The impact of misusing social media: Domino's Pizza case study.

Hello dear readers !

In the last few weeks we discussed the benefits of implementing social media among different organisations; such: Sony and ASOS. Then, we went through examining the measurable benefits and the real business of enterprise 2.0 in the ROI post. This week we are going to discuss the impacts of misusing social media within an organisation, particularly Domino's pizza.

About Dominos :

Domino’s pizza is an international pizza chain, established in the USA year 1960 in Michigan near Eastern Michigan University by the Monaghan brothers. Domino's pizza first international store was opened in Canada, on May 12, 1983 ( See Domino's pizza history). Domino's pizza serves different menus according to the region's preference and culture. However, the menu is always designed to be simple to ensure the delivery efficiency. The current Australian menu features variety of Italian entrees, meat pie pizzas, oven Baked Sandwiches, desserts and beverages. Pizza is the main focus, with traditional,or custom toppings including Prawns, Chicken, Lamb shank, Duck & much more. Domino's pizza is the second largest pizza chain in the USA (Industry Data, 2011), and the largest in the globe with over 220 thousand employees working at 1200 branches around the world. The graph below highlights the 73 countries that Domino’s pizza is located on.

Map showing Domino's Pizza's global locations.

Source: Wikipedia

In the world of social media, Domino's pizza's game is on. Here are some popular tweets from the company's official account that went all over twitter and tumblr.( For the company's good of course).

Domino's is also active at YouTube and Facebook. The thing that Domino's could not plan for, however, was two of its employees that broadcast a disgusting video on youtube.

The infamous Domino's pizza incident :

Two employees of the chain’s restaurant located in Conover, New Carolina, posted a prank video to YouTube on 12 April, 2009. In this video they depicted a number of acts that seriously violated health regulations. Some of the depictions included smearing nasal mucous on sandwiches and using cheese pushed up the nose before delivery of these food items. One of the employees performed these acts while the other provided narration (Gregory, 2009). The video immediately went viral and was viewed more than a million times by 15th April. It trended on Twitter and a Google search for the term “Dominos” showed references to the video or the incident in the first 3 pages results. The employees were eventually identified and charged by the police.

      The incident was bad for business since the company operates in the food business and must adhere to agreed hygienic and health standards in the orders that it delivers. The reason that the video went viral was that customers across the nation were shocked that Domino’s employees claimed such incidents were taking place. Since the video was created and uploaded by actual employees, social media users believed that this was a practice in many of the restaurants run by Dominos franchisees.

The impact :

The incident generated a credibility crisis for the company and many longtime, regular customers were seriously offended or alarmed. The reputation of the business was seriously harmed and perception about quality of its products went from positive to negative among many customers (Clifford, 2009). Public relations experts agreed that it was a highly damaging incident for Domino’s, especially because it occurred primarily in the fast moving social media space.

Social media reaction
Source: Trendrr

There were a number of measurable as well as non-measurable impacts of the incident. Tangible impacts included revenue loss due to decreased sales – a study found that 65% of respondents who were potential customers of Domino’s were less likely to buy food form the chain after they watched the offending video (Flandez, 2009). The intangible effects of the incident were loss of reputation, negative brand perception and negative exposure in the social media. The delayed response to top management was also criticized to some extent in traditional media (Flandez, 2009).

The organization implemented a risk management plan that it had devised earlier. However, the plan was directed more towards traditional media management – its social media plan was only in the process of being developed (Jacques, 2009). Although the concerned Domino’s franchisee fired the two employees on the 14th of April, alerted health authorities and discarded all suspected food, top management tried to allow the controversy go out of public memory and did not respond aggressively. In particular, their Twitter and YouTube responses were delayed (Clifford, 2009). If the incident is analyzed in terms of Rogerson’s eight ethical principles, it can be stated that the employees acted in a dishonest and unfair manner, for Domino’s customers believe in the honesty of the company to maintain food standards (Brinkman & Sanders, 2012, p. 327).

How could Dominos avoid such a ‘misuse’ in the future?

In order to prevent such misuse in the future, the company can adopt two responses. It can train its franchisees and their employees more carefully, stressing the need to adhere to safety precautions, and create an awareness campaign outlining the efforts it has made. The other response is to better coordinate its social media strategy. It should create a blog that highlights the safe practices that it has implemented and how it cares about its customers. It can identify its loyal customers and send them email notes or newsletters expressing its appreciation about their loyalty, offer them rewards, and request them to spread the message among their friends. It should update the Domino’s Wikipedia page quickly if another such incident recurs in the future, for Wikipedia is informally referenced by many people. It should also create response videos and post them online more quickly and create link backs to these videos from its Tweets and other media campaigns. A concerted and well thought out social media strategy that complements its brand building exercise will help the company to recover more quickly in the future.

In conclusion:

Social media is such a powerful tool, if it is used in the wrong way it would result in great loss. Domino's pizza case is one of many examples. However, by implementing strict policies and providing professional training companies can avoid such criss.

If you owned a business one day, What strategies would you follow to avoid such misuse from your employees ?

Leave me a comment and Thank you for passing by.

REFERENCES:

Brinkman, W. & Sanders, A. (2012). Ethics in a Computing Culture [EBL version]. Retrieved from http://www.cengagebrain.co.nz/content/9781133990932.pdf

Clifford, S. (2009, April 15). Video Prank at Domino’s Taints Brand. The New York Times. Retrieved from  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/business/media/16dominos.html?_r=2&

Flandez, R. (2009). Domino’s Response Offers Lessons in Crisis Management. The Wall Street Journal Blogs. Retrieved from http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2009/04/20/dominos-response-offers-lessons-in-crisis-management/

Gregory, S. (2009, April 18). Domino's YouTube Crisis: 5 Ways to Fight Back. Time. Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1892389,00.html

Industry Data.(2011).Top 100 Chains: U.S. Sales (Statistical Division). Retrieved from http://nrn.com/us-top-100/top-100-chains-us-sales

Jacques, A. (2009). Domino’s delivers during crisis: The company’s step-by-step response after a vulgar video goes viral. The Public Relations Society of America. Retrieved from http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/TheStrategist/Articles/view/8226/102/Domino_s_delivers_during_crisis_The_company_s_step#.VCKhRRYy0fY

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ROI of implementations of Social Technology: Chriscar SharePoint project.

Hello and welcome to a new post!
In this post we will explore the real business of social tools and the revenue it generates for organisations. This post discusses several issues including tangible and tangible benefits for a company that undertakes Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Project. The post also examines return on investment (ROI) calculation for a fictitious company known as Chriscar Enterprises. Chriscar Enterprises is a communication and Internet service provider headquartered in Cupertino, California. The company undertakes its projects using SharePoint 2010 project.

Lets start with this informative video that explains the idea of  SharePoint :

Source: CommonCraft (2009)

Chriscar SharePoint 2013 Project Implementation

       As a communication and Internet service provider, Chriscar Enterprises largely rely on the use of social media platform to provide its services effectively to its consumers. The company had faced several problems prior to the implementation of SharePoint 2013. Among the problems the company had experienced include frequent loss of vital clients’ information, increasing traffic in the customer service lines, and frequent loss of emails. Other challenges included increasing operating cost and increased network downtime. Following the existence of these problems, Chriscar Enterprise decided to implement this social platform in order to reduce network downtime, improve its messaging and customer care services, improve collaboration among employees, and to monitor closely employee’s activities.

Tangible Benefits

    Tangible benefits are measurable benefits in which money or dollar value can be assigned. In the case of Chriscar Company, benefits used in calculating ROI include sales increase, reduced network downtime, and production increase (Dickson, 2003). Firstly, for Chriscar Company, sales increase is likely to be facilitated by efficiency in service delivery following the implementation of SharePoint 2013. Measurement of efficiency, therefore, is largely reflected through increased sales in terms of dollars. On the other hand, it is easy to attach monetary value through production increase because SharePoint is capable of increasing team collaboration and productivity. Through team collaboration, the production of services at the company has largely increased significantly. All these measurements can be easily measured with a number and for that reason; a company can evaluate them by collecting and analyzing statistical information.

Intangible Benefits

  Intangible benefits, on the other hand, are those benefits that a monetary value cannot be attached to them. These intangible benefits may include improved teamwork, reduced complaints, increased organizational commitment, improved customer service, and increased job satisfaction. SharePoint 2013 facilitates the improvement of work through provision of effective team collaboration platform. When workers work together, their productivity increases; hence resulting in team improvement. Therefore, while no monetary value cannot be attached to improved teamwork, it is important that it should be included during ROI calculation because it is directly associated with the selected technology. SharePoint 2013 also provides increased job satisfaction and improved delivery of customer care service through enhancement of team collaboration and communication. Since both of these benefits are associated with SharePoint, it is highly necessary that they should be incorporated in ROI calculation. Therefore, though benefits may also be known as nonmonetary benefits, the study will attach a dollar value to them in order to facilitate the calculation of ROI for the company.

Measuring of the Cost:

       The following table provides the full cost for implementing the social platform

Measuring of the benefits

Calculation of ROI

Return on Investment (ROI) refers to a measure of performance used in the evaluation of the efficiency of an investment (Lloret and María, 2011; Leiva, 2012).ROI is given by the following formula:

ROI = {(benefits from Investment - investment cost) / investment cost} × 100

{(1,800,000 – 1,380,000)/1,380,000} × 100

30.43%

Strength and Weaknesses

       In conclusion, several strengths and weaknesses exist in regards to this case study. Firstly, in regards to strength, the implementation of SharePoint platform facilitated not only efficiency at the company, but also improved delivery of services, improved customer care and messaging services, and reduced network time. On the other hand, the main weakness of this case study is that most of the benefits achieved are intangible benefits. It is extremely difficult to attack the dollar value to intangible benefits. For that reason, the case study relied mainly on estimates.

Leave me a comment tell me what you think of this ROI plan, and Thank you for passing by.

REFERENCES:

Common Craft. (2009, Aug 13). Video: Wikis in Plain English  [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s12Jb5Z2xaE

Dickinson, G. (2003). SharePoint. S.l.: Virtual Training Co.

Lloret, R. and María, N.(2011).ROI. Measuring the social media return on investment in a library.The Bottom Line, 24(2), pp.145 - 151. Retrived from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/08880451111169223

Leiva, F. (2012). Improving the Effectiveness of Advertising in Internet Social Networking. International Journal of Information Security and Privacy, 6(2), pp.1-15. Retrived from http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/improving-effectiveness-advertising-internet-social/60341

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Asos : Absolutely Social Online Store ?

Hello and welcome to a new post! I had a break last week from blogging, but this week I brought you a treat/ apology post that I am sure you will enjoy. In this post I will talk about ASOS, one of  my favourite stores. Through the post, I will outline ASOS's social media strategies in boosting sales and marketing, reflecting on Mckinsey's value levers (see the picture below).

(McKinsey,2012)

About ASOS:

Asos is an international fashion and beauty online store. Founded in 2000, by Nick Robertson and Quentin Griffiths. Selling their own products and over 850 other brands, ASOS is Britain's largest online fashion and beauty retailer.

The name ASOS is an abbreviation for " As Seen On Screens", however the brand has expanded more than that to include a marketplace where people can sell their own things. ASOS's head of analytics and customer intelligence David Williams explains the company's vision:

"Our ambition as a business is straightforward. We want to be the world's number one destination for fashion for twenty-somethings globally. We want the word Asos to be as synonymous with fashion as Google is with search"

This indeed shows in the number of visits and sales.

The site ships to 237 country including Australia, and attracts over 29.3 million unique visitors every month (See Asos's about page), which make ASOS the most popular retail store in the world. The sales reportedly reached £753.8 million in 2012 (Asos sales, 2011 ).The chart below illustrate ASOS's sales in the last 12 years.It clearly shows the rapid increase in ASOS sales since 2000.

Source: Asos sales (2011 )

So, how ASOS does that ?
The secret ingredient of their success is the powerful use of social technologies. Social media is ASOS's heart, they based all the contents around their consumers' needs and wants. Below I will discuss some of these social media tools, and how it is effectively implemented to boost sales. SME business owners may want to take notes.

How ASOS uses social media to boost their sales and marketing strategies:

1. FACEBOOK

Asos's Facebook account has generated about 3,470,507 likes.The number is not surprising for the effort ASOS makes in reaching customers trust and quality engagement. ASOS posts up to 2 to 3 daily posts including holidays and weekends.Moreover, it replies to almost every comment even negative and random ones in a professional manner. This has resulted in creating sense of credibility for the brand.

In 2011, asos established the Facebook app where customers can make purchases and share it without leaving Facebook ( McEleny, 2011). The application is expected to achieve high sales because Facebook brings the most traffic to the brand site.

2. Twitter

Asos has three active Twitter accounts @ASOS, @ASOS_Heretohelp and @ASOS_Menswear. This is so marketing messages and consumer engagement be functioned in the best manner.

The main account @ASOS has 179k followers. The account posts 3 to 4 daily tweets mainly about fashion tips, inspirations and new sales and offers. Although, the account gets hundreds of mentions every day they reply to most of it to establish friendly relationship with their customers and gain their loyalty. Most tweets are retweetable/ relatable posts to insure brand spread! (see the techniques!:) )

Moreover, ASOS held interactive games on their account. The latest game was #TodayIs where customers complete the sentence with a short story. The best story wins a 25% discount.Through this games ASOS gained interaction of over 60,000 people and showcased about 400 product.( Sound like a lot of fun does not it ?). So we can see these games are not only created for entertaining purpose and raising awareness of their merchandise.

3. Instagram

Asos has about 1 million followers. The main Instagram shows style inspirations and presents the latest sales and offers. It also repost customers style from the hashtag #ASOSStyle which attracts many customers to share. Moreover, it provides the captured items product ID, so followers can directly locate the item and purchase it. ( Clever clever clever!)

The secondary account @asos_studio account is to show the

models life behind the scenes. Being open and welcoming impact customers in the way they feel part of the organisation. Resulting in, increasing their desire to purchase or even model for this friendly brand.

4. Vine

36 thousand people follows ASOS on vine.The site presents 6 minutes video about new products, runways, models and other random and entertaining vines. One of the most popular campaigns launched on vine was the #ASOSUnbox. The campaign invited customers to share their orders unboxing experience, using the hashtag #ASOSUnbox. There were prizes offered to every participant.

5. Youtube

ASOS on Youtube has about 700 videos with 14,949,987 views and a total of 28,003 subscribers. This tool is used to show interviews with celebrities, fashionistas, bloggers and to demonstrate style tips. All the participants in these videos usually wear from the brand fashion or beauty product , then these product listed in the description box with its link in the store. Moreover, ASOS does not only market their products in their channel, but it also sponsor famous Youtubers to film "hauls" which is pretty popular in the youtube. These strategies drive the customer insight toward trusting the brand and is the perfect implementation of  social commerce.

TO SUM UP:

ASOS is one of the leaders in the social media world. Their secret of success is straightforward. Obtaining customers trust by listening to what they need and want. Establishing 24 hour engagement yet weighing each word carefully. The post illustrated 5 of the social media tools used by ASOS and how they use it to their benefit.

Comment below tell me how you heard about ASOS for the first time?

Also, do you follow any of their social media, if you do which one and why?

Thank you for passing by.

References :

Asos sales boosted by international growth.BBC News UK. (2011, July). Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13625073

Social media analytics in action.The guardian.(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/salesforce-partner-zone/social-media-analytics-in-action-asos-christmas
McEleny, C. (2011). Asos unveils Facebook store. Marketing week. Retrieved from http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/asos-unveils-facebook-store/3022415.article

McKinsey & co.(2013). The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies[ELB Version]. Retrieved from http://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey%20Offices/Korea/PDFs/The_Social_Economy.ashx

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Sony takes the wiki way

Hello!, Sony is one of the leading corporations that have smartly incorporated social technologies in enhancing their business. Last week, I posted about Sony’s use of social technologies in sales and marketing. This week I will focus on how Sony benefited from implementing Wikis.

What is Wikis?

Linguistically, the word is originated from Hawaiian term " wikiwiki" which means fast. Technically, wiki is a collaborative server program where content is created by anonymous users unlike blogs(Rouse,2007). And because we are talking about wikis I thought it is appropriate to include Wikipedia's definition "wiki is a web application which allows people to add, modify, or delete content in collaboration with others". Wikipedia is the most popular wiki, however there are many different types of wikis created for public or private uses.

Examples of Wiki (Rouse,2007) 

Below, watch CommonCraft’s (2007) video explains Wikis further.

Sony’s experience in implementing Wiki ?

In a Sony conference that was held in Tokyo back in 2008, Edward Lerner, the director of tools and technology at Sony Entertainment, America, took his time to explain to everybody on the importance of using Wikis in the development of new products and their introduction to the market (Gardner, 2008). One reason as to why Sony has done so well in its adaptation of the Wikis is that its management is knowledgeable on the use of different social technological avenues (Read more about Sony's uses of social technologies). Moreover, Lerner was keen in introducing wikis especially in the gaming department, because this would make coding a lot easier. The implementation was a bit challenging, as it was hard convincing “older” managers in this new technology. However,It helped that some of the game department was aware of the technology impact. Lerner found that the key to successfully implement it is to find a person "champion" who has good leadership qualities so the department can get influenced by them (Claburn, 2008). Also, hiring experts in such technology because when other employee sees their success that will encourage them to learn and get on track.

Why implementing Wiki ?

Other than increasing  the game department productivity , Sony has employed the use of Wikis  in the production of its products is to boost its sales and marketing efforts. Sony also implemented Wikis in order to see to it that all its collaborative working processes with other organisations that majored in the production of technical innovations were improved. The Wikis made it easy for Sony to write, edit and comment on information written by analysts and affected them directly (Claburn, 2008).

What are the outcomes of this implementation ?

There are of course a lot of advantages that came with the implementation of Wikis and some of these advantages included:

• The improvement of the team interactions.
• A ready access to intelligence and expertise capabilities.
• Dissemination of information became faster than it ever was.
• The emails that were clogging up their systems were reduced.

To sum up, Wiki's implementation has proven many success among many companies, Sony’s case is a great example because of the company's business nature and its many social technologies experiences.

Please comment below, tell me what kind of companies you think could never adopt Wiki?

Also, do you think wiki will continue to be used in the coming 5, 10 years?

Thank you for passing by xo

REFERENCES:

Claburn, T. (2008, May 29). Enterprise 2.0 Conference Preview: Sony Gets Wiki With It - InformationWeek [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.informationweek.com/applications/enterprise-20-conference-preview-sony-gets-wiki-with-it/d/d-id/1068333?

Common Craft. (2007, May 29). Video: Wikis in Plain English  [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

Deutsch, N. (2013). Wikimedias [Image]. Retrieved  from http://www.wiziq.com/teachblog/empower-with-wikis/

Gardner, D. (2008, November 6). Enterprise 2.0: Sony, CIA, Pfizer Strategize On Boosting Enterprise 2.0 Adoption - InformationWeek [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.informationweek.com/applications/enterprise-20-sony-cia-pfizer-strategize-on-boosting-enterprise-20-adoption/d/d-id/1068793?

Rouse, M.(2007).wiki [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/definition/wiki

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