Coles is an Australian supermarket chain whose parent is Wesfarmers and is founded 103 years ago; while, Woolworths is a chain of supermarket/grocery store that was found 92 years ago (Armstrong et al. 2014). However, both if these organizations are accounting for about 80% of Australian retail market (Tuten & Solomon 2014). Coles and Woolworths sells a wide range of bread- and- bakery products, fruits and- vegetables, dairy products, frozen foods, drinks – and- liquor, health- and- beauty products, home décor items, stationary items and baby products however, these two companies uses the connect of competitive pricing strategy for attaining profitability (Woolworths Supermarket – Buy Groceries Online 2017 and Coles Supermarket 2017).
Woolworths embraces social media in from the year 2010 and prior to this year the concerned organization does not have any twitter account and the Facebook account was also recently started in this year (Woolworths Supermarket – Buy Groceries Online 2017). On the other hand, Coles started social media in the year 2009 as a marketing tool (Coles Supermarket 2017). Both the of the companies have account not only in Facebook and YouTube but also in Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Pinterest and Google+.
Heymann-Reder (2012) depicts that with the use of social media marketing, an organization can make customers more aware of their brand and products that are available in their stores. Woolworths and Coles both adopt almost the same technology that is to broadcast their products and videos or future initiatives through Social Media Sites. Since more people nowadays are connected though internet and hence any new initiatives take little time to spread among their customers.
It is evident that most individual send time in Facebook compared to other social media sites like- LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and interest. It is found that 52% of people in recent times prefer Facebook over other channels and these channels have the potential to influence people and convince them to buy their products (Stelzner 2014). Coles and Woolworths also use Facebook to interact with their customers directly. This results in attracting more customers towards their brand.
It is mentioned earlier that one of the advantages of the using social media is to provide interact with the customers directly. Twitter and Facebook are the two sites where organization broadcasted details regarding their new products and initiative on which they are proceeding (Vinerean et al. 2013). Coles and Woolworths also give instant reply on customer’s concern and analyse the same so that they can get aware of their demands. Moreover, both the companies majorly use Facebook and Twitter fin this context.
An organization can assess their target customers and can align their business production and product line for fulfilling their requirement. Coles and Woolworths also display products especially for millennial so that they can buy their products and goods from their stores. Moreover, the age group that shops more from the online shopping can also be targeted.
In the year 22016, both Coles and Wooolworths have faced the same problem due to a Facebook posts that a social media team accidentally says that their ‘fresh milk’ termed product are made from power milk (NewsComAu 2017). Moreover, there milk shelves have empty stocks of branded milk whereas the Woolworths stock is full and is available in triple the rice than regular milk packs (NewsComAu 2017). Papasolomou and Melanthiou (2012) moreover stated that organizations posted good things on social media for attracting many customers. However, the customers broadcasted their negative experience on the same platform. Taken for instance, one customer posted a picture by commenting that Coles have given only two rows to Dairy Farmers while, the rest of their stocks are from home brands. This led them in a controversial situation.
This scandal is associated with Woolworths where Woolworths’ billboard labelled doughnuts as “fresh food”. This makes Ipswich doctor Jason Maloo posted the label of the banner on Facebook that led to controversy. Woolworths however commented instantly that they admit the banner was confusing for spectators and they mean to say that they bake food freshly in their stores (NewsComAu, 2017).
Moreover, Woolworths also change there scheme for Woolworths reward points that also disappoint many users and their customers posted their aggression in their sites on which other customers also share their viewpoints.
In regards with Coles, they have experienced a controversy in their milk product for using reconstituted milk powder in its “fresh” milk. This results in disagreed customers for their milk brands. They started posting pictures of empty shelves of Dairy Farmers in order to support them.
An organization should uses information manipulation theory to attract more customers towards their brands. This theory emphasises on four aspects- quantity, quality, relation and manner (Tuten & Solomon, 2014). Fan and Gordon (2014) also describes that quantity resembles complete and full information. While, quality refers to accurate and precise information in the social media that. The term ‘relation’ and ‘manner’ signifies the relevance of the conversation and easy-to-understand posts respectively (Tuten & Solomon, 2014). This results in maintaining transparency with the customers, which on the other hand lead to lesser chance to be in a controversial situation.
According to this theory, a person has a tendency to regret and apologise for the same for not acting fast enough to overcome the adversity. Taken for instance, in the milk scandal, the Coles social media managers instantly aapologise for the misspelled word and taken back the broadcasted posts (Fan & Gordon, 2014). In addition to that, Woolworths also put off the banners that mentioned ‘doughnuts are fresh foods’.
Thus, it can be said that an organization on adopting the social media get the opportunity to know their customers and their demands. This analysis allows them to develop new products so that their demands can be satisfied and the customer base can be retained, along with the attainment of the effective brand recognition. Online services are one of the new initiatives that are incorporated in social media marketing (Heymann-Reder, 2012). In this approach, customers order their products through online and the organization delivers them to their destination. This approach not only attracts more customers but also provide the organization competitive advantage compared to local stores (Fan & Gordon, 2014).
Woolworths utilises the theory of ‘Scarcity Principle’ that is to take proper action on being underperforming compared to their standard. It can also be said that they have implemented the social media so that they can assess their customer’s concern and know them better. However, these two theories are maintained properly so that first theory can be attained that is to deliver accurate information with the customer.
Coles
Coles on the other hand also taken initiatives for attaining the first theory ‘Information Manipulation Theory’. This can be evaluated from the milk scandal where milk powder was used in preparing fresh milk. The social media manager also apologises instantly and delivers the accurate details to the customers. The next two theories that is ‘Scarcity Principle’ and ‘Know your consumers’ is also implemented.
Reference list
Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S., & Kotler, P. (2014). Principles of marketing. Pearson Australia.
Coles Supermarket. (2017). coles.com. Retrieved 18 April 2017, from https://www.coles.com.au/
Coles. (2017). Facebook.com. Retrieved 18 April 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/coles/
Coles. (2017). YouTube. Retrieved 18 April 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/user/ColesSupermarkets
Fan, W., & Gordon, M. D. (2014). The power of social media analytics. Communications of the ACM, 57(6), 74-81.
Heymann-Reder, D. (2012). Social Media Marketing. Addison-Wesley Verlag.
NewsComAu. (2017). Shoppers’ fury over milk shortage. Retrieved 18 April 2017, from https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/shoppers-furious-over-milk-shortage/news-story/c8600a8a77678e2309489dca70204c7a
Papasolomou, I., & Melanthiou, Y. (2012). Social media: Marketing public relations’ new best friend. Journal of Promotion Management, 18(3), 319-328.
Stelzner, M. (2014). (2012) social media marketing industry report. Social media examiner, 1-52.
Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2014). Social media marketing. Sage.
Twitter.com. (2017). Coles Supermarkets (@Coles) | Twitter. Retrieved 19 April 2017, from https://twitter.com/coles?lang=en
Vinerean, S., Cetina, I., Dumitrescu, L., & Tichindelean, M. (2013). The effects of social media marketing on online consumer behavior. International Journal of Business and Management, 8(14), 66.
Woolworths Supermarket – Buy Groceries Online. (2017). Woolworths Online. Retrieved 18 April 2017, from https://www.woolworths.com.au/
Woolworths. (2017). Facebook.com. Retrieved 18 April 2017, from https://www.facebook.com/woolworths/
Woolworths. (2017). YouTube. Retrieved 18 April 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/user/WoolworthsAu
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