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MANAGING THE MARKETING INTERNET-COMMUNICATIONS ON THE BASIS OF CROWD-TECHNOLOGIES
Poltorak Kateryna
Postgraduate of the Industrial Marketing Department of the National Technical University of Ukraine "Kyiv Polytechnical Institute "
ABSTRACT
In the article it has been studied the transformation of the marketing communications in conditions of the information society. It has been found out that the current model of communication is losing its topicality due to the change of communication process scheme. It has been studied that in the present conditions of the Internet the users are organized into communities and influence one another's behavior. According to this it has been suggested a new communication influence model that is supposed two contours of communication management where the first is directed to the Internet communities and the second one immediately on the consumer. The author has defined the crowd-technologies and crowd-marketing. In accordance to this model it has been developed a structural-logical scheme of choosing the communication strategies and management of consumers' behavior. The strategy of the consumer's behavior management is formed at defining the stage of the consumer's readiness to buy and the corresponding communication environment. The author has formed strategies matrix and defined the essence of the given strategies. The suggested scientific-methodical points can be used in enterprises practice to increase the efficiency of communication policy of the company.
Development of the information society, spreading the Internet-technologies in particular, leads to the transformation of the traditional processes of economic activity. So, one of the key factors of the successful functioning of enterprises is an effective system of marketing communications. However the traditional approaches and methods to the communication process were developed during the epoch of the industrial society and they are losing their topicality in all round informatization of the society. In place new types of communication appear that are formed in the Internet-technologies conditions and they are characteristic of a new society type. As a result there arises necessity to develop approaches to their management.
Spread of information technologies make conditions to all round development of the information society concept the main features of which have been specified by Daniel Bell (1974) in his works [2]. Alongside with Bell the characteristic of economic attributes of the information society is widely described by George Ritzer (2007) [20]. The researchers emphasize the general virtualization of economy, social processes, culture and also growing dynamic of the information relations. (Mac-Kenzie (1997) [18], Webster (2006) [22]). The image of a new net society built on the principles of the Internet that is able to self-organizing and developing, resistant to outer influence of the environment and most relevant to the definite demands of consumers has been described by M. Castells (2000) [17].
One of the specific features of the worldwide net Internet is appearance of virtual communities in the net. To study this notion let us take the definition of the term «community» suggested by B. Wellman (2002): «Communities are nets of interpersonal
ARTICLE INFO
Received 12 October 2015 Accepted 26 October 2015 Published 30 October 2015
KEYWORDS
Internet-communications, Two-contour model, Communities, Consumer's behavior, Lead generation
© 2015 The Author.
relations that provide the social interaction, support, information, feeling of belonging to a group and social identity» [23].
The term «virtual community» was suggested by H. Rheingold (1993) who gave it the following definition: «The virtual communities are social unities that appear in the Net when a group of people support the discussion long and close enough to form a net of personal relations in the cyber environment »[19].
All this draws a change in the object of the marketing communications in the Internet from a definite consumer into whole groups, virtual communities of consumers. The researchers note that the model of communication process is changing in the internet: from traditional «one-to-many communication model» to «many-to-many communication model»
Fig. 1. Change of the communication models in the Internet network (Chaffey, D.,2008) [4].
Traditionally the process of marketing communications is represented by a contemporary communication model that supposes a cycle influence process from the sender to the receiver and its back response to the message (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. The traditional communication model by Ph. Kotler (1991) [15]
In the context of the given model the Internet has been seen as one of the communication canals with a potential consumer.
The traditional communication process with a consumer is based on the principles of linearity, a gradual passing of a consumer the following stages: cognitive, affective, suggestive and conative. In the frames of this point on the communication process the researchers have made a row of models that are used in the traditional marketing activity and the most widely used of which is model AIDA (^iGpoBa, 2009) [8].
The communication influence on the consumer in the Internet has its own specificity because of the peculiarities of the hypermedia environment. As it has been said above, the consumer interacts with other users by joining in virtual communities. During the
communication process the consumers make a new information space and they themselves are under its influence that further on effects their consuming behavior (Zozul'ov, 2013) [26].
The change of the object of the communication process management from a single consumer into whole communities leads to the change of the communication process sequence. The process of communication influence transforms from a linear into non-linear one, a potential consumer can pass from one stage to another and then return to the previous one under the influence of the hypermedia environment in which they find themselves.
According to this the present models of communication stop being topical because the sequence of communication receiving process is broken, the tasks effecting the consumer can be formulated before the beginning of the management subject influence under the influence of the information environment the consumer is found himself. There arises necessity to make an alternative model of the communication influence that would include non-linear character of the communication process with a consumer.
The goal of the article is to study latest marketing Internet-communications on the basis of crowd-technologies and methods of their effective management in the marketing activity of enterprises.
Let us study a new management object that is virtual communities. On the basis of the social psychology laws we have formulated the following regularities of functioning of the new management object - participants of virtual communities (table 1).
Table 1.
The regularities of the communities' participants functioning
The regularities of the communities' functioning The regularity essence Influence on the management specificity
The circular reaction Increasing all round directed people's infection with emotional sets Dynamic changes of the attributive sets of potential consumers
The emotional resonance Increase of the emotional people's condition (self-exciting) Necessity to manage the formation centers of the emotional resonance or use the resonance by these sets
Mass hallucinations Events and phenomena are distorted (twisted) in people's conception Decrease of efficiency of traditional communication usage
Evolutional regression Decrease of personal identification , actualization of more primitive psyche layers Communication appeals to simpler, more primitive motives of people's behavior
Amorphism In the community individual features of people are blotted, their originality and personal uniqueness disappear Control is directed to the group in general in which the consumer remains
Self-organizing Ability to self-organizing the interaction of the community participants Using self-organizing of the group's participants, directing the managing influence on active agents of the community
In accordance with this the new communication model in the Internet must be based on the following principles:
1) Multi-vector character of the information-communication influence and non-linearity;
2) Asymmetric character of information;
3) Heterogeneity of the communication environment;
4) The key principles of the social psychology;
5) Keeping to the optimal management principle;
6) Account of synergetic influence as from the enterprise so as from communities participants.
On the basis of given principles the author has suggested their own model of communication influence and the Internet (Fig. 3). In the given model it is suggested a two-contour managing of the communication process taking into account the specificity of behavior of the Internet communities participants.
Fig. 3 Two-contour model of the communication influence (Source: the author's development)
The first contour of management in this model is supposed to have communication influence on the Internet environment, he community in particular, in order to form a desired context to spread further marketing communication.
Such communication possesses marketing aims in per se, such as increase of goods sale or image formation. It is directed to form and support a desired attitude of consumers to the questions connected with further clients' demands satisfaction.
The means to do such an influence are phenomena that are characteristic for the Internet-communication: scripts, memes and other specific messages in the net. A meme is a unit of cultural information that has been spread in the media (Dawkins, 2006) [10]. A script is a program or program file scenario, any procedure that is performed by the server according the inquiry from a definite web-page [24].
The second contour of management is already directed to the target consumer and is supposed to bring to the object the marketing information about the goods or the producer. Such communication is directed to reach the marketing goals of the interaction process with a potential consumer.
The presented communication model describes the essence of such phenomenon as crowd-marketing that is supposed to involve crowd or net communities as partners to increase the efficiency of the marketing activity (Boudreau, 2013) [3].
Let us give the definition that we share: crowd-marketing is a management process on the basis of functioning the net communities that is directed to involve the effect from the interaction of communities' participants to reach the marketing goals of the company with use of the optimal management principle ((Zozul'ov, 2013) [26].
We must note that in the base of the crowd-marketing is the phenomenon of crowd-technology. Crowd-technology is a technology of interaction of the enterprise with the crowd with the help of the Internet-technologies in order to use the crowd resources to solve the specific tasks of the enterprises or institutions. Crowd-technology has found its response in many management processes of enterprises the first of which was crowd-sourcing and later the practice began to be used in other spheres of the enterprises activity, crowd-marketing in particular (Fig. 4).
Fig. 4 Possibility of using the crowd- technology in an enterprise activity Source: it has been systemized by the author on the basis of [12, 5, 7, 6].
The unique peculiarity of the crowd-marketing concept is that this approach to the management takes into consideration the non-linear and dynamic character of the net processes.
For the realization of the crowd-marketing immediately in the marketing activity of the enterprises it is necessary to formulate and ground the company's marketing policy and arrange the sales scheme in the Internet as a sale canal because sales is a final stage of the prolong communication that leads to a purchase.
Principles and methods of the interaction with a consumer in the Internet beginning from the communication stage to the final sale stage can be called a strategy of management the consumer's behavior in the Internet. This strategy is an important component in realizing the crowd-marketing concept because with its help the company can with higher possibility brings the consumer to the main goal of the marketing activity - selling.
The implementation process of the crowd-marketing concept in the enterprise's practice demands clear understanding of the stage sequence of developing strategies and factors that must be taken into account for their successful realization. For this the author has suggested the structural-logic scheme of choosing the directions of correcting the communication policy and management strategy of the consumer's behavior in the Internet (Fig. 5)
In the given scheme we can see that realization of the crowd-marketing concept in practice of the enterprise's marketing activity is a gradual process of analysis and choice of the communication policy strategies and management strategies of the consumer's behavior.
The first block of the analysis of initial goods and market where the enterprise works provides two work directions: the analysis of the goods (brand) characteristics of the company and the market characteristics analysis. This stage is necessary to define not only the communication policy directions but also the character and quality of communications. So, to define the content quality in order to form the context model contour of the communication influence it is necessary to understand what objective advantages the goods has in comparison with other goods and the closest competitors, what strong and weak points are characteristics of the brand.
Understanding the market characteristics is essential to define the intensity of the communications inquiries. The market characteristics allow assessing the goods and brand positions in comparison with the whole market and the necessary communication direction.
I. The block of initial goods analysis and the enterprise market
The analysis of the enterprise goods
1. Defining the key goods characteristics
2. Defining the closest competitor of the goods
3. Doing the comparative analysis of goods
4. Defining strong and weak sides of goods
The analysis of the enterprise market environment
1. Defining the market type
2. Defining the competing type
3. Analysis of growth tempo and market richness
4. Defining the condition and prospects of the market
II. The block of strategic management of the communication policy
Analysis of the enterprise communication environment
1. Analysis of quality of the communities' net content
2. Studying the indicators of KPI-system
3. D efining the appropriateness of the content-information contour
4. D efining the appropriateness of the context-information contour
Assessment of correction the communication strategy directions
Context-information contour
Appropriate Impropriate
Supporting the current communication Changing the context contour
Changing goods-information contour of influence Changing both contours of communication influence
III. The block of strategic management of the consumers' behavior
Analysis of degree of consumer's readiness to buy
l.Defining the lead generation stage
Target audience \ / Low degree of
—/-\— - i readiness to buy
/ Potential \ /
/ Prospective \
/ Ready to buy / High degree of
readiness to buy
/ Consumers /
\
Defining the strategy of the consumer's behavior control in the Internet
Communication environment
Favorable Unfavorable
Degree of „
the £
consumer's
readiness to
buy Low
Strategy of relations development - sales (Ready leads) Strategy of returning -content improving (Leads of competitors)
Strategy of consumer's development - actualization of need (Potential consumers) Strategy of potential development (Problem consumers)
IV. The block of choosing tactics instruments for the strategies realization
Choosing instruments and methods of tactic management to realize the strategy of control the consumer's behavior in
the Internet
1. Generating the content 3. Targeting advancing
2. Managing the net communities of the brand 4. Retargeting on the prospective consumers
V. The block of control and assessment of the strategies realization
1. Control of realization of the strategies stages 2. Assessment of success of the realization of the chosen strategy
Fig. 5 The structural-logic scheme of choosing the communication strategy and managing the consumer's behavior in the net (Source: it has been developed by the author)
The presented block consists of two parts: the analysis of the communication environment of the enterprise and the correction of the communication policy direction of the enterprise.
In the first block the company must diagnose the communication environment by two communication contours, for this it is necessary to research the communication environment quality of the Internet, to give a quantity assessment of the content spreading as for the company and brand and to assess the correspondence of the context and advertisement communication contours to the current communication strategy.
The quality analysis of the net content includes three stages of research (Table 2).
Table 2.
The characteristic of stages and instruments of the quality content analysis of the Internet (Source: it has been systemized by the author)__
Stages of the quality research of the net content Stage essence Research instruments
Analysis of the macro-content Analysis of the general situation and trends in the net of definite region or country reflect the specificity of national behavior of the population of definite region, formed stereotypes, attitudes of the consumers are formed under the influence of political, economic or other situation at present moment. So, for example, in the situation in Ukraine the main trend of consuming behavior is not to buy Russian goods. - Expert interviews with experts from media in the net. - Results of studying the marketing agencies as for the most popular subjects (topics) in the net. - Ratings of the sites according to their visiting during a set period. - Sites aggregators that reflect the most popular content subjects in the net at present (http://zmiya.com.ua/)
Analysis of the meso-content Analysis of recalling goods and brands in the social nets, blog sphere, articles and reviews. The number of brand recalling is analyzed, the tonality of recalling, topics, authors, context of the brand and goods recalling. Such analysis is necessary to understand the acceptance of the brand by the consumers, to study stereotypes as for the goods and possibility its positioning. - Automated systems of collecting and analyzing the tonality of brand recollecting "YouScan", "Kribrum", GoogleAlerts, SocialBakers,TweetDeckA TalkWalker - Sites-aggregators of the most spread content by inquiry https://app.buzzsumo.com/ - Semantic analysis of the articles and views of goods and brands -Semanticforce.
Analysis of the micro-content Analysis of recalling and commenting on the official and target pages of the companies and brands. The direct comments of consumers and owners of the product, responses, recommendations and inquiries to the company. - Calculators and statistics on the official pages - Means of web-analytics Google Adwords, Yandex. Direct
Traditionally in the marketing activity to give a qualitative assessment the companies have been forced to do marketing consumers' studying by survey, focus groups and deep interviews. However, at the contemporary stage of technology development the enterprise can use automated systems and sites to analyze the net content that work by the technologies BigData. The instruments that are described in the above table allow giving qualitative assessment at minimum money cost and people efforts in the shortest terms. The sites-aggregators, that analyze the content, function free and give the result immediately after the inquiry that allows doing the latest analysis of the net content.
The next stage is a quantitative assessment of the content that allows evaluating the level and depth of the content spreading. For the quantitative content assessment agencies from the social media use a system of key indicators of the efficiency of KPI-system (key performance indicators).
KPI are indicators of the enterprise activity which help the organization to reach strategic and tactic (operational) goals. Using the key indicators of efficiency gives the enterprise a possibility to assess its condition and help evaluate the strategy realization (Parmenter, 2007) [9].
Table 3.
Groups of indicators of the quantitative content assessment (Jay Baer,2014; Larry Kim,2015) [13;16]
Essence characterized by the indicators group Examples of indicators
Consumption of content - the indicator of content consumption Number of page views (publications) Length of viewing Number of downloads
Sharing content- the indicator of sharing content efficiency Number of message links Number of reposts Comments (number/quality) Likes and ratings Reviews - Reviews (number) Participants - Participants and active participants
Conversion - the indicator of the conversion efficiency Converses (mail prepayment, downloads, setting of widgets and instruments, etc.) Registered users Leads number (per day, week, month) Lead cost
ROI - the indicator of the sales efficiency Sales profit Sales cost Profit (from one follower, lead, customer) Part of loyal customers (in social nets in comparison with other canals)
After qualitative and quantitative diagnostic of the net content the company should evaluate the correcting directions of its communication strategy.
The next stage is managing the consumers' behavior in the Internet. An effective newest instrument that allows managing the consumers' behavior in the Internet is lead generation.
Lead generation is a marketing activity to search potential clients as the result of which the sellers receive the contact data of perspective consumers who have shown their interest to their goods or services. Lead generation helps the selling process. This strategy is oriented to defining the level of interest of definite prospective consumers (Avdeeva, 2014) [1].
Let us study the notion of lead: under a «lead» we understand a prospective client who corresponds to the target audience of the company and has shown the interest to buy goods or services of this or that character. This interest can be represented as a filled in form, a prospective client application, and inquiries of the back call. As an example one can give registration in the advertiser's site; orders procedure; download/set of the addition; involving the pre-payer in mailing, etc. [25].
Thus, the process of lead generation combines collecting the contact information about the prospective client, segmentation of the collected clients and further work with them that is directed to the transformation of the potential consumer into a real one by doing a purchase. The given work instrument with a consumer by the Internet means is effective enough. The current classical model of the lead generation is the so called "funnel" of sales which reflects the transforming process from a representative of the target audience into a perspective and potential lead and client (John M. Coe, 2003) [14].
The instruments of crowd-marketing allow increasing the lead generation efficiency and number of consumers at each stage [11].
The crowd-marketing concept gives a possibility as a result of marketing efforts to transform a client into a partner of the company. It is possible due to the use of the crowd-marketing instruments, to be exact spreading information in the Internet environment in the form of responses about goods and the company, transforming into the company's partner. This process has been represented in the scheme bellow (Fig. 6).
Fig. 6 The scheme of sales management in the Internet (Source: it has been developed by the author)
However, the process of lead generation is often non-linear as it can be seen in the scheme above that is it is not obligatory that the potential consumers will transform into the stage of perspective and on. During the interaction process in the Internet a consumer may return to the previous stages of the lead generation. To define the development of further strategy of the consumer's behavior management it is necessary to evaluate the degree of the consumer's readiness to buy.
According to the stage and condition of the communication environment the company by the matrix of the strategies of relations management with the consumers develops future strategies of the consumer's behavior management (Fig. 7.)
Communication environment
Favorable Unfavorable
JS Strategy of developing the relations - Strategy of returning - improving
s h sales the content
«4© 5« "i. © a K (Ready leads) (Competitors' leads)
U O S 5« U s Strategy of the consumer's Strategy of the potential
•M 5« r! ■a w development - demand actualization development (Problem consumers)
O O a o (Potential consumers)
Fig. 7 The matrix of strategies of the relations management with consumers in the Internet (developed by the author)
In the suggested matrix "ready leads" are most perspective consumers who are ready to buy and who demand immediate directed communication that id aimed at goods selling. In this case it is reasonable to use the strategy of relations development with a consumer. Realization of this strategy is possible due to the use of the advertisement mechanism- targeting.
Targeting is an advertising mechanism that allows separating from the whole audience only that part that meets the set criteria (target audience) and show the advertisement only to it (Tatum Krause, 2007) [21]. Targeting is a very effective instrument to increase sales among the consumers who are already ready to buy.
The following strategy in the matrix is strategy of returning. This strategy supposes the work with the so called competitors' leads. The "competitors' leads" are such potential consumers who are ready to buy but to whom it is necessary to bring by the communication the advantage of the goods in comparison with the competitor or the drawback of the competitors. A great number of consumers who are in the Internet have already actualized their need of the goods but they are not interested in this goods supplier because they may not know about it or they may have a negative attitude to it, etc. The work with these consumers supposes improving the content, spreading the desired information in the communication environment of the company and interested consumers.
The quadrant "potential consumers" define consumers who are in a favorable information environment but for them the goods is a latent need that is they are not ready yet to buy. The strategy of the consumer's development supposes active spreading through the context communication contour directed to the consumer's demand actualization.
The last quadrant of the matrix is "problem consumers" who demand work on the information environment in which they remain and on the actualization of their goods need. The strategy of the potential development supposes an active work by both communication contours, the context contour is directed to form a need of goods and the advertising contour is directed to emphasize the goods advantages in comparison with competitors.
Thus, having analyzed the factors of communication environment, the positions of the company in the market, its strong and weak sides the company defines its further strategy of the consumer's behavior management. To realize this strategy the enterprise can use such instruments as content generation in the net, managing the net communities devoted to the company brand, targeting and retargeting.
The conclusions and prospects of further research. Thus, in the article it has been enlightened on the communications peculiarities in contemporary information environment. It has been defined that the communication process in the Internet is non-linear as opposed to the traditional communications because the consumers are under not only the enterprise influence but they also affect one another forming communities. According to this the object of the marketing management changes from a person-consumer into a community-consumer. The author has developed a two-contour model of the communication influence , the first contour of which forms the context for consumers and another contour provides the classic advertising influence on the management object. The author also has developed the procedure of choosing the communication strategy and management strategy of the consumer's behavior in the Internet on the basis of the mentioned above model.
The further research requires a development of practical instruments to realize the crowd-marketing concept. It is also required to ground the calculating methods of the communication efficiency on the basis of crowd-technologies, taking into account the long-term effect from the mentioned communications.
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