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Published: July 09, 2008in Knowledge@Wharton http://knowledge. wharton.upenn. edu/article. cfm?articleid= 2009
Mini USA, the
American branch of BMW’s Mini Cooper line, tracks everything being said about
its brand everywhere on line—in blogs, discussion groups, forums, MySpace pages
and much more—then uses what it learns to guide advertising campaigns.
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At Hewlett-Packard,
50 executives log into their individual blogs each morning to join the ongoing
online conversation about each of their product lines, immediately responding
to customer problems and concerns.
Ernst & Young
recruits many of the 3,500 college graduates it hires every year using a career
group on Facebook, where it not only posts job information but also answers
individual questions from prospective employees. And DelMonte Pet Foods uses a private online
community to regularly “chat” with 400 pet lovers whose opinions help shape new
products.
These are all
examples of companies savvy enough to participate in the “groundswell,”
according to Charlene Li, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester
Research. “The groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies
to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional
institutions like corporations.”
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Li was a speaker
at the recent Supernova conference, an annual technology event in San Franciscoorganized by Wharton legal studies and
business ethics professor Kevin Werbach in collaboration with Wharton. Li and
Forrester colleague Josh Bernoff have co-authored a book on the subject,
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.
“The more you
know and understand the individuals who make up the groundswell around your
brand and your company, the more you can use the new social networking
phenomenon to your advantage,” she said.
Such
understanding comes from going well beyond traditional user surveys, however.
According to Li and other speakers at the conference, too few companies study
how people actually interact with the web and utilize online collaborative
tools, yet much of today’s Internet revolves around individual users, the
content they create, the communities they form and the transactions they
choose.
“People’s lives
are rich and complex, so you need to get data both in the large and in the
small,” said Elizabeth Churchill, principal research scientist at Yahoo!
Research whose work focuses on user Internet experiences. “That means
quantitative data from large groups to answer the ‘who, what, where and how’
questions, and qualitative data to answer the ‘why’ questions. For example, we
know from research done by [photo sharing website] Flickr that while Americans
are big sharers of photos, Scandinavians are not. Why? What is the cultural
impact on photo sharing?”
Failed Searches
and Alpha Moms
Looking more
carefully at people’s behavior on the Internet can uncover surprises, sometimes
calling into question basic assumptions—for instance, that most young people
are adept at using the Internet. Conference presenter Eszter Hargittai, NorthwesternUnivers ityprofessor of sociology and communication
studies, studied a diverse group of students attending the Universityof Illinoisat Chicagoand found that 43% failed on a search task,
based largely on their misunderstanding of Internet terminology and on their
inability to navigate links.
Hargittai
reviewed research showing that people differ significantly in their
understanding of various Internet-related terms and activities. For example,
when asked to assess their own Internet know-how, women, African Americans,
Hispanics and those with poorly educated parents report lower levels of
knowledge than men or Asian Americans.
“Since such
skills are not randomly distributed among the population, certain content
providers and content users stand a better chance of benefiting from the medium
than others,” said Hargittai.
Li agreed, citing
Forrester research on the range of behavior on the web, which is sometimes
based on skill and demographics, while at other times linked more to a user’s
stage of life. So-called Alpha Moms “are comfortable with technology,
interested in parenting, and have above-average incomes,” said Li, “but they
have no time. So if you’re trying to reach them, you don’t give them blogs. You
give them communities of their peers with opportunities for feedback.”
To help companies
target their Internet strategies, Li and Bernoff have organized Forrester
research into a “social technology ladder,” which classifies consumers based on
their participation in various types of social networking. At the lowest rung
of the ladder are the “inactives,” some 44% of all U.S. American adults who
were online in 2007. Higher up are the “joiners,” the 25% who visit social
networking sites like MySpace; collectors, an elite 15% who collect and
aggregate information; and critics, those who post ratings and reviews as well
as contribute to blogs and forums. Only 18% of all online Americans actually
create content, publishing an article or a blog at least once a month,
maintaining a web page or uploading content to sites like YouTube.
The power of such
a classification lies in giving organizations a clear understanding of how
consumers are behaving online, said Li. “Any successful strategy to tap into
the groundswell has to begin with assessing customers’ social activities. Then
you can decide what you want to accomplish, plan for how your relationship with
your customers will change, and finally decide what social technology to use.”
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