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