TopIntroduction
Marketing has evolved as fast as the development of businesses and societies. As no company can be profitable in the long run without satisfying customers’ needs, marketing aims to serve the demand by creating superior value for customers. However, market rules have changed rapidly. Technology and digital communications are dramatically transforming the way in which businesses conduct businesses. Attitudes and customer behaviors have also changed accordingly and, as the digital universe expands, new lifestyles and consumption habits are created (Colvée, 2013). The key feature of this new, digital society is that customers are connected anytime, anywhere. Digital revolution seems unstoppable so the advertising landscape is in continuous development. The new goal of the digital marketing is to get brand engagement using social media, with 2.03 billion worldwide active social media users in 2014 (Kemp, 2014). Besides, more than half the planet owns a mobile phone, with unique users exceeding 3.6 billion, with a 50% penetration rate (Kemp, 2014).
Spain accounted for 28.9 million Internet users in 2013 (ONTSI, 2013), 84% of which consulted the social media very often (ONTSI, 2011). Furthermore, almost 56% of the Spanish Internet users buy on the Internet, which means 15.2 million shoppers spending €816 on average per year (ONTSI, 2013).
Consequently, companies invested 874.4 million Euros in digital advertising in Spain in 2013 (IAB Spain, 2014). Online and social advertising accounted for the 21% of the total share, consolidated its second position only behind a traditional media such as television.
In the past, advertisers had total control over where the message was place and when customers would be exposed to it. Thanks to the improvements on the Internet and the ICTs, advertising has added to the traditional media advertisements (press, radio, television, magazines…) marketing strategies in order to increase the coverage of the targeted audience. Advertisers now control the initial placement of information but they are unable to control how information is disseminated across customers’ social networks.
Even if online advertising is becoming more important day by day, it has not replaced the traditional advertising yet, as both techniques are conceived as complementary to each other (Barreto, 2012). This is the reason why several authors point out the need to study the use of the Internet as an advertising tool more in deep (Ailawadi et.al, 2009). Besides, it is not yet well understood how firms can use this forms of publicity and their impacts on organizational goals (Stephen & Galak, 2010) so the topic needs further research.
Today’s consumers expect companies to have an online presence in social media and it is not just another channel for disseminating corporate information. It represents a tremendous opportunity to engage and create social bonds with customers and followers, with helps to improve corporate reputation (Aula, 2010; Nair, 2011).
To help filling this literature gap, this study presents two different empirical case studies to test the effectiveness of the online advertising techniques in horizontal social networks.