Chapter 10 E-commerce: Digital Markets, Digital Goods 399 INTERACTIVE SESSION MANAGEMENT "Socializing" with Customers More than 3 billion people worldwide use social followers, 24,000 Twitter followers, 15,000 LinkedIn media, making it an obvious platform for companies followers, 15,000 You Tube subscribers, and other so- seeking to engage consumers, amplify product mes- cial communities to photos, videos, text summaries, sages, discover trends and influencers, build brand and other content describing every aspect of the new awareness, and take action on customer requests Anthem line. These activities were credited with at- and recommendations. More than 80 million busi- tracting more than 40,000 new social followers to the nesses have Facebook brand pages, enabling users Mack brand to interact with the brand through blogs, comment Mack uses Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud Service pages, contests, and offerings on the brand page. and Oracle Social Cloud to link social activity to The "like" button gives users a chance to share with 175,000 profiles in its Oracle Eloqua database cus- their social network their feelings about content they tomers and prospects. The digital marketing team are viewing and websites they are visiting. With like thus knows if a person in the database clicked on a buttons on many millions of websites, Facebook can Facebook post to view an Anthem-related video or track user behavior on other sites and then sell this looked for other information on the company's web- information to marketers. Facebook also sells display site. Compelling personalized content helps engage ads to firms that appear on users' home pages and prospects and move them further along the sales pro- most other pages in the Facebook interface such as cess until they ask to talk to a Mack dealer. At that photos and apps. Twitter features such as "promoted point, the prospect is considered a qualified lead. tweets and promoted trends" enable advertisers to Oracle Social Cloud alerts team members when the have their tweets displayed more prominently when Mack Anthem is mentioned on various social sites, Twitter users search for certain keywords and they can respond where appropriate. Mack Trucks, a leading U.S. truck manufacturer, Mack also enlisted celebrity influencers for the used a social marketing mpaign to attract custom- Anthem paign. Country music artist Steve drivers, and dealers when it launched its new Moakler recorded a road song called Born Ready for Anthem model. Mack had traditionally used print the Anthem launch and dedicated it to drivers. More ads in trucking publications, brochures , and industry than 55,000 people viewed Moakler's performance trade shows as its primary marketing channels when on YouTube. The marketing team also produced rolling out a new product. However, these channels a You Tube video with the Oakland Raiders' Khalil did not enable Mack to tailor and deliver different Mack called What Makes a Mack, and it attracted over messages for different customers. For example, a 75,000 viewers. Mack is developing a broad-based manager of a large fleet might be most interested influence program identifying customers and driv- in fuel efficiency, while an owner-operator might ers who will be among the first to view new products be more attracted to design style. Mack's marketing and serve as active advocates on social media team continued to use traditional channels for broad More than 9,300 people opted into some aspect awareness and relied on social marketing to focus on of Mack Anthem campaign, generating about segmentation and metrics, 1,700 qualified leads. The Anthem landing page Starting in July 2017 Mack launched a series of has attracted over 146,000 visitors, who can watch biweekly YouTube videos to build excitement for the Moakler video and obtain information on every the Anthem model, followed by a live stream of aspect of the new truck line. Mack's senior manage- the Anthem unveiling on YouTube and Facebook in ment is very pleased with the results and the detail September of that year. Mack netted 7,000 email ad- and precision of digital marketing information. Vice dresses from the teaser campaign, with 3,700 people President of Marketing John Walsh can see what hap- viewing the live stream of the launch event. These pens with every dollar Mack spends. are considered significant numbers for a product An estimated 90 percent of customers are influ- costing over U.S. $100,000. Mack's marketing team enced by online reviews, and nearly half of U.S. also launched a comprehensive social media cam- social media users actively seek customer service paign directing the company's 174,000 Facebook through social media. As a result, marketing is now of the M a CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 1. Assess the management, organization, and tech- nology issues for using social media technology to engage with customers. 2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media for advertising, brand building, market research, and customer service? 3. Give an example of a business decision in this case study that was facilitated by using social media to interact with customers. 4. Should all companies use social media technology for customer service and marketing? Why or why not? What kinds of companies are best suited to use these platforms? 10-4 How has e-commerce affected business-to-business transactions? Trade between business firms (business-to-business commerce, or B2B) repre- sents a huge marketplace. The total amount of B2B trade in the United States in 2019 is estimated to be about $13.5 trillion, with B2B e-commerce (online B2B) contributing about $6.2 trillion of that amount (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2018 authors' estimates). By 2020, B2B e-commerce is expected to grow to about $6.9 trillion in the United States. The process of conducting trade among business firms is complex and re- quires considerable human intervention, therefore, it consumes significant re- sources. Some firms estimate that each corporate purchase order for support products costs them, on average, at least $100 in administrative overhead, in- cluding processing paper, approving purchase decisions, using the telephone and fax machines to search for products and arrange for purchases, arranging