MARKETING MANAGEMENT 555
Lecturer: Professor Margot Wood

Assessment 1 Case papers overview Due: 14th February 2013 (Thursday) Word Count: 1588.

Facebook

Student Name: David Yew-Choong KAM Student ID: 09876307.
1

WHY do people use Facebook?
Whether it's for posting updates, reposting articles, checking in

locations/whereabouts, or playing Farmville – people participate in Facebook to stay connected, to relax, to be entertained, and to be kept informed (Bond, Ferraro, Luxton and Sands 2010, 4; Piskorski, Eisenmann and Smith 2012, 2). Some might even use it to spy on their partners, triggered possibly by romantic jealousy (Darvell, Walsh and White, 2011; Elphinston and Noller 2011, 631).

Others use it as a platform to advance various social and political causes by creating public Facebook pages. Lynas is an Australian listed company with ambitions to process rare earths in Malaysia. Concerned about the carcinogenic effects of the post production waste, multiple Stop Lynas Save Malaysia (SLSM in short) Facebook pages have been created by various Malaysian green groups (Stop Lynas, Save Malaysia Facebook page, 2013). The resultant groundswell and widespread publicity on mainstream media could have well contributed to the share price slide over the last two years (Lynas Corporation Price Quotes, 2013). This case as well as the iconic Arab spring uprising in Egypt & Tunisia has clearly demonstrated the edge that Facebook has given to the small man on the street by conferring them a voice for their cause, even with limited cash (Chokoshvili 2011, 22-23).

In a nutshell, Facebook is one of the top 4 new social media platforms (the others being Youtube, Twitter and LinkedIn) that allows for users to interact, influence

2

and exchange information, with the aim to increase their social capital (Dutta and Fraser 2009, 2; Macnamara 2010, 7).

The