Engaging customers and the public profile via social networking and micro-blogging websites

Online social networks and micro-blogs are becoming increasingly important to organisationswithin the marketing process enabling business to conduct marketing research, marketingcommunications and customer service. There remains paucity in the body of knowledge as tohow organisations in South Africa are using specific social media technologies to conductsocial media marketing. This research report takes a specific focus on the micro-blogging andsocial networking phenomena and addresses the problem: What are the differences betweenorganisations utilizing social networking and those utilizing micro-blogging, to conductmarket research, marketing communications and deal with customer complaints in SouthAfrica?A review of the literature informed the research study that organisations use a variety of toolsand techniques in researching customers on social media platforms. Micro-blogging andsocial networking services were found to be valid channels for organisations to communicatemarketing information as well as deal with customer complaints due to product/serviceproblems. The study design allowed the collected data to be quantitatively analysedmeasuring independence between organisations using micro-blogging and social networkingservices within the marketing process.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of Information Systems

Year dc:date.issued

2013

Author dc:creator

• Joshua, Garth Robin-Carl

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Cloete, Eric

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/5645

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/5645