From Digital Culture & Society

Article Title:

Mills, A. J., & Plangger, K. (2015). Social media strategy for online service brands. Service Industries Journal, 35(10), 521–536. https://doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2015.1043277

Find article online: https://proxy.library.brocku.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=fsr&AN=102991181&site=eds-live&scope=site

doi:10.1080/02642069.2015.104327

Contents 1 Context 2 Overview 3 Strengths and Weaknesses 4 Assessment

[edit] Context

Marketing firms are ditching the traditional services to online services, simply because of the vast number of young consumers using online services such as online banking, shopping, and social media platforms. Social media has made it easier for firms to reach their targeted audience and to engage users creating a bond between the firm and the consumer. New opportunities open up in different markets such as the financial industry and other online service brands with the growth of social media.

[edit] Overview

The research of Mills and Plangger looks at the significance of online service brands and the use of social media platforms to market their products and services. Online service brands can develop a relationship with consumers to build trust with services that require high-risk private information. New services can be formed with young users being indulged on social media platforms. Mills and Plangger’s “findings are intended, however, to be applicable and relevant to a number of what we will call ‘high-involvement’ online services, such as law, insurance, healthcare and accounting that deal with personal and private consumer information” ( Plangger et al, p.522). Low Involvement online service “such as food ordering and delivery, auction services or real estate agency deal far less with confidential and sensitive personal information” ( Plangger et al, p.522). The research focuses on the high and low involvement services to show how important it is for firms to market to engage and build trust with the consumers. The research focuses on two-way communication for “marketers do not simply talk to the customer; rather they talk with the customer” (Plangger et al, p.536). Firms benefit from engaging users using images and captions to engage with users at a social level to make them feel more comfortable. Social media has made it more effective to communicate with consumers directly without any wait time and direct access to the convenient social media platforms.

[edit] Strengths and Weaknesses

The research had many strengths compared to weaknesses. Mills and Plangger do an exceptional analysis of the benefits of social media to online service brands. They discuss the importance of private personal information being involved in marketing initiatives and how they will make it more secure for consumers. The aspect of new businesses creating new services for consumers makes it easier for users to access important information such as a bank or financial statements as stated as a high involvement service. One of the biggest strength of this research is that consumers are more engaged and informed with services that can help consumers with effective and efficient ways to ask questions and access information on social media platforms that other users have all asked about. The nine-step process helped to understand how firms will build consumer relations and maintenance on social media which is very crucial to online marketing and keeping content fresh.

One of the weakness that need to be addressed more is the data mining and use of personal information to market to audiences. There is a lot of privacy issues in the past with social media and ad-based firms acquiring third-party data. Further research can be done on this topic in terms of how companies will market towards consumers without threatening an individual’s privacy.

[edit] Assessment

Mills and Plangger talk about a relevant topic that is growing in the market and that is the use of social media for companies to keep the consumer engaged. It is important for firms to manage services that require private information, to build a strong relationship with its users to assure them with the service they are interested in. The use of influential strategic plans to help firms to reach their targeted audience proves to be one of the strong arguments in this research. Lots of companies are growing their presence on social media simply because of the growing users on each platform. The research isn’t mainly about firms promoting products and services but to create a strategic plan to create a bond with the consumer to engage with them in real time over different platforms. Trust is an important aspect in building a relationship between two parties and can be challenging but the managerial strategy helps to understand how firms will pursue their goal to engage audiences.

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FAhmad 15:00, 8 February 2019 (EST)