MBA 565 Discussion 4 Publix Grocery Store PDF

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Module 4 Discussion – Publix Grocery Store For years, Publix Grocery Stores have attempted to develop a strong brand image and has recently started to develop a strong brand relationship. How can Publix use social media to assist in the development of brand relationships?

I am not a big social media person. My only social media outlet is Linkedin and it is strictly for business purposes. I do not have a FaceBook, Twitter or any of the other social media apps. For this discussion I had to do a lot of scholarly journal. The meteoric rise of community websites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedln has pushed the world into a modern social media age. Oh how I long for the “Age of Aquarius.” I am told one of my nephews is on Facebook almost daily, filming house parties and other gatherings. I believe it is to garner publicity for his wife who is a very good caterer. The Global impact has been nothing short of magnificent, so much so that if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest, next to China and India. Many also say that this is the biggest revelation since the industrial revolution, which implies that the world has a completely new playing field At its center, social media is any kind of internet advertising that facilitates active involvement, openness, connectivity and a community spirit.

The rise of social media is profoundly moving. social media also changed the methods of research. This enables brands to communicate more effectively with their consumers, and to deepen their association with them. The advertising world wasn't spared from the influence of social media. Organizations are becoming more vigilant with advertising; especially in predicting customer reaction and preventing unforeseeable blunders in networking sites to prevent a viral market backlash. In the promotion mix, social media plays a hybrid role. This helps businesses to speak to their clientele, while also encouraging customers to talk to each other.

The role that social media can play in developing a strong brand image and brand appeal is especially important in today’s times. Publix can do the following to promote its brand appeal based on social media: 

It can start a social media campaign on facebook and

twitter to showcase the value add and tag it through a hashtag and promote its offering to make the campaign viral. 

Encourage customers to post their experience on

popular social media platforms to encourage customer engagement. 

Use social media as a customer touchpoint wherein

customers can post any query or grievances and company representatives can touch base to resolve their concerns.



Announce new product launches, store launches,

discount programmes etc. on social media platforms to engage customers and provide them visibility with the company’s plans. 

Display advertisement and marketing communication

on popular Youtube channels and have targeted facebook, Instagram as well as LinkedIn advertisements on user screens based on their browsing and viewing habits.

Research by eMarketer has shown that consumers go to social media sites to keep up with a brand's products and promotional campaigns (Mangold and Foulds, 2009; Leggat, 2010). For example, Pepsi and Coca-Cola both applied online customer loyalty programs to engage customers by offering special promotions, free mp3 downloads CD’s and so on (Mangold and Foulds, 2009). Additionally, customers view social media sites as a service channel, where they can engage on real-time bases with the businesses (Leggat, 2010)

Businesses can promote products and services, provide instant support, and/or create an online community of brand enthusiasts through all forms of social media such as social networking sites, content communities, virtual worlds, blogs, microblogging sites, online gaming sites, social bookmarking, news sites, forums and more (Zarella, 2010; Kaplan and Haenlein, 2009; Weinberg, 2009). Additionally, social media enables consumers to share information with their peers about the

product and service brands (Stileman, 2009; Mangold and Faulds, 2009). These conversations between the peers provide companies another cost effective way to increase brand awareness, boost brand recognition and recall, and increase brand loyalty (Gunelius, 2011). Thus, it can be said that social media helps firms to build brand loyalty through networking, conversation, and community building (McKee, 2010). Advantageous campaigns on social media are the most significant drivers of brand loyalty followed by relevancy of the content, popularity of the content among friends, and appearing on different social media platforms and providing applications. First of all, companies that want to run effective social media campaigns should take into consideration the benefits, values, advantages they offer to the consumers in their campaigns, what makes the consumers more likely to become loyal to their brands. Consumer brand loyalty is also affected positively by the different platforms and applications that are offered by the brand on social media, what might imply that consumers are asking for creative reasons, variety, and differences for engaging with the brands on social media. Thus, companies may work on creating more engaging, participative, interesting applications. people share music, funny and extraordinary things online along with technological and instructive information. They refrain from sharing sad events, horror or advertisements among each other. This may lead to thinking that social media is a platform where people want to entertain themselves, escape from the harsh

realities of life, search for sincerity and fun, as well as share information and instructions among each other. Brands and campaigns around brands should be entertaining, fun, doing what other brands did not think of when they engage with customers on social media platforms. Information and instructional manuals about the brands may also be provided on social media since information sharing is also an important driver of engagement. Relevancy is the second most important factor affecting brand loyalty; therefore, companies have to keep themselves updated about what customers are interested in, their activities, and current perspectives in life. Companies may conduct qualitative research or observations to understand the lifestyle of their customers and transfer this knowledge on social media platforms. Finally, the popularity of the content among friends also increases brand loyalty of the consumers. Impact of word-ofmouth in marketing is non-negligible, especially in online environments (Gruen at al., 2006). Therefore, companies can provide incentives to the social media users to spread the word about their presence, campaigns, and content on social media among the peers. They can also spot opinion leaders in their target markets and hire them on purpose to talk about their campaigns and pull people to engage with their brands on social media.

References Gruen T. W., T. Osmanbekov, A.J. Czaplewski (2006), eWOM: The impact of customer-to-customer online know-how eExchange on customer value and loyalty, Journal of Business Research, Vol: 59, pp: 449 45 Gunelius, S. (2011), 30-minute social media marketing: Step by step techniques to spread the words about your business, McGraw-Hill, NY. Kapferer, J. N. (1997). Strategic brand management: Creating and sustaining brand equity long term, Kogan Page Horizons (2010) p. 53, 59 68, UK. McKee, S. (2010), Creative b2b branding (No, really): Building a creative brand in a business world, Goodfellow Publishers Limited; USA Saravanakumar, M. , SuganthaLakshmi, T. (2012 ) Social media marketing, Life Science Journal, vol. 9, iss. 4....