The Phenomenon of Social Network

In today’s world, in which we are all involved in a let’s say difficult economic situation that has cached up the concern of everyone. There is a latent phenomenon that let’s people worldwide stay 24/7 in touch and from which companies are starting to take advantage of: Social Networking.

As we have talked several times about, a characteristic that today’s generation has is the amount of information which is reachable for us. This situation is linked with the appearance of tools as Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 or Tuenti (this last one in Spain) in our everyday life. Not so long ago, the only way for knowing about others was being physically in the same place or making calls from the only fix telephone everyone had at home. Today if we don’t have the option of talking whoever we want and share our thoughts immediately we think we are disconnected of the world. Of course this worldwide connection influences in our way of being as customers.

The social network we are involved in lets us share our thoughts about any product or service we consume with people rather than we know or that we are linked with for being consumers of the same product. This is why (linking this blog with last weeks topic) we don’t only have a large wide of choice in our daily consuming decisions but we can also build our own thoughts from the experiences of others. In some way our customer insights are totally generated for a social living experience stimulated by the world of mouth.

With the more information we have it decreases the uncertainty when we consume. This, in consequence reduces the risk we have when we take a decision as a customer, which is a fact that people is starting to appreciate more and more because of the worldwide situation.

Big companies are becoming aware of this situation and are starting to take advantage of it. Big brands are using these social networks to let people share their opinions about their products and in this way get a better approach to the segment they are focused in. To give a concrete example Pepsico has created the group Lays which has more than 500,000 people in it, all usual potato chips consumers, and with this they approach to the sensations of actual customers. It looks like an easy, direct and fast way to know what consumers think about a new flavor, a marketing campaign or even the new display of the products at the university/school cafeteria.

Anyway, the social network it’s becoming an essential tool in our life’s as it is the cell phone today. If we focus in the segment of college students, almost everyone checks Facebook daily or use their blogs often to share their latest concerns. This is why companies should find the way of reaching to their customers through these tools. To show the importance that social surfaces are gaining, I was watching the all-star NBA game this evening when a facebook advertising appeared. Marketers should have in mind the impact it has as the all-star game is watched by millions of people all over the word.

But this is not only a way of approaching from companies to customers or customer-to-customer, it can (and actually is) a way of connecting companies between them. There are networks as Ryze (which is a social network for entrepreneurs) or LinkedIn that are doing it, but I’ve read some articles in which actual CEO’s are skeptical about the actual utility of social networking as I recommend you to read in the following link:

http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-6240543-1.html

In any case, the social network phenomenon is present in our lifes and increasing rapidly. We have to be concerned about it and I strongly think that if companies find the way of taking advantage will have a competitive advantage among their competitors and will reach more efficiently to their customers insights.

The paradox of choice

The podcast about ‘The paradox of choice’ of Barry Schwartz lets some interesting ideas related to what he calls the ‘official dogma’ of thinking that having a lot of choice it’s better than not having that much choice. He talks several times about freedom, welfare, expectations, etc. and this is why (before going further in the topic) I would like to give the definition of freedom that gives Jorge Bucay, a famous argentine writer, which I think it’s appropriate:  freedom is the capacity of choose in between the possibilities we have, over what is possible.

It’s a fact that in today’s world we have a lot more options, related to products or services, than the ones we had years ago. And this is one of the reasons of today’s consumerism, the whole branch of things we can purchase and with some help of the communication media the consumerism has been spread worldwide. But in the other hand having too many choices it is true that affects to our satisfaction in the consuming experience. As Mr. Schwartz says in the podcast, having some choice it’s better than none, but its not true that having more must be better than some.

With this word the author is relating to how having so many choices to make affect our decision when we purchase, and definitively affects to our satisfaction once we have consumed the product/service itself. When we don’t have many options where to choose from we just take the decision and feel good with the consequences, like in the examples of the jeans that is given in the video. When we have a lot of choices to make, apart from making the decision harder, creates in us some kind of anxiety that makes us feel worse although the decision taken is correct, having too many choices makes the decision hard (paralysis).

In this way, a lot of times having many choices or decisions to take makes us not even taking the choice. If you start to think in your last purchases, it is true that a lot of times the ones you feel that were the best ones where those you made forced for many reasons. I like the paradox B. Schwartz makes about everyone needing a fishbowl, because for us to make a decision, we need some rules to follow or at least some barriers inside which to be free to make our choice.

As personal experience of being a victim of the paradox of choice, comes to the top of my head the one I experienced just a few weeks ago when I got to the room where I was going to live during the next 4 months as an exchange student in Austin. We (my roommate and I) realized that we didn’t have sheets on our beds so we decided to go to Target and buy our sheets. The problem came when we got to Target and there were 4 corridors full of different kinds of sheets. After deciding that of course the size mattered, we thought going to the cheap ones could be another good idea of deciding which ones to take but there were about 20 different types in the same range of money to spend. What happened at last, is that after half an hour thinking which ones to buy we finally went with the ones we had seen first and when we got to our room with our brand new sheets we realized that we had mistaken with sizes…

Finalizing this mix up of ideas, it can be true that having many choices between to choose from can increase paralysis, and it’s this paralysis the one that decreases the satisfaction we have. Anyway, I don’t share with the author that the secret of happiness is having low expectations because in a punctual experience can be true that it works, but it’s the freedom we have to make our own expectations and how we deal with them afterwards what makes us truly satisfied in the end.

My thoughts about Generation Y

The Generation Y it’s the one that includes those who where born in between 1979/80 and 1994/99 depending on who writes about it, and the term Generation Y got popular when Business Week wrote about it in 1999 with the article that has the same name.

People born in this Generation Y (in which I’m included) have some characteristics that clearly show a big jump with our predecessors. We have grown up with he influence of marketing campaigns, the rupture of conventional structures, and the most important the Internet boom, that’s why we are also known as the Google Generation or the iGeneration. These characteristics have made us egocentric and with a lack of sense of belonging to any group or organization. Nowadays people is faithful to persons rather than to organizations.

After going through the article and hearing the MySpace Generation podcast, the first thought that has come to my mind is that it doesn’t matter which is your background or the cultural differences that can be depending on where have grow up, the reality for us is the same. In my personal case, I had heard about MySpace but I had never used it, actually I had to go around the website to make an accurate idea of what MySpace was about. In Spain is more popular a blog called Fotolog (which you also might know about) where also people express their opinions and share with their friends ideas or just events they want to attend. I must say that phenomenons like facebook are almost as big, and I could add necessary, to communicate in Spain than here he US.

Like the article says, we are used to marketing campaigns, and TV advertisements don’t influence us so much what has make our generation a less uniform one than the one was before us. It’s this diversity what makes Internet a powerful tool for marketers to get to the customers. If we give a quick overview to the successful companies in today’s world, most of them are internet based or at least have a strong website which makes them more accessible. I don’t share the opinion that personal selling tends to disappear (as we can hear sometimes) or that internet shopping its replacing going to the malls, but its true that the customers have more information about prices and the product itself what makes him less easily influenced to what a personal seller can tell.

As the environment changes and habits in the generations change marketers should also adapt to this changing world. As the article says brands with an “old” thinking of their product and their consumers find themselves struggling to succeed when years ago where leaders in their branch. Marketers must get into the insights of the consumers and look for their needs to satisfy. With our iGeneration, using blogs as MySpace has been proven as successful or advertising themselves associating their brand to the image they want to give.

To give a quick example of adapting to changes on the needs of consumers I would mention the case of Puma. I know that is not a big brand here in the US, but it didn’t used to be big neither in Europe or Asia, and nowadays it’s almost at the level of Nike or Adidas. They used to be a sports brand struggling which saw in fashion relate to sports a big market in the two continents mentioned. Today, people have the image of Puma as a fashion brand apart from sports clothing with a touch of modernity. Apart from young sport stars as corporative image, they support events like skate competitions or dancing competitions, which has, give them another approach.

To finish with my dissertation about us, the Google Generation, so used to computers, videogames, easy accessibility to information and an own opinion for everything. We should be in all cases aware that the generation before us has also experienced all these changes, and we should still listen to them more having in the top of the head that we are getting into the labor market becoming eventually tomorrow business and political leaders. We should be aware of this significant transition and is in our hands to build a better business world with all the tools and facilities there are nowadays, especially with what has happened economically during the last times what has taken to a leader country like to the US into something not imaginable a few years ago.

1st blog post

Hi everyone! 

I'm Emmanuel Grosse, student from Barcelona who will enjoy the exchange experience at Austin this semester with you. See you in class!