Question

Marketers have traditionally used research methods such as focus groups, observation, trend analysis, and competitive research to help develop and gauge customer response to new products.Today, social media is also helping companies understand consumer preferences and develop new products.

Have a look at how Wal-Mart, Frito-Lay, Samuel Adams and Kohls are using Facebook and Twitter and try to answer the following questions:

• For these companies, how is social media useful for marketing research?
• What are the pros and cons of using social media for market research?
• What other companies and products might benefit from this approach?

Answer 1

Ans 1) Social media is useful for marketing research in the sense that it provides faster response as maximum of the people spend their time on social media so any message given through social media reaches to them within a second and the people who follow these companies ultimately can give quicker response and also the research done through the social media gives the correct information and the companies can know what their consumer like and dislike and moreover it is affordable too than any other methods of collecting information. Here Companies like Wal-Mart, Frito-lay, Samuel Adams, and Kohls uses the social media to give information on their products and discounts being offered from time to time to the consumers and the information is collected through the likes of the consumers i.e how many people reacted to its post so that they can know that their how much did that particular ad attracted the customers. Not only this there are various other reasons like getting feedback from customers, responding and solving customer queries instantly, new products availability, and of course to monitor competitors.