Social Media Consumer Activism: A Discussion

Relevant aspects of social media consumer activism

Discuss about the Social Media Consumer Activism for Consumers.

It’s now documented that mass protests can be easily enabled by social media platforms such as facebook and tweeter accounts.  Despite the documentation, the protests brought about by social media are not understood as well as it’s expected (Patino, Pitta and Quinones, 2012).  A trending topic can also amount to social media activism as it was in the case of Nigeria’s activism against the Boko Haram who kidnapped young girls out of school and thereafter there was a slogan by the name ‘bring back our girls’ which went viral and caught the attention of many people including the then USA first lady Michelle Obama (Hendel, Lach and Y Spiegel, 2015). 

This makes the interested parties to engage in conversation that turn out to be bigger and also very complex in some cases.  Therefore there has not been any standard or rather specific social media platform for activism any platform can be used to reach out to a multitude of people (Gorry and Westbrook, 2009).

It’s understated to say that the dynamics of communication between consumers and corporations have been changed by social media. One way communication is far gone and nowadays businesses do not push out messages to just hoard consumers into accepting information from them without questioning anything. The communications nowadays have become emotional, highly visible and animated (Green America, 2013). There is unprecedented influence by social media on consumers which has great impact on the decisions that are made by even big companies. Businesses nowadays react quickly when under spotlight by social media especially on dubious practices.

Consumer activism has been seen to rise so fast in this era of distrust and as it has been seen in America since president trump was inaugurated many protests have been seen or experienced by those for and against his presidency (Castells, 2007). These protests are not just limited to the public domain but also social media platforms.  There have been a lot of #hash tags trending on tweeter regarding many issues such as during the period when Uber announced the removal of surge pricing when they pick up slacks. This was caused by NYC cab drivers that had to join the immigration protests and some customers saw it as a profiting agenda from the issues they had greatly advocated against.

This activism saw many people deleting the app and swearing to support the Uber’s competition they even encouraged peers to do the same (Groza, Pronschinske and Walker, 2011). A stage has been set for a dramatic increase of this phenomenon (consumer activism through social media) due to today’s increased levels of distrust in the institutions that were once trusted by many.  

Chosen consumer activism: Facebook boycott of cottage cheese

There has been a tremendous shift from the concept of brand awareness to consumer activism. This has been due to the fact that brands need to raise their level of readiness especially in this era where it’s more common to hear of consumer activism. The marketers are therefore supposed to think about four main stages and not just the traditional way of doing business. It’s evident that each of this stage has both positive and negative impacts on their brands but they should focus more on the positive impacts (Groza, et al., 2011). These stages include

Awareness- this makes the consumer to have a general knowledge on the brand and the values that come with it so as to find it relevant (Atkinson, 2012).  On the negative part the consumer may have awareness that is low and the values of the product may not be relevant to the consumer. Affinity- there is an urge for the consumer to have a high affinity for the brand being advertised as well as good preference. However the consumer can also have low affinity for the same brand.

Advocacy-the consumer may make recommendations of the brand to other consumers and thus actively promoting it or the same consumer may speak negatively about your brand leading to its fail (Yan, 2011). Activism- some consumers may be actively involved in the defense of your brand or tae actins that are of benefit or also may take negative actions that are damaging to the brand.

There is therefore the need to work towards earning trust of your consumers in this era of consumer activism. This is as a result of the social demands that are emerging as well as the divides on social media (Burson-Marsteller, 2010). This is also combined with the connectivity among peers. All these gives rise to the storm which is perfect for the activism and the brands to get ways in which they can earn both the trust and loyalty of their consumers. It’s been proven that many brands are good at engaging their consumers in interesting and involving ways but fail to get them into investing to reach a point where their own consumer can advocate or act as activists on their behalf so as to promote their brands.

In the near future consumer activism is going to force brands into examining their values and therefore there is the need to handle consumers with care.  The brands will then be forced to ask themselves questions such as ‘what do we stand for?’. Dealing with a low trust environment has been a big risk to the brands and it’s worsened if the brand acts ways that are opportunistic, contrived or inauthentically (Abedniya & Mahmouei, 2010). This does not stop consumers from evaluating brands by both relevance in their lives and also how responsible they feel the brands are towards their needs. Incase brands in today’s business world do not articulate such values there is a high risk of leaving their actions and intents open to any consumer interpretation.

Social media such as facebook have become good platforms for consumers to put pressure on various business people to lower prices of their goods and services or act in a way that is more socially responsible (Hendel, Lach and Y Spiegel, 2015). This has had major impacts on business regulations. Such moves have made companies disciplined and therefore antitrust agencies have become less concerned when it comes to the bad effects of market power on consumers.

Recently in Israel there was an organized boycott by consumers on the cottage cheese and all this was done through facebook. This happened in the year 2011 in summer.  Being a staple food in Israel and produced by three large firms in Israel cottage cheese is highly valued by consumers (Becker and Copeland, 2015). There had been a regulation of its price until the year 2006. The price then rose sharply after deregulation and by the year 2011 it was at 7NIS ($ 1.82) for each container. This was about 46% higher compared to the pricing in 2006. In this period food prices rose heavily but cottage cheese was used as a symbol for the hikes.

An event was then created on facebook on the 14^th of June 2011 after an extensive coverage of the hiked food prices. The vent aimed at calling for the boycott of cottage cheese until the prices fell to 5NIS ($ 1.30).  This social media event attracted a huge following with more than 105,000 users on facebook taking part (Hendel et al., 2015).

This boycott had an effect on the prices such as use of special promotional prices by different supermarkets to ensure they made sales out of their products.  This activism saw the average price of cheese reducing drastically within a short period of time because companies were making losses due to the boycott.  This boycott has seen the price of cottage cheese remaining below 6NIS as it had been priced earlier to the price hikes on food products (Lee and Youn, 2009).  The price decline was at 24% virtually overnight. However before the decline the impact of the boycott on the supermarkets was too big to be assumed.

Fig.1 Daily mean price of cottage cheese by brand Boycott impact-on-demand index (all brands) for cottage cheese

The quantities of the cottage cheese dropped during the early days of the boycott. This boycott came with substantial burdens on the firms. It’s also evident that the boycotts had great impacts in areas where most consumers are exposed to social media usage (Gil de Zúñiga, Copeland and Bimber, 2013). The managers of firms that produce cottage cheese admitted that the boycott taught them the lesson of being modest and humane. The protests also caused the firms to make emphasis on the opinions raised by consumers. Thus there was the need for self regulation by cottage cheese firms (Schmidt and Cohen, 2010).

It’s out of this boycott that the government of Israel appointed a special committee to review the pricing of food commodities especially dairy products so as not to experience what cottage cheese firms had experienced with their products.

Fig. 2 Boycott impact-on-demand index (all brands) for cottage cheese

Conclusion

The boycott organized by the public through facebook platform against cottage cheese is evidence that consumer coordination can be easily facilitated by social media in ensuring they apply pressure on companies that exploit them by hiking process of the commodities without any consultation with the relevant stakeholders.  This can lead to lowering of prices with immediate effect. The same activism has proven to be the best avenue to put pressure on the government through politicians to ensure market power is curbed. It’s evident that firms are likely to quickly react to such boycott threats and therefore set prices based on both demand elasticity which is the traditional analysis that organizations have used for long periods and also the use the environment in which business is carried out. The business environment is rarely captured in the traditional analysis yet it’s the first in importance.

References

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Atkinson, L. (2012). Buying in to social change: How private consumption choices engender concern for the collective. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social   Science, 644, 191–206. doi:10.1177/0002716212448366

Becker, A. B., & Copeland, L. (2015). Networked publics: How connective social media use facilitates political consumerism among LGBT Americans. Paper presented at the Workshop on Social Media and the Prospects for Expanded Democratic Participation in National Policy-Setting, Boston, MA.

Burson-Marsteller. (2010). The global social media checkup. Retrieved September 23rd, 2017

https://www.bursonmarsteller.com/Innovation_and_insights/blogs_and_podcasts/BM_Blog/Documents/Burson-Marsteller%202010%20Global%20Social%20Media%20Checup%   20white%20paper.pdf.

Castells, M. (2007). Communication, power and counter-power in the network society.     International Journal of Communication, 1, 238–266.

Gil de Zúñiga, H., Copeland, L., & Bimber, B. (2013). Political consumerism: Civic engagement and the social media connection. New Media & Society, 16, 488–506.        doi:10.1177/1461444813487960

 Gorry, G. A., & Westbrook, R. A. (2009). Winning the internet confidence game. Corporate Reputation Review, 12(3), 195–203.

Green America. (2013). The big green opportunity for small business in the U.S.: Small business    sustainability report. Washington, DC: Russ Gaskin, Martha Van Gelder. Retrieved from  https://biggreenopportunity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Big-Green-Opportunity-         Report-FINAL-WEB.pdf

Groza, M., Pronschinske, M., & Walker, M. (2011). Perceived organizational motives and  consumer responses to proactive and reactive CSR. Journal of Business Ethics, Sep    2011.102(4), 639-652.

Hendel I, S Lach and Y Spiegel (2015), “Consumers’ Activism: the Facebook boycott of Cottage Cheese”, CEPR Discussion Paper 10460, March.

Lee, M., & Youn, S. (2009). Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) – how eWOM platforms  influence consumer product judgment. International Journal of Advertising, 28(3), 473- 499.

Patino, A., Pitta, D. A., & Quinones, R. (2012). Social media’s emerging importance in market research. The Journal of Consumer Marketing, 29(3), 233-237.

Schmidt, E., & Cohen, J. (2010). The digital disruption. Foreign Affairs, 89(6), 75–85.

Yan, J. (2011). Social media in branding: Fulfilling a need. Journal of Brand Management,18(9), 688-696.