Facebook: a blessing or a curse for grocery stores?

Abstract

Purpose Increasingly businesses are using Facebook to communicate and engage their customers. However, there is a dearth of research as to why and how customers interact with businesses on social media in the grocery sector. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the roles played by online brand communities and social customers in the creation as well as the destruction of value. Design/methodology/approach Netnography was adopted as an approach to gain insight into the various ways customers engage with grocery stores on their official Facebook pages. Messages posted on Tesco’s and Wal Mart’s Facebook pages are thematically analysed and critical discussion is linked back to the extant contemporary debate on social media. Findings This study shows that customers respond to company posts for the following reasons: to communicate with the stores, to converse with other customers, to express their emotions, to share their experiences as employees of the stores with customers and to share their positive or negative actions with members of the online communities. Research limitations/implications This study further highlights the role of social media in the co-creation and co-destruction of customer, consumer and supermarket value and builds contemporary theory and informs practice. Practical implications Retailers should use social media to enrich the customer experience by encouraging customer engagement, co-creation of value and responding efficiently to customer needs in real time. Originality/value This paper contributes to knowledge by uncovering the various ways customers react with the business. The social customer is both a curse and a blessing to Tesco and Walmart as they can create or destroy value for the business.

Food retailing marketing management: social media communication for healthy food

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Defining the relationship between consumers and retailers through user-generated content: insights from the research literature

“…For example, content created by users in the form of social media posts, text, and video blogs, ratings, and reviews on e-commerce websites and their engagement with such content falls under the ambit of UGC. The reasons for users producing such content included customer-to-retailer conversations like queries, complaints, criticism and sarcasm, and customer-to-customer conversations like positive and negative referrals, helping other customers, comparing retailers and warning against certain products (Peeroo et al, 2017). Subsequently, Smith et al (2012) in their comparative study on retail-apparel brands, proposed six UGC dimensions of "promotional self-presentation, brand centrality, marketer-directed communication, response to online marketer action, factually informative communication about the brand and brand sentiment".…”