Social Media Marketing ― Emerging Concepts and Applications

This book focuses on the role of social media as the next major game-changer. Social media has emerged as the defining trend in the last decade and continues to restructure communication and interactions between individuals, communities, governments and businesses. Researchers and marketers are still struggling with the profound impact of rapidly evolving social media on viral user-generated content, its ability to shape consumer perceptions, and the constantly changing landscape for developing business cases to proactively engage with stakeholders. The growing opportunities to “hear” about customer priorities and concerns on company managed channels as well as third-party review sites, including social media pages, across the digital space are accompanied by the challenges of responding to these conversations in real-time, which calls for a massive shift in the way marketing functions engage in dialogue with customers.

As leading users of social media in emerging markets, Indians are increasingly logging into their Facebook and Twitter accounts, with the country recording the highest growth in social networking. This book begins by discussing the impact of social media on marketing, from brand building, communications, and advertising to customization and customer engagement. The book approaches the subject matter systematically, identifying broad trends, concepts and frameworks in the first few chapters. It then goes on to address the varied application of social media in marketing for different sectors. Primarily focusing on understanding digital consumers, the book integrates social media with marketing and the outcome. It also presents new, selected cases of successful digital companies in emerging markets never before considered. Researchers and managers alike will find this book to be a handy reference guide to social media in emerging markets.

Dr Githa S Heggde is Director, IFIM Business School. She is a corporate consultant on Marketing and Sales enhancement, Vice Chairperson, CII-Indian Women Network and in the board of CII Karnataka, Country Director, India, EuroMed Business Research Institute. Member editorial board of International Journal on Emerging markets, Emerald, Core member at the Centre for Emerging Markets, IIM, Lucknow, Faculty resource IIM Kozhikode, MDP apart from other holding distinguished positions is various professional bodies. She has over 27 years of teaching, consultancy and industrial experience. She has authored books and articles on Applied Marketing, Social Media Marketing and several case studies. Currently, she is member of Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry. 

Professor Heggde was part of the team at “Global colloquium on participant centered learning” at Harvard Business School, Boston and worked on teaching with case studies and developing curriculum for management courses. Participated at the follow-on sessions at Shanghai.

She was invited by Pace University, New York, for lectures and discussions on pursuing collaborative research and Pepperdine University, Malibu. Conducted several training programs for senior marketing and sales executives at Airtel, ITC, Infosys, Murugappa group, Pricol, HDFC, Infosys, EY, Biocon and several leading companies. She has engaged in consultancy and research with companies such as Logitech, USA, iWatt, USA, Reliance, India, Adaptive marketing and many others. She had been a member of Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Karnataka, and Chairperson, Coimbatore chapter FICCI ladies organization during 2004-2006.

G. Shainesh, Professor of Marketing - IIM Bangalore, has over two decades of research and teaching experience. He has conducted research and teaching assignments at the Goteborg University (Sweden), University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), Audencia Nantes and IESEG (France), Vienna University and MCI Innsbruck (Austria), Bocconi University (Milan), Curtin University of Technology (Perth), and the American University of Armenia (Yerevan). His research focuses on CRM, Services Marketing, and Service Innovations. At IIMB, he leads the cross-functional research initiative on consumer insights (ICI@IIMB). His book titled Customer Relationship Management – A Strategic Perspective (Trinity Press, Laxmi Publications) is a prescribed textbook for CRM courses at several business schools. He is also the co-author of a book on CRM titled Customer Relationship Management – Emerging Concepts, Tools and Applications (21st Reprint 2017, McGraw Hill, New Delhi). His papers on services and relationship marketing have been published in the MIS Quarterly, Journal of Service Research, Journal of International Marketing, Journal of Services Marketing, The Service Industries Journal, International Journal of Bank Marketing, International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, International Journal of Technology Management, Journal of Relationship Marketing, International Marketing Review, among others.