Using Social Media Tools in Marketing: Opportunities and Challenges

Introduction

In recent years, deep changes have taken place in the field of marketing, especially with regard to the emergence of Internet or digital social networks. With the advent of online social networks, events took a new dimension for both consumers and businesses and therefore for the practice of marketing to provide value to customers.

In response to these developments, marketing as academic discipline and management activity moves from a mass marketing approach via standardized products to a more personalized marketing approach that proposes tailored and specific individual offers. The consumer has changed his/her behaviour. Now, he takes on a new status. The consumer has become more demanding and volatile. Marketing teams should adapt and cope with this new digital media to be closer to their customers and, at the same, time adapt themselves to their needs. If not, they will lose their relevance. A better knowledge of it allows for more targeted marketing campaigns and personalized messages, offers and / or products.

As a result, these changes have significantly affected Marketing as Philip Kotler (Kotler and al., 2012), one of the fathers of marketing, put it. Whereas marketing 1.0 focused on product management, marketing 2.0 is based on the predominance of communitarianism. It became participatory with the advent of tools together under the label Web 2.0. The customer-focused paradigm is based on openness, engagement, cooperation, co-creation, and propensity to help customers rather than control them (Von Hippel & Katz, 2002; Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004; Deighton & Konrfeld, 2009). While extending collaborative and participatory Web 2.0, a transition to Web 3.0 is in order. This new age is expressed in the cooperation of participants (Barassi & Trerè, 2012).

The business world was no exception to this revolution. As more and more organizations move into the virtual world, some have considered the potential of using digital social networks in their information systems and with their partners. The purpose is to promote social links to improve human-machine interaction and do more business through e-commerce. This brought about significant changes in the way people work and behave and in human relationships. The changes have also led to improvements in how companies function, resulting in gains in productivity and innovation. This new platform system enables online managers to consider Web 2.0 environment in a different and innovative way. More recently, marketing researchers emphasize the value of the optimal experience (online flow) in the context of understanding consumer behavior on the Web (Bridges and Florsheim, 2008; Thatcher and al., 2008; Chen, 2006; Skadberg et al., 2005; Pace, 2004). These studies suggest that psychological chaos (flow) is similar to exploratory behavior. This behavior expresses the desire of individuals to navigate and interact with the environment. In the context of social media, this behavior is of particular importance in the exploration for the collaborative creation of knowledge and the opportunity to engage in consumer-to-consumer (C2C) communications such as sharing experiences and knowledge through eWOM (electronic word of mouth), seeking information, and meeting people (Raab et al., 2015). Furthermore, prior flow experience literature has recommended flow theory as an appropriate theoretical framework for understanding user behaviors in online environments (Chang & Zhu, 2012; Huang, 2003; Novak et al., 2000), and to keep customers satisfied in the context of social media (Fornerino et al. 2008, Koufaris 2002, Hoffman and Novak, 1996).