Exploring Social media potential for a Company that sells


Exploring Social media potential for a Company that sells
Optical High Tech Products
By
Firat Aslan
Philipp Müller
Daniel Stojakovic
Dominique von Fischer
20 May 2011
BSc International Management
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel
Client: Knecht & Müller AG
8260 Stein am Rhein
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I
Management
Summary
The first part of the paper covers the theoretical framework of Social media as well as
sustainability reporting. This includes definitions, historical background, trends and best
practice.
The second part deals with empirical studies of qualitative as well as quantitative surveys.
The sample consists of spectacle wearers from Switzerland as well as opticians selected
by Knecht & Müller. The goal is to show how Social media are used, that sustainability in
this context cannot be considered as a sales argument. Furthermore, the goal was to find
out which the main channel of information for potential customers are.
The third and last part deals with the evaluation of the findings of those surveys and
specific proposals for the implementation. The findings of the quantitative survey revealed
that Facebook, YouTube and partially Xing are the Social media, which are most
frequently used by the sample. Several companies operating in lens manufacturing and
other industries have been analyzed concerning their social media activities and are
mentioned as best-practice examples.
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I
Declaration
of
Authenticity
We the undersigned declare that all the material presented in this paper is our own work or
fully and specifically acknowledged wherever adapted from other sources.
We understand that if at any time it is shown that we have significantly misrepresented
material presented here, any degree or credits awarded to us on the basis of that material
may be revoked.
We declare that all statements and information contained herein are true, correct and
accurate to the best of our knowledge and belief.
Olten, May 18, 2011:
_________________________
_________________________
Philipp Müller
Firat Aslan
_________________________
_________________________
Dominique von Fischer
Daniel Stojakovic
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Index
1.
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................1
2.
Literature
Review ............................................................................................................................2
3.
Social
media
Theory ........................................................................................................................4
3.1
Definition
Social
media .............................................................................................................4
3.2
History
and
Development
of
Social
media ................................................................................5
3.3
Social
media
Strategy
Theory ....................................................................................................7
3.3.1
Organisational
Level ...........................................................................................................7
3.3.2
Communication
Level.........................................................................................................9
3.3.3
Operative
Level ................................................................................................................10
3.3.4
Monitoring .......................................................................................................................11
3.4
Social
media
Landscape
(tools) ...............................................................................................11
3.4.1
XING .................................................................................................................................11
3.4.2
LinkedIn ............................................................................................................................14
3.4.3
Facebook ..........................................................................................................................15
3.4.4
From
Weblog
to
we
Blog
to
Blogger ................................................................................18
3.4.5
Twitter ..............................................................................................................................19
3.4.6
VLOG
(Youtube)................................................................................................................20
3.5
Challenges
and
Opportunities
of
Social
media
Activity...........................................................21
4.
Sustainability
Reporting
Theory
&
Swissness................................................................................23
4.1
Definition
Sustainability
Reporting .........................................................................................23
4.2
History
and
Development
of
Sustainability
Reporting ............................................................24
4.3
Sustainability
Reporting
in
the
Case
of
Knecht
&
Müller ........................................................25
4.4
Trends
for
the
Sustainability
Reporting...................................................................................28
4.5
Best
Practice............................................................................................................................30
4.6
Swissness.................................................................................................................................31
5.
Qualitative
and
Quantitative
Survey .............................................................................................32
5.1
Qualitative
Survey
among
Opticians .......................................................................................32
5.1.1
Goal ..................................................................................................................................32
5.1.2
Target
Audience ...............................................................................................................33
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5.1.3
Sustainability
&
Swissness
as
Sales
Arguments................................................................33
5.1.4
Social
media
Activities......................................................................................................36
5.2
Quantitative
Survey
among
Optical
Wearers..........................................................................39
5.2.1
General
Information.........................................................................................................39
5.2.2
Participant
Information ....................................................................................................40
5.2.3
The
Sales
Process .............................................................................................................41
5.2.4
Attitudes
towards
Social
media........................................................................................43
5.2.5
Attitudes
towards
Social
media........................................................................................45
5.2.6
Sustainability
and
other
Sales
Arguments........................................................................45
6.
Recommendations ........................................................................................................................47
6.1
Facebook .................................................................................................................................47
6.1.1
Chances
and
Risks ............................................................................................................47
6.1.2
Best
Practice.....................................................................................................................49
6.1.3
Recommendation .............................................................................................................50
6.2
Twitter
&
Blog .........................................................................................................................55
6.2.1
Chances
and
Risks ............................................................................................................55
6.2.2
Best
Practice.....................................................................................................................59
6.2.3
Recommendation .............................................................................................................61
6.3.
Youtube ..................................................................................................................................64
6.3.1
Chances
and
Risks ............................................................................................................64
6.3.2
Best
Practice.....................................................................................................................66
6.3.3
Recommendation .............................................................................................................66
6.4
XING ........................................................................................................................................67
6.4.1
Recommendation
&
Best
Practice....................................................................................67
6.5
Homepage ...............................................................................................................................70
6.5.1
Recommendation
&
Best
Practice....................................................................................71
6.6
Offline
Activities ......................................................................................................................77
6.6.1
Chances
and
Risks ............................................................................................................77
6.6.2
Best
Practice.....................................................................................................................78
6.6.3
Recommendation .............................................................................................................79
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7.
Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................81
8.
Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................83
9.
Figures ...........................................................................................................................................90
10.
Attachments................................................................................................................................91
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1.
Introduction
Knecht & Müller is a company based in Switzerland, which produces high quality optical
lenses. The company is interested to know if there is a potential to directly get in to contact
with their end consumers through Social media. The goal of the Social media strategy is to
give their clients an understanding of their high-tech products and boost the awareness
among clients towards their efforts in producing sustainable.
The project group did a thorough desk research to analyze potential Social media Tools,
which would best fit the needs of Knecht & Müller.
In addition to that, expert talks as well as qualitative and quantitative online surveys were
conducted to learn about the attitude of glass wearers and opticians towards Social media
in general, as well as sustainability and Swissness as sales arguments. The results of the
surveys and the expert talks, combined with the findings of the desk research, will narrow
down the choice of which Social media tools Knecht & Müller should choose to build up a
Social media Strategy on.
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2.
Literature
Review
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has increased its significance substantially over the
last years and keeps raising its field of influence. The amount of companies using the GRI
Guidelines have increased from 9 in 1999 to over 1’300 in 2010. Nowadays, even the
biggest corporations such as Nestlé, UBS or Holcim have discovered the advantages of a
holistic view of their companies (GRI 2010).
Due to the tradition of Knecht & Müller AG as a sustainable employer and producer,
Corporate Social Responsibility was always a substantial part of the company (Knecht &
Müller 2008).
The rise of sustainability reporting throughout the world is also accompanied by another
trend: the rise of social media. In the last years, social media emerged en-masse. As an
example, Facebook has exceeded the 600 million-user benchmark in the last year
(MSNBC 2011).
Some companies forecasted that trend correctly and were able to take advantage of the
first-mover. E.g. McDonald’s already has over 7 million users on Facebook and is
interacting intensely with customers to benefit from feedback as much as possible.
Once a company starts to be active on Social media, it has to bear in mind that it cannot
go back. Klaus Eck (2010) makes it clear, that critics, rumours or sensible data will find
their way around the world even faster than information about products or offers.
Furthermore, he states that a company being active on Social media can face reputation
damages. It is obvious that Social media enhance the transparency and therefore change
the framework for all, companies and customers. It is therefore necessary that companies
face this new situation. Nowadays a company has to communicate actively and with
transparency to reach its clientele.
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Lon Safko (2010) shows the pros and cons of various social media tools. He believes that
if a social media tool is chosen with care by a company and implemented with a sound
strategy, the communication channel between customer and company can be greatly
enhanced. Valuable feedback channels may develop which will strengthen customer
loyalty and increase brand awareness. Nevertheless, Safko (2010) shows that with a poor
strategy, social media tools may cause more damage to the company than the expected,
targeted added value. Therefore every step has to be carefully planned prior to pursuing
an online viral marketing through social media tools.
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3.
Social
media
Theory
3.1
Definition
Social
media
After Safko (2010) being social is in the nature of us human beings, we have the urge to
connect and interact with other humans. In order to exchange and interact with other
individuals a media is needed to transport the message from the sender to the receiver.
Safko (2010) explains that in the early days mediums of communication were letters, then
telegraphs, followed by telephones and later advanced to “ radio, television, e-mail,
websites, photographes, audio, video, mobile phones or text messaging”. Safko (2010)
further remarks that medias “are the technologies we use to make” connections to
individuals as friend’s family etc. So there is a very old unchanged constant factor, which
lies in the human nature, the urge of being socially active. While in the early days one was
only capable to send a message from A to B or B to A, nowadays one has the possibility to
communicate to many more receivers than just B. (Safko 2010)
Andreas M. Kaplan and Michael Haenlein have a more technical definition to the rather
simple one mentioned above. The say that:
“Social media is a group of Internet – based applications that build on the
ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the
creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (Kaplan and
Haenlein 2010)
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3.2
History
and
Development
of
Social
media
Social media is present in our daily life and it’s difficult to imagine living without it. Social
media has been hyping strongly over the past few years but what some people do not
know is, that social media exists a whole lot longer than previously assumed.
Prior to the commercialization of the Internet in 1991 there existed already various
interactive Bulletin Board Systems allowing individuals to exchange themselves with each
other as presented by Leiner et al. (1997). The First such interactive Platform was
developed by Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss in 1978 (Ward and Suess. 1978). Since
the Worldwide Web as we know it today was at that point non-existent, only a handful of
users were exchanging themselves about various contents.
As Leiner et al. (1997) reported the “World-wide web consortium” was founded in 1995
and from that point on everybody had access to the Internet as we know it today. With the
creation of the World-Wide Web the nutrient medium for social media was born.
The first social networking site that went online was sixdegrees.com in 1997. Boyd and
Ellison (2007) have shown that shortly after sixdegrees.com launched its website, social
communities going online in the early 21’st century skyrocketed. Suddenly everyone was
able to interact with each other and to spread news, share experiences and personal
estate not only within one’s close environment but with the whole world.
While in the beginning of the Social media or web 2 age, the social media platforms were
mainly used for social networking, catching up with old school friends and sharing the
latest news about one-self with posting pictures, its role has changed a lot and has
become more important.
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Today more and more companies are active in using social media. In a research executed
by McKinsey in 2008 approximately 2000 companies all over the world participated to find
out how web 2.0 has affected their daily corporate live.
The research conducted by McKinsey (2008) found out that only about 36% stated that
social media “has not changed the way the company is managed & organized”.
Furthermore, the majority of the participating companies agree that with web 2.0 it is much
easier to share information with their customers and give them constant updates. In
addition the way of communicating with consumers has changed significantly so that the
interaction between company and customer has grown and became a big player in the
customer relation issue. Through strong customer interaction companies implement
customer’s ideas in the product development process in order to fulfil their requirements
and needs. This fact explains why over 60 % of the questioned companies see web 2.0 as
an active driver of competitive advantage. McKinsey (2008)
Web 2.0 or social media which in the beginning served as social interaction platform has
over the past few years grown to become one of the most important marketing, customerrelation and feedback tool. Time will show if the commercial use for such medias is
sustainable and will redefine marketing, or it will disappear as fast as it came.
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3.3
Social
media
Strategy
Theory
After stating what the project group understands by Social media, the next part is going to
give an overview pertaining Social media Strategy.
One of the biggest mistakes a company can do, is to just go into the social media without
having a strategy in mind. Even if it is easy to create a Facebook account or start to write a
Blog, a company should bear in mind that what is put on the Internet stays in the Internet.
Therefore without having a clear strategy, a company risks reputation damage. Companies
often neglect the fact, that being active in the social media needs resources; so one aspect
of a Social media Strategy is to allocate the right amount of resources. An important factor
of being successful with social media is to be accurate, on time and to coordinate online
together with offline activities. To assure this, a social media strategy helps to assure, that
the online activities match the overall marketing and communication activities. Last but not
least, a Social media Strategy needs a clear time-schedule.
Klaus Eck (2010) is following a three-step process towards a Social media Strategy, which
includes an organisational, communicational and operative level.
3.3.1
Organisational
Level
The activities and tasks at the organisational level are linked to the overall organisation,
processes and structures. This step emphasizes the importance of the commitment of the
top management towards Social media Activities and is often accompanied by a
management change process. The organisational level includes the following three areas:
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Situation
Analysis
The Situation Analysis is the starting point of a Social media Strategy. It includes an
external analysis to give an overview on how a brand is already treated in the Social
media, information about the activities of the competition and the risks and chances of
getting active in Social media. The internal analysis is about recognizing whether the
organisation is ready to step into the Social media world and to find out which
organisational implementing Social media activities could support goals. To round up the
situation analysis it is recommended to do a SWOT Analysis with the aim to develop action
recommendations building on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Strategic
Fundament
Based on the situation analysis, the next step is to define important parameters of the
Social media activities. The strategic fundament includes the definition of Social media
goals on each functional level including the relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPI) as
well as the stakeholder segments that the company wants to reach. In a second step,
there is the need to define the different channels which could be used and define their
specific goals.
Build
Structures
The last step of the organisational level activities is to create a structure. This means the
company has to define which departments and which employees are responsible for the
Social media activities within the department. To assure a coordinated Social media
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Communication, it is then necessary to develop applicable internal processes
accompanied by a Social media Policy and guidelines.
3.3.2
Communication
Level
This level includes all elements, which have to do with communication issues. It is worth
mentioning, that Social media activities always have to do with visible communication,
meaning that whatever the company does in Social media will be detected by Internet
users. Therefore, it is recommendable to accompany Social media activities by
communication experts.
Social
media
Communication
Strategy
As Social media activities are public, it is important to define a strategic framework. This
part of the strategy is to assure that the Social media communication strategy is
embedded in the company’s communication strategy as well as that the Corporate Identity/
Corporate Design (Appearance of the company) is applied (as far as possible) within the
different tools that a company uses. Furthermore, the company has to do a topic planning
to state which topics should be addressed through which channel or tool. The social media
communication strategy also helps to plan where the Social media could accompany
planned marketing campaigns and activities. To recognize and response fast to new or
problematic issues, it is important to build real time monitoring which helps to assure an
immediate reaction.
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Marketing
strategy
For the usage of Social media a company normally has fixed costs. This means that the
more users or receivers of the medium the company has, the more efficient it is. Therefore
it is important to have a good marketing strategy, which helps to reach the target group
and make the Social media activities known.
3.3.3
Operative
Level
The last step of the strategy is to create concrete tactical activities based on the previously
takes steps.
Operative
Planning
The success of a Social media Strategy relies equally on the commitment of the top
management and on the employees. To assure this, companies often accompany the
implementation of the Social media activities by an active change management. The more
the employees know about the new activities, the higher their commitment and the more
certain the success of the implementation will be. As mentioned in the introduction of
social media strategy an important part is the resource allocation. Therefore, the operative
planning also includes the allocation of the financial, personnel as well as other resources
necessary for the successful implementation of the strategy. As other projects, the social
media strategy as well includes a concrete schedule with necessary milestones.
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3.3.4
Monitoring
The monitoring is not really a part of the strategy but more an on-going process. It helps to
analyse the (KPI) as well as performing a real time monitoring. This constant monitoring is
important to recognize what is going on among the Internet users and also generates
information on what certain stakeholders think and could contribute to optimize products
and processes. Furthermore, it helps to react immediately in critical situations. There is the
possibility to pay for the monitoring conducted through professionals or to build an own
monitoring by using tools like Google alerts or Google Blog search.
3.4
Social
media
Landscape
(tools)
3.4.1
XING
XING is a social network for maintaining existing and acquiring new business contacts.
Besides managing contacts it is also widely used to find new employees or get in contact
with possible new clients. It also offers the possibility of being active in communities
(special interest groups) or taking part in offline live networking events. In many industries
being a user of XING is nowadays often taken for granted. By December 2010 the platform
XING already reached 10,5 million registered users worldwide (XING 2011).
Beside the wide functions offered by XING it might be sufficient to just have a XING
Account. Having a XING profile and therefore being available to be found through search
engines like Google is according to Eck (2010) recommendable. This is especially
important when your name is researched so that your XING Profile appears on top of the
Google hits.
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Rather unknown usages of XING are the so-called company profile sites (Eck 2010). It is a
way to raise awareness for the company’s business within a business-networking
environment. It enables a company to interact as a company with interested users, clients
or prospective employees. A company profile can be used as a marketing & PR tool by
increasing the company’s visibility, as a recruitment tool to position the company as an
attractive employer, as an online sales channel by initiating new business and corporations
or to maintain customer loyalty by informing its customers on a regular basis about
products, innovations and news.
This company profile site can be generated when two or more registered users record the
same company name as their employer. Therefore, it is important to assure that all the
employees use the same form of the company name. By watching a company profile, the
user then can see all the employees, which are registered under this company’s name.
Furthermore, the company profile site shows how long the employees are working for the
company, which languages are spoken, which benefits the employees provide and which
connections to other companies exist. All employees having their company in their profile
are acting as brand ambassadors and therefore it is important to guide the employees
towards this important goal. Klaus Eck (2010) is giving various recommendations for a
successful corporate appearance on XING:
-
Bear the costs of premium accounts of all the employees in PR, Marketing, Sales
and Human Resources, to assure that they use Xing professional in the interest of
the company
-
As the employees act as brand ambassadors do, employ a professional
photographer to take the profile pictures of your employees
-
If necessary organize a internal training or develop a support document to help
your employees improve their profile sites
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Formulate standards how to fill in the company information like Name, type of
enterprise, amount of employees, etc.
-
Try to encourage your employees to give access to references, articles and hints to
presentations and public project overviews.
These company profiles can be seen and/or created under the tab “Unternehmen”.
Even if these company profile sites are used hesitantly, it is a good way to start presenting
your company. It is a tool to help improving the online reputation of a company and to find
out who is interested in your company.
Xing (2011) is offering three different product packages, with the following characteristics:
Fig. 1: Product Package table
BASIC
STANDARD
PLUS
Company logo and description
✔
✔
✔
Prominent placement of your XING job offers
✔
✔
✔
Employees list
✔
✔
✔
Max. Number of profile editors
1
3
5
Profile can be found by search engines
✔
✔
✔
Prominent placement incl. logo within XING
✔
✔
✔
4
10
3
5
45 characters
75 characters
search results
Contact for certain departments and divisions
within the company
Number of keywords you can enter to boost
your visibility in the XING network
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Individual design with linkable graphics
✔
Unlimited company updates that people can
✔
follow
✔
Your company updates can be followed on
members homepage
COSTS per month
0€
24.90 €
129 €
Source:
authors
based
on
data
from
Xing
3.4.2
LinkedIn
Like Xing, also LinkedIn can be seen as a business social networking tool. It is widely used
to maintain professional relationships, stay in contact with alumni and university contacts,
as well as a job-searching tool and in the perspective of companies, as a recruitment tool
(Safko 2009). LinkedIn has about 85 million members (dated: November 2010) and is
available in six languages. The main advantage of LinkedIn is that it is possible to embed
other sources like a corporate Blog, twitter news feeds or to provide documents and
presentations on your profile. With the basic profile, the user has only limited possibilities,
therefore in order to be really active and take advantage of LinkedIn a “Business” account
is highly recommended. The prices of upgraded accounts vary between 25 and 100 USD
per month, which is relatively expensive in comparison to Xing (Safko 2009).
As with Xing, it is also possible to create a company profile site on LinkedIn. Through
these profiles your company can be found and provide information for clients, business
contacts and possible employees. The company profiles can be used as a research tool. If
a user visits a company profile site he/she can see a company overview, which people he
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or she knows at the company and unique data from the LinkedIn network. The most
valuable data on these company sites are information about the employees. This means
on one side there is information of relevant people at the company and on the other side
statistics about employees of the company. This enables the user to see where the
employees worked before, discloses work history, their schools or educational
background. It is obvious that LinkedIn is the most interesting tool in terms of HR
departments as it offers additionally a wide area of candidate recruitment tools.
There are no extra costs for the company’s profile website. Nevertheless, to make use of
the wide range of functions it is essential for a company to upgrade their basic
memberships.
3.4.3
Facebook
Facebook is a social network service to build and maintain social contacts like friend’s,
family members or co-workers (Safko 2009). The aim of Facebook is to make the world
more open and transparent by giving their users the possibility to share and connect with
others (Eck 2010).
Comparing networks like LinkedIn or Xing, Facebook has or had its focus primarily on
private usage. Nevertheless, Eck (2010) states that over the last two years, companies
also started discovering the potential of this network. While on Xing or LinkedIn the
personal contact is important, on Facebook the community is pulling the strings. Therefore,
it is growing much faster than the above mentioned social business networks. Facebook is
more attractive for companies as it is much easier to reach the clientele, as on any other
website in the World Wide Web.
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As a big, well-known company it is easy to get some hundred or thousand followers, as a
small company the content defines the chances of attracting followers. The goal is to
connect the Facebook activities with other online activities and even more so with offline
marketing activities. According to WebMediaBrands (2011) there are basically three
possibilities to get in contact with the clientele: Facebook Adds, Facebook Pages and
Facebook Platforms, which are described below:
Facebook
Ads
Facebook Ads are a classical advertising tool. Compared to normal banners, as known
from other websites, the Facebook Ads always consist of media content (like picture or
video), a customized text and an optional customer interaction possibility. The main
advantage is that the “Ad generator” can specify the criteria (e.g. demographic) users
should see in these ads (Facebook 2011a).
It is possible to place the ad as a Rest-Of-Site ad - displayable on the right hand site - on
all of the subpages or as a homepage ad, which is displayed on the Facebook start page.
These rest-of-site ads can be easily booked over the Facebook Ad Manager. To get on the
start page of the Facebook user, it is necessary to contact the Facebook Sales Team. It is
furthermore necessary to generate minimal revenue to be placed on the start page.
A big advantage of the Facebook ads is the possibility to upgrade them to Facebook
Engagement Ads. With Facebook Engagement Ads Facebook users can directly interact
with the ad. Example: if a company displays an ad for an event, the user can directly
respond to the ad whether he or she will participate in the event or not. Other interaction
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possibilities are survey questions or giving the user simply the chance to push the “I like”
button about the ad.
Facebook
Pages
Facebook Pages are the virtual contact cards for a company on Facebook. The Facebook
pages offer similar possibilities as the private users have on their personal profile.
Compared to the Facebook Ads, it is free of charge to create a simple Facebook Page. Of
course, a company has always to bear in mind that the job is not done by simply creating a
page. Maintaining a Facebook Page, as well as communicate with users will call for
personal resources.
If a company considers becoming active on Facebook, it needs to think whether its
customers are on Facebook or not. According to Chadwick Martin Bailey (2010), “fans” of
a company or brand on Facebook, as well as the follower of a brand or company on
Twitter, are more convinced to buy a product of this company/brand or at least to
recommend it.
As mentioned earlier, it is certainly not sufficient to just create a Facebook page without
maintaining it. It is therefore a must, that the Facebook page delivers value to its followers.
Especially for small companies it is not so easy to attract people as active followers. It is
therefore recommendable to promote the Facebook Page also on the company website,
the E-Mail-Footer as well as on offline means like posters or advertisements.
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Facebook
Platforms
The Facebook platforms stated in this paper are meant to be an open link, which allows
Facebook as well as external developers to use this open link to create other services for
the Facebook community. The most known tools are the Facebook Apps. There are
several games or other applications, which were produced to entertain the Facebook
community. Before starting to use such applications like games, the user gives the
developer certain rights to access his data.
Facebook offers moreover a set of pre-programmed solutions which can be easily
implemented on a company’s website. Examples are the “I like” buttons or the Facebook
Comment Box.
3.4.4
From
Weblog
to
we
Blog
to
Blogger
About 30 years ago one used to exchange the latest new among friends or family over the
telephone, via letter or in the nearby bar while having a drink. Nowadays, a few simple
clicks and some typing are involved in order to write a Blog and share the latest happening
with everybody who wants to read the just posted Blog worldwide.
Safko (2010) writes that blogging, also known as live casting, began back in the early
nineties and grew enormously around 2006-2008.
Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) describe Blogs to be personal web pages, which can vary
extremely in content. A Blog can be about really anything and everything, from a specific
topic to personal diaries over political campaigns and many more. Everybody has the
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possibility to post or comment on a Blog. The author’s contributions are listed in a reversed
chronological order, keeping the newest one on top. (Safko 2010)
Such Blogs are mostly run by one person. This means that one individual, theoretically has
the possibility to share his/her Blog with anybody who has access to the web. In general
the authors of such Blogs write about personal things or a personal opinion, which
indicates that contents tend to be more subjective than objective.
It is possible that different people will write about the same subject and therefore also refer
or link page with one another.
Bendel (2006) remarks that since everybody is able to comment on what was previously
posted, reactions are provoked and so the Blog, in the ideal case, keeps going on and on,
which guarantees that it stays up to date.
Kapland and Haenlein (2010) indicate that blogs have a low creation cost and are easy to
maintain. They say that is why “many companies are using blogs to update employees,
customers, and shareholders” on the latest news about their corporation or product.
3.4.5
Twitter
“Twitter is a real time information network”(Twitter 2011a), which allows every Twitter user
to basically broadcast everything what is on ones mind and one wants to share with the
world. A tweet stands for a small “burst of information”(Twitter 2011a) which consists of a
maximum of 140 characters, the same as a short message capacity on a cell phone. Every
twitter user may freely choose which other user to follow in order to be able to read the
tweeted tweets.
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Twitter can be seen or used as a self-promotion tool. Some celebrities but also noncelebrities put a “follow me button” on their webpage to invite interested parties to read
their tweets. Various Hollywood stars have been twittering on what they are currently doing
in order to be “close” to their fans and give them a small insight on what they are doing.
Twitter also provides tweet buttons to put on homepages or blogs or any kind of Internet
platform. It gives individuals or corporations the possibility to interlink social media tools
with each other. This means that an update on a home page for example will immediately
appear on for example a Blog and at the same time a tweet will be sent to all followers on
what has just been updated. This allows each author/ individual/ corporation to reach out
and get in contact with even more people.
Under business.twitter.com, Twitter shows how corporations can best use this social
media tool, together with some practical examples.
3.4.6
VLOG
(Youtube)
VLOG belongs to the family of Blogging and stands for video blogging. Basically every
individual or corporation is able to create a video with the content they want to broadcast
and upload it to any video-sharing site desired.
Many firms have started to advertise their products via vlog. It allows them to create
creative videos which viewers are amused to watch. Video broadcasting allows the creator
to surprise, to shock or to simply get the viewer emotionally involved with the content.
(Safko 2010)
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The biggest such video sharing site is Youtube. Cheng et al (2007) reports that Youtube
has grown to become the biggest video-sharing page on the web. The page alone is
responsible for approximately 10 % of the Internet traffic worldwide with over 20 million
viewers a month. Because Youtube is so well frequented it presents a great potential to
reach a high number of users, which is greatly appreciated by the video creators.
3.5
Challenges
and
Opportunities
of
Social
media
Activity
Over the last years, social media marketing has emerged as a powerful tool, giving the
customers a voice and enabling them to communicate on the very same level as the
producers. According to Jeff Bullas (2010) – a social media marketing guru – there are
about 15 challenges a company might have with online social media as a marketing tool.
Main issues concerning web 2.0 and social media marketing are:
•
Turning followers into customers
•
How to make money using social media marketing
•
Getting followers or friends on Twitter or Facebook
•
Getting traffic to the website, Blog or Facebook page
•
Choosing the right social media channels to use
•
How to use social media marketing to get great PR for the company
Social media are a cheap and an intensely fast way to get messages across. Thus,
companies using social media need to be very careful with their actions. Recently, Nestlé
(a food giant) had a disastrous defeat against a revolutionary Facebook crowd (Imke
2010). The Facebook users were complaining about deforestation from Nestlé to produce
their Kitkat chocolate. Initially, the crowd started by opening up a complaint group against
Nestlé. However, instead of getting involved and trying to calm the people down, Nestlé
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reacted with deleting comments. This caused an outcry among the complainers and some
started to post the entire hotline-numbers of Nestlé on the walls. Soon, the protests
swapped over to Twitter and the reputation of the company was severely damaged. Even
Greenpeace (an environmental organization) supported the actions (2010). Therefore, it is
very crucial to be responsive and caring about the customers of a company.
In order to avoid such disasters and benefit from social media marketing, companies need
to consider several things (Parise et al. 2010; Solis 2010).
The companies need to involve the customers and communicate two-ways. This should be
done throughout the marketing process and will allow the company to get very important
insights. Furthermore, the consumers need to have a reason to participate in social media
activities. This could be done through incentives like topics of interest for the customer,
cash rewards or products. This behaviour will show recognition towards the customer and
will increase the efficiency of such tools. Additionally, the marketers need to listen carefully
to their customer’s discussion and join them, when necessary. Another crucial point in
social media marketing is not to see the participants as customers, which need to be
besieged with products. Rather, it should be seen as a way of communication and
decision-making. Controlling the content of such sites is not going to work, as the previous
example of Nestlé and Kitkat shows. Thus, companies need to keep the discussions going
and do not interfere but rather take negative comments to consideration (Imke 2010).
The Harvard Business School (cited in Jefferson 2010) made a research on whether being
present on Facebook increases emotional connections with the brand. The result was
clear and showed that with this measurement Facebook fans generated additional word of
mouth and visited even the homepage more frequently.
Furthermore, it is inevitable for a good marketer to use the seeding mechanisms of
Facebook. If done correctly, this can push the news to a wider network. E.g. Ikea, a
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Swedish furniture giant launched a campaign on Facebook, where they used the imagetagging feature of Facebook, to engage customers in competitions. In this area, also the
interconnectivity of the social media needs to be considered. Twitter and Facebook can be
linked with simple measures and this can lead to additional synergies (Jefferson 2010).
4.
Sustainability
Reporting
Theory
&
Swissness
4.1
Definition
Sustainability
Reporting
Sustainable Development, according to the Worldbank (Worldbank 2001), is defined as
the “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs.”
Sustainability reporting in its broadest sense goes back to environmental reporting which
came up in the late 1980s. Back at that time it was mainly used by chemical industries,
which dealt with environmental issues. Starting in the late 1990s and even up till today,
sustainability and sustainability reporting has increased in range and depth (Kolk 2005). In
2005 the World Summit defined that sustainability has to take into consideration not only
one but rather three aspects, namely environmental, social and economic factors also
called the three pillars (World Summit Outcome 2005).
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4.2
History
and
Development
of
Sustainability
Reporting
The history of sustainability might have developed somewhere within the time period of the
modern civilization. During the 13th century with the forest ordinance of Nuremberg,
regulations were implemented about the sustainable use of wood (Held 2000).
Hans Carl von Carlowitz was seen as the founder of the modern principle of sustainability.
He published his work, "Sylvicultura oeconomica" (von Carlowitz 1713) during the time of
the Industrial Revolution. Through his work, Carlowitz wanted to indicate a future issue
regarding the deforestation, caused mainly by the Industrial Revolution and its immense
need for energy. Carlowitz gave the solution to this dispute by himself. He suggested
planting a new tree for every tree, which was cut. His ideas can therefore be seen as the
pathway to the sustainable thinking as it is known today (von Carlowitz 1713).
The creation of the National Environmental Policy Act in the United States in 1969, the
Stockholm Conference in the 1970s or the UN Conference on Environment and
Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 were the final steps, which brought sustainability to
the next level. Now environmental issues were taken on a whole new dimension, which in
turn lead to an unprecedented breakthrough, known as the Kyoto Climate Agreement
(U.S. Environmental Protection Agency).
Beyond doubt did those negotiations foster the awareness of people towards
environmental issues and in turn lead to focusing on social responsibility. It can be said
that people nowadays are more ecologically aware than they were in the past. A lot of
companies use “ecological” or “sustainable” as a sales argument. The new technology, in
the first place the Internet, offer TV stations, newspapers and even random mobile
reporters the perfect platform to inform the entire world within seconds about events going
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on. If a company does not pay close attention to those challenges, the economic harm
might be tremendous nowadays.
4.3
Sustainability
Reporting
in
the
Case
of
Knecht
&
Müller
Knecht & Müllers commitment towards sustainability goes a long way back and has its
roots in the early 1990s. With the implementation of an Eco Balance in the year 1993,
Knecht & Müller set the initial step towards sustainability (Knecht & Müller 2011a). Aiming
not only to produce high quality glasses, but at the same time to develop environmentally
sound products. Sustainability is not only a saying for Knecht & Müller, rather is it a duty.
Starting in the year 2000 until 2008, water consumption was reduced by more than onethird, consumption of material lowered by almost 20% and the amount of waste was kept
on a stable level (Knecht & Müller 2009a, p.38).
To bring it up to the strategic level, Knecht & Müller (Knecht & Müller 2009b, p. 20-57)
implemented the following six directions, which it strives after, namely:
1. Effectiveness: Doing the right thing
2. Efficiency: What is done, has to be done in the proper way
3. Care of resources: Using resources environmentally conscious
4. Protection of contamination: Trying to affect the environment as little as possible
5. Justice: Being fair in dealing with stakeholders
6. Solidarity: Keeping the whole picture in mind
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1. Effectiveness: Doing the right thing
Being able to do the right thing, means knowing what the right thing means. Knecht &
Müller defines this in terms of customer orientation, technological innovation and simplicity.
A high standard towards product and service quality, a credible and quick delivery service
as well as an above average price-performance ratio makes it possible to cope with
customer needs. Technological innovation and simplicity are always key aspects in the
process towards the market leadership in the field of resource gentle production
technology.
2. Efficiency: What is done, has to be done in the proper way
With regular investments into new facilities and technologies, improvements in capacity
utilization and cost optimization, Knecht & Müller does not only keep pace with competitors
but at the same time assumes responsibility towards the environment as a whole.
3. Care of resources: Using resources environmentally conscious
Knecht & Müller puts its main focus on employees, the organizational culture, technology,
natural resources as well as the financial capital. Only when employees are satisfied, they
will perform in the best possible way, therefore it is not enough to treat employees well;
rather they should be developed within the company. The same applies to natural
resources; it is not enough to use them, in lieu of one should try to break new grounds by
optimizing the use of it.
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4. Protection of contamination: Trying to affect the environment as little as possible
With the protection of contamination Knecht & Müller wants to appoint three main issues:
The employees, the social system of the community and the natural environment. In daily
business, employees are confronted with contamination, physical and psychological.
Recessions and downturns cause production shortfalls and following layoffs. Production
consumes energy, which in turn stresses the environment. Knecht & Müller sees every
one of these groups as its contemporaries and therefore wants to strain them as little as
possible.
5. Justice: Being fair in dealing with stakeholders
Being fair does not only mean to obey the laws, in fact it means to enhance transparency,
to maintain relationships and act in proportion to the motives close-by.
6. Solidarity: Keeping the whole picture in mind
Solidarity does not only mean a strategic goal. For Knecht & Müller, in fact, it means to
involve and to engage. With regular donations to regional associations and institutions or
by supporting students in their education Knecht & Müller is demonstrating it’s commitment
to the community.
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4.4
Trends
for
the
Sustainability
Reporting
According to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) – an organization that has pioneered the
development of the world’s most used sustainability reporting framework – there are 44
Swiss companies using the standard out of a pool of over 1’300 companies. Companies
such as Credit Suisse, UBS, Holcim, Nestlé, Novartis and Knecht & Müller AG are
applying the GRI framework. The number of companies increased from 9 in 1999 to over
1’300 in 2010 (GRI 2010). Currently, a total of 142 countries do have laws and/or country
standards with regards to sustainability reporting. Almost two thirds of these standards are
classified as “mandatory”, where the rest is applied voluntarily (KPMG 2006). Furthermore,
“there is a steep increase in companies, and some public agencies, issuing sustainability
reports based on the GRI G3 guidelines.” A research made by KPMG in 2006 revealed
that 79% out of 250 globally active companies do disclose their environmental, social and
governance (ESG). Moreover, there is an emerging trend to combine mandatory with a
voluntary disclosure. In addition, there is a trend to include corporate governance, financial
and sustainability reporting into one framework. Talking about Switzerland, there have
been substantial changes in the legal framework of sustainability reporting: starting in 1997
with the Sustainable Development Strategy of the Federal council (Bundesamt für
Raumentwicklung 2010), Guidelines on reduction of energy consumption and the Federal
Law about reduction of CO2 emissions in 2007 (Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft 2011),
3-pillar Sustainability Charter in 2009 and the Quality and Ethics Seal (VSGU) in 2009.
Other countries, like the USA have passed more than ten sustainability-reporting related
laws (KPMG 2006). This trend is seen also in different developing areas of the world such
as Brazil, South Africa, China or India. In Brazil, companies started disclosing with social
balance sheets as early as the 1980s. In China, the Sustainability or Corporate Social
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Responsibility Reporting “exploded into activity” in the last four years and is now used by
over 600 companies. Another important factor contributing to this rise in Chinese
Sustainability Reporting activities was the listing requirements of the Shanghai Stock
Exchange (KPMG 2006). It is expected that Corporate Social Responsibility or
Sustainability Reporting will gain more importance in the future. However, there are also
negative comments concerning Sustainability Reporting. Gray and Milne (2002)
concluded:
“So the message is, there is an awful lot of talk and very little action. Do not believe
what you read, and social and environmental accountability will remain a “nice
idea” until there is substantive legislation requiring it of all large organizations.”
It is important to see this issue from two sides. Even tough Sustainability Reporting
skyrocketed immensely during the last years; it still did not make the necessary progress.
This is again – as stated above by Gray and Milne – due to the missing legislation behind
this issue. It is still unclear where Sustainability Reporting is going. Nevertheless it seems
that it will increase its significance in the next years, as “green issues” and climate change
in general become more ubiquitous. Additionally, reporting standards such as the
“International Financial Reporting Standard” or the “International Accounting Standard”
need to be linked with Sustainability Reporting in order to increase significance
(Brooksbank 2010).
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4.5
Best
Practice
According to the Sustainability Report (2000) – a Canadian NGO – best practice
comprises points such as a comprehensive reporting structure, strategic focus on data,
connecting life cycle assessment to financial performance, defining sustainable
development, using the Pressure-State-Response framework to define strategic directions,
the Paperless Report, a commitment to employee health, employee performance indicator,
stakeholder
relationship
performance
indicators
and
benchmarking
corporate
environmental management practices.
A comprehensive reporting structure means having clear illustrations and explanations of
the information flows. The Sustainability Report mentions Rio Tinto – an Australian raw
material company – as a best practice example because of their well understandable
illustrations. Procter & Gamble is shown as the company having the most strategic focus
on data, meaning that they build credibility by using resources most efficiently and
providing detailed data on areas of concern. Connecting life cycle assessments to financial
performance has been and still is a major concern of Electrolux – a Swedish appliance
maker (Electrolux n.d.). This means that Electrolux compares the consumption of natural
resources and pollutant emissions with the annual statement. Bristol-Myers Squibb – a
biopharmaceutical company - is said to be looking beyond the bottom line by including all
the stakeholders into their statements.
In a general sense, it can be observed that companies such as Electrolux, DuPont
Canada, Procter & Gamble or Rio Tinto do have the management and know-how to
endeavour a sustainable leadership (The Sustainability Report 2000).
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Moreover, in the last decade the support of social media towards reporting issues has
increased. According to Zumer – a company focusing on improvements in corporate
sustainability initiatives – 42% of their interviewed 50 multinational companies, stated that
they link their Corporate Social Responsibility issues or sustainability web page directly
with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube (Zumer 2011). As the absolute benchmark in
corporate sustainability issues are Pepsico and McDonalds. Both companies have big
communities on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. E.g. Pepsico has a community on
Facebook of about 16’300 people and McDonalds even has 7.2 million on their profiles
(Facebook 2011b & 2011c). Comparable to the case of Knecht & Müller would be Intel,
due to the abstract and high-tech products which both produce. Intel has over 300’000
members on its page (Facebook 2011d).
Thus, corporate social responsibility and especially sustainability can be and are
communicated via social media. However, in the cases of McDonalds and Pepsico the
size of the companies does matter and is decisive. In order to have an optimal in-depth
solution in this area, further research would be required.
4.6
Swissness
The Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (SFIIP) states in 2011 that attitudes
such as exclusivity, tradition and quality are core values of the Swissness-factor. As Swiss
products are often perceived positively abroad, foreign companies used the Swissnessfactor in order to boost sales. The SFIIP proposed changes in the legislation to better
protect the “Swiss” brand in the future. The legislation foresaw to label only products with
the Swissness label, which use 80% of Swiss raw materials. It is therefore clear, that the
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Swissness factor is important for products to be sold globally (Tagesanzeiger 2009). In
relation to manufacturers e.g. the producers are required to have 60% of production costs
incurred in Switzerland (Swiss Federal Council 2009). Representative research done by
gfs-Zürich – a research institute – found out that 61% of the Swiss population prefers
Swiss products compared to foreign ones. 69% of the interviewees said that they were
ready to pay a premium for Swiss products. Moreover, over two thirds of the people are
buying Swiss products implicitly, to support the Swiss economy (gfs-zürich 2004). Other
research done by the University of St. Gallen revealed that due to the Swissness factor,
companies can have substantial advantages and are even less affected in times of crises
(Moneycab 2010). This shows once more that Swissness is an important sales factor and
could be used as a sales argument. However, there are tough regulations to follow for
companies.
5.
Qualitative
and
Quantitative
Survey
5.1
Qualitative
Survey
among
Opticians
5.1.1
Goal
The survey among opticians consists of two parts. First, the project group asked several
questions related to the sales process of glasses. The aim was to find out, how important
factors like sustainability or Swissness are in the whole sales process. The results should
indicate, if spectacle wearers take into consideration where a lens is manufactured or
which sustainability efforts a glass producer is undertaking. The second part was directed
towards Social media. The project group asked questions of which the answers gave an
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overview about which Social media Tools are being used by opticians and what role they
play in the opticians marketing actions. The outcome of the interviews should give an
insight about the potential of using Social media to communicate with the spectacle
wearers.
5.1.2
Target
Audience
The target audience of the qualitative survey were opticians in Switzerland. Knecht &
Müller provided a list of their top clients of whom six were chosen for the qualitative
interviews. All opticians were based in the German-Speaking part of Switzerland.
5.1.3
Sustainability
&
Swissness
as
Sales
Arguments
To determine the brand awareness towards Knecht & Müller among the end consumer,
opticians were confronted with questions towards the role of the lens itself in the selling
process.
When presenting the interview partners the question whether their customers already have
an idea about what kind of lenses they need, most opticians responded that their clients do
not have any conception on what they require. A thorough counselling is necessary in
every case to find out what the customer needs.
Some Opticians mentioned that it is extremely difficult for a non-professional to gather
information about the high-tech lenses, as they exist today. The lack of technical knowhow
and the enormous lens variety prevents eyeglass wearers to combine the optimal lens with
their need to reach the desired solution of a better vision. There are factors, unknown to
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non-opticians which play an important role in determining which lenses provide the desired
effect. Therefore, hardly any client is in a position to ask for a specific set of glasses.
This explains why the percentage of end consumers asking specifically for a certain brand
of lenses as for example Knecht & Müller, is so small that it is hardly worth mentioning.
Varilux is a known term, not for its brand but rather for its meaning as a progressive power
lense.
It seems that the younger clientele to a small extent is informing themselves prior to
purchasing a set of spectacles. This is hardly the case in the older generation. However,
the spectacle wearers tend to inform themselves via the opticians’ homepage itself rather
than over a lenses manufacturer.
The majority of the opticians referred to “Sustainability as a sales argument” as nonimportant, clients embrace sustainability but are not willing to pay more when it comes to
lenses. The attitude towards sustainability in general among the spectacle wearers is
positive, nonetheless does not seem to play a significant role when buying a pair of
glasses. The fact that the lenses are so small compared to the weekly accumulated waste,
leads to the believe, that the sustainability issue barely plays a role. Yet clients seem to be
interested in what is happening with their spectacles after they do not use them anymore.
A trend was to donate them to third world countries, but with the possibilities today in
producing cheap spectacles, such social actions are obsolete.
There is a factor for which end consumers are willing to pay more; the “Swissness” factor.
Products manufactured in the home market are sought after and are associated with high
quality. Opticians use this fact as a sales argument. When selling a pair of glasses they
mention that the lenses are Swiss made and of eminent quality. What most opticians
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indicated is that it is not of great importance whether they mention the name Knecht &
Müller, it is the “Swissness” factor, which seals the deal.
Opticians are not interested in actively promoting lenses of a certain brand. Their core
business is to sell the whole package, a pair of glasses that more than satisfies the
customer’s expectations. Opticians promote their own store and hope that spectacle
wearers associate the good quality of the purchased pair of glasses with their store and
become a returning customer.
A reason for this attitude of not specifically promoting a certain brand of lenses is that even
if promoting a specific brand, the sales figures would not change in a positive or negative
way. The sales figures, as practically the whole questioned sample confirmed, do not
change when disclosing the name of the manufacturer of the suggested lenses is. What is
of importance to the customer and decidable in choosing a specific lens is the origin, e.g.
whether or not the product is produced in Switzerland.
Virtually all opticians clearly mentioned that they do not sell separate parts but the whole
package. If one would have to define the most important selling criteria, it would be the
spectacle frame.
The wearers want to have comfortable and stylish glasses. The eyeglass wearer, in the
optician’s point of view, can only differentiate the spectacle frame, it is the part that makes
the wearer look good or not, and that is all they really care about. End-consumers cannot
see why they should prefer one set of lenses to the other. They trust the optician to
provide them with the lenses that best correct their amblyopia.
As an outcome from this first interview section, one sees which factors really play a role in
the selling process. In perennial operation no customer has ever asked whether the lenses
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are produced sustainably or not, the effort is valued but not in a way that the customer is
willing to pay more. Nor does it help to sell a set of lenses when mentioning the name
Knecht & Müller. At least 80% of all lenses sold in the questioned sample, are Knecht &
Müller lenses. In the optician’s opinion, the only way for the customer to really be informed
and get an idea, which lenses best help to correct their emblyopia, is by attending a
thorough counselling interview. Because of the enormous variety and the required
technical know-how used to understand how the lenses function, it is extremely difficult for
the glass wearer to inform himself/herself. A factor, which can be seen as a sales
argument is Swissness. Customers are willing to pay a considerably higher price for a
Swiss made product. Secondly and thirdly, the optical frame and a good counselling
interview is what makes the customer feel well looked after and influences the buying
attitude.
5.1.4
Social
media
Activities
One main finding of the survey was that the opticians are only partially active on social
media. There are some opticians that already have a Facebook fanpage, but all did it more
as an experiment. According to the opticians, it was never a carefully planed marketing
approach to be active on Social media like Facebook. In most cases, one of their
employees opened a Facebook fanpage and uploaded some content, but all these
fanpages are still in the early stages. Through feedbacks we could see that the reason for
this faltering or even non-existing activity level, is on one side the lack of resources and
knowledge and on the other side the lack of trust in these new communication tools. The
opticians confessed that most of the people on their Facebook fanpage are their
employees as well as friends, rarely customers. None of the opticians actively promotes
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their Facebook activities or even considers using them actively as a communication tool.
Nevertheless it seems that Facebook is an issue and even opticians without a Facebook
account are thinking about getting active in the future.
Other social media like Twitter or LinkedIN are not used by any of the opticians as a
communication tool with their customers. Some of them do not even know what these
tools really are and what opportunities they provide. There is also nothing planned for the
near future. Furthermore, none of the opticians uses a tool like XING to evaluate their
suppliers. In rare cases maybe one of the employees connects with one of the suppliers,
but this was seen more as a personal approach rather than a coordinated action. Finally,
blogs also were considered unimportant. Overall the trust and the awareness about social
media are not yet widespread due to lacking knowledge of their use.
So far collaboration among opticians in the social media area is not really an issue. Most
opticians stated that they ignore what competitors do in the social media area. The only
collaboration, which was mentioned, is the Visus cooperation among several opticians,
where Knecht & Müller is the main supplier.
Only recently, Visus launched an iPhone app. At the moment there are no planned
activities to get active with a collaborative approach on social media. Nevertheless, the
opticians agreed that they have to face the issue “Social media”, despite all difficulties of
finding a consensus among the Visus opticians.
Finally, it could be observed from the interviews that all opticians still put more trust in
traditional marketing instruments like direct mails, Email newsletters and their own
homepage. Those opticians participating in the Visus cooperation use a standard
homepage layout provided by Visus. On this standard layout, there is already a built-in
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information site about Knecht & Müller, as Knecht & Müller is the main supplier of Visus
opticians. One optician, not a member of the Visus collaboration, is promoting lenses of
another lens manufacturer. His motivation in doing so is this manufacturer’s unique hightech eye scan technique, which produces an individual customized lens.
Conclusion:
There is little knowledge about social media and their opportunities. Furthermore, opticians
do not really believe that their customers care about social media activities or would use
them as an information or communication tool. There is also little potential to work as a
lens manufacturer with the opticians to launch social media activities. The most interesting
option seems to be Visus. Visus opticians basically agree on the need of being active on
social media in the future. Therefore, this could be a chance for Knecht & Müller as main
supplier, to get involved with the opticians in a coordinated social media approach.
Another potential still lies on the websites of the opticians. The homepages in the Visus
cooperation already provide information about Knecht & Müller. It could be of interest for
Knecht & Müller to approach the Non-Visus opticians in order to acquire more presence on
optician websites, as this is still the main instrument for clients of getting information before
entering an optician store.
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5.2
Quantitative
Survey
among
Optical
Wearers
5.2.1
General
Information
The survey conducted for Knecht & Müller was sent out initially to all the students of the
University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, thus approximately 7’700
students. Additionally, the survey has been distributed through social media such as
Facebook. Through this facebook wall posts, approximately 2000 people could be
reached. Furthermore the survey was distributed among friends and family members as
well as among people connected to employees of Knecht & Müller. Out of this pool of
approximately 10’000 people, the total sample size was 721. However, out of this amount,
607 people (84,19% net participation) started the survey and finally 528 persons finished
the entire survey (figure 2).
Fig. 2: Survey table
Source: authors
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This high participation was already seen in the test run for the survey and the reason for
this could mainly be the gifts that the project group listed: IPod Touch, IPod Nano, IPod
Shuffle and three Victorinox Camper knives. The program for this survey is called “unipark”
and the survey has been conducted entirely in German. The mean processing time
(arithmetically) was 7 minutes and 10 seconds, whereas the median was at 6 minutes and
7 seconds. The entire survey was online for 18 days starting from 03.03.2011 to
20.03.2011.
Moreover, the average participation per day was 40 people and the weekly average at
240.33. The bulk of the people accessed the survey around 2pm – 4pm.
5.2.2
Participant
Information
Out of the respondents, 46.49% are males and 53.51% females. Most of the participants
are from the cantons of Aargau (23.36%), Berne (18.25%), Solothurn (15.33%) and BaselCounty (14.05%). Thus, the project group was able to ensure a broad range of people and
geography. The project group booted out all the people not using glasses by a filter within
the survey and also an indication in the introduction page. According to the statistics of the
project group, the filter has worked and sorted out 119 people who are not wearing
glasses. Out of 494 participants, 89.68% subscribed to the lottery for the presents. Over
83% of the interviewees are younger than 35, in absolute terms this would be 441 out of
531 answering this question.
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5.2.3
The
Sales
Process
A big part of the interviewees buy their glasses regularly from companies such as
Fielmann (19%), McOptik (7%) or Visilab (7%). However, it is observable that the chart
below (Figure 3) is highly fragmented. Over one third of the participants buy their glasses
in small local optician stores.
Out of the 536 people responding to the question “do you know the brand of your
glasses?” only 136 participants or 24.44% know the brand of their glasses. Furthermore,
88.3% of the participants stated that they do not see the brand of the glasses as important.
Crucial for the project team was the rating of the importance (1 = very important, 5 = least
important) for some of the following attributes:
Fig. 3: Survey pie chart
Source: authors
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•
consultancy of the opticians before the purchase (mean of 1.94)
•
design of the glasses (2.03)
•
quality of the glasses (2.75)
•
the after-sales service (3.74) and lastly
•
the information gathering before purchasing a product (4.32).
Some participants commented why the brand is important or unimportant, respectively: the
biggest group stated that they know the producer or optician. Several participants stated
“Brand = Quality”, others stated that they want Carl Zeiss glasses. However, there has
been also some negative feedback concerning that question: “Why should it matter, it’s a
glass like every other one”. Furthermore, the survey showed, that the participants rank
sustainability as:
•
very important (35.16%)
•
important (56.64%) or
•
unimportant (8.2%)
Over 54% of the survey participants stated that their attitude towards sustainability has
changed to a better (meaning they became more aware) in the last 10 years. 30% of the
participants did not change their mind towards sustainability.
Less than one percent of the participants are always gathering information about the
sustainability issues a company is involved in (0.99%). However, 19.96% stated that they
were never even bearing in mind that sustainability is a characteristic worthwhile
considering. The survey also revealed if people are most ready to pay more for products –
and rank it accordingly, if the product quality is on a high level (mean of 1.26) or the
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company is producing in Switzerland (1.57). In addition to that, it could be seen that only
16.40% of the participants are willing to pay a surplus, whereas 61.40% are not willing to
pay more for a glass if the lens manufacturer produces sustainabl.
5.2.4
Attitudes
towards
Social
media
In the second part of the survey, the goal was to find out the attitudes of spectacle wearers
towards Social media. Important for Knecht & Müller AG is the table below, showing how
often people are on certain social media platforms:
Fig. 4: Frequency table
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Never
Total people
Xing
3.31%
11.8%
8.7%
72.26%
483
Facebook
54.97%
20.89%
4.87%
17.85%
493
LinkedIn
0.82%
2.06%
3.51%
92.78%
485
Twitter
2.92%
3.54%
5.21%
85.62%
480
Youtube
13.36%
42.91%
30.36%
8.30%
494
Others
7.14%
7.79%
6.49%
77.27%
154
Blogs
4.68%
3.51%
5.26%
82.46%
171
Source: authors
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55.97% of those surveyed stated that they use Facebook every day, which is at the same
time the media most often in use. YouTube, with a frequency of 13.36%, is the second
Social media that can be considered worthy to be analysed more into detail. The
remaining part consists of Xing, LinkedIn, Twitter and Blogs, which were below 10% on the
frequency distribution of this survey. The data of the weekly analysis revealed another
picture. Based on the information of the participants, YouTube, with 42.91%, is considered
as the media most frequently used. Facebook, with a slightly lower percentage share of
20.89% follows immediately on the second place. Xing with 11.80% scored in this category
above 10.0%. All other types of Social media but most of all LinkedIn and Twitter did not
make it even close to 10.0%. The last category considered in the analysis contains the
frequency in a monthly interval. It can be observed that all types of medias lost ground,
however, YouTube is still far and away the most frequent in use. Xing, LinkedIn, Twitter,
Blogs and even Facebook did not reach the 10.0% line in this denomination.
However, most of the people get informed – before going to the optician - on the
homepage of the opticians (31.66%). Further information spots are e.g. Google’s and other
provider’s search engines (19.04%). Additionally, the customers seek the homepage of the
glass producer (11.22%). This is important; also with the question of how often current
and/or prospective customers inform themselves online. Customers seek the company’s
homepage very often (3.02%), not too often (6.65%) or sometimes (44.15%). However, the
majority of the people are not seeking advice from online media platforms. 92.34% are not
consulting Facebook for opticians or glass producers; neither do they inform themselves
on Twitter (96.57%), nor Youtube (94.15%) or Blogs (91.52%).
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5.2.5
Attitudes
towards
Social
media
The survey gave the participants the possibility to choose among following frequencies:
Daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. For the sake of simplicity only the first three were
analysed
more
into
detail.
Daily: 55.97%, and therefore the majority, indicated that they use Facebook every day.
Following on the second place regarding the frequency is YouTube with 13.36%. It can be
stated, that those two types of Social media are the ones which are used the most. The
findings from the survey showed that Xing, LinkedIn and Twitter are all far below 5.0% in
daily use. Weekly: By looking on weekly figures, YouTube is the Social media which is
most often used with 42.91%. Facebook followed immediately with 20.89% on the second
place. Xing reached 11.18% and is therefore located on the third place with a much higher
share than in the daily analysis. LinkedIn and Twitter revealed again similar patterns, both
again below 5.0%. Monthly: As seen before YouTube also leads this frequency group,
however, down to 30.36% of the questioned group. All other Social media, including
Facebook, fell below the 10.0% line in this category.
5.2.6
Sustainability
and
other
Sales
Arguments
The survey revealed that for 34.62% of those polled, sustainability or sustainable acting of
companies is a very important aspect. 56.64% see it as important and only 8.20% as
unimportant. By considering a longer time frame of the past ten years, 64.38% stated that
their attitude towards sustainability changed within that time horizon. The survey aimed to
see if and how people inform themselves about sustainability efforts prior to the purchase
of products. Only 0.99% of those polled inform themselves always about sustainability
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efforts. 24.11% sought information most of the time and 54.94% from time to time. 19.96%
mentioned that they never inform themselves about sustainability efforts prior to purchase.
Another aspect was to find out if people are willing to pay more if the company shows
sustainability efforts, produces in Switzerland or fabricates high quality products. 52.89%
indicated that they would be willing to pay a surplus if there are efforts towards
sustainability. Only 9.38% would not pay an extra amount for sustainability and a large
fraction of 37.72% did not come to a clear solution. For 65.00% it would be worth to pay a
surplus if the products are produced within the borders of Switzerland. 13.40% would not
pay extra and 21.60% indicated that they might be willing to pay something in addition for
Swiss quality. For 85.20 % of those polled it would be okay to pay a surplus if the company
produces high quality products. 3.40% would not be willing to pay additional costs and
11.40% are undetermined.
The last part covers sustainability during the purchasing process of glasses and frames.
Compared to the part before, only 16.40% are now willing to pay a surplus for
sustainability, whereas 61.40% state that they are not willing to pay for it. The same
situation repeats itself regarding the production within Switzerland. Only 23.20% are willing
to pay extra for their glasses if they are Swiss made, whereas 59.40% are saying clearly
no to this. The only point which correlates in general with the previous section is the one
regarding the quality of products. Here, for 59.92% of those polled, it would be worth to
pay a surplus if they could get high quality products, whereas 30.86% would not be willing
to bear those costs.
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6.
Recommendations
6.1
Facebook
6.1.1
Chances
and
Risks
A lot of companies see a high potential in marketing with Facebook and they are certainly
right about it. Not only is it possible to reach thousands of people at the same time, but
also one can even engage in active communication with them. It is important to know the
chances and risks of Facebook on the corporate level.
Fig. 5: Chance / Risk table
Chances
Risks
-
Reaching a high number of people
-
-
Low implementation costs
-
-
Low maintenance costs
-
-
Known worldwide
Possibility of direct interaction
-
-
Negative comments from other
users are also transmitted within the
group
Not all people are using Facebook,
chance of missing target group
False reaction can harm the
reputation of the company
Risk of falling into oblivion
Maintaining
efforts
might
be
underestimated
Risk of overflowing people with
information
Comments and reactions can be
spread around the globe within
seconds
Source: authors based on data from Pressemitteilungen-online.de
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Facebook offers the possibility to turn customers into friends (Pressemitteilungen-online.de
2011). When people join groups in Facebook you cannot see them only as potential
customers, rather you have to address them as “friends” of yours. Now it is not only about
marketing your products. Since people have a voice within the group you have to deal with
questions, feedback and statements. If you do not participate actively in those discussions,
“fans” or “friends” easily get the impression that you do not even talk to them or care about
their opinion (Pressemitteilungen-online.de 2011).
With the “I like” button, which was implemented recently by Facebook, new ways for
marketing opened up into this direction. Instead of requiring people to join ones group or
page, with the ability to click on the “I like” button you can easily bring people onto your
site. By implementing it, people do not even have to access Facebook at the initial stage,
rather are they accessing a website elsewhere and can simply attend by the way. The
advantage is that you can post the icon easily on a website and link it directly to your site
on Facebook. You can market yourself across websites and make it as convenient as
possible for the people, which visit those.
Unfortunately this is not without risk. As with other types of medias there is a chance that
people become blind towards new information. When Spammers abuse this function,
people might become reluctant to click on the buttons and to support the company
(Neukunden, 2010). Besides the risk of Spammers, an even higher risk comes from users themselves. The
more people share information, post links, or join groups, the higher the chance that your
message falls besides the bulk of information. To sum it up with a quote:
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„Nachrichten müssen eben Gewichtet werden. Da wo alle das gleiche Gewicht haben,
herrscht Durcheinander.” (Knüwer, 2010). 6.1.2
Best
Practice
YUMM is a small company producing home-made cupcakes. The company was founded
in Basel in 2010 and consists of the two entrepreneurs Nicolas Kündig and Sarah Fanny
Kleiber (YUMM). The company only sells directly to customers upon order and through
intermediates. As a result YUMM cupcakes are not to be found in markets or grocerie
stores. By targeting special occasions like birthdays, weddings or corporate events, YUMM
is more focusing on a niche market.
YUMM is represented on two Social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter. On the
website, YUMM posted icons which lead the visitor directly to those two platforms. On
April 15th 2011, 352 people clicked “I like” on their Facebook page. This amount of people
is quite impressive, considering the fact that the company is not yet a full year in business
and does not produce mainstream products. The eye catcher of the site is their
photographs. It is a mix of professionally made pictures with a blend of mystic behind it.
Photographs of cupcakes alternate with daily life pictures and create a curiosity about the
company. Another aspect which might explain, at least partially, the high number of
followers on Facebook is the fact that YUMM was presented in the newspaper 20min. In
general not a big deal, but the fact that the article “Süsse Versuchung aus Basel” was also
published on www.20min.ch, which offers the possibility to recommend links over
Facebook with a single click, spread this article on the wall of 53 users within seconds. By
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assuming that each of those 53 Facebook users has 100 friends, the above-named article
will be available to a potential of around 5300 users.
YUMM takes care of its site very carefully. It answers questions from users regarding its
products very often and at the same time tries to prevent its page from becoming afloat
with useless comments. Furthermore pictures and videos but also articles or events are
regularly posted on the wall, giving the whole site a dynamic and keeps people interested
in news.
6.1.3
Recommendation
With “Pages” and “Groups” Facebook offers two main possibilities which can be used for
marketing purposes. The question now is what serves the company in the best way. The
following graphic shows the differences between groups and pages on Facebook. A
detailed explanation and the advantages and disadvantages can also be found on the
Internet (Allfacebook).
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Fig. 6: Differences Groups vs. Pages
Source: Allfacebook.com
Even though the lenses are the most important part of glasses, people usually do not care
as much about it as they do about the frame. This aspect does make it hard to raise
people’s awareness. By analyzing websites of companies operating in a wide range of
different industries it can be observed that a lot of them implemented the “I like” icon from
Facebook on their web page. The advantages are perfectly clear. Knecht & Müller can get
easily a lot of people on their Facebook page without almost any effort. Visus, taken as an
example, could be an important partner in this process.
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Fig. 7: Draft of Visus members website
Authorized dealer of
icon, this could increase the perception of lenses from Knecht & Müller. A photomontage
might look as follows:
Source: authors based on data from Visus; Knecht & Müller; Facebook
By implementing the Knecht & Müller banner along with the Facebook icon on all of the
visus member sites, a great saturation can be achieved, since the quantitative survey
revealed that a lot of people inform themselves directly on the opticians’ website prior to a
visit. The Facebook page then offers an easy way of keeping people informed about new
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products or gives an opportunity for discussions. Opticians who are not members of the
visus group, can never the less the possibility to offered if they would put the Facebook ad
along with the banner on their website.
Fig 8: Draft of Knecht & Müller website
Sources: authors based on data from Facebook; Knecht & Müller website
Given the choice between pages and groups, we would definitely go for pages. They are
easily established, free for everyone to join on Facebook and the messages can be spread
to all users. Furthermore a link with other websites can be established very fast. To
increase the number of followers on Facebook, there is also the option to contact the end
users directly. An effective way of doing so could be formed by asking opticians to attach a
short link when sending emails to their customers. This link at the end of the email guiding
the customer to the facebook page of Knecht & Müller might be:
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…
Knecht
&
Müller
informiert
Sie
auf
Facebook
stets
über
die
neuesten
Produkte
auf
dem
Markt.
Treten
Sie
noch
heute
bei
und
seien
Sie
sind
stets
up
to
date!
Facebook in addition offers the possibility to embed content from other social media tools
like Twitter or Youtube. Therefore it might be interesting to install a register within the
group, which guides followers directly to other social media content of the company.
(Example of Lexus Europe:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/lexuseurope)
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6.2
Twitter
&
Blog
6.2.1
Chances
and
Risks
Opportunities
Corporate Blogs or Blogs in general are cheap and easy to create. One does not require a
profound knowledge in web applications to create and use a Blog. As a result, employees
do not need to attend long workshops in order to learn about application.
Corporate weblogs are great additions to existing homepages. Peters and Stock (2007)
remarked that blogs are less formal and most of the time the authors of such corporate
web logs belong to the company. This kind of communication is far more personal
because a blogger may expect to get a direct response to his posted Blog, a very positive
aspect.
Brellochs and Rosenkranz (2007) see opportunities of blogging in the following aereas :
Fast
broadcasting
to
the
mass
Broadcasting information or news over blogs is extremely quick and can reach a great
number of people in practically no time. Uploading news on the company’s homepage
requires a lot more time and more intermediate steps prior to presenting the news. Not
only can information be spread in a tremendously fast way, bloggers can access company
information, view discussed topics or find topic related information of interest.
In addition the company has the possibility to instantly react to hot company related topics.
Irrespective of the issue being good or bad, they can instantly give a statement.
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Feedback
channel
and
customer
loyalty
Other than the Homepage, blogs provide a platform for readers to directly interact with the
company. Customers can give feedback, express satisfaction or dissatisfaction concerning
a product or the company as a whole. Such information is of great value for the company.
A corporation does not only have the opportunity to respond to unsatisfied/ angry
customers and regain them as returning clients, but also to collect valuable input from
bloggers which may help to adapt existing product-lines to customers’ needs and develop
new products accordingly. Through actively accounting inputs collected through customer
blogged comments in the product development process, consumers will recognize this and
customer loyalty will be strengthened.
The
effect
of
networking
in
on
and
offline
communities
Blogs provide a great possibility to interlink with other blogs or topic related communities.
The bigger the community, the more potential viewers/ readers of the company’s Blog
exist.
There will be more Internet traffic, meaning more visits on the Blog which will not only
strengthen brand awareness but will simultaneously increase the link popularity which
results in an optimization of search engines but also the company will be more noticed by
Journalists and classical media. This will further help to make the name of the company
more known.
The more professionally and profoundly the company will respond to customers, the more
credibility will be accounted towards the content of the Blog. No company can be
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omniscient, it is therefore advisable to collaborate with experts concerning certain topics,
or invite them as guest bloggers.
The company will have the possibility to position itself as an expert in its field. It can thus
provide a platform for exchange and discussions for other experts to exchange themselves
or even refer to your Blog for certain topics or points for discussion.
Twitter presents very similar opportunities as blogs do. The fact that tweets are a lot
shorter in text means that they are read and responded to much faster. Twittering can be
combined, or synchronized with blogging. Every time a Blog is posted, a tweet will
automatically inform twitter users about the new Blog post. This way a company can
communicate to an even broader mass.
As Mangold and Faulds (2009) indicate, consumers do no longer pay great attention to the
traditional sources of information as:” radio, television, magazines and newspapers.”
Customers want to be able to access information about products or companies at their
own convenience. Blogging or social media grants this possibility!
Risks
As useful as blogs and micro blogs may be, they also present a great risk. The mentioned
opportunities can at the same time present a great risk.
As Ward and Ostrom (2006) remark, if a company does not immediately respond to
negative posts or rumours, bad press can spread extremely fast. Unsatisfied customers
can express their anger or write about a bad experience with a product or the company
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itself. Readers who have experienced a similar unpleasant incident will associate and
share their story as well. If a company does not react accordingly, the company may suffer
not only serious image damage but can also lose a lot of money and credibility which is
hard to regain.
Good news is fast to spread, bad news even faster. Since Twitter has the potential to be
read and responded to even faster due to the limited character space. Therefore one has
to be extra cautious concerning Twitter content!
A good example of what can happen when negative topics are neglected and not
responded to is the Kryptonite case in the USA.
Lariscy et al. (2009) suggests that organizations should “actively monitor online
conversations about” what is being said regarding the company because around 16
percent of journalists actively observe social media activity to detect new scandals to write
about. Various monitoring softwares are available which facilitate this process. Monitoring
may be done by the company itself or can be outsourced to professional social media
monitoring companies. As Bendel mentioned, a company has to pay attention to what it
posts online because it can be held reliable for the content.
Bendel further mentions that small to middle sized companies would require a part-time
job of 20% to 50% (microblogging included) in order to Blog and monitor the blogging
activity effectively.
Bendel further remarked that corporations have the possibility to outsource the blogging
activity to professional blogging firms. What one has to know when perusing an
outsourcing strategy is that the blogged content may not appear as authentic to the reader
and is adjunctive with high costs.
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A further important key is that the Blog is maintained on a regular basis and that the posts
do not vary in their quality of content. Only blogs that are kept active and do not have great
content quality fluctuations are credible.
6.2.2
Best
Practice
Lens
manufacturers
Essilor, Zeiss as well as Rodenstock are lenses manufacturers which are currently present
on Twitter. Rodenstock has the most active Twitter account so one could say that
Rodenstock would function as the best role model for the mentioned 3.
None of the above mentioned, seem to have an active Blog page. When searching the
web, all of the names appear in various blogs which means that either people write about
them or they even comment on topics themselves.
Two opticians (among many more) present a good example of how to show their activity
on social media platforms. Since these opticians are active on social media, it is easy for
them to cross-link with other blogs or twitter accounts and provides a platform for
discussion where for example also a lens manufacturer could be interactive. The two
pages mentioned belong to Misterspex and Optikerschütz in Germany.
The following links will directly open the two examples
Misterspex web link :
http://misterspex.de/
Optikerschütz web link:
http://www.optikerschuetz.de/Blog/
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Best
practice
mentioned
on
the
business.twitter.com
web
address:
When describing a company who best uses Twitter for corporate purpose, JetBlue is often
referred as a good example. JetBlue’s initial intention for opening a Twitter account was to
help their clients in case of problems. Now they have over one million followers and are
one of the most frequent visited and most active corporate twitter accounts. (Twitter
2011b)
The Twitter account can be viewed under: http://twitter.com/#!/jetblue
Time
magazines
best
Blog
for
2010
Time.com presents online what they think are the best blogs of 2010. Ranked on place
three, is a Blog which deals with climate progress. (Time 2010)
Since sustainability is important for Knecht & Müller it would be interesting to have a closer
look on the layout of the blog. It is clearly structured so that long searches concerning
certain topics are avoided. In addition the most popular blogs are clearly visible and easily
accessible.
The blogs URL is: http://climateprogress.org/
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6.2.3
Recommendation
Knecht & Müller should Blog already existing content, Brochures, leaflets, any material
which could be of interest for Blog readers. This way a substantial amount of information
would be available to which bloggers could post questions or discuss upon subjects.
Further it would be in their interest to Blog/ twitter about every activity, for example when
attending a fair, what kind of awards they have won, everything that could be of interest to
the reader.
When having an expert talk with Bendel he mentioned that it would be advisable to not
only post blogs concerning internal issues but to be active on other blogs as well. Every
time a comment on an external Blog is made, an additional linkage to the Knecht & Müller
Blog page is created. Also Knecht & Müller should constantly remind and inform their
clients and associates about their existing blogs. It would be best to encourage business
partners to actively participate on a Blog post written by Knecht & Müller. In addition it the
company could invite guest bloggers to comment on certain subjects, this would not only
be interesting for the company itself but would grant the Blog readers interesting insights in
various topics.
This would not only create greater cross linkage between Knech+Müller and other blogs
but would also boost traffic around their page. To crank traffic even more, the company
should synchronize their Blog activity with Twitter. Doing so, every time something has
been blogged, immediately a tweet would be released containing the title and the link of
the post which makes it possible to reach out to an even bigger mass.
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More traffic will automatically result in an optimization on search engines. As a result the
likelihood of the name Knecht & Müller appearing on search engines on top will increase
when looking for information about spectacles online.
Concerning the sustainability issue Knecht & Müller should create a separate section on
their Blog interface, showing all their efforts and further plans concerning this subject.
In addition Knecht & Müller should cross-link their Blog to other blogs, communities and
homepages dealing with sustainability. The more they contribute and write about
sustainability on other blogs, the more known for their Blog entries they will get. As a result
the amount of viewers on the Knecht & Müller Blog will increase.
In addition they should encourage their employees to Blog about sustainability matters
once a month. This should not be forced, articles written by motivated employees are far
more interesting and of better quality than unmotivated blogs as a result of forcing them.
In order to Blog and micro Blog effectively Knecht & Müller has to be willing to create and
occupy a 20% part time job. The person in charge has to make sure that the posted
content is in a similar style and of same quality in order to communicate credibility of the
Blog. A Blog is a dynamic medium and must not turn into a static page. To ensure the Blog
of staying dynamic, it is advisable to Blog weekly. Knecht & Müller should actively involve
itself on other blogs and contribute interesting and valuable content so other readers will
notice and recognize their efforts. It is important to keep in mind that everybody is able to
read every Blog or tweet which includes the name Knecht & Müller.
As Bendel indicated, competitors may spread bad rumours about other company’s in order
the present themselves in a better light. To prevent such rumours from spreading, an
effective monitoring has to be done. This will not only help to prevent bad press from being
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spread but also show the effects of the company’s efforts on the blogging sphere. More
alerts through the software indicate that more people are writing about Knecht & Müller
To provide diversified and sufficient content to Blog, employees should be included in the
whole blogging process.
Twitter will have to be monitored more closely since information can spread a lot faster.
Bendel mentioned that effective twittering requires at least 5 tweets a day. If one tweets at
least 5 times a day the Internet traffic will be increased and will, as mentioned above,
result in an indirect optimization of search engines.
So that an employee can successfully master the mentioned tasks, he or she should
attend a course on how to Blog. There are certain tricky does and don’ts which can easily
be mastered when attending such blogging seminars. The person who has been instructed
should hence be in charge for the whole blogging activity. Before a Blog will be posted, the
employee in charge will proofread the text and make sure the content is written in a similar
style to ensure the same high quality in each Blog.
Bendel also mentioned that some blogs already posted on the Knecht & Müller Blog are of
great quality and would have the necessary professional touch through excellent
background knowledge to appear in magazines. If blogs would end up being published,
they could be tracked back to the original blogging page which would again increase traffic
and the viewer number.
Further comments from Prof. Dr. Bendel concerning the existing Blog can be found in the
attachments.
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In addition Safko (2010) wrote some recommendations in his book “The Social media
Bible” on how to get more people to visit your Blog and follow you on twitter. He suggests
the following:
•
Indicate all social networks on which you are present on your homepage
•
If you have a twitter account, or a Blog or even both, mention that on your business
card. (symbols)
•
Put your Blog and Twitter address on all your print advertising brochures etc
•
Put a hyperlink of your Blog address as well as Twitter address in your e-mail
signature
•
Mention your Blog account on your Twitter account and vice versa.
6.3.
Youtube
6.3.1
Chances
and
Risks
In his book the Social media Bible, Safko (2010) argues that in most cases video or vlog,
is “the best medium for communicating with your customers” He indicates that the major
part of communication is influenced through gestures, body language which can only be
seen/ shown to the client, through video.
When reading his book on can draw a conclusion that creating a video and posting it on a
video sharing site is very simple and does not require a Hollywood studio.
With a creative approach one can transform complicated technical terms in to easyly
understandable videos. Safko (2010) remarks that individuals will prefer to watch a
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creative video over reading papers about technical manufacturing processes of a certain
product. Video transmits information addressing almost all senses causing the viewer to
feel involved in what is being shown. Through video it is much easier to reach out to
viewers on an emotional level getting them to associate with a certain product.
Similar to the Blog where the reader can comment on a Blog, the viewers of a video have
the possibility to place a comment, express what their feelings, thoughts and ideas are
about the video. Here again the creator/ company has the possibility to interact with viewer
and respond accordingly.
Cheng et al. (2007) researched and measured that approximately 20 million people visit
youtube each month. This ensures that videos which draw great attention have the
possibility to turn to “become a pervasive viral marketing tool for corporations”. Lariscy et
al (2009)
The risks of vlogging (youtubing) are similar to the ones in blogging and micorblogging.
Blogs and micoroblogs as well as vlogs, are used to broadcast company or product
specific information to the mass. Here the rule of Lariscy et al. (2009) applies as well. A
thorough monitoring about any social media activity with content about the corporation has
to be done on a constant basis.
If one neglects the monitoring, there will certainly be a journalist who will catch up negative
press and spread it even wider!
With a good monitoring the company is given a chance to react to a unsatisfied customer’s
complaint and turn him/her “into a satisfied and loyal customer”. Fornell and Wernerfelt
(1987)
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In addition Bendel mentioned that it is not certain what happens with data once it is on
Youtube. After a company has posted the content online Youtube can use the posted
material however it wants, even if this does not comply with the company who originally
posted the video.
6.3.2
Best
Practice
The German eye glass manufacturer Rodenstock has posted several videos on the video
sharing platform Youtube. Rodenstock provides a good mix of funny commercial videos
but they also manage to introduce the whole company and what they stand for in an
interesting informative way. Their videos evoke emotions and are a good example of how
a video should be.
6.3.3
Recommendation
Producing videos, of good quality, requires a certain level of knowhow and can be very
costly. Benel (2011) remarked that a cost efficient video could be obtained in collaboration
with universities of art as for example the Zurich University of Arts. Students of art have
the necessary understanding in this field and are thought to think creative and outside of
the box. A possibility would be that Knecht & Müller contacts the corresponding
department to evaluate the possibility of issuing a video-project proposition to the
university’s Institute for the Performing Art’s and Film. The company could specify what
they are looking for and could emphasise the importance of Swiss-ness and sustainability
factor. With this approach Knecht & Müller would not have to consult professional video
making companies and could save an enormous amount of money.
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6.4
XING
As stated earlier in the report, Xing is the most important online business network in
Switzerland. The following part should help Knecht & Müller AG to professionalize its
appearance on Xing.
6.4.1
Recommendation
&
Best
Practice
The most effective way of presenting a company on XING is through the company profile
sites. As seen on Xing, Knecht & Müller AG is represented by one of these self-generated
company profile sites. Unfortunately this company profile site is not customized. In the first
part of this report the possibilities of customizing the company profile site are explained in
more detail. The project group highly recommends to make use of the free-of-charge basic
company profile site. The free-of-charge version offers the possibility to upload a company
logo and give a detailed company description. To assure that the XING appearance is in
line with the website of Knecht & Müller AG, it is recommendable to use the same
company description on the XING company profile site.
As a best practice example, the group looked at the one of Rodenstock. Rodenstock filledin a company description and also uploaded their company logo. As they are paying for
the company profile site, by using the standard version, they also included some contacts
of the company. The company profile site is available under the following link:
https://www.xing.com/companies/rodenstockgmbh?trkid=cp%3adef16bd44b0d4b44833fda
47ed92a662%3ad41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e%3acompanies;trkoff=0
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Fig. 9: Company Site Rodenstock GmbH
Source: XING AG
Another important part of improving the appearance of a company on XING is by looking
at the profiles of the employees. As already stated earlier, it is recommendable to support
the employees, to assure a corporate appearance on XING. The project group
recommends including the following information in a possible employee advice:
-
Company Name
-
Company Address
-
Exact Job Title
-
Industry
-
Amount of employees
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Furthermore the group team advices Knecht & Müller AG to engage a professional
photographer for a visit at their company. This would assure, that all employees have a
professional profile picture on their profile, as they all act as brand ambassadors. For
certain key positions like CEO, Head of Marketing/PR, Head of Human Resource it is
further recommendable to bear the costs of a premium account for this employees.
Certainly Xing is only effective as a networking tool, if it is used for this purpose. Therefore
it is recommendable that people in key positions (as stated above) as well as sales
representatives look for contacts in this network. Getting in touch with clients (opticians) as
well as suppliers is a chance to engage again with these key people and assures the
growth of the online business network of Knecht & Müller AG.
As Knecht & Müller is already active on writing a Blog, it could be a chance to also publish
this content on Xing. As a Xing user it is possible to open groups about personal interest.
Knecht & Müller could open a group where it publishes on a regular basis its Blog content.
The advantage of this tool is, that other XING members can follow the group as a member.
Knecht & Müller will therefore have a clearer picture of the people following their
information. Furthermore the tool offers an interaction possibility so that group members
can comment on texts published by Knecht & Müller.
A best practice example of a highly active group is the one of “Sustainable Development”.
This group is available under the following Link:
https://www.xing.com/net/pri80e308x/nachhaltigeentwicklung
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Fig. 10: Sustainable Development Group
Source: Group Sustainable Development; XING AG
6.5
Homepage
In the last part of this paper the project team was looking in depth at the website “knechtvision.ch” of the company Knecht & Müller AG. This section is rather an academic
approach than a collection of little pieces which could be optimized. Whenever possible,
the group tried to involve best practice examples from other companies. To make this
section as useful as possible, the group divided the recommendations according to the
titles on the website of Knecht & Müller AG. At the end of this Homepage optimization
section, the group provides a possible new structure of the website.
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6.5.1
Recommendation
&
Best
Practice
Google
search
The website of Knecht & Müller ranks top by searching with the word combination “Knecht
und Müller”. Most of the articles listed on the first site of the Google hits, are about the
sustainability efforts of the company. In comparison to other lens manufacturers, the text
displayed in Google is quite informative. The only thing missing is the emphasis on the
importance of sustainability.
Design
of
the
website
The general impression of the website is that it looks out-dated and needs tending.
According to the project group, the website consists of too much green colour. The green
colour is ok in the logo, but should not be over emphasized on the website. On the main
page as well as on all the subpages, there is always this text box, which changes
information. It makes the reading of the pages more difficult. The group feels that the box
is too small, it requires scrolling. It is recommendable to remove this text box.
News
On the landing page of knecht-vison.ch is a little box on the right-hand site, which consists
of News. The problem there is, that if you click on these news, you are asked to login,
which is certainly not possible for a non-optician. As Knecht & Müller aims to communicate
more closely with the spectacle wearers, it is recommendable to display on this first site
only content, which is accessible for all page visitors. A best practice approach would be
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the one of Rupp and Hubrach. They have a category “News” where they inform about
actual things (not related to opticians) and additionally a link “Partnerportal” where they
provide a login for the opticians.
Wir
über
uns
If you look at other lens manufacturers or companies from other industries, the most
common name chosen for this section is “Firma” or “Unternehmen”. The wording chosen
by Knecht &Müller is another approach, but according to us not helpful. We recommend to
either use “Über Knecht & Müller” or follow the standard of “Unternehmen” or “Firma”.
Augenoptiker
As already stated in point 2, we recommend to rearrange the optician part of the website.
Not only Rupp and Hubrach, but also other lens manufacturers like Rodenstock chose an
approach of higher emphasis on the communication with the spectacle wearer instead of
the optician through their website. Therefore it would be recommendable to make the
“Augenoptiker” part less prominent on the website, but then state on the landing page of
the “Augenoptiker” what exactly it is about. It should be obvious from the “Augenoptiker”
landing page, what services an optician can get from Knecht & Müller. The section could
be renamed in “Optikernet” or simple in “Partnernet”. The opticians would be informed
through a letter that their services are available in the new section. Another advantage of
creating an external “Partnernet” is the fact that through this approach we can prevent
misleading information from being displayed n the google hits. For example if you are
looking for “Knecht und Müller Aktionen” you come to content, which is not accessible for
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non-opticians. If Knecht & Müller want to communicate more intensively with its spectacle
wearers, then such “dead-hits” are disruptive.
Ihr
Ansprechpartner
This section we recommend to be renamed in “Kontakt”. “Kontakt” is used nearly on every
website as the section in which the visitor can get information about how to contact the
company. There is a “Kontakt” button but it is far too small. This new “Kontakt” section
should include the information on how and when the company can be contacted. In our
opinion the pictures of the Service Team are not really necessary It is irritating that on one
side there are the personal pictures of some employees but on the other side there is only
a 0800-number and no possibility of reaching these people personally. We recommend
publishing the pictures of the service team in the “Partnernet” site, with direct phone
number and e-mail address. This emphasizes the importance of the personal contact,
which Knecht & Müller aims to build with its partners. As already mentioned, it is not
necessary to publish these employees on the “public” part of the website. It is far more
important to structure the information in a good way, so that the visitor gets the contact
information as easyly as possible.
Lageplan
In the “Lageplan” section there is a google map link, which does not work properly. The
visitor is connected to google, but doesn’t see where to find the company. Google offers a
static link, which can be implemented, so that if the visitor clicks on the link, he/she can
see where the company is located. Furthermore it would be recommendable to support the
visitor with further information. The TCS Routeplaner could be offered under the section
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“Mit dem Auto”, as well as the SBB online schedule under the section “Mit dem Zug”.
Under the section “Zu Fuss” it would be recommendable to include the google map “walk”
description. So the visitor can easily see how she/he can reach the company from the train
station. The map on the website where you can zoom is not useful. We recommend
providing a PDF, which includes all the explanations on how to reach the company as well
as a picture of the route from the train station to Knecht & Müller.
Brillenträger
In the beginning of the section “Brillenträger”, the company speaks about providing routedescriptions of how to reach the opticians. The group did not find any route-descriptions in
the category “Optikerverzeichnis”. Therefore this hint should not be included.
We further recommend to include the “Pflegehinweise” directly on the website and just in
addition as a document. This part could also be used to advertise social media activities of
Knecht & Müller. The company could add at the end of the cleaning recommendations:
“Treten
Sie
unser
Facebook
Fanpage
bei
und
Sie
erhalten
gratis
ein
Brillenreinigungstuch”. The user then has the possibility to directly join the group and give
his postal information on the website.
In our opinion the section “Rund um Brillengläser” does not provide sufficient information.
Either Knecht & Müller has to provide more content in this section or it is recommended to
remove this section for the moment. Therefore the section could be renamed in
“Pflegehinweise”.
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Presse
As the section “Presse” should serve not only the interests of opticians and spectacle
wearers but also the information needs of journalists, we recommend rearranging this
section. By looking at other websites like for example Carl Zeiss, we can see that they
understand which purpose this section serves. First of all we miss on the website of
Knecht & Müller a section for journalists. The PR person of the company should be clearly
listed with all contacts for journalists. Furthermore, the “Geschäftsberichte” are also
missing in this section.
Structure
By analysing the website of Knecht & Müller, as well as looking at other websites, the
project team would recommend the following new website structure:
Main topic
•
Home
•
News
•
Unternehmen (Film + Description)
o Geschichte
o Organisation
o Karriere
o Kontakt
•
Nachhaltigkeit
o Umweltfreundliche Produktion
o Umweltengagement
o Auszeichnungen
•
Produkte
•
Services
o Optiker
 Optikernet/Partnernet
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Brillenträger
 Optikerverzeichnis
 Optiklexikon
 Pflegehinweise
 Sehtipps
 RSS Feeds
Side Topics:
•
Kontakt
o Anschrift (inkl. Lageplan)
o Telefon
o E-Mail
o Formular
o Social media
•
Optikernet
•
Presse
o Kontakt
o Mitteilungen
o Artikel
 Zeitungen
 Internet
 Radio
 Fernsehen
o Geschäftsberichte
•
Impressum
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6.6
Offline
Activities
6.6.1
Chances
and
Risks
Offline methods can significantly complement the efforts of the awareness of Social media.
The chances and risks are as follows:
Fig. 11: Chances / Risk Offline table
Chances
‐
‐
‐
Risks
Getting people on Social media
platforms which do not use the
Internet often
Creating a sense of belonging for
people which bought the lenses
Reaching a higher number of
potential followers
‐
Higher costs, time and money
‐
Conflicts with opticians
‐
Alone not sufficient
Source: authors
It can be stated that offline methods, especially in this industry, might have a supportive
character. Since people might not be interested in joining a group or becoming a fan of a
page by itself, an incentive might set the ball rolling. People usually do not buy glasses
every day. Therefore it cannot be seen as a mass good like a bag of sugar. If a customer
receives an invitation to join a Social media platform along with its glasses, this might to a
certain extend create a sense of belonging. It might lead customers onto the platform,
maybe also friends, colleagues or family members. Finally, online efforts can be raised as
people can be approached who do not very often use the Internet to browse on websites
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Offline methods do still contain some risks or drawbacks. Due to the fact that you are
using physical objects and not merely digital ones, product, labor and distribution costs will
arise. Since the scope of possible distributors is mostly limited to opticians, there might be
a conflict of interest among Knecht & Müller and the opticians. Lastly, offline methods
alone will hardly be sufficient to attract enough people.
6.6.2
Best
Practice
In a world where televisions, Internet and smartphones are always present it is hard to get
people’s attention. Sometimes the simplest methods are the most effective ones. During
the interviews with the opticians, one simple thing caught our attention. Stefan Merk from
Merk Optik in Lenzburg, gives to all his customers a small present along with their glasses.
It contains 3 cleaning tissues. Nothing out of the ordinary, but the fact that each of those
serves a special purpose makes it a clever marketing instrument. One of those tissues is
actually a coupon, worth CHF 50, and will be deducted from the purchasing price if it is
handed out to Merk Optik.
Stefan Merk has begun using this marketing method only recently. Already someone took
advantage of the coupon and has used it towards the purchase of a new pair of glasses.
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6.6.3
Recommendation
A simple way of promoting the social media presence of Knecht & Müller offline could be a
lens cleaning tissue. With every pair of sold glasses through the optician, a cleaning tissue
from Knecht & Müller would be handed over. This might look as simple as the following:
Fig. 12: Draft of cleaning tissue
Sources: authors based on data from Facebook; Knecht & Müller;Twitter
Now every customer interested in Social media might easily join on Facebook or Twitter
for example. This offline method might indeed be a very effective method to boost the
awareness of its Social media activities and getting more people on the platform.
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Another offline method, which might be applicable in this context, would be social network
business cards. Some providers even offer business cards with a QR-Code, which offers
the possibility to access a website by taking a picture from the Code using the cell phone
camera (HEROLD 2010), making it even easier for people to join the platforms along the
way. One proposition might look as follows:
Fig. 13: Draft of Business Card
Source: authors based on data from zazzle
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7.
Conclusion
In general the research work indicated that there is a high interest in sustainability among
spectacle wearers. There is even a big portion of people that are willing to pay more for a
product, if the company undertakes sustainable actions. A big issue is that only a portion
of the people who are interested in sustainable products, really inform themselves before
buying a product. This factor indicates that there is still a lot of information needed, about
where a customer can inform himself about sustainability efforts of a company and even
more so where to learn more about the meaning sustainable development. For a company
like Knecht & Müller this could be a chance to fill the information gap. The challenge is to
find the right language and means to communicate effectively what sustainable production
means in the case of a lens manufacturer.
It can further be stated that among all the Social media tools which were analysed,
Facebook seems to be the most important one. Facebook is the only tool that got high
frequency results among the spectacle wearers. Being active on Facebook offers certain
risks, as reputation damage could harm the company. Nevertheless, the survey as well as
the literature research indicated, that even small companies with high qualitative products
could benefit from being active on Facebook. As indicated in the recommendations, it is
important to actively manage the community on Facebook and being creative in means of
attracting people to join the fanpage. Besides Facebook, also youtube is quite widely used
among spectacle wearers. As video production normally over extend the budget of a Small
& Medium Enterprises, the challenge is to find a creative way of telling a story which could
spread around the world. Neither should other Social media like XING or Twitter should
not be underestimated as they have high potential in attracting new customers or maintain
and develop a follower community as well as a business network.
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From the research done it was also indicated that the website of a company still seems to
be the most important information tool for spectacle wearers. None of the Social media
could beat the website as information medium number one. Therefore it is essential that
the website of Knecht & Müller has to be updated to cover the needs of the users. The
project group stated certain improvements, which could help to make the homepage more
attractive. Nevertheless, if Knecht & Müller aims to totally change its website concept, then
it is recommendable to do further research in website optimization.
Finally we can say that Knecht & Müller has a high potential of enhancing its
communication through Social media. It is Important to have a “fil rouge” in all the activities
of Knecht & Müller even though the clientele is still somewhat reluctant in joining. This
means, that Knecht & Müller will communicate similar messages through all the Social
media used. The target is to get in touch with the customer as often as possible and to
implement the brand of Knecht & Müller. It is important to bear in mind, that if Knecht &
Müller want to be active on Social media, that it will call for certain personal resources.
Furthermore and most important, it is adamant that the Top management as well as the
key positions in the company commit to the usage of Social media and get the necessary
help and training.
Last but not least, the project group highly recommends developing a detailed Social
media Strategy based on the theoretical and practical inputs provided in this report.
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8.
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9.
Figures
Fig. 1: Product Package table, authors based on data from Xing
Fig. 2: Survey table, authors
Fig. 3: Survey pie chart, authors
Fig. 4: Frequency table, authors
Fig. 5: Chance / Risk table, authors based on data from Pressemitteilungen-online.de
Fig. 6: Differences Groups vs. Pages, Allfacebook, http://www.allfacebook.com/facebookgroups-pages-2010-02
Fig. 7: Draft of Visus members website, authors based on data from www.visus.ch/de/;
www.knecht-vision.ch/de/section_1.php; http://facebookicon.net/
Fig. 8: Draft of Knecht & Müller website; authors based on data from
http://facebookicon.net/; www.knechtvision.ch/de/section_1.php;
Fig. 9: Company Site Rodenstock GmbH;
https://www.xing.com/companies/rodenstockgmbh?trkid=cp%3adef16bd44b0d4b44
833fda47ed92a662%3ad41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e%3acompanies;trkof
f=0
Fig. 10: Sustainable Development Group;
https://www.xing.com/net/pri80e308x/nachhaltigeentwicklung
Fig. 11: Chances / Risk Offline table; authors
Fig. 12: Draft of cleaning tissue; authors based on data from http://facebookicon.net/;
www.knecht-vision.ch/de/section_1.php; www.kingshop.ch/img/twitter_icon.png
Fig. 13: Business card; authors based on data from
http://www.zazzle.ch/qr_code_follow_mevisitenkarte_schablone240561943002926210
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10.
Attachments
Enclosed please find the CD with the following documents:
1. Project description
2. Project charter
3. Quantitative interview results
4. Qualitative interview notes & audio files
5. Summary of the interviews
6. Codebook of quantitative survey
7. Data of quantitative survey
8. Interim presentation
9. Prof. Dr Bendel’s recommendations concerning the Blog
10. Final presentation
11. Final report of the project
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