Practice Prize Winner ---Creating a Measurable Social Media Marketing Strategy: Increasing the Value and ROI of Intangibles and Tangibles for Hokey Pokey

V. Kumar (), Vikram Bhaskaran (), Rohan Mirchandani () and Milap Shah ()
Additional contact information
V. Kumar: Center for Excellence in Customer and Brand Management, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia 30303
Vikram Bhaskaran: Freshdesk, Chennai 600 096, India
Rohan Mirchandani: Ross Group, Clifton, New Jersey 07011
Milap Shah: DRUMS Food International Pvt. Ltd., Kurla, Mumbai 400 070, India

Marketing Science, 2013, vol. 32, issue 2, 194-212

Abstract: Hokey Pokey, a popular “super premium” ice cream retailer, has over a dozen outlets based in India. Hokey Pokey offers “customized mix-in” flavors and realizes the importance of social media platforms to connect with its target consumers and create an engaging brand experience. However, with a limited marketing budget, the retailer needed to measure the success of its social media marketing efforts and create an optimized strategy. To accomplish this, we proposed and implemented a methodology to measure social media return on investment (ROI) and a customer's word-of-mouth (WOM) value by first creating a unique metric to measure the net influence wielded by a user in a social network, customer influence effect (CIE), and then predicting the user's ability to generate the spread of viral information. We then link WOM to the actual sales that it generates through a second metric, customer influence value (CIV), and we implement a strategy at Hokey Pokey to measure these metrics and identify their individual drivers. Finally, we refine our strategy to increase CIE and CIV, thereby impacting the profit. Our research shows that social media can be used to generate growth in sales, ROI, and positive word of mouth and can spread brand knowledge further.

Keywords: social media marketing campaign; ROI; customer influence effect; customer influence value (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

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