Consumerism in the Digital Age:
Exploring Innovative Commerce as a Design Strategy for Brand Creation and Implementation
A thesis submitted to the School of Visual Communication Design, College of Communication and Information of Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Master of Fine Arts
By
Vanessa O. Okojie
December, 2018
Thesis written by
Vanessa O. Okojie
B.A., Cleveland State University, 2016
M.F.A., Kent State University, 2018
Approved by
______
Jessica Barness, M.F.A., Advisor, Professor, School of Visual Communication Design
______
David Robins, Ph.D., Acting Director, School of Visual Communication Design
______
Amy Reynolds, Ph.D., Dean, College of Communication and Information
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………………...... v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……….……………………………………………………………………..vi
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...………1
CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………. 3 Assumptions…………………………………………………………………………………………… 3 Methodology…………………………………………………………………………………………… 3
CHAPTER III: DEFINITION OF BRAND…………………………………………………………….. 4 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………. 5 The Paradigm Shift……………………………………………………………………………...……... 6 Brand Differentiation and Brand Relevance……………………………………………….………….. 6
CHAPTER IV: CULTURAL INNOVATION…………………………………………………………...7 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………. 8 “Blue Oceans” and Value Innovation………………………………………………………………….. 9
Cultural Expressions………………………………………………………………………………..… 13 Main Principles of Cultural Innovation…………………………………….………………………… 18 Cultural Innovation in Practice – The Nike Pro Hijab Case Study…………………………………... 21 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………... 25
Evolution of Social Commerce………………………………………………………………………..28
CHAPTER VI: INNOVATIVE COMMERCE: A NEW MODEL…………………………………... 43 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………... 43
Brand Analysis: Fashion Nova……………………………………………………………………….. 45 Brand Analysis: Fenty Beauty………………………………………………………………………... 49 Brand Analysis: Away Luggage……………………………………………………………………… 52
Brand Analysis: Dollar Shave Club…………………………………………………………………...54
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CHAPTER VII: EVALUATION & INSIGHTS………………………………………………………. 57
Insights Gained From User Testing…………………………………………………………………... 57
CHAPTER VIII: IMPLICATIONS & CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………….. 59
APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………………………………… 62
Selected electronic survey results…………………………………………………………………….. 63 Innovative commerce brand analyses………………………………………………………………… 67 Innovative commerce presentation methods…………………………………………………………. 70
References………………………………………………………………………………………………... 73
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
1. The new brand model...... 6
2. Blue Ocean Innovation Type 1: Technological Innovation...... 10
3. Blue Ocean Innovation Type 1: Netflix’s Disruptive Innovation...... 11
4. Blue Ocean Innovation Type 2: Mix & Match Innovation ...... 12
5. Blue Ocean Innovation Type 2: Cirque du Soleil Mix & Match Innovation...... 12
6. Starbucks’ Cultural Innovation...... 15
7. Nike’s Cultural Innovation...... 17
8. Nikes Cultural Innovation: Nike Pro Hijab...... 22
9. Mix & Match Innovation: Nike Pro Hijab...... 23
10. Components of social commerce...... 29
11. A model for social commerce ...... 30
12. Social media measurement areas...... 38
13. A Model of Innovative Commerce...... 43
13.1. A Model of Innovative Commerce; create and build...... 45
13.2. A Model of Innovative Commerce; market and sell...... 47
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank my parents for their unconditional love and support, for allowing me to pursue my passion for art; through design. I want to appreciate my mom who is my unrelenting cheerleader and therapist, who gives freely and listens lovingly without expecting anything in return, I do not know where I would be without her. I want to thank my dad who supported me my entire life. He worked so hard for his family, but he left this mortal plane too soon, and I wish he were here to see this.
Thank you to Sarah Rutherford and Jenn Visocky-O'Grady who encouraged me to apply to the VCD master's program at Kent State University, I will forever be grateful to them. Thank you to Jessica Barness for pushing me to think critically and explore new ideas throughout my thesis research and my time in the VCD program and also for her kindness, empathy, and friendship during a hard time in my life when I lost my dad. Thank you to Ken Visocky-O'Grady and Gretchen Rinnert for being on my committee and making my thesis defense a pleasant experience. Thank you to all my peers in the VCD master’s program and to my friends Lisa
Cook and Natalie Snodgrass for being part of my support system in graduate school, hanging out and going through our projects together made my days easier.
And finally thank you to me, Vanessa Okojie, for not wallowing in self-pity and for finding a way to persevere in the face of adversity. Thank you for not giving up on your plan to graduate in the fall of 2018, thank you for keeping your promise to your parents and to yourself, thank you for pushing through the hard days and getting your work done in spite of everything that happened. Thank you for earning your master's degree. Your dad would be so proud of you.
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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
Being an avid participant in the culture of social media and remaining an active member in that community over the last few years, I began to notice that the social media landscape was shifting from a community of individuals who often shared superficial content, to a domain where the shared content was becoming transactional. Several individuals and companies have begun to conduct business via social media. Take Instagram for example: multiple retail companies have set up 'Instagram shops' to sell and market their goods to consumers. Some are more effective at doing this than others, and this could be as a result of factors such as the appeal of the product, and the quality and design of the product. Design plays a crucial role in social media for a business because a visually strong brand accurately describes the personality of a company. Effective design creates a professional first impression with customers. It affords brand recognition by connecting a target audience with a company and their products/services.
Consumers assess the visual appearance of a brand online within an instant of encountering it, more than any heavily text-based content. The most successful brands tapped into something that was missing in their market category, and this thesis seeks to understand how they did that, if there is a formula for doing so, and if the said formula can be workable and attainable.
Social and physical shopping have begun to interconnect in considerable ways within the last few years and now more than ever, consumers are demanding greater symbiosis between the two experiences. Currently, the first leg of the shopper’s journey often begins with social media as an engine for product discovery and research. Products being shared and validated on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are increasingly attracting consumers, and these platforms help justify a purchase.
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The objective of this thesis is to find out how to create culturally resonant brands and market them on social media successfully. A holistic design strategy is needed from brand inception, to brand communication and product release. The goal of any suitable design strategy is to use design thinking to merge business and creative objectives in a meaningful way that communicates design as more than just an aesthetic practice. This thesis proposes innovative commerce—the intersection between cultural innovation and social commerce—as a model for doing so. Businesses succeed when they break through in culture because the potential to connect with specific groups of consumers can represent a significant opportunity. It is clear that the digital experience is evolving, and brands that want to stay ahead of the curve need to know how best to employ this evolving digital experience.
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CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Assumptions
The research process began with a list of assumptions on consumer attitudes regarding social media and business transactions conducted on social media, that helped to frame the early stages of investigation. Assumptions were formed based on personal experience, current developments in popular culture and previous research done on the subject. The list of assumptions include the following comments:
● The first leg of a shoppers journey begins online.
● Most people in technologically developed societies have a social media account.
● Social media posts can influence a consumer's purchasing habits.
● The average individual cares about brands that relate with their culture and self-
perception.
● Brands become relevant when they resonate with customers on an emotional and cultural
level.
● Brands are now focusing on communicating with their customers on social media.
● Social media has a broader reach than traditional sources of mass media.
Assumptions can be proven, disproven or re-evaluated based on the trajectory of research endeavors. Throughout this research, some of these assumptions were proven correct and helped to form the final product.
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Methodology
The methodology for this research involves a comprehensive literature review of previously published research on brand relevance, cultural innovation and social commerce respectively. This helped provide an understanding of the intersection between brand relevance, cultural innovation, and social commerce.
Primary research involved a 100 participant electronic survey (Appendix A) in form of a web-based questionnaire. It was distributed to an online audience, the majority of whom (58%) were 25 - 34 years of age. The audience were sourced using email and social media (Instagram and Snapchat) respectively. The survey consisted of 11 questions, each related to the participants use of social media and their perception of shopping on social media.
Data gained from the literature review and survey responses were utilized in the development of research, by providing perspective to the assumptions and final outcome of this thesis: a model of innovative commerce. To test the validity of the model, the author analyzed five brands (Fashion Nova, Fenty Beauty, Away and Dollar Shave Club)—from different industries—which are exemplifications of innovative commerce. Following this, user testing sessions in the form of interviews were conducted over email and phone to gain more insights into the model. Participants were of both professional and academic backgrounds. The interviews were conversational in nature and consist of one primary question which framed the discussions.
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CHAPTER III: DEFINITION OF BRAND
Introduction
Before delving any further into this discussion, it is important to note the meaning of the word "brand," because the application of the word has changed over time. The Oxford English
Dictionary (OED) defines the word brand as "a type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name" (OED, 2018). By this definition, a brand is a manufactured artifact. However, in recent years, designers and market researchers have debated over the semantics behind the word. They have come to the conclusion that a brand is not a manufactured artifact, but rather it is a gut feeling about a product or service, and when enough people have the same gut feeling about a company, it can be said to have a brand (Neumeier, 2008).
This author believes that we cannot choose one definition over the other because people and language create meaning. When random people were intercepted and presented by this researcher with the simple question “what is a brand?” they all said a variation of the same thing; a brand is a business. If enough people believe this statement, then is it the designer, marketer or researchers job educate them on the true meaning? A brand can be, and is both a business and a gut feeling about a product or service, because the meaning has been created by culture and its definition depends on the context in which the word is being used.
Based on this evidence, a brand should be defined as: a product or service that includes a culmination of the experiences and expectations consumers have attributed to it. The brand in its most established form is a product of design thinking and it has become a crucial asset for businesses, encouraging both ideation and action and assisting them in making decisions to frame the future in an increasingly complicated world.
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The Paradigm Shift
One persistent factor in the definition of a brand is the customer; they define and sustain brands. Therefore, brands cannot exist without them. In the past, companies prescribed what consumers should want, they crafted products and inserted those products in the lives of their customers through substantial advertising and distribution, and there was very little room for collaboration; the customer had no authority, this was the established formula. In recent years, however, due to the explosion of connectivity on the internet and social media, the power of companies has been placed in the hands of the customers, they are now co-curators (Neumeier,
2008). Co-curators have authority because they do not just want to buy brands, they want to join them by suggesting what gets produced, promoting the brands to their friends and followers and even going as far as selling the products and services. Co-curators care about the meaning behind the products they purchase, but they do not want to feel like they are being sold.
Figure 1: The New Brand Model (adapted from Neumeier, 2008)
Brand Differentiation and Brand Relevance
The idea of a brand has become so popular now because as purchasing choices have multiplied, consumers have become over informed and impatient and as a result, they no longer judge products by comparing features and benefits because competitors copy each other's
7 product features as soon as they are introduced. People are forced to base their choices on more characteristic properties such as the look and feel of the product, the demographic of individuals who buy the product, the cost of the product, and the manufacturer of the product. The degree of trust consumers feel towards a product rather than the assessment of its features and benefits now determines whether they will buy it or not, therefore, trust creation has become a primary intention of brand design (Neumeier, 2006).
Brand relevance and brand differentiation are two sides of the same coin, and the detail differentiates one brand different from its counterparts is the way it exists in the mind of people.
Differentiation exists because of the way our cognition works; we rely on our visual system to discern the differences between the things we see. Visual Communication design uses visual compositions to relay these differences through typography, imagery, color and form. These compositions act as the face of a brand by communicating its visual and intangible qualities.
The reliance on our visual system is why we are concerned with aesthetics especially where brands are concerned; if we find a product, package or page layout aesthetically pleasing, we are drawn to it. However, brands stand out by being personally and emotionally relevant to consumers (Lloyd, 2016). The attention of consumers has been shifted from the visual compositions and features of a brand (which is still very important) to the emphasis on how it connects with them culturally and emotionally (Neumeier, 2006).
When a company seeks a meaningful position through personal relevance and emotional importance, it starts by creating value through innovation and then concentrates on eliciting the sentiments that will maintain, prolong and emphasize that innovation in the mind of their customers. For brands to have maximum effect, they need innovation to fulfill their promise
(Lockwood, 2009).
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CHAPTER IV: CULTURAL INNOVATION
Introduction
Businesses create new products to stay ahead of their competition, and when consumer needs change it is evident that companies need to find ways to create value for them continually.
Take for example the advent of the iPhone, the design of which has undergone several modifications since its inception in 2007. IPhones were initially durable and able to withstand impact with their early bulky designs, but as the technology evolved and time passed by, Apple has shifted to a more sleek and fragile design of their smartphone. This created a consumer need for iPhone protection and opened the market for phone cases on which companies like OtterBox and Casemates were founded. There was also a consumer need for people who do not want their iPhone to slide out of their hands and potentially break, but also do not want to hide the sleek design of their iPhone in a phone case. This created a vacuum in the smartphone accessories market that companies like PopSockets filled by creating smartphone grips that allow consumers to use their phones case-free without fear of slippage. People may buy phone cases and phone grips for two different reasons—to protect their phones, or as a form of showcasing their individuality—in both instances, it is clear that companies found a way to create value for consumers by paying attention to their changing needs.
Cultural innovation outlines a systematic approach for identifying new market opportunities and building concepts to leverage these opportunities. What factors influence a company’s decision to create a new product or service? How are the decisions made? When viewed in the context of cultural innovation, the word innovation gets turned upside down because companies do not necessarily need to create new products or features that alter their value proposition. “A cultural innovation is a brand that delivers an innovative cultural
9 expression” (Holt & Cameron, 2010, p 181). Therefore, to understand cultural innovation, one must first understand the central role of cultural expressions in creating consumer value and then understand how certain cultural expressions target blue oceans—known as ideological opportunities—to surpass competitors who pursue more conventional product-innovation related marketing strategies (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
“Blue Oceans” and Value Innovation
A thorough background on cultural innovation must be discussed in order to provide a precise definition of its theory. W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, authors of the book Blue
Ocean Strategy (2004) surmised that companies of today find themselves in a “red ocean” of competition which means that existing markets are permeated with a conventional set of benefits in which there is an overlap of proposed value that companies provide to their consumers (Holt
& Cameron, 2010).
A red ocean is a market in which the competition has nothing left to compete over other than price, for example, Nordstrom vs. Macys vs. Dillards—all department store chains that provide high-end clothing, accessories and home furnishings. Kim and Mauborgne (2004) advise that to develop future leading businesses ventures, companies must create and capture a new demand by crafting “value innovations” in market categories that have no direct competition—an approach referred to as “blue oceans.” Value innovation happens when a company's competition is made much less relevant through the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation, and low cost
(Kim & Mauborgne, 2004) and innovation experts have provided two paths to finding opportunities for this type of innovation.
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Technological innovation. Holt and Cameron (2010) argue that technology-driven innovations dominate business, and the commercialization of breakthrough technologies have had a significant impact on business and our society. In his book The Innovator's Dilemma
(1997), Clayton Christensen explains that new technologies allow companies to design
“disruptive innovations.” Disruptive innovations are products and services that alter the value proposition of an existing category by providing consumers with products marketed as more inexpensive, convenient and reliable (Christensen, Raynor & McDonald, 2015).
Figure 2: Blue Ocean Innovation Type 1: Technological Innovation (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
Disruptive innovations come from low-end, or new market positions and consumers usually do not find them appealing at first until the quality of the company or product labeled as a “disruptive innovation” meets up with their standards. Netflix, for example, was a disruptive innovation when it launched in 1997, but its service was not appealing to Blockbuster’s customers who typically rented new movie releases on impulse. Netflix had an exclusively online interface with an extensive inventory of movies, but movie rentals took several days to arrive through the U.S mail delivery method. This appealed to a select number of people: early adopters of DVD players, people who didn't care about new releases and online shoppers. At the time, Blockbuster did not see Netflix as a competitor, because both companies filled different needs for their various customers. However, as new technology arose, this allowed Netflix to
11 shift to streaming videos over the internet which eventually became appealing to Blockbuster’s core customers, offering a more extensive selection of content with an all-you-can-watch, high- quality, low-price, highly convenient approach. Netflix achieved this through a characteristically disruptive route (Christensen, Raynor & McDonald, 2015).
Figure 3: Blue Ocean Innovation Type 1: Netflix’s Disruptive Innovation (adapted from Holt & Cameron, 2010).
Mix-and-Match Innovation. A “mix-and-match” approach to innovation has become influential, and for companies to offer customers a significantly better value proposition, they must break the rules of their category. They can do this by tapping opportunities that can be developed from existing categories, through unique value combinations that may not have been formulated yet, and by subtracting and enhancing conventional benefits in addition to importing new ones from other categories (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
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Figure 4: Blue Ocean Innovation Type 2: Mix & Match Innovation (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
An example of Mix and Match innovation in Blue Oceans Strategy is Cirque du Soleil.
Cirque du Soleil adopted this strategy by taking conventions from theater and Broadway musicals to reinvent the experience of going to the circus (Kim & Mauborgne, 2004).
Figure 5: Blue Ocean Innovation Type 2: Cirque du Soleil Mix & Match Innovation (adapted from Holt & Cameron, 2010).
Although technological innovation and mix-and-match innovation are strikingly different, they rely on the notion of what constitutes an “innovation.” Innovation comes down to
13 providing significantly better benefits to consumers at a given price, for example, cars with higher fuel economy, phones that hold more applications or hard drives that have more storage space and are more portable.
Cultural Expressions
Cultural expressions are conventions that help us understand the world and where we fit in, they serve as compass points that help us organize how we perceive the world. They help us navigate what is meaningful, what is moral, what is immoral, what we should strive for, what we should despise and so on. Cultural expressions are vital in the formation of identity because they provide us with directions on how to maneuver through fundamental social, political and existential concepts (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
In modern society, traditional sources of cultural expression (religion, education, the arts, the state, and other societal institutions) have been taken over on a large scale by technology and commerce. Also, the beginning of the twentieth century saw the practice of advertising move from industrial societies in which people worked to meet basic human needs, to consumer societies in which the production of goods was focused on feeding desire. This resulted in a shift in habits of consumption and the expansion of media—new technologies—made this possible
(Davis, 2012, p 171). Companies have competed to find ways through which they can capitalize on this source of economic gain and brands have become the primary means to market cultural expression.
Cultural Expressions are made up of Ideology, Myth and Cultural Codes:
Ideology: An ideology is a point of view on the cultural constructs around us; a
“construct” in the context of culture is a set of ideas which make up one main idea. For example,
14 in “the bond of marriage between a man and a woman” each culture has its own “construct” of what marriage is, and they may all share many traits in common while still varying significantly in many details depending on the culture. Ideologies shape our everyday actions and we all have ideologies that allow us to function effectively in our daily activities. They also function as a basis for consumer markets because strong brands sustain ideologies—a point of view which is central to the product. Ideologies are not expressions, they are concepts that can be expressed in different ways. Consumers experience ideology through layers of cultural expression, so ideologies enter culture when they are conveyed by way of myth and cultural codes (Holt &
Cameron, 2010).
Myths: Myths are instructive stories that inform ideology. An example of this will be illustrated in the next section.
Cultural Codes: For a myth to be resonant, it must be created using the most compelling cultural content. These are referred to as cultural codes. Mass cultural expressions (packaging design, store graphics, etc.) require elements with meaning that has been well-established historically in the culture. Cultural codes provide a shortcut for consumers by allowing them to experience and understand intended meanings (artistic and avant-garde expressions usually ignore or purposely mangle cultural codes). Cultural expressions need historical conventions to fall back on because if there are no historical conventions, every element of the expression will have to be defined in a way that would allow the consumer to interpret the contents of the expression accurately.
Cultural innovations become successful when they display the appropriate ideology, which is executed through the right myth and expressed with the right cultural codes. Marketing strategies often focus on the functional (e.g., high-tech) and emotional benefits (e.g., fun) of
15 products to create differentiation and relevance. The use of these abstract associations implies that consumers value abstract concepts such as “fun” or “high-tech” so that when companies convey such concepts effectively, consumers will value the brand. However, such abstract concepts do not exist as singular entities. For example, the word “fun,” consumers do not experience that word as a singular entity because what constitutes the “fun” could be many different things, rather; consumers experience a particular expression of “fun” like dancing while listening to music. Each interpretation of “fun” is brought to life as a cultural expression. The cultural expression creates these benefits; therefore it is the culture and not the benefit that defines a brand (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
How Cultural Expressions Create “Emotional Benefits”
Starbucks will be used as an example to explain this concept. Starbucks became a success because they provided a resonant cultural expression of a central societal construct: social class.
Starbucks competed with other coffee house chains to deliver the cultural expression of sophistication.
Figure 6: Starbucks’ Cultural Innovation (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
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Ideology: Artisanal Cosmopolitanism
Starbucks adapted an artisanal-cosmopolitan ideology—skilled handcrafted coffee, exotic sourcing, and pre-modern agricultural traditions—as it was the antithesis of anonymous industrial foods of the time. It was one of the most compelling ideologies for expressing
“sophistication” in 1990s America. It conveyed a very niche ideology of “sophistication” (Holt
& Cameron, 2010).
Myth: Accessible Sophistication
Starbucks gained success with the way it embedded the ideology in the coffee experience, more specifically, the myth and cultural codes it used to stage the ideology. Starbucks promised their customers that they could have a sophisticated coffee experience in a way that was accessible to them and not difficult. This myth packages the sophistication found in elite subcultures and trickles it down in a way that the “non-elite” can still enjoy (Holt & Cameron,
2010).
Cultural Codes: Retail Props, Avant-Garde Cafe Design
Starbucks employed coherent and compelling “accessible sophistication” codes for every consumer touchpoint—the use of visuals such as whole coffee beans as retail props, the sanitized avant-garde cafe design codes, the use of sustainable materials for in-store signage, coffee cups and so on (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
Starbucks worked because its particular expression of “sophistication” resonated with the target consumer. If Starbucks failed to execute on any of the three components of cultural expression—ideology, myth, cultural codes— they would not have succeeded. Consumers began to depend on Starbucks and began developing strong emotional attachments to the brand and attributed desirable qualities to it such as “cool,” “fun,” “adventurous” and so on (Holt &
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Cameron, 2010). These emotional and functional benefits are a result of an effective cultural expression.
How Cultural Expressions Create “Functional Benefits”
Nike will be used as an example to explain this concept. Initially, Nike targeted the subculture of professional runners, Nike shoes were marketed based on performance, but customers outside the subculture of professional runners were not interested in “performance.”
Nike had found success when it celebrated the “combative solo willpower” ideology of its competitive runners, this resonated with mass-market consumers who were in search of a new motivational tool to pursue the American Dream (Holt & Cameron, 2010). Consumers found value in this cultural expression and readily came to believe that Nikes would help to boost their performance.
Figure 7: Nike’s Cultural Innovation (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
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Ideology: Combative Solo Willpower
In the late 1980s, Nike expressed this ideology by showcasing branding that portrayed the
“combative solo willpower” of determined athletes who—with their Nikes—were able to combat societal discriminations such as racism and poverty (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
Myth: “Just Do It.”
Athletes facing severe forms of discrimination rely on Nike's combative solo willpower to overcome obstacles and win. So Nikes will allow the consumer to overcome adversity to achieve the American dream in the competitive labor market (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
Cultural Codes: Subcultural Vernacular
Nike constructed its ads with cultural codes that reflected the vernacular of each marginalized group of people in a sports subculture. For example, ad spots set in “the ghetto” showed bleak high rise buildings, tattered basketball courts surrounded by chain link nets, all of which combined to portray the harsh reality of ghetto life and the struggle it would take to break out of this environment (Holt & Cameron, 2010).
Nike appealed to mass-market consumers with cultural expressions that the consumers identified with because these expressions served a functional role in their identities and once they identified with Nikes expressions, they readily made strong assumptions about how Nike shoes will improve their performance.
Main Principles of Cultural Innovation
“A cultural innovation is a brand that delivers an innovative cultural expression” (Holt &
Cameron, 2010, p. 181), and these cultural expressions can create value in the form of emotional and functional benefits for a consumer. Because cultural expression plays a central role in
19 creating consumer value, cultural innovation is an excellent tool for developing new businesses and improving failing ones through these principles:
Identify the Cultural Conventions: Red oceans are understood as spaces where there is a great deal of overlap across functionality or proposed value offered to consumers (Kim &
Mauborgne, 2004), which leaves little room for innovation to occur. Innovators need to look for blue oceans which provide significantly improved value propositions for a brand either by new technology (see Figure 2) or Mixing-and-matching (see figure 4) value propositions across spaces. Leading companies in any given market category tend to dictate what is a "good" cultural expression— making said expression dominant—thereby making companies in the same category copy one another. Businesses then compete to outdo each other in providing different benefits product-wise while at the cultural level, they imitate each other by developing their marketing initiatives as minor variations of the same ideology, myth and cultural codes—these widely imitated cultural expressions are known as the category’s cultural convention. A Red ocean creates an opportunity for a different and original cultural expression to be represented because competitors are preoccupied with intense product-level competition (Holt & Cameron,
2010).
Locate the Social Disruption: The driving forces of cultural innovation are social disruptions—any change in history that is significant enough to destabilize a market category’s cultural conventions (Christensen, Raynor & McDonald, 2015). These disruptions create a demand for new cultural expressions when once-dominant companies lose their resonance, and afford innovative brands to take off because they deliver the right cultural expression. Social disruptions create ideological opportunities—detailed discoveries on how the social disruption is changing the world around the customer, impact on their lives and their views on the
20 environment—because the category’s cultural conventions no longer adequately deliver the cultural expressions that consumers demand at that time (Holt & Cameron, 2010). These ideological opportunities lead the consumers to desire companies that present new ideology brought to life by new myth and cultural codes.
Remodel Source Material: Cultural innovations adapt and repurpose source material, in order to take advantage of an ideological opportunity. Remodeling source material involves identifying existing ideologies, myths and cultural codes that are embraced by consumers and figuring out how to best express them (Holt & Cameron, 2010). Source material comes in three forms: subcultures, media myths and brand assets.
Subcultures. In this context, subcultures are groups or places that hold together an ideology that is connected to the category’s cultural convention. Subcultures prove that an ideology exists in the world as a viable world-view that has value.
Media myths. Often mass media is quick to promote cultural expressions derived from subcultures. Media myths are packaged in different forms of popular culture products (films, television programs, sports, books, music, politics, newspapers). In addition to this, cultural innovations often draw inspiration from the media’s treatment of these subcultures.
Brand Assets. Companies usually have cultural assets that can be used to their advantage.
These assets include the company’s business practices that have cultural potential as well as historical, cultural expressions that people still remember.
Cultural Design: The end result of creating a cultural innovation involves designing a concept that responds to an ideological opportunity originally and compellingly. This transformation of source material into a design is the creative portion of cultural innovation.
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Cultural Innovation in Practice – The Nike Pro Hijab Case Study
Hijab in the context of Discrimination
The interconnectivity of the digital media and the prevalence of fast-paced real-time news on the internet has made it such that unfortunate instances of prejudice faced by Muslim women on the basis of their dress code are presented on a daily basis. One of such instances happened in
2016 when a mother was laying on La Bocca beach in Cannes, France and was told to remove her hijab or face being fined by the French police. The police read the details of the headscarf ban on beaches which stated that beachgoers must wear correct clothing, respect secularism, hygiene rules, and security, and argued that her hijab was a brazen sign of religion (Samuels,
2016). Another case showed a woman being asked by armed policemen to remove her burkini— full body swimwear for Muslim women—on a beach in Nice, France. Stories like these do not go unnoticed in the global village because they spread rapidly and lead to mass awareness and outrage, creating a social disruption.
Background on Sports Hijab
In 2012, the International Football Association Board (IFAB), overturned a 2007 ban which claimed that the hijab was unsafe for athletes because it could increase the risk of neck injuries. IFAB noted that there was nothing in medical literature concerning injuries caused as a result of wearing a headscarf (Sambidge, 2012). In 2012, Muslim athletes who wore the hijab garnered considerable media attention because the product was a new cultural design.
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The Nike Pro Hijab
At the start of 2017, Nike announced the launch of a “highly anticipated” product —a sportswear hijab. On December 1st, 2017 Nike shared the visuals for its new product on
Instagram and its company’s website—news outlets picked up the product visuals from those two sources and word spread quickly. The post currently has over one million views on
Instagram, and the caption reads “sport is for everyone, introducing the Nike Pro Hijab.”
On Instagram, Nike posts inspirational, motivational, and inclusive images that embrace lifestyle, rather than focusing solely on product. Instagram afforded Nike the ability to share its cultural innovation in the global village and convey its intentions directly to consumers and followers alike which lead to instant trackable feedback in the form of comments, likes, and shares.
As was previously stated, Nike found success in shifting from being the brand known for making running shoes, to becoming an Icon in the athletic wear industry by creating strong cultural expressions with the ideology of "combative solo willpower". With the Pro Hijab as a case study, This researcher examines how Nike might have created this cultural innovation.
Figure 8: Nikes Cultural Innovation: Nike Pro Hijab (adapted from Holt & Cameron, 2010).
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Identify the Cultural Conventions: Nike crafted a blue ocean through mix-and-match innovation by combining the design of activewear with the hijab.
Figure 9: Mix & Match Innovation: Nike Pro Hijab (adapted from Holt & Cameron, 2010).
Locate the Social Disruption: Nike noted the social disruption initiated by Muslim women embracing sport against all societal prejudices, in a statement to Al Arabiya, Nike said:
“This movement first permeated international consciousness in 2012, when a hijabi runner took the global stage in London.” (Khan, 2017). Saudi Arabian Sarah Attar was the runner who competed in the London Olympics. This disruption created an ideological opportunity when female hijabi athletes noted that the material and design of a traditional hijab was less than ideal for sports purposes. Ibtihaj Muhammad, a Nike athlete, and champion fencer indicated that she had been carded for false starting on several occasions because she could not hear clearly out of her hijab, she also noted that the material became heavy and stiff when wet (Nike, 2017).
Remodel Source Material: Nike is not the first company to sell sport hijabs; smaller companies such as Capsters which started in 2001 and ResportOn have been doing this for years.
Nike however, is one of the first mainstream sports brands to address this specific need of
Muslim women (Ahmed, 2017). Nike used its brand assets to its advantage, the historic cultural
24 expression surrounding the “just do it.” slogan still resonates with consumers and is ingrained in
Nike's business practices. Using the caption “sport is for everyone” emphasizes the ideology of
“combative solo willpower”; the determination to succeed at all costs no matter the hurdles— discrimination or preconceived notions—brought forward by wearing a hijab while competing in a sport.
Cultural Design: Nike’s cultural design is the Pro Hijab. According to Nike, the hijab took a year to create and during this time prototypes were presented to a variety of hijabi athletes to put the garment to the test in their respective sports. The feedback from the athletes lead to the creation of a lighter, softer and more breathable garment that accounted for a range of headsizes—a product which is optimized for sport (Nike, 2017). Nikes “sport is for everyone” approach is especially compelling and timely given today’s climate of intolerance and discrimination towards Muslim women.
Cultural innovation is a relevant tool for businesses today and given that commerce and technology play an essential role in shaping the world, companies that deliver cultural innovations may have better chances of success in the technology and trade driven marketplace.
However, because traditional sources of cultural expression have been taken over by in large part mass media, the delivery of cultural innovations to consumers had become one-sided and biased until the advent of social networks.
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CHAPTER V: SOCIAL COMMERCE
Introduction
Social networks provide a unique territory where commerce and technology interconnect.
This makes it a powerful marketing tool due to the rise in the number of people who use social media, as it provides customers with a considerable amount of autonomy where cultural expression is concerned. It also allows businesses to uncover clusters of ideological opportunities from audiences online and presents them with the opportunity to deliver subsequent cultural innovations directly to their consumers and gain instant feedback.
Marshall McLuhan in his book, Understanding Media (1964) predicted the global village—the world becoming a single nervous system linked by electronic media. Because electronic media affords consumers equal access to information (Davis, 2012, p. 211), consumers are made aware of companies and their offerings through different outlets, and social network sites have become one of the most popular of said outlets. Social networks, in particular, allow for interactivity which provides two-way communication between companies and consumers. It applies mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms via which individuals and communities share, discuss, create, and modify user-generated content
(Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy & Silvestre, 2011).
Social media started as an entertainment tool and evolved into a powerful marketing tool all while serving its primary purpose of connecting people. It provides designers and marketers with access to large amounts of data, and it allows them to communicate directly with their audience without the need for intermediaries (Vagianos, 2017). 96% of respondents surveyed for this thesis have one or more social media accounts, this information is quite telling, and with the rise in the number of people who use social media, it is evident that companies are adjusting their
26 marketing and design strategies, and capitalizing on this development to target current and potential consumers. According to research done by Statista (2017), social media advertising budgets doubled worldwide increasing from $16 billion in 2014 to $31 billion in 2016 and social media spending in the US alone is expected to increase to $17.34 billion in 2019 (Fuller, 2017).
This chapter will cover topics such as Web 2.0, social media and the evolution of social commerce.
Understanding Web 2.0
The phrase Web 2.0 was first used in 2004, to refer to the second generation of internet tools and services that facilitate social relationships by linking people together over the internet.
It focuses heavily on user-generated content, online networking and collaboration, and social interactions interactively. These online social relationships are transforming group behaviors and their interactions with the power structures in corporations (Lai, Strauss & Turban, 2016). The social web is considered a platform for running social media and at its essence, it provides the tools people use to engage in social media activities. Web 2.0 is a platform where files and applications are saved on the web rather than on a user’s central processing unit (CPU), and web
2.0 activities rely heavily on participation.
The web is now a participatory domain used to harness collective intelligence and engage users through the creation of communities and the broadcasting of user-generated content
(Darwish & Lakhtaria, 2011). Web 2.0 technologies—blogs, wikis, social networks and so on— encourage a more active, participatory role for users. The web is no longer used for the singular purpose of receiving information from the governing bodies that be in the media, but instead, people have become empowered to create and share knowledge with others using Web 2.0
27 technologies. Nowadays, Web 2.0 technology has transformed the way people approach the
Internet, especially where specific technologies, such as media sharing sites, social networking and instant messaging are concerned. Before web 2.0 tools, websites offered one-way communications—from the website owner to an audience (Lai, Strauss & Turban, 2016), but web 2.0 tools disrupted this dynamic by making intercommunication on the web possible and streamlining the process of collaboration. It is therefore essential to understand the capabilities of these tools and how best to employ them.
Understanding Social Media
Social media builds on the technological and ideological foundations of web 2.0. It can be defined as online text, audio, image or video content created by people using various social network sites (Lai, Strauss & Turban, 2016) examples of which include Facebook, YouTube,
Twitter and so on. Social media is a powerful force for socialization, communication, and collaboration on a massive scale; it is a blend of technology, user-generated content and social interaction for the co-creation of value. There are three fundamental components of social media:
1. Media Components: These include text, audio, images, and video, they make up the
primary content on social networks.
2. Social Network Sites and Services: They provide a public sphere for consumers and
companies to interact with, find and share media, examples of this include YouTube and
Facebook. Media sharing networks for example, afford users the ability to upload text,
photos, videos, and audio to the internet, making content accessible and mobile from
anywhere in the world. Users can choose if they want to share their media publicly or
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privately. There are two main types of media sharing networks; video sharing and photo
sharing networks. Video sharing networks allow users to upload videos online and
interact with other users through commenting, sending private messages, liking or
disliking content and even subscribing to a channel. The most popular video sharing
network to date is YouTube which as of 2013 has had over one billion active monthly
users (Reuters, 2013). Many companies use sites such as YouTube as a way to generate
notoriety by creating viral videos and sponsoring famous content creators. Photo sharing
networks are similar to video sharing because they afford users the ability to upload
photos online and interact with other users through the same conventions; commenting,
private messages, liking or disliking uploads and so on. One of the most popular photo
sharing networks is Instagram which has over 800 million users as of April 2017
(Balakrishnan & Boorstin, 2017).
3. Social Media Activities: These are the actions that can be done using social media such as
creating and sharing content, creating profiles, joining groups and conversations.
Evolution of Social Commerce
It is essential to have a fundamental understanding of Web 2.0 and Social Media because they are the key drivers of social commerce. Social commerce is a combination of e- commerce—commercial transactions conducted electronically on the internet—and social media marketing—the process of marketing a product or service using social networking. Quite simply put, social commerce refers to e-commerce transactions facilitated by social media.
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Figure 10: Components of social commerce
The field of social commerce has grown quite rapidly in recent years; the top 500 retailers earned $3.3 billion from social commerce in 2014, up 26% from 2013, that is considerably more than the 16% growth rate for the overall e-commerce market in the US
(Smith, 2016). Social commerce has evolved in ways such that customers now can make a product purchase from a business within a social media platform and consumers are taking note of this; 64% of survey respondents said they had bought an item directly from a brand or sellers social media page. On Instagram for example, an individual can browse and compare products and then make the purchase directly within Instagram itself rather than going to the company’s site to make the purchase, 85% said they had considered buying something because they saw it on a social media page.
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A model for Social Commerce
The scope of social commerce is significantly vast however, this thesis filters through existing research and proposes three primary processes for practice that are related to the technological and cultural applications of social commerce; Acquaint, Attract and Assess:
Figure 11: A model for social commerce
Acquaint (getting to know the user)
Recommender Systems. As the World Wide Web keeps growing at an excessive speed, the volume and intricacy of many websites grow alongside it. For the users of these websites, finding the information they are searching for becomes more tedious. User interfaces could help consumers find the information that is within their interests by personalizing a website.
Recommender systems apply machine learning to provide personalized information by learning the consumers interests from traces of interaction with that consumer (Kordik, 2018).
User Modelling. For a recommender system to make predictions about a user’s interests, it has to learn from a user model or a user persona. A user persona is a fictional depiction of an ideal customer. A persona is usually based on user research and covers the needs, goals, and observed behavior patterns of a target audience. Instead of concentrating on large groups of
31 people, creating user personas helps tailor a brands message, products, services or promotions that are relevant to a person by making the scope of the target audience as specific as possible.
The process—called personalization—matches services, products, and marketing communication to individuals based on their preferences and this technology allows automated messages to be conveyed to target audiences. Personalization can be achieved by monitoring what customers are doing online via posts, retweets, reblogs, following habits and so on (Lai, Strauss & Turban,
2016). Identifying what social media platforms the target audience uses is essential when creating user personas. In doing this, the process of finding them and tailoring messages to them will become easier.
Information Filtering. Information filtering deals with the delivery of information that the user is most likely to find useful or interesting. An information filtering system filters the relevant data from a source and delivers only the relevant information. Information filtering systems must be personalized to accommodate the different interests of individual users.
Collaborative filtering also referred to as social filtering, is a form of information filtering; it filters information by using the recommendations created by other people. It is based on the notion that people who are in agreement with their assessment of certain items in the past are more likely to agree again in the future. In the real world, individuals are more likely to trust recommendations from friends with similar interests than recommendations from strangers but on the internet however, a high percentage of people trust online reviews as much as friends
(Bloem, 2017). Amazon.com’s “Frequently bought together…” or “customers who bought this item also bought…” is an example of information filtering in action.
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Attract (Engaging with the user)
Digital Word of Mouth/Viral Marketing. This is a cyclical process whereby individuals are encouraged to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the possibility for rapid growth in the message’s exposure and impact. This strategy takes advantage of accelerated multiplication to extend a message to thousands, and millions of people. Viral marketing is frequently referred to as "leveraging the media," and "creating a buzz" by the media. Web 2.0 tools and social media makes the spread of information easy and fast(Lai, Strauss & Turban,
2016).
An example of digital word of mouth/viral marketing is the Coca-Cola Share a coke campaign. The "Share a Coke" 2015 summer campaign was one of the most successful marketing campaigns in Coca-Cola's history. This marketing strategy swapped out the company's iconic logo on 20-ounce coke bottles for 250 of the most popular names in the United States
(Moye, 2018). Primarily, customers had the opportunity to purchase a generic name, such as
"Mark" printed on Coca-Cola bottles and were incentivized to share those bottles with friends and family. Also, consumers Were prompted to join and create online media content; customers could share their stories and encounters on Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #ShareaCoke.
Those who shared their stories were likely to have their photos featured across company billboards, on the company's website and the company's social media pages.
Coca-Cola was able to generate large amounts of social media content by specifically targeting consumers who use social media to share stories and images. The Coca-Cola company provided these consumers with full creative control and brand ownership, prompting people to feel like they were not being sold by the Coca-Cola Company online so much as they were starting and participating in their own social media conversations. For example, when a
33 consumer shares a name-branded Coke bottle with their friend, they feel as if they are honoring their friend rather than selling the Coke brand itself. This yielded multiplatform conversations on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Online conversations became organic, directed by consumers rather than the brand itself and this incorporated the Coca-Cola
Company into the homes of its consumers, essentially becoming part of their lifestyles.
The online effects of the campaign have been a massive success; more than 500,000 photos were shared using the #ShareaCoke hashtag. As of September 2017, consumers who were prompted to create virtual Coke bottles shared more than six million of these bottles, Coca-Cola also gained about 25 million extra Facebook followers as a result of the campaign (Windle,
2016). The brand resonated with consumers on a personal level because personalization is not just a fad, but it is in fact, a way of life for a large demographic of society. These consumers place a high value on self-expression, personal storytelling and creating and sustaining connections. The "Share a Coke" campaign provided the ability to do all of these things while simultaneously promoting the Coca-Cola brand.
Social Shopping. Social shopping is online shopping with social media tools and platforms. According to a study conducted by Adweek, the top 500 retailers brought in nearly
$6.5 billion from social shopping in 2017. Now more than ever, brands are employing social media as a platform for conducting sales. Roughly 25% of business owners are selling through
Facebook, and 40% are using social media as a whole to create sales (Alcántara, 2018). Not only does social media influence people's purchasing habits (77% of respondents surveyed for this thesis), a fully 64% of respondents surveyed said they had purchased an item directly from a brand or sellers social media page. It seems as though customers are eager for the social shopping experience. Social shopping is an inclusive term; there are several features and
34 functionalities that social networks offer which fall under that term. Every social media platform has adopted their strategy for executing social shopping features for brands to benefit from, and some have been more successful than others. Below are some of the most popular social commerce features being used across popular social media networks:
“Buy” Buttons:
One of the earliest and most popular ways to transform social media into a medium for
sales is the “buy now” button. One of these buttons can be found on most of the
prominent social networks including Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. The
“buy” button acts as a call-to-action on a brand’s social media posts, and it generally
connects users to the brand’s website to complete the sale although some social media
platforms are equipped with in-app purchase capabilities.
Shoppable Posts and Stories:
Shoppable posts and stories enable brands and users to tag specific items wherever they
are represented within posts and “stories.” This type of social shopping is somewhat new,
but with platforms like Snapchat and then Instagram and Facebook each launching their
version of the same feature, it has become quite popular in a short amount of time with
41% of brands trying it out on Instagram in particular. If an individual follows a brand on
any of the previously listed social networks, they are likely to have come across a prompt
telling them to "swipe up to learn more." This prompt usually isn't a blatant display of an
advertisement either in a post or story; products are merely tagged within a piece of
content. This feature allows brands to create a more seamless experience for their
customers because they do not have to interrupt their in-app activities. With Instagram’s
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version, brands can tag up to five products in a post, and when users click on the tags,
they can see additional information on the post such as price information and product
description. Shoppers are provided with a direct link to the brand's website where they
can finalize their purchase, and because of this, users are provided with a direct
marketing and shopping experience. With the increasing adoption of integrated marketing
communications, implementation of new marketing technologies and a constant focus by
brands on improving user experience, it is no surprise that shoppable posts have become
so popular despite being so new.
Social Commerce Plugins and Apps:
While the big social network sites are working towards finding the best ways to
implement social commerce capabilities for brands, some third parties launched their
plug-ins and apps to facilitate social shopping. An example of a third-party app is Soldsie
which operates with both Instagram and Facebook, and it allows users to make purchases
by merely commenting with the word "sold" after which the app does the grunt work,
emailing the user an invoice to complete payment and verify their order.
An example of social shopping is Air Jordan’s Snapchat shoppable Augmented Reality experience. During the NBA All-Star game activities in February 2018, Snapchat provided its users with early access to purchase the new Air Jordan III Tinker sneaker within the app and with same-day delivery. It centered on a life-size Michael Jordan augmented reality (AR)
Snapchat lens advertising the new, unreleased Air Jordan III Tinker sneakers, which went on sale within the app through a unique and exclusive QR code. Nike and its Jordan Brands subsidiary used the All-Star game sale to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Michael Jordan’s iconic dunk in
36 the 1988 NBA All-Star Dunk Contest in which he jumped from the free throw line to slam the ball into the basket (Alcántara, 2018). Snapchat users surrounding the Staples Center that Sunday in Los Angeles; where the NBA All-Star Game was happening, saw a 3-D AR lens of Jordan from 1988, taking off from the free-throw line during the slam dunk contest. Users could then walk around the lens to explore Jordan and tap to see him change into this year’s All-Star jersey along with the new Air Jordan III Tinkers.
Jordan Brands worked with Shopify Inc.— an e-commerce platform—to facilitate the transaction within the app, and logistics startup Darkstore handled shipping fulfillment. While the shoes did not go on sale to the general public until March 24, the sneakers sold out on
Snapchat in 23 minutes—Darkstore and Nike declined to share how many were sold—and the unique AR lens averaged more than 80 seconds of play time per user, compared with a national average play time of 15 to 20 seconds for sponsored lenses (Stambor, 2018). The campaign shows the potential for growth in the social shopping area of social commerce.
Ratings, Reviews, and Testimonials. A significant characteristic of social commerce is the influence that ratings and reviews have over customer decisions; they boost word of mouth and most importantly, they influence purchases (Lai, Strauss & Turban, 2016). Before making any purchases, consumers like to collect research such as what brand to buy, from which vendor and at what price range. They do this by reading product reviews on product review sites (like
CNet), vendor sites (eBay, Amazon, Groupon) and the company’s sites. A study conducted by
Inc. magazine (2017) showed that 91% of people read online reviews regularly, and 84% trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. 68% form an opinion after reading between one and six online reviews (Bloem, 2017). With peer-to-peer engagement through social
37 media, it is clear that customers voices can be a powerful marketing tool for generating sales and improving products. There are different models available for this purpose:
Expert Ratings and Reviews:
This is feedback from an independent voice of authority, either an actual professional or a
prosumer (professional consumer). These reviews can also be accessed through an e-
commerce page, a social network page or a product review site.
Sponsored Reviews:
These are paid-for reviews given by experts and influencers on social media platforms.
These reviews are often presented in video format.
Conversational Testimonials:
This is the comments section of any brands social media page. Monitoring the
conversations can yield rich data for market research, product improvement, and
customer service.
Assess (Measuring progress and impact)
Performance Metrics. A performance metric is a measure of an organization's performance on activities designed to meet specific objectives. Figure 12 displays four general social media measurement areas.
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Figure 12: Social media measurement areas (adapted from Turban, Strauss & Lai, 2015).
Awareness/Exposure Metrics. These metrics assume that if uses access a brands social media page or view their social media content, they will become aware of the brand and its offerings:
Unique Visitors:
This measures the number of visitors who access a site, application, video or other
social media content without repetition and within a specific period of time.
Page Views:
This refers to the single pages that are viewed on a social media site. For example,
one unique visitor can view many different pages on one website. The more pages
a user views, the more they are on the site learning about the brand.
Impression:
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These are the number of times an ad loads on the user screen. Impressions are not
based on any user actions; they are merely defined by a user possibly seeing the
advertisement.
Search Engine Rankings:
This evaluates where an organization web content appears in results of a search
engine query. A company will ideally want its links to appear in the first page of
search results when their brand name is entered into a search engine.
Number of Followers, Registrations or Subscribers:
The number of people who follow or subscribe to a social network page is also
used to measure awareness and exposure engagement.
Brand health Metrics. Companies need to measure the influence their communication has on consumers. Brand health refers to the amount of conversation a brand elicits and what proportion of the sentiments are positive or negative. Additionally, it measures the brand relevance to consumers and whether or not it translates into purchases:
Share of Voice (SOV):
This is the proportion of conversation about one-brand versus its competitors.
Social media SOV analyzes the share of social media advertising carried out by a
brand and the amount of user-generated content that relates to the brand; these
include shares, reposts, and mentions.
Sentiment:
Social sentiment is a process for measuring the emotions behind mentions on
social media. It notes the proportion of conversation about a brand that is positive,
negative or neutral. It is a method in whereby the tone of the conversation that is
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taking place—is the user happy, satisfied, annoyed, or disappointed?—can be
measured. Sentiment provides context to social media because data can be
misleading without sentiment. For example, if a company was releasing a new
product and it was receiving a substantial amount of buzz online, one might
automatically assume that the product has been well-received when in fact, that
may not be the case.
Engagement Metrics. These metrics illustrate how users are interacting with content.
There are several measures regarding engagement levels for brands to choose from; it depends on the specific content, promotion or other communication systems.:
Content Viewership:
This refers to the number of users that consume a piece of content, i.e. watching
videos, viewing at pictures, listening to podcasts, reading blogs, downloading
media and so on.
Applause Rate:
This the number of approval actions (likes and favorites) a post receives relative
to the total number of followers a brand has on a given social media platform.
When a follower likes or favorites a post, they acknowledge that it has a
personal/emotional value to them; this informs future communication decisions.
Followers:
These are the number of followers a brand has accumulated from their social
media community within a social media platform (e.g., Facebook, Twitter).
Number of shares:
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This refers to the number of times a brands content is shared with others on social
media.
Content Creation:
This is the number of users who upload user-generated content resulting from
reviews, word of mouth, comments, and so on.
Conversion rate:
This refers to the number of users against a page's total number of visitors that
take action on the page (e.g., click the follow button, subscribe to a channel) after
clicking on a link in a post. A high conversion rate means that the content is
relevant and compelling to the user.
Click Through Rate (CTR):
This refers to how often users click on the call-to-action link in a post. Not to be
mixed with other engagement actions (e.g., likes, comments, shares), the CTR is
explicitly tied to a link that takes the audience to additional content. Tracking
CTR, frequently and accurately, will give valuable insight into what offerings are
compelling to a user.
Innovation Metrics. These metrics help businesses understand how their social media communications drive customers to interact online (comments, reviews) in ways that help the business improve its offerings. Innovation is a high level of brand engagement and improves customer loyalty because it tells the customers that the brand knows what they need, and they are listening to them.
Trend Spotting:
Trend spotting helps brands to understand what is popular in their target market
42 by anticipating what customers need before they know it themselves. Websites like TrendSpotter and Springwise are sources for trend spotting.
Revenue Growth from New Products:
This is the increase (or decrease) in a company’s sales within a new product release cycle. It illustrates the increases and decreases in revenue over time by identifying trends in the business.
Idea Management:
Idea management is the controlled process of generating ideas. It facilitates the movement from idea generation to idea implementation.
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CHAPTER VI: INNOVATIVE COMMERCE: A NEW MODEL
Introduction
Figure 13: A Model of Innovative Commerce
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Chapters II-IV set up a basic understanding of brand relevance, cultural innovation, and social commerce. The intersection of these concepts result in a model for innovative commerce
(Figure 13). Innovative commerce was created by the author as a design and marketing strategy approach. It provides an understanding how to create culturally resonant brands and market them on social media; it is a synthesis of all the information collected over the course or this thesis.
There are two subsets of innovative commerce (Fig 13):
1. Create and Build this section denotes the process of designing an innovative cultural
expression; identifying the cultural conventions, locating the disconnect, adjusting
existing material and creating a new design. All previously discussed in chapter III.
2. Market and Sell conveys the three processes of social commerce; attain, attract and
assess discussed earlier in chapter IV.
As an evaluative method, this research examines five brands (Fashion Nova, Fenty
Beauty, Away and Dollar Shave Club) from different industries (apparel, makeup, luggage, and grooming) using the proposed innovative commerce model. These brands are exemplifications of innovative commerce in practice and their varying industries illustrate how innovative commerce can be used as a universal strategy for brand design and implementation. The aforementioned brands are analyzed in an effort to examine the validity of the model of innovative commerce designed by the author.
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Brand Analysis: Fashion Nova
Fashion Nova is an apparel, accessories and beauty business that opened their first store in 2006 at the Panorama Mall in Panorama City, California. In the following years, CEO Richard
Saghian started to notice something; websites that sold the same products as his store were moving more merchandise than he was at higher price points. He began to consider creating an e-commerce site but he needed to find a way to direct people to it, Saghian decided to utilize
Instagram and started posting pictures of his best-selling pieces on models (Hargrove, 2018).
Many of his Fashion Nova store shoppers were already tagging pictures of themselves on
Instagram wearing the clothes before he started to work with them directly by giving them free products in exchange for online promotion. Here we have a brand that has created a movement by engaging thousands of fashion enthusiasts through the use of Instagram; Instagram is perfect for fashion houses, companies and brands that have products that are inherently visual so it makes sense that a fashion brand can be created, can develop, and then flourish on the platform.
Fashion Nova is now seen as the most popular fashion retailer on Instagram and it has taken them approximately three years, the manner in which they has become a recognizable, trusted brand is quite intriguing.
Create & Build
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Figure 13.1: A Model of Innovative Commerce; create and build
“We at Fashion Nova believe the customer is the Star. The girls who rock our styles are
adventurous, inspirational and badass. A Nova Star is always the best-dressed girl in the
room. Her confidence is what truly shines, but her Fashion Nova outfit adds that extra
sparkle. We strive to provide awesome service, unbeatable prices, and the hottest trends.”
—Fashionnova.com
Fashion Nova realized that a specific demographic of women were scouring through their social media feeds all day and were consuming images of celebrity fashion, so they tapped into that aspirational aspect of the human psyche. Regular everyday women wanted contemporary celebrity fashion but did not have the trendy celebrity fashion budget, and this was their ideological opportunity. Fashion Nova built upon the concept of “copying the good stuff,” this means that they see the latest fashions and what celebrities are wearing on social media and then they produce their versions. Their versions are significantly cheaper—$60 or less—and are inspired by the celebrity culture (Appendix B).
Fashion Nova states that they turned fast fashion into ultra-fast fashion. Their design team works with over 1,000 manufacturers on their products, and over the summer months, 80% of the clothes are produced in Los Angeles, and during the colder months, 80% are made overseas (Hughes, 2018). Fashion Nova’s CEO expresses that he eventually wants Fashion Nova to become a one-stop-shop for his #NovaBabes. Fashion Nova launched Fashion Nova Curve—a plus-size assortment—in 2017, and Fashion Nova Men in 2018 because fashion Nova had become so popular that they began to explore more ideological opportunities that no one else was outside their core market category as well.
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Market & Sell
Figure 13.2: A Model of Innovative Commerce; market and sell
Fashion Nova’s business model and its product is not unique—there are quite a few U.K.- based retailers such as Boohoo and Pretty Little Thing that operate in the same space. However, the brand is differentiated from its competitors by speaking directly to an urban demographic that has not always been prioritized by brands and retailers but has a resounding and influential reach on social media. Take for example Cardi B–an American rapper—who was “Instagram famous” in the urban Instagram community, before she became famous in mainstream culture for her hit records, no brand apart from Fashion Nova accepted her requests or reached out to her for promotion because she wasn’t an appropriate representation of the types of audience they
48 wanted. She frequently posts photos and videos about her Fashion Nova clothes, and this increased the brand’s reach to her fans.
Fashion Nova launched an all-out attack on Instagram, hundreds of photos are shared per week, and a crucial part of their saturation of Instagram feeds across the country lies in the network of over 3,000 social media influencers— an accumulation of fashion and lifestyle bloggers with thousands and millions of followers each— they have amassed. These influencers are paid; with the lower profile influencers being paid as little as $500 for the endorsements and mentions, and sometimes just even with gifts like the clothing itself, and higher profile influencers like Cardi-B being paid as much as one million dollars a post (Hargrove, 2018).
Fashion Nova is asking for shares while putting the right people in front of their audience, and by doing this, they have tapped into the hearts and minds of millions of women who want to wear what celebrities wear.
Fashion Nova exerts their energy on Instagram by posting approximately every 30 minutes throughout the day and talking to their customers in a language that’s relatable and familial; they sign off on customer service inquiries on Instagram with heart emojis and their customer service emails with a “love and light” salutation. They have honed in on their customers’ need to be seen, heard and validated; when customers tag pictures of themselves wearing their Fashion Nova outfits on Instagram, sometimes, Fashion Nova likes and comments on each post and reposts the image on their account.
Fashion Nova is steadily growing followers on Instagram every month with a total of
13.4 million followers—they are experiencing 10% growth in followers every month (Miranda,
2017), and its Fashion Nova Curve page—started in 2017—has more than 2 million followers and its Fashion Nova Men page—started in 2018—has over 900,000 followers. The company
49 grew by 600% in 2017, and fashionnova.com generated between US$300m - US$400m in net sales (ecommercedb.com). According to Google, Fashion Nova was the fourth most searched fashion brand in 2017 with Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Supreme, and Chanel being first, second and third consecutively (Nembhard, 2017). Fashion Nova did this without a runway show, placements in magazines, traditional marketing campaigns they were able to do this just by understanding and engaging their customers on social media.
Brand Analysis: Fenty Beauty
Fenty Beauty was Launched in September of 2017 by singer and businesswoman
Rihanna. When the line was launched, the much anticipated makeup collection sold out almost immediately online and in Sephora stores. The launch of this brand propelled the dialogue of diversity in makeup to the spotlight. It has influenced positive, inclusive branding in the makeup industry but no other makeup brand has matched up to the impact that Fenty beauty had on the beauty industry. The brand launched with an unprecedented 40 different foundation shades
(Appendix B) and a campaign featuring models of differing sizes and ethnicities (medium.com).
Rihanna’s celebrity is definitely a contributing factor to the brands meteoric rise but this could have been a risky endeavor because the beauty industry is saturated with competition with little ground for new players however, Fenty Beauty’s cultural impact is clear causing huge buzz online and in stores every time there's a new drop, and even prompting rival beauty companies to improve their strategy in terms of offering more diverse ranges of shades. Fenty Beauty has all the components to guarantee its success: beautiful packaging, great products, a universal message of inclusivity.
50
Create & Build
“Makeup is there for you to have fun with. It should never feel like pressure. It should
never feel like a uniform. Feel free to take chances, and take risks, and dare to do
something new or different.”
—Rihanna (Fentybeauty.com)
Fenty Beauty noticed an ideological opportunity; women of color were not appropriately considered in the beauty industry. Mainstream brands would release makeup that made it seem like people of color were just an afterthought. After noticing this void in the industry, Fenty
Beauty addressed this by creating makeup formulas that work for all skin types especially traditionally hard-to-match skin tones. They recognized that a message of diversity and inclusivity was essential and that not all skin colors have the same pigmentation or undertones— which is why makeup for people of color has to be formulated with a great deal of consideration.
Because they took inclusivity into account when the products were being made, Fenty garnered a vast, loyal audience. Fenty does not feel like a predatory advertiser; instead, it feels authentic and sincere—like a friend. Its social media team often uses colloquialisms and slang and does not shy away from inappropriate language. Fenty is pushing boundaries and tapping into something uniquely progressive and new, because of their seemingly pure intentions and distinctly positive message, they have been presented as a solution to fill a void in the beauty industry and as a champion for women who feel belittled in the makeup community.
51
Market & Sell
Fenty’s tone on social media is funny and transparent. They post content almost solely on
Fenty-focused accounts, and they post both promotional content and user-generated content
(photos and videos of customers wearing their products). Everyone featured on any Fenty social media page is not just cut from the same mold, they come from different backgrounds and experiences. Fenty also utilizes Instagram's new shoppable post feature which allows customers to shop for products in pictures and on models from directly within the app.
Part of Fenty’s sudden rise can be attributed to the reach they received from digital word- of-mouth. Fans and beauty influencers were excited to give their first impressions of the products, in fact, there were over 50,000 posts created about the brand across different social media platforms in just one month—about 132 million people watched Fenty Beauty tutorials in
September alone (medium.com). The Fenty Beauty Instagram account began its regular activity on September 1st 2017, and it has garnered over 5 million followers. Before Fenty’s product launch, their follower count was holding steady at 100,000 until after the initial product launch, and in a single day, the account added over 600,000 followers.
According to a Vogue profile, Fenty Beauty was one of Time Magazine's best inventions of 2017 (Mandell, 2017) the beauty brand pulled in a reported $100 million in sales in its first 40 days. This is the result Fenty got get by combining one of the biggest stars on the planet and an innovative idea, with use world’s top visual marketing channel (Instagram) as a catalyst.
52
Brand Analysis: Away Luggage
Away luggage was co-founded by Warby Parker alums Jen Rubio and Steph Korey in
2015. Having sold over half a million suitcases, in three years they have become the most popular brand in the $630 million smart luggage market. According to research conducted by
Technavio, the company grew by 500% between 2016 and 2017 (Klara, 2018).
“Nobody we knew really loved their luggage, that seemed strange to us. There wasn’t a
brand that really spoke to consumers, or that they felt loyal toward.”
—Jen Rubio (Kludt, 2018)
They filled a gap in the $32 billion luggage business with a direct-to-consumer online social brand that their target demographic—millennial consumers—would embrace. They raised
$2.5 million in seed funding from investors and spent a year creating Away, with Korey serving as CEO and Rubio as president and chief brand officer (Segran, 2018). Away has leveraged
Instagram as an essential avenue to tell their story and get their point of view across, which made their efforts for reaching their target audience. Away built momentum through teaser images on
Instagram before their product launched. When their suitcases were eventually released, they exceeded expectations and received much praise from the press.
Create and build
Frequent travelers are burdened with the possibility of low battery on their electronic devices; phones, tablets, and computers die, leaving travelers scrambling for charging stations and outlets to recharge their devices. Jen Rubio told a story of how she was inspired to start
53
Away when her flimsy suitcase burst open in the middle of the Zurich airport, dumping all her personal belongings to the floor. This was a formative event, and as Rubio shopped around for a replacement bag, she discovered a massive disconnect in the luggage market itself. There was the high end-good quality end of the spectrum (with bags costing as much as $970) and the lower end-average quality end of the spectrum (with bags costing as low as $49) with little room for any offering in between (Klara, 2018). An individual could either spend $1000 for an indestructible high-quality suitcase or buy a $60 low-quality suitcase with a short lifespan—there was not an affordable and durable option in-between.
Away noticed that the luggage market was very fragmented with little to no brand loyalty. This was their ideological opportunity, Away’s set out to offer “first class, direct-to- consumer luggage at coach prices” (Awaytravel.com). This lead to the design of their first product—a hard-shell carry-on suitcase with a built-in battery for charging devices, TSA- approved locks, and other features (Appendix B).
Market and sell
Away is most active on Instagram (with over 200,00 followers), their page contains promotional and user-generated photos and videos of the brand’s luggage, which ranges in price from $225 to $300. Followers and customers are encouraged to tag Away in their social media posts because the brand shares them they have embedded a behavior of sharing with their community (Enright, 2016).
Influencers and brand deals play a significant role in Away's digital word of mouth. They host social media contests and giveaways for their followers; offering limited edition suitcases as
54 prizes. In 2017 Away partnered with "Despicable Me 3" to create a limited-edition yellow minion suitcase which sent fans into a frenzy.
In 2017, Away announced the release of their new limited edition white luggage in their
Instagram Stories by letting artists paint, draw and doodle their creations on the bags. Without overtly asking customers to do so, this encouraged them to share their creations across social media. Away has been able to build an audience with legions of loyal followers and closed 2017 with sales exceeding $10 million, most of them online. Away used the internet to disrupt and rewrite a product category by shunning traditional retail methods (Enright, 2016).
Brand Analysis: Dollar Shave Club
Dollar Shave Club (DSC) was founded in 2011 by Mark Levine and Michael Dubin. At its heart, DSC is a male-centric brand with a simple value proposition; providing high-quality razors at a low price. The founders noticed that name brand razors and shaving products (like
Gillette) sold in drug and retail stores were expensive, and they exploited this ideological opportunity; DSC offers inexpensive razors and shaving products which are delivered to the customer's door for as little as three dollars a month. They created an affordable solution to a relatable problem shared by men and women, by selling an item that people want and need in a market that had not seen much innovation in decades.
DSC is a brand with a distinct culture, humor, and style and without social media and the marketing and communication the company has used on it, no one would know about them. In
2012, they released a hilarious launch video entitled ‘Our blades are f***ing great’ on YouTube which resonated with the public and sold an otherwise ordinary product to an audience of millions. They built on the success of that video and started a razor revolution and were
55 eventually bought by Unilever—producers of Dove, Axe, and dozens of other brands—for $1
Billion (Sukhraj, 2016). The entire company benefited considerably from social commerce to grow their brand to what they are today.
Create and Build
DSC’s vision was simple, to create a complete line of men’s grooming products that can survive in a world where everything is readily available at the click of a button. They provided value to their customers by building a playful and stylish brand. By joining the club, customers are not only signing up for low-cost razors and blades, but they are also investing in the monthly
“delight” that comes along with it. DSC provides their customers with a beautifully branded box, a playful welcome note, shaving products, free samples, and “The Bathroom Minutes,” DSC's monthly lifestyle newsletter which includes a note from the chairman, member spotlights, monthly quotes, trivia, and club news (Appendix B). Their brands' offerings are inexpensive and straightforward, but much like their launch video, they created an innovative cultural expression by taking an ordinary product and transforming it to a remarkable experience for the customer.
Market and Sell
DSC began on YouTube, and this helped them bust into the scene; within the first 48 hours of their video going live, the company generated 12,000 new customers (Naziri, 2013).
Today, that video has been viewed over 23 million times, and DSC has grown to 1.1 million subscribers. While viral marketing is their most effective tool, DSC has made great use of social media to engage with their customers and audience for example, when members share a photo of
56 their monthly box on Instagram or their Facebook page, the brand reposts their favorites, and then rewards that member with a free t-shirt.
Additionally, DSC makes it a priority to answer questions that consumers pose in their comments section or posted individually. The company posts great content on their social channels, for example, their Father’s Day video they created for Facebook. The video illustrates that regular Father’s Day gifts are awful, and then proposes a solution in the form of a Dollar
Shave Club box, complete with angelic hymns from on high upon opening (Naziri, 2013). This video does a great job of subtly, yet powerfully, suggesting their product as a gift for dad, and it was met with a positive reception the video has over 70,000 views.
DSC was born of video marketing, and their strategy was clear from the start; they needed to make themselves relevant in order to captivate their consumers and to achieve this, they took a boring product (razors) and made it entertaining by creating a video that went viral on social media. Their first video was the entire catalyst for the company, and its authenticity is part of what made it a success.
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CHAPTER VII: EVALUATION & INSIGHTS
Introduction
The brand analysis case studies serve as a purpose for validating the model and its potential for real-world applications, although the case studies validate the model, the brands analyzed have already been created and their success established. To get grassroot level opinions, the next step of evaluation involved presenting the model to everyday people who had no knowledge of the subject, and garnering their opinions.
Insights Gained From User Testing
A large-format poster (Appendix C) was presented to individuals of professional and academic backgrounds They had no prior knowledge of the subject, and they were given a brief explanation of this research after which they were all asked the same question “what do you make of this?” Their insights were intended to provide responses and attitudes regarding practical application methods for Innovative Commerce.
Initially, when some individuals were presented with the poster (Appendix C), they were confused by the terminology because they were unfamiliar with the topic of discussion. This prompted a revision in which a glossary was included for reference. This addition was positively received with one individual saying they were “inclined to use it.”
Some individuals viewed the model as a portable concept, meaning they felt that they did not have to use the model in its entirety. They could break it up into sections by using whatever portion is relevant to them. The addition of the glossary to the poster (Appendix C) presented too much information, and this was overwhelming to some individuals, which prompted the researcher to create a modified layout (Figure 13) with a separate glossary (Appendix C). The is
58 because separating both elements provides the information in a digestible and less intimidating format.
This model is not intended to be absolute, rather it is intended as a starting point for further action—research, design and implementation—for young entrepreneurs or anyone who cares enough about the subject. A lot of the feedback gained from user testing said different manners of the same thing; innovative commerce gave a face to the process of designing a relevant product or service and engaging in social commerce activities seem less daunting.
59
CHAPTER VIII: IMPLICATIONS & CONCLUSIONS
Brands become relevant by connecting to their customers on emotional and functional levels which is why the need for cultural innovation is apparent. A cultural innovation is an
“innovative cultural expression,” and cultural expressions are the conventions that help us understand the world; they are made up of ideology, myth and cultural codes. Cultural innovation proposes four principles for practice. First, by identifying cultural conventions when the need for innovations are created by red oceans—spaces where there is a great deal of overlap across the proposed value that is offered to consumers. Second, by locating social disruptions— noticeable changes in society—significant enough to destabilize established cultural conventions and create room for ideological opportunities— detailed discoveries on how the social disruption is changing the world. Third by remodeling source material through identifying existing ideologies, myths and cultural codes that are accepted by consumers, and deciding how best to express them through a cultural design. And fourth, by creating a cultural design through transforming source material into a compelling artifact.
Social media presents customers with a simple tool for expressing user satisfaction, and because of its very nature, it is a domain where content goes viral. Digital word of mouth facilitates this process through audience building and increased user engagement. With social commerce, businesses aim to sell and promote products and services while simultaneously building strong relationships with their current and prospective customers. Brands can deepen trust and loyalty in their relationships with their consumers with this opportunity for engagement.
Social commerce can result in the consistent growth of a brands reach because thousands of new users join social media sites every day. By regularly showing up in a user’s update feed, brands are presented with a significant marketing advantage; A user that has frequent and
60 meaningful contact with a brand is more likely to share and recommend that brand. Users are encouraged to connect with businesses through two-way communication, and this allows them to use social media as a customer service outlet where problems can be addressed and solved in real time.
Some social media platforms allow for performance measurement, and evaluation—
Instagram business accounts, Facebook pages, and tweets on Twitter have built-in metrics for impressions, engagements and reach, additionally, social media posts make it easy to measure traffic to a company's website. Research proves that social commerce is making a significant impact on the business world, however, although it presents companies several opportunities, its implementation may also involve some potential risks such as the possibility of fraud and the truthfulness of user-generated content. Companies also risk the loss of control over their brand images and their reputation in social media conversations and product review sites (Lai, Strauss
& Turban, 2016).
The knowledge presented in this research is relevant as it proposes value to brands and consumers alike. The author realizes that the word “innovation” has positive connotations but the term ‘innovative commerce’ could contrarily, manifest as an exploitation of cultural expressions and consumer attitudes. Although this model was not created as a tool for cultural exploitation, it can certainly be used to do so, especially in situations whereby brands view their consumer base as resources to plunder, rather than people for them to service (Gustafsson, 2005). Alternatively, this model could just as likely function as an educational tool to demonstrate how companies could conceivably exploit their consumers, by appropriating cultural expressions.
The example of the Fenty Beauty brand (chapter V) which seemed to touch on all the benchmarks of innovative commerce provides a unique opportunity to gain insight into the
61 design of a seemingly successful cultural innovation. Consumers will be unable to discern the true intentions of Fenty—creating consumer value for a neglected subculture of women of color, or exploiting a social disruption for the sole purpose economic profit. It could be for one, or both of those reasons, and this model provides insight into the process of creating such a cultural innovation.
The main reason for this thesis was to gain a better understanding on how to create culturally resonant brands and market them on social media at its core, this thesis is about utilizing design thinking and design strategy in the formulation and implementation of brands and their offerings through innovative commerce. Brands become relevant by presenting their customers with innovative cultural expressions that elicit sentiments that emphasize that innovation in the mind of their customers. There is no singular way to go about this process as the field of social commerce is vast, innovative commerce however, presents a starting point by compiling relevant concepts into a model for reference. Innovative commerce provides practical instructions on how to “do” innovations and how a brand can implement a design strategy which fosters such innovations for social commerce.
62
APPENDICES
63
APPENDIX A
Selected electronic survey results
64
65
66
67
APPENDIX B
Innovative commerce brand analyses
68
left: fashion Nova model in “twenty fun satin dress” $59.99, right: Kylie Jenner in a Peter Dundas mini dress $2,000+ (Instagram.com/fashionnova)
69
Fenty beauty’s foundation shade range (Glamour.com)
Away’s carry-on luggage (Awaytravel.com)
Dollar shave club box (Thembsgroup.co.uk)
70
APPENDIX C
Innovative commerce
(Large format poster)
71
Innovative commerce large poster format
72
Innovative commerce (glossary terms)
73
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