During the last two decades the retailing industry is finding itself in a state of constant evolution and transformation. Globalization, mergers and acquisitions, and technological developments have drastically changed the retailing landscape. The explosive growth of the Internet has been one of the main catalysts in this process. The effects of the Internet have been mostly felt in retail sectors dealing mainly with intangibles or information products. But these are not likely to be limited to these sectors; increasingly retailers of physical products realize that the empowered, sophisticated, critical and well-informed consumer of today is essentially different to the consumer they have always known. The web, and particularly what is known as Social Media or Web 2.0, have given consumers much more control, information and power over the market process, posing retailers with a number of important dilemmas and challenges. This article explains what the new face of the Internet, widely referred to as Web 2.0 or Social Media, is, identifies its importance as a strategic marketing tool and proposes a number of alternative strategies for retailers. Implementing such strategies will allow retailers not only to survive, but also create competitive advantages and thrive in the new environment. EUROPEAN RETAIL RESEARCH Vol. 22, 2008, pp. 1-28 2 European Retail Research Vol. 22, pp. 1-28 Keywords IntroductionFifteen years after its commercial launching, the Internet has become the second most important distribution channel (after high street retailing) and a major source of customer information and empowerment (Urban 2003(Urban , 2005Constantinides/Fountain 2008). A number of recent developments in this field threaten to further weaken the role of traditional retailing in a number of sectors where retailers and intermediaries have always played an important role. Music, entertainment, press, printing/publishing and traditional travel agents are some of the branches that have already felt the negative effects of Internet-enabled disintermediation. The web has made possible the direct contact between producers and consumers, making the physical retailer of information-based products or intangibles redundant.These developments are widely seen as effects of the Internet evolution and have been extensively discussed and debated. However, over the last three years, a new generation of online tools, applications and approaches such as blogs, wikis, online communities and virtual worlds, commonly referred to as Web 2.0 or Social Media, are increasingly attracting the attention of practitioners and, recently, of academics. As often happens when revolutionary innovations become booming business, research and theoretical underpinning on the Web 2.0 issue is still very limited and there is not even a generally accepted definition. What most people would agree though is that a fundamental element of Web 2.0 is what is widely known as Customer-Generated Content (CGC): besides extracting value, users also add value to W...
The widespread adoption of Web 2.0 applications, commonly known as social media, has brought about a new generation of empowered customers who are often willing to co-create by sharing their experiences, product knowledge and innovative ideas with producers. They provide inputs in the form of ideas, suggestions or testing in new product development trajectories. Co-creation with customers obliges businesses to step away from the traditional firm-centric view of innovation and presents marketers with interesting challenges: how to identify, motivate and recruit the most innovative customers in co-creation processes. A pilot questionnaire based on the uses and gratification approach identifies the motivators for customers to participate in online co-creation. The results indicate that customer participation in co-creation projects is motivated by four distinct types of benefits and also that co-creating customers differ in their motivational level. The paper also discusses ideas for follow-up studies and presents suggestions for further research.
Los canales de distribución online son significativas plataformas de venta que ofrecen la posibilidad de aplicar estrategias de colaboración e innovación entre clientes y marcas. El objetivo del presente documento es destacar a través de una revisión de la literatura, la continua transformación online en la industria textil a través de acciones de interacción más personalizadas por parte de las marcas textiles. Con la finalidad de poder satisfacer la exigente demanda de los actuales consumidores en el sector textil, la constante evolución en la industria de la moda también es percibida a través de planteamientos que aportan un nuevo valor al consumidor final, como la cocreación online. Situando actualmente al consumidor final, también a través de estrategias multicanal, como un agente clave en los procesos de creación y decisión.
Online social networking has become a reality and integral part of the daily personal, social and business life. The extraordinary increase of the user numbers of Social Networking Sites (SNS) and the rampant creation of online communities presents businesses with many challenges and opportunities. From the commercial perspective, the SNS are an interesting and promising field: online social networks are important sources of market intelligence and also offer interesting options for co-operation, networking and marketing. For SMEs especially the Social Networking Sites represent a simple and low cost solution for listening the customer’s voice, reaching potential customers and creating extensive business networks. This paper presents the results of a national survey mapping the demographic, social and behavioral characteristics of the Dutch users of SNS. The study identifies four different user profiles and proposes a segmentation framework as basis for better understanding the nature and behavior of the participants in online communities. The findings present new insights to marketing strategists eager to use the communication potential of such communities; the findings are also interesting for businesses willing to explore the potential of online networking as a low cost yet very efficient alternative to physical, traditional networking.
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