Social media

To start with, I would like to define the concepts I am going to use. First concept I will introduce is social media. Nowadays, this term is widely used, nevertheless, there are different points of view on what is social media. Thus, I will discuss different opinions and finally make a conclusion about what is included in social media in my work.

Although the ideas of social media appeared in 20^th century, the first formal definition of it was given in relation with two concepts which are also necessary to be considered. The first concept is Web 2.0. This term was introduced to describe the new situation in World Wide Web when all the content can be modified not only by few individuals but by all the Internet users. Appearing blogs and other types of activities that allow users to give feedback is a main distinctive feature of Web 2. Another concept which is necessary to define briefly is User Generated Content. This term describes different types of media content which are available for audience and made by users. Based on those 2 definitions it is possible to formulate what is social media. Social Media is a collection of Internet applications which is created on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and which allows to publish User Generated Content and exchange it among users. Social media includes different type of content ranged from basic forms such as text, for example, blogs, or microblogs to more complicated forms such as photo and video (Berthon et al 2012).

However, different definitions of social media exist and, therefore, I will make an attempt to describe the borders of this definition. There is a research made by Kaplan A. and Haenlein M. in 2010 investigating two key characteristics of social media which can help to classify various social media. The first characteristic is connected with social richness and media presence. Social presence is a category which can be described by two parameters. One parameter shows if communication is synchronic (like life chat or telephone talk) or not (like email). Another parameter describes if communication is interpersonal (for example face-to-face talk) or mediated (for example telephone talk). Those parameters can define the effect people can have on each other through the communication. Media richness helps to estimate the amount of information which is possible to deliver in exact time.

The second category is connected to the concept of self-presentation or self-disclosure. A degree of self-presentation shows how much information a person is ready to give through communication because of his desire to make a right impression on others and influence them.

Therefore, the scholars have combined those dimensions together and classified all the social media into categories depend on high or low degree of social presence and low, medium, or high degree of media richness and social presence

In my work I will regard only social media with medium social richness such as networking sites (for example Facebook, Vkontakte and other) and content communities (such as YouTube) since different types of social media has significant distinctive features, therefore, it is better to investigate them separately to analyze all the details. (Kaplan, Haenlein 2010).

Social networking sites

First, let me describe social networking sites. Social networks are special sites which allow users to communicate with each other through creating profile which includes different type of data (personal details, photo, video etc.). However, social networking sites are not only sites containing different types of information. They are representing a shift from the individual to the collective, as they show the power of relationships. (Berthon et al 2012)

Content communities

In my work I will consider social communities also. The main goal of content communities is to share the content between users. Basically content communities are not supposed to contain much information about the user (for example, only the date he or she joined the community and his or her nickname) (Kaplan, Haenlein, 2010). However, YouTube allows to put more personal information and, thus, it can be said that it has some features of social networks. For example, it is possible to create a profile and fill in some personal data (name, personal photo) and use this profile to comment videos and put like or dislike. Such an application as Instagram not only requires some personal detail but also has an opportunity to send direct messages and connected with other social network Facebook, which is obviously, a social networking site. Moreover, some photos and videos are personal though they are regarded as content. Thus, I claim that there is no exact border between social networking sites and content communities that is why I decided that in my work I will consider YouTube and Instagram as social networks.

Social media marketing

Social networks are a way for users to communicate with each other and to share different content that has significantly changed situation in the market for both companies and consumers. There is a study generalizing those changes in two categories. First, social networks, for example Facebook, provide customers with an opportunity to interact with brands in companies directly, thus, social media allows two ways communication instead of one way communication as it used to be. Moreover, social networks allow consumers to share their experience and information they have with each other. Due to social networks nowadays there is a tendency that many marketing activities are customer driven (Lipsman et al, 2012). It means that a huge part of value added activities are conducted by customers, who can be called “creative consumers” (Berthon et al, 2012).

Overall, currently social networks are widely used for commercial purposes. Managing social networks allows promoting different goods and services. Moreover, some companies organize a distribution channel in social networks (Kaplan, Haenlein, 2010). Thus, in my work I am going to consider social networks as a marketing tool.

First, I will define the term social media marketing and discuss it in detail. Social media marketing is a technique that employs content created by everyday people using highly accessible and scalable technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, microblogs, bookmarks, social networks, communities, wikis, and vlogs (Singh, Diamond, 2012).

SMM is a marketing tool which can be very effective. It was proved that company presence in social media positively affects relationships between a company and customers and among customers with each other. Those actions increase brand loyalty, which is a goal for many companies (Laroche et al, 2013). One of the most significant points in favor of using social media marketing is its small cost. Currently, firms need to have more cost effective tools to implement marketing strategy. In comparison to other tools such as a big advertising campaign SMM is much cheaper as it does not require costs for using social media (social networks and social media sites are free or have minimal establishing costs) (Chena et al 2011). However, there are some features of SMM which should be taken into account, for example, the fact that SMM activities are mostly customer-driven. For companies it means that they cannot influence customer's actions in social networks directly (Baird, Parasnis, 2011).

Moreover, social media is not only a marketing tool. Thomas (2010) called social media a customer relationship management for millennia, trying to emphasize the importance of social media for building relationship with customers (Thomas, 2010).

It is possible to conclude that promotion through social networks is an up-to date, effective, and low-budget way to develop the business (Zborovskaya, 2015). Nevertheless, there are some recent researches claiming that social media marketing is becoming overestimated though actually it is not always necessary. Consumers are supposed to be active, nevertheless, the fact that the most content is generated by the small proportion of users. In addition, a wide range of choice makes customer indecisive and less active (Heinonen, 2011). In order to understand what functions can be fulfilled with a help of SMM I am going to investigate social media marketing tools more deeply.

Ways to shape the discussion with a help of SMM

As I have already said social media is a consumer driven activity. However, a company can shape the discussion. There were regarded several ways how it is possible to do. I will briefly discuss these ways.

? The first way to manage customer discussion is to provide social networking platforms. It is a place where like-minded people can communicate with each other. For example, a brand Dove has created a platform for people who wish to make standards of beauty more realistic and help women to improve their self-esteem and feel happier. It is necessary to say that currently social networks are so popular that those platforms can be performed as online brand community in Facebook or Instagram.

? Another way to engage customers is to provide them an opportunity to give feedback. The feedback can include many things like positive and negative reviews, suggestions and criticism, fan art, various photos and videos. This feedback can be organized in a form of a discussion in a community brand page or a poll in which a company can ask different questions about a product.

? A research has shown that consumers who feel that they know a lot about the product and the company will probably more discuss it. Thus, giving information about a product can encourage people to discuss the product more and be interested in it. This idea can be realized through posting information in a brand or other community in social networks. One more way to provide customers with information about a product is to ask bloggers or stars to promote it. Nowadays, it is popular to give a blogger a free sample of product and ask to review it or even invite him or her to see the product production.

Furthermore, authors advise to be outrageous and unique and to support causes which are important to consumers. However, those points should be considered creating marketing strategy in general and SMM is only one way to fulfil those recommendations. That was the reason why I decided not to consider those points in detail (Glynn Mangold, Faulds, 2009).

Overall, different ways to shape the discussion were outlined and some examples were given, however, it is necessary to analyze exact tools which SMM can use in more detail.

SMM tools

There are different tools which can be implied in social networks in order to understand which of them are possible to use during the customer journey.

The first tool I'm going to consider is online brand community.

Online brand community

There are different definitions of social media based brand community, however, I will use the definition discussed by Laroche and others (2013), who defines this term as special type of a community which is not geographically bound and was created for loyal customers of an exact brand. Online brand community includes different activities such as information about products, customer reviews, and technical support from a company, polls about existing and new products, and other sources. Usually brand communities facilitate the process of information exchange between consumers and company, give a company an opportunity to provide technical support for customers, and increase brand trust. All these factors are positively influence customer loyalty (Laroche et al, 2013).

Online customer reviews

Online customer reviews are reviews which are posted in the Internet. There are many different researches claiming that online customer reviews have an impact on product sales and its forecasting (Chena et al, 2011). It is necessary to say that in my work I will consider only reviews which are posted in social networks. There are many other tools which can be used such as direct messages, using opinion leaders, organizing and assistance service for customers. I will not point it in detail; I gave an overview of some of them in order to get an understanding of what is considered as SMM tools in this work.

1.2 Customer experience and customer journey

Nowadays interactions between companies and customers are becoming more complex as customers use different touchpoints in multiple channels to interact not only with firms but also with each other. It results in the fact that companies moved their focus from developing company strategies to the research of customer experience as it can be a key of improving company performance and increasing sales (Lemon, Verhoef, 2016).

First, let me define what customer experience is. It is possible to find different definitions of customer experience in the literature. In my work I discuss the most common ones. First, scholars describing customer experience said that it is customer's interpretation of his or her interaction with a brand (Frow, Payne, 2007). They emphasize that neither products nor services themselves but a special kind of experience is actually a thing which consumer looks for (Lemon, Verhoef, 2016).

Scholars studying customer experience later pay attention to the fact that this kind of experience is multidimensional, which means that it is connected with every aspect of customer interactions with firm. For instance, De Keyser and others suggest that customer experience includes physical, emotional, cognitive, sensorial, spiritual, and social elements which can appear during the process of customer communication with the company (De Keyser et al, 2015). Other scholars add that those interactions can be direct and indirect. Direct interactions mean that it can be controlled by the company like the process of purchase or after-sale service. In contrast, indirect interactions stand for processes which a firm cannot control directly, for instance, some customer reviews or news reports.

There is a point of view that customer experience can be improved by managing each of touchpoints separately. Moreover, according to P. Frow and others' study there are some cases demonstrating that improving each customer touchpoint leads to better customer experience (Frow, Payne, 2007). Considering this concept many companies try to improve individual interactions with customers not paying attention to the whole process. However, this approach is not completely right. More recent studies have shown that in many cases making better service on each separate touchpoint is not enough for getting high satisfaction level from customers. A company needs to look at the process from the customer point of view, thus, a holistic approach should be used while considering customer experience. Furthermore, there is a study claiming that customer experience should be perceived as a journey since this concept is useful in regarding the whole process of customer experience instead of separate interactions (Rawson et al, 2013).

Overall, I came to the conclusion that customer experience is a multidimensional holistic concept which focuses on a customer's cognitive, emotional, behavioral, sensorial, and social responses to actions of the company during the entire purchase journey. Thus, a journey is a contemporary approach which should be studied more carefully as this concept is more appropriate for describing customer experience. Therefore, let me move to discussing the concept of customer journey.

Scholars define customer journey as a recognized concept illustrating customer experience across all the touchpoints with the company (Lemon, Verhoef, 2016). As this concept enables companies to have more complex view on customer interactions with company many firms try to apply this concept to their own business. However, it has become noticeable that every company has its own customer journey. Moreover, every customer can have his or her own way of moving through the touchpoints of the company. This fact leads to the opinion that customer journey is too complicated to be created and analyzed. It can be true, nevertheless, the purpose of the customer journey concept is to analyze weaknesses of the process of interactions with customers, which can be a problem not only for one customer, but for quite many people, and lead to sales losses and worse firm performance. Thus, customer journey can be an indicator of processes optimization needed (Myron D. 2016). Furthermore, the fact that studying customer journey can be important and influence company strategy significantly is proved by practical experience, therefore, it is needed to be studied as it can be useful for companies (Rosenbaum et al 2017).

In addition, despite the fact that customer journey differs among different companies; there are some commonly recognized models, which can be applied for most goods and services. In my work I will discuss some of them and choose one which is the most appropriate for the research purposes. To get the full understanding I will consider several customer journey models from the first ideas of tracking customers' interactions with company till the recent customer journey models.

AIDA and DAGMAR models

First models illustrating the idea that customer moves through the sequence of stages during the process of making a purchase were introduced in 19^th century. The basic model demonstrating this fact was called AIDA. It was introduced in 1978 by McGuire. The model consists of four main stages: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Similar model, which is called Development of Hierarchy of Effects Model in Advertising (DAGMAR), was created a little bit later and also included four stages: Awareness, Comprehension, Conviction, and Purchase. The stage of Awareness is similar to stages of Attention and Interest in AIDA, as it represents the process of attracting attention to the product. The stage of Comprehension stands for consumers understanding of advertising message. Conviction is a stage when consumers believe in the advertising message and want to buy a product. Therefore, this stage is similar to Desire in AIDA. Finally, the last stage is Purchase in DAGMAR or Action in AIDA. It represents the process of buying goods or services(Wijaya, 2012).

However, those models are not complete as they do not consider some important stages. Lately the models were significantly improved but the different scholars and now I am going to consider one of the last models.

The AIDA model was extended till AISDALSLove. “A” stands for Awareness, which is a stage when people first pay attention to advertisement. The next stage is Interest when potential consumers become interested in a product. “S” stands for search, which is a process when customers try to find information about the product they are interested in. “D” for Desire describes the stage on which audience has already found the information about the product and wants to buy it. “A” (Action) is a process of making a purchase. The next stage is “L” (Like/Dislike) demonstrating post purchase experience when a customer like or dislike the product according to his experience. “S” stands for sharing, which means a consumer's intention to tell other customers about his or her personal experience connected with a usage the product. Finally, last stage Love/Hate represents customer long-term feelings about the product after using it and sharing his or her opinion about it (Wijaya, 2012).

Nevertheless, this model illustrates only effect of advertising while nowadays it is not enough to fully understand customers. Thus, I aim to consider some models regarding the whole process of customer interaction with company.

Sales funnel model

First ideas considering customers moving during interactions with a company were represented in market funnel. It consists of the following stages: awareness, opinion, consideration, preference, and purchase. This model was convenient to demonstrate how customers move from the point when they just aware of the product till the moment they make a purchase, which is really useful in understanding how to develop some processes, however, there were significant improvements required as model does not represent some important stages and is not detailed enough (Sauro, 2015). To improve these drawbacks a concept of customer journey was introduced.

At first sight, it is possible to think that sales funnel and customer journey are the same concepts as they both have stages representing awareness, consideration and purchase. However, a concept of customer journey has quite significant distinctive features. Firstly, it is focused on analyzing process from customer's point of view while purchase funnel is oriented on considering touchpoints from the perspective of a company. The purpose of this study is to analyze the process of interactions with customers from their point of view, therefore, the concept of customer journey is more appropriate in this case.

Moreover, the customer journey has other advantages in comparison to sales funnel. I will consider them using the example of several customer journey models.

Customer journey models

Katherine N. Lemon and Peter C. Verhoef in their work have created a model of customer journey which consists of three main stages: Prepurchase, Purchase, and Postpurchase.

The first stage, Prepurchase, considers the whole process of interaction with customer before he or she makes a purchase. This phase includes recognition (when a customer becomes aware of his need or goal), search, and consideration (when a customer is thinking of satisfying a need or achieving a goal with a particular purchase).

The second stage is a stage of Purchase. This stage is the most compressed in time because it includes the process of making a purchase (choice, order, payment) itself, which obviously takes less time than Prepurchase and Postpurchase.

The last stage of the model is a Postpurchase stage. It consists of usage and consumption and can lasts till the end of consumer's life. This is a significant improvement which allows analyzing customers' way more fully (Lemon, Verhoef, 2016).

The model discussed above is full and considers all important stages; nevertheless, the more detailed model is required for the purposes of the research. Thus, I will consider one more model introduced by McKinsey Company.

Their model is supposed to be a basic one. It suggests that there are four main stages. The first stage is called Initial consideration. This stage includes a situation when a person realizes his or her need and imagines some goods or services of some brands which can satisfy it. Researchers pointed out that brand awareness is very important on this stage as the possibility that a person will finally buy the product of a particular brand is significantly higher for brands he or she has already known before the process of research for suitable goods or services. Thus, I will include brand awareness as a separate stage in the customer model since it is possible to conduct some social media marketing activities in order to increase brand awareness.

The second stage of the model is a stage of Active evaluation. This phase includes the process of searching for potential purchases. Unlike the metaphor of purchase funnel, this stage can broaden the number of possible options for consumers since during the search some more suitable product or services can be added.

The next stage is called Closure, which is actually a stage when consumers make purchase.

The Postpurchase period includes the period when customers consume goods and services they have bought. It is necessary to say that consumers can search for substitutes or competitive brands after making a purchase. It means that this stage influence whether a customer becomes loyal to a brand or not, therefore, loyalty, it is very important.

The loyalty loop is a last part of customer journey model described by McKinsey. This stage requires additional attention. First, loyalty is an important process, which can be the result of the funnel. However, loyalty is not only the end point of it since it influences customer's future purchasing decisions (Court D.et al, 2009). Thus, it is crucial to be studied.

Let me discuss the stage of loyalty more in detail. It is necessary to distinguish two types of loyalty. Active loyalists are people who like the brand and ready to recommend it. In opposite, passive loyalists stick to the brand for some reasons but they are ready to choose another brand, which means that passive loyalists are open or trying new products from other brands.

All the models described are presented on the Table 1.

Тable 1.Customer journey models

Overall it can be seen that customer journey has some significant advantages such as following:

? Customer journey model helps to understand the process of interacting between customer and company in more detail in comparison to sales funnel.

? Customer journey model includes the post purchase phase and loyalty loop which is very important since nowadays goals of many companies moved from attracting new customers to retaining current customers, thus, understanding the process of making them loyal and repurchase can be crucial for companies.

? Customer journey model considers exact touch points, which is really important. Instead of sales funnel customer journey maps it shows the main moments of delight for customers. However, as I have already said more recent researches show that customer journey should not be perceived only as a collection of touchpoints but consider the whole customers way, which is also possible to see with a model of customer journey (Rawson et al, 2013).

? Customer journey models are useful not only for sales and marketing. Usually sales and marketing department has a goal to increase sales. However, customer journey map includes the whole process of interaction with customers, which can be interesting not only that one but also for other departments (Sauro, 2015).

Thus, a customer journey is the up-to-date concept considering customers. Having considered different models of customer journey, I needed to choose the most appropriate one for the research purposes. There is no doubt that one of the last models should be used as it considers the process of customer journey more fully. In addition, the model should not be too brief as Lemon K. and Verhoef P. who define only 3 stages of customer journey claims that every stage can consists of different process. All things considered, I decided to use the customer journey model, which has following stages:

? Awareness,

? Consideration and Evaluation,

? Purchase,

? Retention,

? Loyalty loop.

Managing customer journey

Previously, I considered activities which can be appropriate in different stages of customer journey. Nevertheless, customer journey is not a not a sequence of separate stages but a continuous process but which requires managing and control all over it. That is why next I am going to consider different aspects of managing customer journey.

According to the study made by Stan Maklan, Paolo Antonetti, and Steve Whitty the model of managing customer experience was introduced and implemented in a real organization. Though it was Royal Bank of Scotland, received experience can suitable to other companies (Maklan et al, 2017). The suggested framework of managing customer experience is the following:

· First, it is necessary to define customer journey which means understanding all the experience a customer gets from the interactions with a company.

· Next, it is necessary to identify the quality of every interaction with customers and its costs.

· The third stage of the process is an assessment of the journey made by customers. This is an extremely important stage as company is not able to understand all the process of customer journey from customers' perspective. This can lead to the situation that a company wants to improve its customer journey but cannot do it since it does not notice existing problems or does not pay attention to them (Rawson A. et al, 2013).

· The last stage of the process is to identify the events which are the most important for customers in their interaction with a company and analyze a company performance across these moments (Maklan S. et al, 2017).

I have already said there is a point of view that managing customer journey is not correct to fulfil by developing every touch point separately. However, it is necessary to emphasize that in the considered study the process was taken into account from customer perspective (especially at the stage of customers' assessment of the journey), which allows to avoid this problem. Moreover, it is necessary to say that fulfilling all these stages has led to both reduced costs and better sales for the company (Maklan et al, 2017). In addition, researchers draw attention to the fact that it is impossible to create the ideal model of customer journey and ideal process of managing it. They claim that working with current situation and data can also be a successful approach. All these facts lead to the conclusion that this model is possible to apply in other businesses.