Social Media Technologies and Brand Loyalty | Abhishek Srivastava |

Social Media Technologies and Brand Loyalty | Abhishek Srivastava

Executive Summary

The study deals with finding relation between social media technology and brand loyalty. Nature of the research is secondary. First the sudden explosion of data has been encountered in early sections. Various seminal research papers are undertaken as a part of the literature study, all of which point to one general trend, i.e. of rise of power in the hands of the consumer. Examples of various companies are cited which have embraced this change in the paradigm shift and have emerged on the top. Concept of “Brand Community” has also been discussed at length which is nothing but an entire ecological system that springs about a particular brand.
Various models and frameworks have been suggested, some of which are Social Media Strategy Framework and various conceptual frameworks to substantiate the literature. As far as key findings are concerned, the most important is letting the customer adopt a more active role as against to a passive role. One of the ways in which this could be achieved by providing a free environment which encourages discussions and not to erect silos within an organisation.
Many studies across the country such as that of Revlon India and Shoppers Stop is analysed. Case studies of Dr. Pepper and Nike are also presented to bring home the point of letting customers become collaborators.
Al-in-all, in the conclusion part, world would belong to those brands who could both adapt to differences and aggregate across similarities in an effective and efficient manner.

Table of Contents Executive Summary 1 Introduction 3 Literature Review 5 Implications for Global Business and Indian Industry 10 Conclusion 17 Appendix 18 References 20

Introduction

We live in a world which is inundated with ever-pervasive data all around us. ‘Information Asymmetry’ is not playing that major a role which it was playing, let’s say, a decade or so back. Due to the so-called ‘Wisdom of Crowds’, one could easily get a feedback regarding a particular brand or product at one’s fingertips, just at a moment’s notice. As per ‘Moore’s Law’ of Big-Data, storage of data gets doubled every two years. Just to put things in perspective, CERN’s (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) Hadron Collider produces 40 terabytes (TB) of data every second. Boeing Aircraft during its flight across Atlantic could easily generate up to 640 terabytes of data (Rogers 2011), one could easily figure out how much that data would amount to after considering that approximately, on any given day, there are 25,000 flights across Atlantic. One could simply go on with these gigantic figures of data that is being produced every second.
The hotbeds that are responsible for generating these reams upon reams of data are primarily social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and countless others. As per a research (Lang 2010), customers spend approximately one third of the time (spent on the internet) on social media websites. There are two schools of thought regarding the presence of brands on social media platforms; proponents of the first one believe that brands have to be ubiquitous on social media, if they want to survive in today’s hyper-competitive world (Kaplan et al., 2010) and the proponents of the second school believe that social media should be left for people only, as its primary motive is to connect people and not to be a marketing place for various brands to fight it out amongst themselves (Fournier et al., 2011).
Investment in Social Media could be a double-edged sword for a company. It is not just when the customers are happy with your products that they voice their opinion but also when they are not satisfied (to the extent which product promised to perform), they ensure that the word gets spread in the online community, just like a raging fire in a dry forest, about the poor quality of the product.
Success in adoption of social media technologies would be measured by how effectively a company could get hold of the four C’s – Connection, Creation, Consumption and Control (MIT Sloan Management Review, Fall 2010, Vol. 52). If a brand wants to ensure the loyalty of its customers then it should feel free to give the ultimate deciding power in their hands, for majority of the discussion that happens over the web is between customers themselves, a never-ending cycle that feeds itself on the content that is being generated by the users. The problem with social media technology is that there might not be an immediate result in the form of a measurable key attribute or metric such as percentage increase in sales or cost reduction. There would certainly be advantages, but one has to be patient in order to reap the rewards, especially if something as deeply ingrained as loyalty has to be measured.
Brand Loyalty is a very loosely stated term and could have different connotations for different persons. As per a recent study (Laroche et al., 2012), there is a subtle difference between brand loyalty and brand trust. The research defines trust as “It is one of the main antecedents of loyalty”. Trust is also being defined by some other researchers(Chaudhary and Holbrook, 2001) as “the willingness of the average consumer to rely on the ability of the brand to perform its stated function”. Another source (Oliver 1999) defines loyalty as “a deeply held commitment to rebuy or repatronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or same brand-set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing efforts having the potential to cause switching behavior”. Inquiring further about Brand Loyalty, could it be simply stated as repeat purchase behavior, or is there something which requires our further attention. Brand Loyalty could be because of two factors: positive feelings or expectations about the product and habits (or given circumstances) which are mainly automatic in nature, and therefore doesn’t provide much of an insight into why a particular brand might be popular or hated by people. Therefore, one has to clearly articulate as to why the repeated purchase may not be a sign of long-term commitment with the company or brand.
The overarching theme of this piece of writing is to drive home the point that the combination of social media and brand loyalty is still pretty much an uncharted territory and there is huge scope of improvement (by further careful assessments) in this field. There are two parameters at stake here: Social Media and Brand Loyalty, both of these paint a slightly hazy picture with uncertainties of their own. Many factors are to be considered for carrying out a study to explore the relation between the two, such as how much impact of social media is actually derived from the communication (of the customer) with the representatives of the company or the other customers themselves. Other factors which might also play a huge role would be the impact of promotional offers, frequency of update of the data, relevancy of the content and the number of applications (apps) that are being provided by a particular brand.
One of the major reasons that this topic demands serious attention is the power or impact of “user-generated content (UGC)” in our ever-connected World. Companies must have a paradigm shift that now consumers are not just going to take whatever companies will serve to them, but in today’s world consumers are the co-creators of the product themselves ( such as NIKEID), they are simultaneously both creators and consumers. There is no more asymmetry of information which initially used to provide some bargaining power to the companies, it now rests with the consumers. Brands find themselves constantly in the crosshairs of customers, as one bad review or service could just turn out to be a spoilsport for the brand, one should never forget that “One Dirty Fish Spoils The Whole Pond”.
Social Media presence these days is not considered as a value-added service but a mandatory offering which is expected by the consumers. So, Loyalty is not concerned just with the brick-and-mortar model of shopping but also plays a critical role in the social media space. Various factors would be used to convey the impact on Loyalty such as the authenticity of the comments and the responsiveness in solving the problems of consumers or Query-handling mechanism. It should be a Win-Win situation for both the companies and consumers alike, given the company does not try to impose much of its will on the customers.

Literature Review

Since this area of study is still in its nascent stages, ergo not much of the relevant literature is available, but still some of the studies have been carried out which will form a critical part of the discussion. In a recent study (Laroche et al., 2012), attempt was made to determine the relation between brand communities (on social media) and customer (by developing a “customer centric model”). This “customer centric model” has four key relationships, namely, relationship between focal or central customer and brand, central customer and product, central customer and company and central customer and other fellow customers. Another objective of the study was to establish the impact of Brand trust on brand loyalty, which so far had not been carried out by any other research in this field.
The paper talks about “Social Media based Brand Community”. This term comprises of two broad terms; Social Media & Brand Community. Definition of Social Media could be quite different depending on the sources, a simpler version is provided by (Kaplan et al., 2010) wherein they define social media as “a group of internet based applications that builds on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and it allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content”. There are various websites which have recently gained popularity in Social Media domain such as Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Second Life.
“Brand Community” as defined by a recent study (Muniz and OGuinn, 2001) as “specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand.” At the very core of these Brand Communities is a strong desire to feel connectedness or belongingness, which is one of the most sought after psychological needs. In our today’s hyper active world, where no one has time for other, it becomes imperative that one joins social media, as it is the last resort to make one feel about the belongingness. Some of the reasons that encourage people’s contribution to Social Media (Zhou, Zhang et al., 2011) is “Shopping, researching, entertainment and making money”. One of the weakness of Social Media, as cited by many experts, is that it actually takes away the human element from our lives and only provides one to do with weak-ties (Constant, Sproull, & Kiesler, 1996; Granovetter, 1973). Weak-ties do play a more important role in one’s life as compared to Strong-ties (Levin et al., 2002). Another popular reason as to why people join brand communities is to be a part of the group that which they always desired to be. It’s more about nursing carefully the desire for a particular brand and then giving it a vent by joining a particular Brand Community.
Referring to figure 1, one should ask the questions that how all the interactions that take place are beneficial from the standpoint of all the stakeholders involved in the process. One advantage that is directly for the brand or product manufacture is the ability to share current or latest information regarding any updates about their product with customers. Within customers also, there needs to be differentiation, there are certain customers which are more loyal as compared to others, as evident by the historic purchases. These Brand Communities do provide certain advantages to the company or Brand in the sense that they could capitalize on it, and could get easy access to these more loyal customers.

Initially due to the lack of technological advancements, “Brand Communities” were limited to a particular area or region, but now thanks to the evolution of Social Media, it is not localized to a particular area anymore. “Brand Communities” are now ubiquitous on the Social Media, some of the primary examples would include Harley-Davidson Users Group. Members of Harley-Davidson Users Group could informally schedule meetings and get involved in the reviews of the latest products launched by Harley-Davidson. There are prominent other examples such as Apple Users Group or Jeep users Group. As per figure 2, these unique intersection of Social Media and Brand Community leads one to “Social Media based Brand Community”. The overall objective of the research carried out is to show the impact of “Social Media based Brand Community” on the factors such as Trust and Loyalty.
In another research (Irem Eren Erdogmus et al, 2012) titled “The impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty” authors try to decipher the key factors that lead to greater brand loyalty or affects it in a negative way. First, authors have tried to explain what is meant by Loyalty as such, they (Keller, 2008) have defined as “Brand loyalty can be conceptualized as the final dimension of consumer brand resonance symbolizing the consumer’s ultimate relationship and level of identification with a brand”. First, an attempt has been made to shed some light on the importance of “Brand Loyalty”, authors tend to state the importance of Brand Loyalty by referring (Oliver, 1997; Chaudhuri and Halbrook, 2001; Bennett and Rundle-Thiele, 2002) to “Building and maintaining brand loyalty are one of the central themes of research for marketers for a very long time”.
Authors then go on to explain about the process that leads to a brand being recognized as “Loyal” in the hearts of the consumers. It has been said that as brands climb up the ladder of uniqueness, prominence and positive meanings in the mind of the people or consumers, they tend to move towards the stage, where they could be termed as attaining towards “Loyalty”. “Brand Loyalty” in turn ensures that sales increase and so does other performance metrics such as market share or profitability.
Paper details about that there have been many ways in which marketers have tried (Keller, 2008; Kotler and Keller, 2007) to ensure that their brand gets the tag of “Loyal” in the minds of the customers, such as “including brand elements, classical marketing mix variables, and new methods of marketing such as events, sponsorships, one-to-one marketing activities, Internet marketing and social media marketing”. The paper focuses solely on the social media marketing part of the tactic that has been tried by the marketers. One of the major reasons for selection of Social Media is the increase in popularity of the medium.
Authors cite (Robinson, 2007) for defining the social media as “tools used for communication that have Web 2.0 attributes that is, they are participatory, collaborative, and have knowledge sharing and user-empowering tools available on the Web”. It’s a win-win situation for both the brands as well as consumers, as now businesses can easily generate enough attention or attract enough eyeballs to their products in a much more cost-effective way. The best part is that, at times company might get to know of the information regarding a novel usage of the product or any flaw in the design by the collaborative process between the consumers themselves, not by dictating terms to the consumers, but by simply creating that atmosphere during which these healthy discussions should pop up.

As per another research (Fallon, 2012), effort has been made to link the effect of popularity of brands on social media platforms by running promotions etc. to the end-customer loyalty. In this study, respondents were from University of Wisconsin. The study first details about the process behind why customer chooses a particular brand over the other, reason cited is that of matching of the characteristics of the product with the inherent interests of the customer, personality of the customer comes into picture here (Park and John 2010). Time constraint and knowledge availability regarding the product also play a key role in the overall purchase of that product (Howard 1989). Satisfaction has been cited as a key reason of popularity among the social media platforms. Ultimately, it is the satisfaction with the product that leads to the overall popularity of the product within the customers. On the similar lines, it is more likely that customers would be able to recall an advertisement of the brand, if they have favorable and positive attitude towards the company.
One of the advantages of this merging of “Social Media” with “Brand Loyalty” is that of the measurability of the consumer’s action. Now, with such a huge growth in technology, it has been made possible to track the exact movements of a consumer on the web. In a more domain specific term, churn could easily be measured and whether any customer has defected to a rival brand could also be confirmed just by carrying out some simple analytics exercises. The research also cites (Sicilia and Salvador 2010), saying that it is not always going to be the fact that more availability of knowledge is going to lead to a better relationship between the company and the customer. It is like a tight ropewalk for the company to come to such a stage where only the necessary and relevant information is disseminated to the consumers, as customers are pretty well accustomed to reading between the lines.
Research also talks about the importance of differentiated or unique product offerings to differentiate oneself from all the other competitors present in the market. The way in which this differentiate would help the company is by ensuring that new consumers get loyal to your products and those which have been a loyal customer of yours in the past, strengthen their relationship with you. Emphasis has also been placed on the intangible part of it, certain emotions which get aroused when one is purchasing a product or brand is also one of the key factors for ensuring that loyalty does persists over a longer period of time.
Impact of popular campaigns on sustainable brand loyalty have been also carried out in the past. These experiments demonstrate that most of the respondents tend to be only temporarily loyal to a particular brand. As far as ‘sustainable loyalty’ is concerned, very few of the consumers tend to acknowledge that even without any promotion or offer , they would have bought the product that they actually ended up buying. So, loyalty is not something that one can take at face value, it has to be critically examined as to what actually makes a customer say that he/she is loyal to a particular brand, whether it is the situation or environment or is the deep-rooted respect or faith in the product.
As per (Chang 2009) importance of relationship development between the customer and company is defined as “The ability to create a relationship with a consumer is essential for a company to maintain for many years, if not for a life time. One of the objectives for a company’s online marketing and social media strategy should be to maintain a relationship with its customers”. Focus here should be on ‘lifetime’ – loyalty is all about establishing a long-term horizon.

Loyalty could be efficiently achieved, as suggested by the author, is to focus on two aspects; Trust and Commitment. These are defined as the fundamental pillars on which the very foundation of loyalty will stand, if these twin pillars themselves are weak, then in no way, could the loyalty be generated, and even if there is some loyalty which seems to be getting stronger with the passage of time, will just turn out to be a mere mirage in the desert. It will just remain as a false promise, a utopia or chimera which in reality would never exist. It is the trust that is predecessor of commitment, without trust being there, no consumer will ever dare to show the commitment to the brand. It is like taking a leap of faith, and before taking that leap of faith, some faith or trust has to be present, after all that is the precondition with which this argument started.
Another of the relevant literature regarding this topic was published in MIT Sloan Review fall 2010 edition. This talks about ensuring that social marketing campaigns should not be very short-sighted in the nature, so that the top management starts breathing down the neck of the manager responsible for the successful outcomes of the social media marketing campaign. Patience is the name of the game. Loyalty could not be ascertained just by having a quick glance at the numbers, there is a lot more in determining ‘loyalty’ of a customer to a brand. If a customer is frequently buying your product, does it necessarily mean that he/she is being loyal to that particular brand? The article highlights that looking at this problem, it appears to be a two-pronged approach. One side, company could question that what is the return that they are generating by investing in these social media platforms, instead authors suggest that the approach has to be more customer-centric, there has to be gestation period during which no interference from the company should be there.
Authors suggest that Loyalty could only be ascertained if and only if the customers are freely allowed to post their feedback, and carry out other related activity. Paradigm shift from the point of investment from company has to be shifted to the investment made by the customers in the form of time that they spend on the forums while providing their valuable inputs. Authors put this in an articulate way “The ability to create a relationship with a consumer is essential for a company to maintain for many years, if not for a life time. One of the objectives for a company’s online marketing and social media strategy should be to maintain a relationship with its customers”. This is where the loyalty factor kicks in, it is not always going to be about the quick bucks that company could make out of you, but it is about ensuring that the consumer ends up being an unpaid ambassador of the product. Until that stage is reached, one is quite far away from loyalty.
Authors clearly highlight the factors that govern the activity on various social media platforms; “connections, creation, consumption and control” – they are loosely termed as 4C’s of Social Media Marketing. One of the major factors that lead to unsuccessful campaigns and not attaining loyalty via social media is that managers tend to treat social media just as another form of traditional marketing, in fact when it is completely the opposite, they should embrace the uncertainty and come up with unique initiatives tailored to social media. There are many factors which underpin this simple approach, such as brand loyalty might certainly be perceived as quite high just on the count of some promotional activities, but it is only in the long-run, when the dust settles that loyalty towards a brand could truly be ascertained. At least, not completely ignoring the 4C’s would ensure that social media marketing consultants don’t end up making the basic mistakes by ignoring the customer side of the equation.
A seminal piece in this domain was published by KPMG as a report titled “Using social media to build brand Loyalty” Issues Monitor May 2011. This piece of research identifies social media marketing as equally divided among the four categories; “engaging customers, enhancing customer experience, rewarding loyal customers and emphasizing core brand values” (refer to figure 5 in appendix). Authors identify need for information availability as the key reason for the surge in social media marketing campaigns. Article further goes on to suggest that connectedness with a product or brand would result in loyalty of that customer to that particular brand, and one way in which it could be done efficiently and much economically is online as compared to other traditional mode i.e. offline.
The overarching theme of the publication is to throw some light on rapid growth in usage of social media by “food, drink and consumer goods (FDCG)” industry. Article identifies that it is not only the connectedness with the customers that the brand ends up achieving but this approach also provides brand an opportunity to build ‘Brand Loyalty’. And the ways in which it is being done is by various measures such as ensuring that customer engagement is given high priority and loyal customers are awarded. In the end, a satisfied customer himself vouches for the credibility or performance of the product, which is the ultimate ‘loyalty’ that any brand wishes to achieve in the hearts of the consumer.
Engaging customers forms a critical pillar of success. Example of Ann Taylor is provided in the study wherein the company changed the advertisements that were being aired, and it led to substantial improvement in recovering the lost ground. Initially there had been some concerns regarding the advertisement of a particular brand LOFT, which were raised by Facebook ‘fans’. Enhancing customer experience is also one of the key elements of social media marketing. Article cites an example of campaign by Anheuser-Busch, wherein Anheuser-Busch asked its Facebook fans to don the hat of detectives and guess the themes of their Super Bowl advertisements. More engaging it becomes, more eyeballs it attracts and hence more chances for new potential customers which might turn into ‘loyal’ after a regular usage of the brand. Example of Coca Cola has also been provided in the same light, it tweets in many different languages, so that no one feels disadvantaged, and more importantly, everyone feels as if Coca Cola has a special place for him/her.
By emphasizing core brand values, loyalty definitely gets strengthen, as it reinforces what brand actually stands for. It actually differentiates itself from rest of the field. One of the best examples, cited in the paper, is that of Tiffany & Co. who are known for their premier jewellery all around the world. They ensure that customers are aware of the fact that celebrities also prefer Tiffany, and Tiffany does it by posting photographs of celebrities sporting its jewellery. Rewarding loyal customers is also a great method for retaining the ‘loyalty’ status of the brand. Example of Proctor & Gamble is cited in the article wherein P&G provides its customers with “crest toothpastes” who like its Facebook page.
In the words of Justin Montgomery, Editor-In-Chief, Mobile Marketing Watch – “Adopting new methods to engage customers and keep a brand relevant should be a top priority for businesses — especially those engaged in consumer goods — and the time couldn’t be better”

Implications for Global Business and Indian Industry

The marriage of social media and brand loyalty is still in its nascent stage, so it would definitely not be wise to make any comment as to what will happen in the future about the consequences of this partnership. Global Business has definitely been impacted by this emerging phenomenon. Something which is entirely new, does not requires that one has to be afraid of it in implementing, it could also mean that one should be ready to embrace the uncertainty and then, if possible, leverage and thrive on it. Global Business is replete with examples wherein companies have both thrived and failed just because of utilization or neglect of this phenomenon. In 2003, Dr. Pepper launched a new product called “Raging Cow”. Dr. Pepper thought that asking some of the individuals to post favourable comments about the drink would be a great idea, so they went ahead with it, but many of the professional bloggers had smell something fishy. They came to know about Dr. Pepper’s misdeeds and Dr. Pepper fell on its knees. It is just one example from the possible hundreds that one could easily come up with.
Global Business Scenario is as uncertain as ever, and these rough times demand a flexible and innovative approach from the brands or companies. Due to the ever-increasing connectedness of the people over social media, any fault with the product ensures that the information spreads across the web like a raging fire in the dry forest. So, Global Businesses cannot take customers for granted anymore. Global Businesses need to be very clear with their strategies, whether they want loyalty by aggregation or adaption. These Social Media platforms provide companies with opportunities that never before existed. For instance, such an instant and uniform access across all the geographies was never possible in the past, ergo it is a big plus for brands.
The best approach that a company can take is by proclaiming throughout their organisation that “customer is the king”, there has to be a paradigm shift of company towards customer from just being a passive consumer of the product to the co-creator of the product. Many companies have started embracing this and are thus reaping huge awards for that. Nike by its NikeID program lets customers design their own shoes, of course a premium is being charged, but then it shows the right way for companies to be successful in the coming tumultuous times. One of the best examples of utilization of social media platforms could be the use of local languages in their promotions or other regular announcements by the brands. Adopting this approach ensures that consumers feel a sense of connectedness with the brand, which obviously would not have been possible just by the usage of one universal language.
Global Brands such as Maybelline have realized that there could be another hidden benefit of Social Media. There were fake products coming out in the name of Maybelline in New York, so Maybelline form a Facebook community and the copycats were reported by hundreds of fans within a short span of time. This is the ultimate extent to which a brand should aspire to reach n the hearts of the people – until consumers themselves become the watchdogs and ambassadors of the product. It is always going to be a win-win situation for both the brand and consumers given that brands don’t try to force things upon the consumers. But how could these global brands build that capacity to leverage the situation is also a question worth pondering. Case in point is P&G’s VocalPoint, customized website for discussions regarding the launch of new products by P&G.

There are certain caveats though from the point of the global brands, they must strictly adhere to relevant and current information. No customer wants to be loaded with a barrage of information, if they don’t find it relevant enough. Most important thing here is that Global Brands looking for Brand Loyalty via Social Media platforms should be patient enough to see the ultimate results. It’s not a genie-in-a-bottle phenomenon that would ensure overnight success regarding the brand loyalty. Brands have to let it happen rather than force it happen, but that does not mean that companies should sit on their laurels and simply play the wait-and-watch game. Brands should ensure that they regularly keep coming with loyalty programs and frequent (relevant updates) which consumers find useful. One of the critical success factors for the strategy from the point of global brands would be the effective resolution of query. One example here worth citing is that of Citibank, it predominantly uses its social media presence as just a means of promotion, but some of the emerging players like ICICI banks use the same platforms to respond to the queries and other related stuff which could easily be carried out online, rather than making the customer visit the office in person. Another perspective that global businesses have to deal with is the “Culture Issue”. Global Brands must ensure that no nation is at a disadvantage to other while framing their campaigns for social media platforms.
As far as the Indian Industry is concerned, there have been a number of brands who have leveraged on the rise of social media. Brands such as Myntra.com, Shoppers Stop, Snap Deal and Jabong have really bet big on the success of social media in the future. These firms provide a certain discount to customers, if they “like” their page. L’Oreal India has been pretty aggressive at using the Social Media Platform for delivery of the content and other regular activities. In this campaign – both online and offline offerings were merged as users were asked to provide their code on the product via Facebook app. This approach led to a better understanding of the break-up of the revenues from online and offline, as initially offline purchases were hard to account for.
Since this approach is still quite new in India, therefore there are still few companies who have meddled with this, one successful story is that of Revlon India. Due to the ever increasing consumer base (“demographic dividend”) India remains a hotspot for many MNC’s. Revlon carried out a #TwiceAsGood to celebrate the dual layers of Indian Woman – many roles that they have to play. Revlon India ends up taking the popular content from Revlon Global Facebook page itself, this has a lot to tech the companies who are yet to enter the domain of Social Media Marketing. It is not just making a hue and cry about such a global brand that you are, but to ensure that you adapt locally, that is where Ghemawat talks about adaptation in his bestseller book “Redefining Global Strategy”. Companies in India have a long way to go in this domain, one thing that they could do is to possibly emulate some the successes of a Global Company but keeping always at the back of their minds that it is the localization or customization or uniqueness of the product that would lead to winning the race in the long term.
All-in-all implementing a successful social media strategy that leads to brand loyalty is like a tight ropewalk, wherein all factors should be very judiciously considered, as just a minor slip here or there could send the entire brand down a deathly spiral. Indian Businesses should especially focus on the fact that it is not necessary that Facebook “likes” lead to brand loyalty as the only motivation for the consumer might be lower price due to promotion.

Theories, Frameworks and Models
The model discussed in (Michel Laroche et al. 2012) provides us with the motivation behind development of the model that authors ended up using in their research paper. The main motivation behind developing a brand community model (Michel Laroche et al. 2012) was to examine to observe and strengthen relationships “among customers, marketers, product, brand, and other customers, and how these relationships could enhance brand trust and loyalty.” AN iterative process is adopted starting from the most basic of models to come to the present stage of sophistication. Initially as provided by (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001), the very initial models of “Brand Community” comprised of a “customer–customer–brand” triad. But with further understanding of the underlying dynamics and with further progress another entity was added to the Brand Community i.e. Company and Product (McAlexander et al. 2002).
Attachment Theory – Theoretical Framework: Marketers have always relied on “Attachment Theory” to guide them in developing the marketing strategies. “Attachment Theory” gets paramount importance in today’s hyper-active world wherein every one’s need is to stay connected 24 hours a day. This theory, very fundamentally stated means that there is a strong between two individuals, reason for which could be sense of security or safety which is met by remaining in a close distance with the other partner. As per (Bowlby 1969; Ainsworth 1970), “Attachment Theory” could be described as “Strong bonds between mothers and infants that meet fundamental needs for safety and security through maintenance of proximity”. This theory fits pretty well in the context of Brand Loyalty and Social Media Marketing, as it exploits the hidden necessity of an individual to remain connected with the society and avoid the feeling of being left away from the mainstream world. In this process, many of the individual attach themselves with a particular brand or product.
Attachment is in no way restricted to a tangible product, it could always be related with an intangible service as well. Now, as soon as, services come into play, one could easily make out the nexus between social media and brand loyalty, as now social media itself becomes a craving, a target to which consumers might attach themselves to. Now, the nest question, in this series is to determine whether this attachment’s impact could be quantitatively studied, or will it only remain a qualitative metric without any concrete measurable attributes. As it turns out to be, there is yet to be a quantitative process to be developed which could solve this riddle for us.
As per (Rebecca A. VanMeter et al. 2013), authors have made an attempt to ensure that the above mentioned qualitative aspect of attachment gets transformed to a quantitative aspect. For this, authors have developed an alternate model titled “EASM: emotional attachment to social media”. Authors go on to formally define EASM as “as an emotion-laden bond between a person and social media; characterized by affective and cognitive connections with others and one’s self facilitated by social media”. To develop such a type of innovative metric was in itself quite a challenge but authors’ effort lead to overall success of the study carried out, thereby implying that individuals who end up having a higher EASM score end up spending more, much more time on the various social media platforms

Euro Mediterranean (Model) Viewpoint of Brand Loyalty:
This model (refer to figure above) has been divided into four quadrants; “No loyalty, Spurious loyalty, True loyalty and Latent loyalty.” By “No Loyalty” it is meant that customers do not wish to buy the product, whatsoever the reason may be. In general, perception of that product in the eyes of the consumers is rapidly falling and no customer wants to be a purchaser of that product. “Spurious Loyalty” is the situation wherein the loyalty is being falsely ascertained as to be true. Temporary loyalty could be due to many factors such as brand promotion, heavy discounts or influence of certain other factors. Therefore, customers in this bracket tend to be prone to “poaching” i.e. if a rival comes up with a better product then there always is a possibility that the consumer will defect. “Latent Loyalty” is the situation wherein the loyalty is somewhere hidden deep inside the heart of the consumer, but is not evident in the regular or frequent purchases of the product by the customers. “True Loyalty” is also termed as “Sustainable Loyalty” is that stage when there is often high frequency of repurchases and the motive behind those frequent repurchases is the faith in the performance of the product, a belief that the product will perform to the expected level.
Why this model is termed as Euro-Mediterranean should be attributed to the fact that European consumers are predominantly the ones who value luxury and life style in their lives to be on a higher side, they are more refined in their tastes. Their expectation of product performance and expectation is much different from that of consumers of other parts of the world. In the parlance of luxury, it should not be made available to anyone, or it cannot be made affordable, otherwise rarity of that luxury item would cease to exist. The application of VRIO framework – Valuable, Rare, Inimitable and Organisation. The model also considers the various possible avenues within luxury segment itself. Even though there have been many studies which have been carried out in other parts of the world, but theory regarding Euro-Mediterranean brands (luxury) was never being developed at such a scale.
Conceptual framework for Brand Loyalty: As per a recent study (Sajal Kabiraj et al. 2010), authors have come up with a conceptual framework or theory underlying the Brand Loyalty. But before one gets a hang of that first, one has to appreciate the fact that this entire process of Brand loyalty consists of two stages which is pretty neatly elaborated in a figure in appendix.
(Dick and Basu, 1994) originally came up with the concept of “conceptual framework of Brand Loyalty”, (please refer to Figure 5 in the appendix). In their framework, they came up with a groundbreaking work wherein they ascertained that even a repeat purchase might not be indicative of brand loyalty as there may be certain other hidden factors or situational factors involved such as particular brands that are being stocked by the retailer or any other constraint, it might as well be a bumper discount period that might have led to the repeated important purchases. Conceptual Framework (Karine et al. 2013) regarding “Virtual Brand Community” (VBC): Brand loyalty in a VBC could be influenced by several factors. With the help of this framework one would be better able to understand as to what could be the critical factors that would lead to the success of VBC in leading to more brand loyalty. Initially there have only been qualitative approaches taken for this problem, but now there seems to be a change in paradigm, and more attention has been paid to quantitative framing. There have been researches carried out (McAlexander, Kim and Roberts, 2003) to ascertain the fact that there seems to be a positive relationship between the time spent after being an indispensable part of the community and the overall satisfaction of that consumer, researchers have even proved that there seems to be a positive relationship between time spent and the overall loyalty that customer experiences for that particular brand. But all the researches just mentioned were never conducted in a French domain and that is where this conceptual framework kicks in.
Authors do away with traditional mode of thinking and radically suggest another metric by the use of which one could successfully achieve the objective i.e. of achieving the brand loyalty is the minds of the consumer. The suggestion from the authors is that of inclusion of Intensity as the parameter or the governing force for the loyalty. Intensity is not all that easy to quantify, as authors did realized earlier rather than later. They suggested an entirely different approach to deal with this problem, by bifurcating Intensity into two different, unique and independent components; participation (level of) and contribution (level of).
By the participation, authors try to convey the message of participation with respect to just one factor: presence. Now, that presence could itself be further classified in many ways is a different game altogether, our domain is just limited to the frequency (average) and duration, which we would use as pointers for participation. Now coming to contribution, taking a leaf out of participation’s definition, one could easily arrive at the guiding definition of contribution, that is, the count of activities by community in which the consumer participates. There is a gigantic difference between the two factors, on one hand we have participation, which is all about being passive whereas on the other we have contribution, which is entirely active in nature.
Equation is still quite far from being solved. This conceptual framework not only enables to determine the impact of participation (intensity) on Brand Loyalty but also provides us with an understanding of the possible effect of intermediating by another role of community participation or community commitment. The overall findings of the study and the overall conclusion from this framework is that highly involving or engrossing or intense the involvement or participation is, that is, higher the member involvement in VBC is, leads to stronger relationships with the community, and it just does not ends at that. It also ensures that there is that desirability to be attached with the community also becomes persistent in nature, that is, maintaining of long-term relationship with the community is on the cards. The cycle does not stops here only, it in turn leads to a better rather much stronger trust or loyalty towards the brand.
VBC in itself is a breathtaking innovation derived out of utter simple observations, success story of VBC should result in other researchers also tackling this problem of coping with this deadly combination of social media and brand loyalty in a much better manner.
The difference between brand commitment and community commitment should be ignored at one’s peril as that might result in the failure of the overall assumptions of the model. All the careful analysis up to this stage helps one identify and ascertain the impact of VBC in a quantitative manner whereas up to this point most of the researchers have tended to solve this problem by taking a qualitative approach.
Social Media Performance Model (SMPM): This model was developed more as a necessity rather than as an exercise in fancy dreamland conjuring up utopian ideas. The need was felt as companies were actively posting content on the social media websites, were eagerly involving themselves in dialogues with consumers, running promotional or advertisement strategies, all on social media but were simply not analyzing the data, it was more like a thoughtless way of just pushing the content through, on the part of the companies or the brands. As per a recent Forrester study, approximately 66% of the companies do not bother themselves with the analysis of the data (be it in the form of clicks per ad, revenue per ad, discount coupons availed and so on). All this data is just going out into the ether and does not serves anybody the purpose, if there is no descriptive or predictive analytics applied on the data, so this is for the background of the Social Media Performance Model.
This relates to brand loyalty in a way that there could be no analysis of brand loyalty until and unless there is some statistics deployed on to the dataset. The “Social Media Performance Model” is a statistical multivariate model, in which, as the name implies, more than one variables are used to determine or clearly understand social media performance. The approach that this model is not quite the ‘rocket-science’ stuff. This “Social Media Performance Model” utilizes the customary variables such as frequency and reach, other variables which capture the amount of engagement of consumer with the platform. All of these traditional inputs could be used by this “Social Media Performance Model” to produce more better focused or targeted advertisements or promotion or any other relevant and current update for that matter.
It is this direct correlation between social media result and the favourable outputs that put this technique of “Social Media Performance Model” way ahead of its competitors. The logic behind working of this model is the identification of critical factors which significantly influence the outcome or response variable (which in the context of social media would be better revenues by targeted or relevant content postings). Once the variables are being isolated which play a significant role in determining the output or response variable, predictive analytics could be used to design any further campaigns for the company.
It might seem that it is a no-brainer that twitter feeds or retweets about a company would lead to better sales or gaining of popularity of the company among the public, but it might not always be the case, and that is where our “Social Media Performance Model” comes in handy and rescues one out of trouble. Best part of this tool is the no-fuss approach that is being adopted out here, the tool scans through all the possible input variables that might have effect on the outcome or response variable and provides us with the most relevant set of the variables that would be used in our prediction equation.

Social Media Strategy Framework (Third wave Social Media Strategy framework): This framework lays the guidelines to be followed for an effective strategy to be deployed via social media platforms. It is divided into three parts- goals, strategy and setup. This framework is itself quite generic that there are no specific or quantifiable ways or mechanisms that are to be followed but still none the less it is quite handy at the macro level i.e. for the formation of the strategy. This framework asks individual or brand to clearly ideate the requirement which is to be serviced by this platform. Until and unless the target is clear, there is no point in determining the efficiency part of it, first one has to be effective, only then efficiency could pop into the equation.
Now, getting down to the basics, in order to determine the objectives or goals of the company, there are certain conditions which must be satisfied, in order for an objective to be qualified as a good objective: * Should always be linked to the business part * Has to be long-term (preferably) * Should consider interdepartmental synergies * They should be measurable (Peter Drucker once remarked “That which cannot be measured cannot be improved”)
Now, coming to the other parts of the framework, on how to efficiently and effectively target people by setting people goals, once again, certain conditions which will serve us good in determining the people objectives: * Judiciously asking whether company will attract right set of people by being present on that particular platform * Calculate the opportunity cost by letting go of a particular platform in favour of the other (for example there might be confusion between reddit and delicious, so one has to be chosen) * Carefully segmenting your audiences
Paper details about the most important part of any activity, that is, rigorous analysis so that frequent mistakes do not keep occurring and should be prevented in future. Certain ways suggested are: * Monitoring of the processes * Questions should be clearly defined * Processes must be streamlined and formally established * Approaches for Monitoring * Feedback Loop * Radar Topic * Engagement opportunities

Conclusion

The world of social media and brand loyalty is fraught with dangers and therefore has to be carefully trudged upon. On one hand, we have ever cheaper and more convenient ways of reaching to the consumer, on the other hand, power ultimately resides in the hand of the consumer. Due respect has to be provided to the customer and he should be treated as a co-creator of the content, and not just a passive consumer of the content which has been forced by someone else.
As far as loyalty is concerned, it is extremely difficult to gauge the extent of loyalty just by seeing some short term fluctuations in the demand of the product. There might be discounts or other factors which might be leading one to believe that suddenly loyalty has shot up, when in actuality it has not. It is more like settling for noise in search of signal (a famous book by Nate Silver). Brand Loyalty in turn is affected not just by how frequently the content gets updated but also by certain other factors such as relevancy of the update and the size of the information that is being divulged. Not every customer would like to have tons of information at his disposal leaving him aside with too little time making any sense out of the data.
Key challenges for brands active on Social Media would be to come up with certain promotions that incorporate all the said changes in the previous paragraph (last few points).Also brand loyalty is such that it varies across geographies as evident by the discussion of Euro Mediterranean model, what might be considered as Brand loyalty in one part of the world might not come even close to the definition of loyalty in other parts of the world.
Certain frameworks could definitely help marketing consultants in forming their marketing campaigns. But the most important message that one could take away from this piece of writing is the importance of context and customization of the messages. In the world of ever-increasing data availability, marketing consultants could always come up with the right mix of analytical tools to help them come out with right customized offerings which in turn would be about maximizing the chances of increase of Loyalty.
Last but not the least, winner would be the one who would not just adapt to customize but also aggregate across similarities.
Appendix

Figure [ 1 ]: The Euro Mediterranean Model of brand loyalty map adapted from Dick and Basu (1994)

Figure [ 2 ]: Brand loyalty – A deterministic and stochastic perspective. (Kabiraj & Shanmughan)
What Customers Do
What Customers Do
What Customers feel
What Customers feel

Loyalty= Property of psychological commitment

Loyalty= Property of psychological commitment

Brand Loyalty
Brand Loyalty
Loyalty= Behaviour; effectively a matter of habit
Loyalty= Behaviour; effectively a matter of habit

Behavioural
Stochastic
Behavioural
Stochastic
Attitudinal
Deterministic
Attitudinal
Deterministic
Figure)
Figure [ 3 ]: A conceptual framework of brand loyalty. Dick and Basu (1994)

Figure [ 4 ]: Customer centric model of brand community (McAlexander et al., 2002)

Figure [ 5 ]: Social media practices by FDCG companies (Using social media to build brand Loyalty : KPMG May 2011)

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