Corporate Blogs are fast emerging as new organizational tools for marketing, building brand relationships and Customer Relationship Management. This study has been conducted to analyse the ability of an organization to use its Corporate Blog as an e-CRM tool. We attempt to study the impact of brand communication (content type and volume), hosted on an organizational blog, on its ability to induce consumer engagement. Organizations can build relationships with their prospective and current consumers through posts on a Corporate Blog, and encourage them to participate by commenting on the blog, thereby stimulating consumer engagement. The variation in the organizational objective behind hosting each post on the blog is used to categorize the content posted on the blog. An exploratory study enables us to deduce the importance of content typologies in building a relationship with the customer. We are able to identify three types of content typologies -Organizational, Promotional and Relational. We further observe that Relational content hosted by an organization is able to induce greater volumes of consumer engagement (measured in terms of number of consumer comments) than any other content typology. The analysis of dependency of consumer engagement on the volume of content posted by the organization indicates a positive correlation between number of posts and volume of comments.
This paper traces the journey of the marketing mix paradigm from its inception through continuous debate and discussion over the years. It traces the evolution of marketing mix components and the transformation of the marketing paradigm as society, technology, media, information and money have changed. A significant evolution of technology has changed the face of marketing. The paper uses inputs from marketing experts to trace the all-encompassing and unstoppable expansion of cyberspace that is changing every single dimension of consumers' lifestyles. The paper outlines the acceleration of the information revolution with the advent of the 'Read-Write Web' or 'Web 2.0'. Within this emergent virtual domain, corporate blogs, online communities, social networks and wikis have redefined the routine lives of individuals and changed the way people relate to information, brands, other people and even themselves. The discussion further proceeds to address three important issues facing the world of marketing today: the implications of today's technologically inspired environment for marketing in the twenty-first century, the conceptualization of a customer mix as a pre-requisite for the marketing mix and, in conclusion, finally proposes an update to the marketing mix itself. In addition to this, the paper also traces the incorporation of the concepts of relationship marketing, customer relationship management, co-creation, salesforce automation and digital marketing in current-day marketing environments.
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