Chapter 9: Social Computing

Question 1

Differentiate between blogs and wikis.

Answer 1

Blog: is a personal website, open to the public, in which the site creator expresses their feelings or opinions via a series of chronological entries

Wiki: is a website made up entirely of content posted by users. Wikis have an “edit” link on each page that allows any user to add, change, or delete material, thus fostering easy collaboration

Question 2

Define Social computing

Answer 2

Social computing: is a type of IT that combines social behaviour and information systems to create value.

• Social computing is focused on improving collaboration and interaction among people and on encouraging user-generated content
• ex. Users rating a movie on Rotten Tomatoes

Question 3

Differentiate between social networking and corporate social networks.

Answer 3

Social networking: refers to activities performed using social software tools (e.g., blogging) or social networking features (e.g., media sharing).

Corporate social networks: companies have created in-house, private social networks for their employees, former employees, business partners, and/or customers.

• Employees utilize these networks to create connections that allow them to establish virtual teams, bring new employees up to speed, improve collaboration

Question 4

Briefly describe the benefits of social commerce to customers.

Answer 4

• Better and faster vendor responses to complaints, because customers can air their complaints in public (on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube)
• Customers can assist other customers (e.g., in online forums)
• Customers’ expectations can be met more fully and quickly
• Customers can easily search, link, chat, and buy while staying on a social network’s page

Question 5

Briefly describe the risks of social commerce to businesses.

Answer 5

• Information security concerns
• Invasion of privacy
• Violation of intellectual property and copyright
• Employees’ reluctance to participate
• Data leakage of personal information or corporate strategic information
• Poor or biased quality of users’ generated content
• Cyberbullying/cyberstalking and employee harassment

Question 6

What are the benefits of collaborative consumption to customers?

Answer 6

Collaborative consumption is an economic model based on sharing, swapping, trading, or renting products and services, enabling access over ownership
* ex. Kijiji

Advantages
* include self-management, variety, and the flexibility that comes from being able to set their own schedules.

• The model can be beneficial for part-time workers, young people such as students,
  the unemployed, stay-at-home parents, and retired persons.
• The model allows people to share their underused assets and earn income.

Question 7

What are the risks of collaborative consumption to participants (i.e., workers)?

Answer 7

Disavantages:
* People working for collaborative consumption services often work seven-day weeks, performing a series of one-off tasks.

• The pay is less, and will still be taxed on income
• Hard to make full time job

Question 8

Prior to making a purchase, why are ratings, reviews, and recommendations so important to potential
customers?

define social shopping

Answer 8

Social shopping is a method of electronic commerce that takes all of the key aspects of social networks—friends, groups, voting, comments, discussions, reviews, and others—and focuses them on shopping.

• helps shoppers connect with one another based on tastes, location, age, gender, and other selected attributes.

Question 9

Is social advertising more effective than advertising without a social component? Why or why not?

Define social advertising and examples

Answer 9

Social advertising refers to advertising formats that make use of the social context of the user viewing the ad.

• Social advertising is the first form of advertising to leverage forms of social influence such as peer pressure and friend recommendations and likes.

Customer will want to be like influenced by friends and people around them

Question 10

Describe how marketing professionals use social networks to perform marketing research.

also define social intelligence

Answer 10

Customer activities on social networking sites generate huge amounts of data that must be analyzed, so that management can conduct better marketing campaigns and improve their product design and their service offerings.

• The monitoring, collection, and analysis of socially generated data and the resultant strategic decisions are combined in a process known as social intelligence.

Question 11

Discuss why social computing is so important in customer relationship management.

Answer 11

Customers are now incredibly empowered.
Companies are closely monitoring social computing not only because they are mindful of the negative comments posted by social network members but also because they perceive an opportunity to involve customers proactively to reduce problems through improved customer service.

Question 12

Describe how social computing improves customer service.

define Conversational commerce

Answer 12

Conversational commerce: Customers can chat with company representatives, access customer support, ask questions, receive personalized recommendations, and click to purchase, all from within messaging apps
* Can interact with companies through chat apps like WhatsApp

Question 13

Explain why LinkedIn has become so important in the recruiting process.

Answer 13

Today, job searchers use traditional job sites and social networks such as LinkedIn

vast majority of entry-level positions are now listed only online. Job sites are the fastest, least expensive, and most efficient method to connect employers with potential employees.