SOCIAL LISTENING: CONSUMER INSIGHT IN A NARRATIVE PYRAMID

The rising popularity of social networks has sparked tremendous commercial interests. Brands and companies have taken various approaches to capturing the business potential of social networks, such as posting targeted ads and building online brand communities. This paper focuses on another emerging business application of social network sites (SNS): social listening. Unlike most current social network-based marketing efforts, social listening does not have a brand interact directly with existing and potential customers. Rather, it adopts an Internet-based ethnographical approach by taking a backseat and observing brand-related online chatter. Using a model based on the fantasy theme analysis and the theory of narrative bits, the paper argues that this nascent approach, also known as nethnography, has the potential to generate valuable SNS user-generated, brand-focused insights for industry practitioners in a cost-effective way while also fulfilling the branding goals that are currently served by existing approaches.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Gu, Qi

• consumer insight

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/37654

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/37654