Home Depot misuses social media

Many social media are familiar to us, such as YouTube, Twitter, blogs and Google+. These Enterprise 2.0 technologies are not only for personal use, but they are also used by different companies. Different organizations use social media to promote their business and to help them to provide a good service for customers. Social media brings a lot of benefits for organizations, including brand development and marketing promotions. 

There are six main risks, when human beings use social media (Dawson, 2008).

·         Loss of control

·         Security

·         Productivity

·         Reliability

·         Resources

·         Reputation

A good way to use social media can help organizations bring a lot of benefits, but misusing social media will bring some disadvantages to companies. In this blog, we will examine a case study about Home Depot, which is a company that misuses social media. 

About Home Depot

Let’s learn about Home Depot, before we discuss it misusing social media. The Home Depot is an American company, which was established in 1978. Home Depot is the largest improvement retailer and the second largest retailer in the U.S. Consumers can freely visit the Home Depot website. It sells a wide assortment of building materials, home improvement, lawn and garden products and provides a number of services. Home Depot offers a variety of installation and repair services, including bathroom remodelling, garage door repair and more. From the Home Depot official website, it is easy to find that a variety of social media have been used, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Blog and YouTube.

‘Misuse’ of social technology

The tweet, from Home Depot’s official Twitter account, @HomeDepot, was part of a “College Gameday” college football promotion on ESPN. It was quickly pulled, but not before people took screen shots of it and it was widely circulated in social media. NBC and CNBC, among others, reported on the Tweet. Home Depot said Friday that it has fired the person and an outside agency that was responsible for the tweet, but did not disclose their names. 

A casual racism is shown on Home depot’s twitter. Even though it didn’t last very long, the response to the offending post was swiftly furious. The damage was done, and people are angry at the obvious racism in twitter. People are easy to misconstrue the photo used in twitter. The Racial discrimination twitter brings a lot of condemnation and it brings a negative effect to Home depot. Racial discrimination is a sensitive problem in all over the world, and anyone should be respected, which is no relative to racial and cultural differences. There are many African-American, and the casual racism twitter hurts their feelings. Not only is the company in America, but it is also in other countries. 

The impact of misusing social media

There are Rogerson andFidler’s 8 Ethical Principles helping us to understand and analyze the issue. 

·         Honor

·         Honest

·         Bias

·         Professional Adequacy

·         Due care

·         Fairness

·         Consideration of Social Cost

·         Effective and Efficient Action

Home Depot shows the bias on race, which has broken the principles. As a big company in America, Home Depot’s twitter makes a huge negative influence. It is not only affecting Home Depot’s reputation, but also the loss of control comments and spreading will hurt millions of Africa-American. The negative influence cannot be measured by money. 

How to avoid abusing social media

Most of company leaders believe that social media and other workplace technology are misused by their employees (Jessica, 2012). Organization misuses social media, which means that the Organization’s employees misuse social media. Therefore, organizations should train their employees to use social media with correct methods. Eight ethical principles should be taught to employees. When misusing social media, organizations should apologize to the public. What’s more, Dundas Lawyers gave some suggestions which we can use on this misusing social media. A documented effective social media strategy can be in place. When similar problems happen in the future, the organization can provide the solutions as soon as possible.

Reference List:

Dawson, R., Hough, J., Hill, J., Winterford, B., & Alexandrov, D. (2008). Implementing enterprise 2.0.

                San Francisco; Sydney: Advanced Human Technologies.

Rogerson, S., & Fidler, C. (n.d.). A practical perspective on information ethics. Retrieved from                  
                 https://www.academia.edu/322961/A_Practical_Perspective_of_Information_Ethics.

ROI of Online to Store: Panasonic Case

Enterprise 2.0 is widely used in organizations, such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Social technologies help organizations to create a great communication with customers and have good insights into products. It is easy to find that Enterprise 2.0 brings a lot of benefits for organizations. However, without measurements, companies do not know how much value Enterprise 2.0 technologies have brought for them. Return on investment (ROI) helps companies to measure whether Enterprise 2.0 technologies bring benefits. In this blog, I will use a Panasonic case to discuss the ROI in an Enterprise2.0 project.

Overview Panasonic Case

Panasonic Corporation is a Japanese multinational electronics company, which was established in 1918. It is the world’s fourth largest television manufacture of 2012. The case study of Panasonic is about Panasonic digital cameras (Product x) sales during the online campaign period in a major French retailer. Panasonic spends money on advertisement to promote marketing, such as TV, YouTube, online display and paid search. From this graph, TV advertisement spent 85% of the budget. YouTube, online display and paid search spend the remaining 15% budget, which are 6%, 5% and 4% respectively in the 4^th quarter. The total Revenue is $0.25billion.

Measuring the Costs

The following is that Panasonic spends money on media investment in the 4^th quarter.

Cost for TV Advertisement (85% of the budget) = 17 million

Cost for YouTube (6% of the budget) = 1.2 million

Cost for Online Display (5% of the budget) = 1 million

Cost for Paid Search (4% of the budget) = 0.8 million

Expenses

Expenses	Price
TV Advertisement	17 million
Total Cost (TV Ads)	$17 million
YouTube	1.2 million
Online Display	1 million
Paid Search	0.8 million
Total Costs  (Social media)	$3 million

Measuring the Benefits

There is 15% of offline retail sales comes as a result of ‘Product X’ Brand marketing. Total Revenue is $0.25billion.

Total Revenue (TV Ads) = 0.25 billion *9%= $22.5million

Total Revenue (Social media) = 0.25billion*6%=$15 million

Total Benefit (TV Ads)	$22.5 million
Total Benefit (Social Media)	15 million

ROI of TV Advertisement = ((22.5-17) /17) *100=32. 35

ROI of Social Media = ((15-3) /3) *100=400

From ROI, we can find that Enterprise 2.0 technologies can help Panasonic to get more benefits than TV advertisements.

Tangible benefits

Social media make a great contribution for sales. Even though the investments in social media are not the most the sales were driven by social media, which accounts for 40%. 

Social media don’t only promote ‘Product X’ sales, but also it increases sales of the other Panasonic product during the campaign period.

Intangible benefits

Panasonic uses the Enterprise 2.0 technologies to promote sales, which is a good way to communicate with clients.

It helps Panasonic get insight into its products, after Panasonic gets client’s feedback.

Strength and weaknesses of ROI approach

Strength of ROI approach is that Panasonic uses social media technologies to promote sales, which is not the traditional social media, such as YouTube. Panasonic realizes that consumers have changed the way to get information. Panasonic knows to use new social media to make advertisement and promote sales. What’s more, Panasonic doesn’t use a lot of investments, and it gets a good ROI approach by YouTube. Moreover, the advertisement of ‘Product X’ does not only promote the sales of this product, but also it has a positive effect for the other products’ sales.

Weaknesses of ROI approach are that Panasonic doesn’t use many different kinds of social media technologies during an online campaign period. This is because a single social media technology cannot cover the largest consumer group. Therefore, Panasonic cannot get the most ROI by Enterprise 2.0 technologies. 

Reference List:

Panasonic. (2014, September 26, 23). Wikipedia. 

        Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panasonic

Panasonic Online to Store Case Study a Think with Google. (n.d.). 
        Panasonic Online to Store Case Study a Think with Google. 
        Retrieved from 

        http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/case-studies/panasonic-online-to-store-case-        study.html

Social technologies with 7-Eleven

With the development of society, people are busy with work in every day. There is no enough time of going to the supermarket, such s K-mart, Woolworth or Coles. The convenience stores have provided more and more convenient for people in the daily life. People can get drinks, foods, or daily living goods. Today I will introduce 7-Eleven how to use social technology in the value level, which is related to McKinsey Global Institute Report (2013).

About 7-Eleven

7-Eleven is an international chain of convenience stores, and it is the largest operator, franchisor and licensor of convenience stores, which cover 16 countries with more than 51000 stores all over the world. The company was founded in 1927 by John Jefferson Green and was just a small grocery store. The company changed its name to 7-Eleven in 1946, which reflected its operation time from 7am to 11pm, and it was unique after the war. In 1952 7-Eleven owned its 100^th store. A Japanese company, Seven & I, became the biggest stockholder in 2005. There are approximately six stores open every day somewhere in the whole world.

7-Eleven in McKinsey Value Level

In the Marketing and sales area, 7-Eleven has a good performance. 7-Eleven doesn’t only have its own website to introduce themselves, but also use a lot of social technology, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. However, we have to find the phenomenon that 7-Eleven retail stores use different kinds of social technology in different countries. No matter what kind of social technology 7-Eleven use, it all makes a great contribution to the marketing and sales.

Communication and Interaction value level

7-Eleven post new product advertisements on Facebook. It usually gets thousands of supporters, and it is also easy to find a lot of comments under the post. Facebook provides a good platform to customers. Customers can communicate with 7-Eleven directly. For any service questions, customers can ask them on Facebook. Also, 7-Eleven can have the interaction with customers. 7-Eleven can reply to customers’ problems or questions in time. It changes the traditional face to face communication methods in business.

Drive customer insights

Social technology provides a good platform for 7-Elevent to make the customer analysis. For example on Twitter, 7-Elevent posts the different product information based on different packages or price. 7-Eleven can get the number of retweet and favorite. From this kind of data, customers can easily get some data about customers’ preferences such as what kind of products, and which customers are much more interested. The data can help 7-Eleven to make good marketing strategies in the future.

Generate and foster sales leads

Social technologies can help 7-Eleven to generate and foster sales leads. Instagram shows the function well for 7-Eleven.We can find a lot of amazing information about 7-Eleven, such as events, products, or some new service. Consumers can get the information as fast as possible. Also, customers can leave comments under the pictures. It is a good marketing strategy and attracts customer purchasing. At the same time it helps 7-Eleven to build a good impression in consumers’ minds.

Private suggestions

However, 7-Eleven doesn’t have a good social commerce. On the social media tools, we can find the friends who have followed it. To our friends, who purchase the product, we cannot get the information on its social media tools. Also, it does not have the delivery service. I find a funny conversation on the Australia 7-Eleven Facebook. It is clear to show that 7-Eleven still stays in the traditional business methods, and it didn’t develop the e-commerce. All the different social technologies should be good assistants for 7-Eleven, but 7-eleven didn’t use their functions. Actually, 7-Eleven can provide the service to the customer based on different price and places. It will bring 7-Eleven more benefits.

References:

About Us. (n.d). – 7-Eleven. Retreved September 26, 2014, from http://www.7eleven.com.au/about-us