Social media and customer dialog management at Starbucks

MIS Quarterly Executive

Volumn 9, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 197-212

  Gallaugher, John ^a   Ransbotham, Sam ^b  

^a BOSTON COLLEGE   (United States)

^b BOSTON COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79956069359     PISSN: 15401960     EISSN: 15401979     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. Ann Majchrzak and Blake Ives are the accepting Senior Editors for this article
2. The authors wish to thank Chris Bruzzo, Vice President of Brand, Content and Online at Starbucks, and Alexandra Wheeler, Director of Digital Strategy at Starbucks, for their time and insights. Any errors are entirely the responsibility of the authors.
3. What Americans Do Online: Social Media and Games Dominate Activity, Nielsen Corp., Aug. 2, 2010.
4. For an early discussion on the growing importance of customer opinions, see Dye, R. "The Buzz on Buzz," Harvard Business Review, Nov-Dec 2000, pp. 139-146.
5. Examples of how social media have positively and negatively influenced firms is provided in Qualman, E. Socialnomics, Wiley, 2009.
6. Goodman, P., Fichman, M., Lerch, F., and Snyder, P. "Customer-Firm Relationships, Involvement, and Customer Satisfaction," Academy of Management Journal (38:5), 1995, pp. 1310-1324.
7. Mahajan, V., Muller, E., and Kerin, R. "Introduction Strategy for New Products with Positive and Negative Word-of-Mouth," Management Science (30:12), 1984, pp. 1389-1404.
8. ENGAGEMENTdb Report, Altimeter Group and WetPaint, July 2009, available at http://www.engagementdb.com/Report, which ranks the Top 100 of BusinessWeek's Best Global Brands according to breadth and depth of social media engagement.
9. Based on the 2009 Social Media Index Ranking in Brandau, M. "Social Media's Top Restaurant Players," Restaurant News, July 8, 2009.
10. Cost and impact dictates that large firms are almost exclusively the targets of negative mass-media campaigns. Examples include critical ads placed in USA Today by the activist organization Greenpeace targeting Monsanto, and the book Fast Food Nation and the film "Supersize Me" criticizing McDonald's.
11. Ryu, G. and Feick, L. "A Penny for Your Thoughts: Referral Reward Programs and Referral Likelihood," Journal of Marketing (7:11), 2007, pp. 84-94.
12. For a general discussion of the changes due to social media, see Kane, G., Fichman, R., Gallaugher, J., and Glaser, J. "Community Relations 2.0," Harvard Business Review, November 2009.
13. Shirky, C. "How Social Media Can Make History," conference presentation delivered at TED@State, June 2009. Available at http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html.
14. Kumar, V. J., Petersen, A., and Leone, R. "How Valuable Is Word of Mouth?" Harvard Business Review, October 2007.
15. For examples, see Dellarocas, C. "The Digitization of Word of Mouth: Promise and Challenges of Online Feedback Mechanisms," Management Science (49:10), 2003, pp. 1407-1424.
16. Godes, D. and Mayzlin, D. "Using Online Conversations to Study Word-of-Mouth," Marketing Science (23: 4), 2004, pp. 545-560.
17. Neff, J. "Nielsen: Facebook's Ads Work Pretty Well," Advertising Age, April 19, 2010.
18. For examples and a discussion of reliance on user reviews, see Mudambi, S. and Schuff, D. "What Makes a Helpful Online Review? A Study of Customer Reviews on Amazon," MIS Quarterly (34:1), 2010, pp. 185-200.
19. CRM and Social Media: Maximizing Deeper Customer Relationships, Avanade Whitepaper, 2008, available at http://www.avanadeadvisor.com/CRMsocialmedia/docs/Coleman%20Parkes%20Research%20Findings%20Summary_final.pdf.
20. Starbucks is one of only six U.S. firms to be ranked by four prominent corporate social responsibility rankings: The 2010 Global 100 by Corporate Knights; The Ethisphere Institute's 2009 Most Ethical Companies; CRO's Best Corporate Citizens, 2009; and Newsweek's 2009 Green Rankings.
21. Many activists have exploited film as a protest medium. See the YouTube-posted short "What Do Starbucks and Wal-Mart Have in Common?" and the motion picture "Black Gold.".
22. A customer-focused online community for developing ideas
23. The Starbucks Digital Network will give Starbucks customers free access to a collection of premium digital content accessed through one-click Wi-Fi in Starbucks stores (see http://news.starbucks.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=423).
24. A location-based social networking website
25. Starbucks' title for its coffee house employees
26. Parfeni, L. "Starbucks' Twitter Campaign Hijacked," Softpedia, May 25, 2009.
27. An image and video hosting website
28. http://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/learn-more/goals-and-progress.
29. For a criticism of MyStarbucks Idea, see the blog post "Has Social Media Failed Starbucks?" at http://marketinggimbal.typepad.com/marketinggimbal/2009/03/has-online-social-media-failed-starbucks.html; includes responses from Starbucks' social media manager, Matthew Guiste.
30. Van Grove, J. "Starbucks Used Social Media to Get One Million to Stores in One Day," Mashable, June 8, 2010.
31. See Graco's Relationship-Based Approach to Community Building, Case Study, Word of Mouth Marketing Association, 2007
32. Jarvis, J. "Dell Learns to Listen," BusinessWeek, Oct. 17, 2007.
33. Acohido, B. "Dell Sells $6.5 Million via Twitter," US Today, Dec. 8, 2009, available at http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2009/12/620003151/1.
34. Wasserman, T. "Is Twitter the Next Second Life?," BrandWeek, Feb. 7, 2010.
35. Embarrassing incidents include a video posted by Domino's line workers, fawning praise posts pseudonymously made by the CEO of Whole Foods, and the firing of Virgin Atlantic employees for creating an online forum disparaging customers
36. Li, C. and Bernoff, J. Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, Harvard Business School Press, 2008.
37. For an early report of this critical success factor, see Davenport, T. "Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System," Harvard Business Review, July-August 1998, pp. 121-131.