. In the case in this study, the proactive ways in which social media are used are the company site and the company blog. Reactive activities include following what is said about the company and the products on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, digital newpapers etc; and also responding and commenting in the debate. By doing that, the company aspires to create deeper knowledge about the subject debated.

Social media are also used in the launch of new products, and in different stages in the product development social media are used. Although this is true, it does not seem as if all the possibilities that Weber (2009) mentions are used, to use podcasts and webinars and wikis for example. One explanation could be that these methods are not yet so common on the Swedish market.

Advantages in Using Social Media to Create Brand Awareness

One of the most important advantages Weber (2009) has put forward in this area, is the possibility to create dialogue with the customer and through this to create the strongest brand awareness. This is exactly the item that the company mentions as the most important advantage with social media, to talk to customers and to influence what is being said about the company and the products in social media. It is particularly underlined, that the company in the case study has a strong reputation and that they have a lot to gain from being present in social media.

Disadvantages in Using Social Media to Create Brand Awareness

The risks and disadvantages that were mentioned by Carlsson (2010) in section 3.1 were not brought up by the respondents, so an analysis of how social media can become a risk for the company was not possible to make. Instead, the respondents point to that there is no real option for this kind of company in the fast moving consumer goods sector to not being active in social media, the discussion about their brand goes on in social media whether the company chooses to participate in this discussion or not. Carlsson (2010) also draws attention to the issue of the importance for the company to really find the balance between what kind of information the company can go out with without damaging the company’s vital interests, and the necessity of providing interesting contents for the reader. A too strict information policy would lead to that the contents are not interesting and that nobody is interested in reading them, let alone debating them.

Chapter 7: Conclusions and Suggestions

The purpose of this study was to, based on the fact that social media are predicted to really have a strong breakthrough in the corporate sector in this year of 2010, look at how companies use them in branding. Initial research on the branding area and on the social media area led to the formulation of the research problem as previously described, to increase the understanding of the role of social media for the creation of brand awareness. The specific area of fast moving goods sector within business to consumer market was chosen. The whole approach of this study has been exploratory and descriptive, as mentioned in the methodology chapter. With social media, we are sailing into unknown waters, and there is no clear sea-map yet. The necessary parameters allowing for comparative studies being made on the usability of social media in the creation of brand awareness do not yet exist, or at least they were not possible to find within the literature overview which was made in this study. The most important message that comes across from the interview with the company in the case study, is that the great challenge that the respondents see, is for the company to find the right balance between providing contents of great interest for the audience, while at the same time respecting what kind of information the company can really go out with- it is about being relevant in social media and in all other channels of communication. This means a constant need for learning and developing new knowledge, for measuring and following up. Another remark is that Weber (2010) points to the necessity of creating interest, creating a buzz about the brand in social media, to feed the discussions with information that makes the readers interested in the brand. In the case study, this approach is indeed used, in connection with the release of new commercial films for example. But perhaps is it premature to expect at this stage, to expect companies to have a clear strategy for how to reach the different stages of brand awareness, from the weakest (recognition) to the strongest (word-of-mouth). In addition, in contrast with the findings by Weber explained in the frame of reference, it seems like the company does not abandon completely the traditional way of marketing for marketing in social media, and do not fully follow the idea of switching from being broadcasters of messages to being aggregators of customer communities. Instead, what was considered more important by the company in the case study, was to integrate social media in the total communications and PR-strategy, a task which is actually being performed at this very moment.

One comment on the setting up of this kind of integrated strategy in which social media take part, is for future research to look at the possibilities that social media create in terms of reach out and affordability to establish dialogue. The perspective in this study has been a qualitative one.

It would be very interesting to make a more quantitative study looking at now that everybody with an internet access can participate in social media, why is it not yet used in a more systematic way in the corporate sector? What parts in the communications, making use of the social web, generate costs? It is clear how much an ad costs per line, but how does one estimate the costs of having rapid and responsive communications from a company? In conclusion, the knowledge about the research problem ought to be greater with the findings presented in this paper.

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