FROM USERS' MOTIVATIONS TO BRANDING: THE CASE OF
SOCIAL NETWORKS
Andrei Andreia Gabriela,
Ph.D. student, F.E.A.A., University “Al. I. Cuza”, Iasi, Romania,
andrei.andreia@gmail.com
Iosub Daniela
Ph.D. student, F.E.A.A., University “Al. I. Cuza”, Iasi, Romania, dana.iosub@gmail.com
Iacob Amalasunta
Ph.D. student, F.E.A.A., University “Al. I. Cuza”, Iasi, Romania,
semproniaro_2004@yahoo.com
Abstract
The social networking phenomenon is one of the most interesting topics when considering new
media as an important medium for brands interactions with consumers.
This paper applies branding and Economics of Long Tail theories in an effort to investigate the
predictive power of consumers' motivations in achieving customer integration in the brand
building process. We find out that brands can tailor their strategies to achieve effectiveness
offering what motivates consumers most - namely being treated as individuals not as masses,
buying rare or custom items at mass products' price - if they adopt a social media strategy
adapted to user's motivations for online social networking. Implications in terms of branding
within the context of social networks are also discussed.
Keywords: branding in social networks, brand leadership, branding in the long tail economy, brand
management tailoring long tail economics, from social networking motivations to branding
1. Web 2.0 leads to humanization and Economics of Long Tale
As KPMG International outlined in 2009, the first digital decade - 1994-2003 was
characterized by technological innovation and mass adoption of mobile telephony,
computers and Internet , revealing the digital space and a new dimension of functionality for
both businesses and consumers. The second digital decade - 2004-2013 came up with new
and personal ways of connecting - consumers between them, consumers with businesses
etc. - humanizing technology and shifting the focus from functional innovation to
connections and personalization.
The shift from innovation to humanization has lead to new Web 2.0 business models that
feature both attractive and disruptive characteristics: low cost of entry; massive reach;
ability to target niche customers; ability to have meaningful interaction between
participants; attractive demographics; threat of replacing existing physical goods and
services (e.g., CDs, newspapers); economics of Long Tail [1].
2. The paradigm shift
It is known that marketing is experiencing a profound paradigm shift. In the old paradigm,
marketers controlled the conversation with consumers through commissionable media –
television, radio, newspapers and magazines while in the new paradigm marketers can only
join and benefit from the online ongoing conversations about their brands. Proliferation of
Internet-based communication channels and social media like blogs, podcasts, online video
and social networks give voice to millions of consumer opinions. While mainstream media
continues to play a vital role in disseminating mass and general information, these social
channels are major levers of influence through online conversations, giving rise to a new
style of marketing that is characterized by conversation and community [2]. The fact is the
failure of marketer’s control in the conversation and increasing the importance of word of
mouth, referrals and social marketing. It is a totally new, decentralized information flow that
brand communication must cope with.
But it is not just that. The paradigm shift is going beyond communication strategy. The shift
is coming with new business models where the 4 P's – product, price, placement, promotion
- become more and more customer centered and influenced by the Long Tail. Suppliers can
use unlimited capabilities due to infinite storage and demands that were unable to be met
prior to the Long Tail become realized. Long tail businesses can treat customers like
individuals using their active contribution in the product innovation process. Lower prices,
unpopular and niche products along with personalized taste satisfying become economically
viable to offer. So, it is not only about experiencing a paradigm shift in product promotion
and communication strategy; it is about a much profound paradigm shift comprising the
entire business approach and brand management.
3. The Long Tail phenomenon
In 2004 C. Anderson has coined the term “The Long Tail” to describe the phenomenon that
niche products make up a large share of total sales. Describing the effects of the Long Tail
C. Anderson argued that products with a low sales volume can collectively make up a
market share that rivals the best-sellers if the distribution channel is large enough. But the
distribution and sales channel opportunities created by the Internet often allow such a large
product placement. Amazon's book sales was used as example for showing that the total
volume of low popularity items exceeds the volume of high popularity items. A large
proportion of Amazon's book sales come from obscure books that were not available in
brick-and-mortar stores. [3]
Some of the most successful Internet businesses – like Amazon (retail), eBay (auctions),
iTunes Store (music and podcasts) and Google (web search) have leveraged the Long Tail
as part of their businesses because it is economically viable to sell unpopular products where
inventory storage and distribution costs are insignificant.
3.1. Lower prices and diverse, niche products offering where long tail works.
When storage and distribution costs were high, only popular products were generally
offered. Since Long Tail works a wide range of products become available with a large
enough array of choices for satisfying minority tastes. The Long Tail encourage product
diversification and niche category offering. As C. Anderson said, “this is the difference
between push and pull, between broadcast and personalized taste. Long Tail business can
treat consumers as individuals, offering mass customization as an alternative to mass-
market fare. They make everything available, pull customers down the tail with lower prices
and help customers to explore and find out what they need” [3].
Brynjolfsson et. all showed that, while most of the discussion about the value of the Internet
to consumers has revolved around lower prices, consumer benefit from access to increased
product variety in online book stores is ten times larger than their benefit from access to
lower prices online. They showed that the primary value of the Internet to consumers comes
from releasing new sources of value by providing access to products in the Long Tail [4].
3.2. Shift from best-sellers ( Pareto's 80/20) to niche products
Many markets have traditionally been dominated by a few best-selling products. Pareto
Principle describes sales concentration in 80/20 rule - a small proportion of products (20% )
in a market generates a large proportion of sales (80% ). In 2006 Brynjolfsson, Hu and
Simester found that the Internet markets shifted the balance of power from a few bestselling products to niche products that were previously obscure. On the demand side, tools
such as search engines, recommendation software, and sampling tools are allowing
customers to find products outside their geographic area. The authors discussed also about
the amplified effect of Long Tail, including the growth of markets serving smaller niches.
By lowering search costs Internet markets increase the collective share of hard-to-find
products, thereby creating a longer tail in the distribution of sales. By analysing data
collected from a multi-channel retailing company, Brynjolfsson et. all showed empirical
evidence that the 80/20 rule needs to be modified to a 72/28 rule in order to fit the
distribution of product sales in the Internet channel. As companies invest in ever-more
sophisticated information technologies that allow consumers to actively and passively
discover products that they otherwise would not have considered, and as consumers gain
more experience using these IT-enabled tools, Brynjolfsson et. all findings suggest that
product sales will become less and less concentrated. The balance of power will continue to
shift from a few best-selling to niche products more and more easier to be discovered by
consumers. They estimate that the Long Tail phenomenon will have a profound impact on a
company’s product development strategy, operations strategy, and marketing strategy [5].
3.3. Web 2.0 enable an organized cooperation between companies and their customers
where products' users perform a big part of the innovation work acting like social
innovation communities.
In their quest for products that are customized for their own needs, users are willing to tell
the producer what they want and how it should work. Since 1986 Eric von Hippel noticed
the importance of user innovators who share their ideas with manufacturers (free revealing)
for enabeling those producers to offer the product they want [6]. In 2009 he reports an
empirical research made in 2007 showing that about 20% of the user-innovators surveyed
reported transferring their innovations to other users and/or equipment suppliers – and the
majority of these did so at no charge to recipients [7].
In 2005 Eric von Hippel defined the user-led innovation model concluding that innovation
becomes more user-centered [8]. Today Web 2.0 features the decreasing cost of
communication and information sharing. Using Web 2.0 interactive tools, companies can
give their users a voice enabling an organized cooperation where users perform a big part of
the innovation work. As a consequence long-tailed user driven innovation is gaining
importance allowing companies to rely on users of their products and services to do a
significant part of the innovation work. Using a long-tailed innovation strategy company is
taping into a large group of users that are in the low-intensity area of the distribution. These
groups of users act like social innovation communities for the company if they are provided
with tools and infrastructure to perform the trial and error process of innovation, share
information, test and diffuse the results.
3.4. Long-tail marketing techniques
The low cost and high degree of information sharing has led businesses to implement a
series of long-tail marketing techniques, most of them based on extensive use of Internet:
new media marketing (using social networks and online communities to extend the reach of
marketing to the low-frequency, low-intensity consumer in a cost effective way, often
through fan pages or profiles on social networks, blogs, RSS feeds and webcasts); buzz
marketing (strategic transmission of commercial information from person to person in an
online or real-world environment using word of mouth); viral marketing (intentional
spreading of marketing messages via social networks, video sharing sites and e-mail with an
emphasis on the casual, non-intentional and low cost); Pay per Click and Search Engine
Optimization with focus on long-tail keywords which have less competition and can be
extremely profitable in terms of a lower cost per action and higher return on investment
because, as A. Mitchell claims in 2009 [9], they often exhibit a higher conversion rate by up
to 200% compared to short-tail generic keywords.
4. Branding shift
Brands and brand management were subject to constant review in the last 15 years.
In the traditional approach the brand was an identifier: “a name, term, sign, symbol, or
design, or a combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or
group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors” - the American
Marketing Association definition of the brand. Brand was just a step in the whole process of
marketing to sell the product and the goal of brand management was communication
strategy towards getting exposure and creating brand image. Brand management was the
concern of the marketing department and the most companies thought that focusing on the
advertising meant focusing on the brand [10].
4.1. The first shift: brand as a pillar of the organization
The first shift began when it was understood that brands are something more than
identifiers, and they are performing an economic function in the mind of the consumer
standing for a recognized symbol in order to facilitate choice, to gain time and for reducing
the perceived risk. According to Kapferer [11] “the value of the brand comes from its ability
to gain an exclusive, positive and prominent meaning in the minds of a large number of
consumers”. “Before 1980 companies wished to buy a producer of chocolate or pasta: after
1980, they wanted to buy KitKat or Buitoni. The shift was from buying a production
capacity to buying a place in the mind of the consumer”.
4.2. Brand management winning models - Brand Leadership and Corporate branding
In the recent years successful companies dropped out the traditional approach. They start
using brand management as a part of the total management process and not just as a
marketing activity. This new brand management perspective was first theorized by Aaker
and Joachimsthaler in 2000 when they introduced the brand leadership model .
In their model brand management process acquires both strategic and visionary perspective.
Brand identity, creating and delivering brand value become the drivers of the business
strategy. The brand manager is in the top of the organization being a strategist as well as
communications team leader. [12]
In Aaker's brand leadership model [13] the brand building process address four challenges:
1. the organizational challenge ( to create structures and processes that lead to strong brands
and to establish common vocabulary and tools, an information system that allows for
sharing information, experiences and initiatives, and a brand nurturing culture and
structure);
2. the brand architecture challenge ( to identify brands, sub-brands, their relationships and
roles within portfolio; to clarify what it is offered and to create synergies between brands;
to promote the leveraging of brand assets);
3. the brand identity and position challenge ( to assign a brand identity and to position each
brand effectively to create clarity);
4. the brand building program challenge ( to create communication programs and brand
building activities that help both implementation and brand defining process in order to
change customer perceptions, reinforce attitudes, and create loyalty.
Since 2001 Doyle [14] noticed that a good tactic would be to consider alternative media in
addition to advertising.
Brand leadership model was largely agreed and branding specialist went deeper in analyzing
brand - lead businesses for special situations like services area [15] or corporations with
multiple brands.
Due to the importance of a multidisciplinary approach in order to manage multiple brands
and interactions with multiple stakeholders some businesses shift their focus from product
brands to corporate branding [16], [17], [18], [19], [20, [21], [22].
Aaker defines a corporate brand as a brand that represents an organization and
reflects its heritage, values, culture, people, and strategy. A corporate brand is defined
primarily by organizational associations, and thus can develop and leverage
organizational characteristics, as well as product and service attributes [16].
Urde states that an organization’s core values must be the guiding light of the brand building
process, both internally and externally. They must be built into the product, expressed in
behavior, and reflected in communication [22].
Brand leadership and corporate branding leads to brand consistency.
Company's personnel is the carrier and the promoter of the brand promise - from CEO to
those working on the production line. Enthusiastic and charismatic leaders stand behind any
strong brand. They firmly believe in brand values. They are naturally followed because they
live the brand values, making them authentic and inspiring staff commitment to the brand
and thus made brand internalization. As L. de Charnatony states: “A further advantage of
having a focus on brand management and looking more inside in the organization is that it
gives rise to a corporate persona with a deeply felt set of values enabling the brand to have
a clear attitude.” Staff alignment to the brand values ensures a constant quality level in
delivering the brand promise by any employee - very visible especially in services. [23]
4.3. The Brand and the Brand Strategy, pillars of the organization's plans
In a brand-lead business the top management uses brand as a pillar of the organization. All
resources are directed to deliver the promised value. Brand strategy gives focus and
direction by providing a platform that enables consistency in all actions and activities.
Marketing and communications serve a common set of brand objectives for generating
unity. The consistency of brand across all audiences is necessary because they interact and
they are interconnected. All of them should be informed and involved - employees and
shareholders, customers and consumers. Advertising, packaging, price and promotions have
an important common point: they are controlled by the marketing department. But there are
factors like personnel, rumors and social media conversations that can not be kept under
control.
Social media gives the consumers more opportunities to influence the opinions of hundreds
or even thousands of others in discussions about products and companies. Consumerconsumer communication produces today a significant share of the amount of information
available about products and companies [24]. Businesses need to target social media users
for inducing consumer’s discussions according to the objectives of the brand's performance.
4.4. The second shift: branding in the long tail economy
In 2005 C. Anderson, the one who coined the term “The Long Tail” and wrote five books
on this topic shared [25] the following short history about brands' prevalence.
“ In the first half of the 20th century, consistently high quality products were relatively
scarce. Product brands prevailed. Over time, more and more products entered the market
and shelf space became the scarce good. Power shifted to retailer brands. Now ... the shelf
space constraints evaporate ... and the scarce good become customer's attention.
We are moving from product-centric brands to customer-centric brands. Product-centric
brands represent promises about products (or retailers) – “buy this product from us
because you can trust that it will be a quality product at good value.” Customer-centric
brands offer a radically different promise – “buy from us because we know and understand
you as an individual customer and we can tailor an appropriate bundle of products and
services to meet your individual needs better than anyone else.”
C. Anderson suspects that “the center of gravity of brands is shifting so much from products
to customers that tomorrow's most powerful brands probably won't be companies at all.
They'll be the customers themselves.” ... “Brand power will shift downstream from the
producers to the consumers ... and the brands that matter most will be the tastemakers...
“These are the filters you trust” (Amazon, Google, smart software for finding the good stuff,
individual tastemakers from celebrities to critics to editors or simple mavens with influential
blogs) who point you to the niche (or mainstream) stuff you wouldn't have found on your
own. And because you trust them, you're willing to follow their recommendations, voyaging
down the tail with confidence.”
We conclude that brand leadership and corporate branding provides the appropriate business
philosophy for facing the challenges of the economics of the long tail. Since 2001 Doyle
noticed that a good tactic would be to consider alternative media in addition to advertising
[14]. In 2010 best practices consider advertising as a good tactic in addition to alternative
media. And a big contribution in these alternative media is payed by the long tailed
marketing techniques. Having the brand as a top priority for the top management who
integrates brand building into the overall business concept all resources are directed to
deliver the promised value in an integrated way, through products, services,
communications, personnel behavior and organizational culture. The result is a unique and
valuable customer relationship leading to positive word of mouth and good referrals across
social media platforms enabling a competitive social marketing and brand growth. But with
a brand building process addressing the four challenges (1. the organizational challenge, 2.
the brand architecture challenge, 3. the brand identity and position challenge, 4. the brand
building program challenge) as they were detailed in the Aaker's brand leadership model
aforementioned [12], [13], [16], the only big change for brand lead businesses will remain in
the following years to pay enough attention to Web 2.0 and to use the Internet based
technologies to enable an organized cooperation with their users, giving them a voice and
relying on their contribution in the process of innovation and brand value creation. The
consequence will be a great pot of customers becoming one of the company's resources
directed to deliver the promised brand value following the long-tail rule. Beside users'
driven brand sindicalization directed to change perceptions, reinforce attitudes, and create
loyalty, the major consequence will be a deep integration of brand's users in the brand
nurturing culture, in the process of brand building. The brand value will go beyond the usual
jargon and customers will be able not only to embrace the brand experience but to have the
feeling of belonging, of being a part of it.
Our statement that brand leadership and corporate branding provides the appropriate
business philosophy for coming years is supported by at least four of today's most
innovative and successful brands, that leveraged the Long Tail as part of their businesses:
Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple.
Behind each of these great brands, there is a clear vision and a strong leadership: Jeff Bezos
at Amazon, Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Google, Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, Steve
Jobs at Apple. Bringing their creative visions to life, these strong leaders crafted such
enduring experiences that, as Loebman M. says, “we live in the world they create for us and
pay good money to do so”[26].
Arguing corporate branding approach, in 2003 Urde said that an organization’s core values
must be the guiding light of the brand building process, both internally and externally. They
must be built into the product, expressed in behavior, and reflected in communication. [22]
Google's purpose “To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible
and useful." [27], is used as example in 2010 by M. Loebman for warning about the
importance of defining organization's unique essential value to the world.
He says: “ This language clearly and compellingly tells the world why it needs Google,
what value Google brings to the world, and how Google is different from every other
organization on the planet. With a complete understanding of its purpose, consumers can
anticipate what their relationship with Google will be, both now and in the future. As long
as it sticks to its mission and doesn't do anything "off-brand", Google will always be
relevant whether we interact with the brand on - or offline in the future. All of this meaning,
derived from one simple sentence as expressed by two strong leaders: Sergey Brin and
Larry Page.”[26]
Indeed, all Google's products, behavior and communication reflects the unique essential
value they are offering. Even when they are playing with their let's say mimetic logo they
are delivering in an exquisite way the promised value of making information universally
accessible and useful. In the same time Google's brand portfolio is satisfying simultaneously
mainstream and niche taste. Google Labs, maybe the most widely available organized
cooperation for innovation and product development between a company and users,
demonstrates that Google is a real customer-centric brand integrating his consumers in the
process of value creation and brand building, as Google declares in their culture statement
[28]: “Our commitment to innovation depends on everyone being comfortable sharing ideas
and opinions.“
5. Social networking sites as a broader medium for achieving
consumers integration in the brand building process
As we argued before, brand-lead businesses hold the appropriate business philosophy for
facing the economics of long tail. Their challenge for the following years will remain to
deeper integrate customers in the brand nurturing culture and brand building process by
upgrading their management system with Web 2.0 tools for organizing the day by day
interaction with users.
Due to the mass adoption of social media and especially of social networking sites (SNSs)
we can talk about their dominance in the Attention Age of Web 2.0. SNSs are already
becoming the broader medium for meaningful interactions between brands and consumers.
But achieving brand effectiveness on SNSs begins with understanding users’ motivations
for online social networking. Companies must connect with users accordingly to establish a
committed relationship with their customers. Users' expectations towards brands presence
and communication within the context of each social network must be known for adopting a
proper social media strategy. Therefore brands need to know for every country they operates
the most popular social networks and user's core usage motivations for each SNS. Besides
Facebook and Twitter - which are intensively used almost everywhere, there is at least one
another highly popular SNS in every region or country a brand addresses.
The literature review indicates that users consider that a major benefit of social networking
sites is building types of social capital, or staying in touch with friends while gaining new
ones. Impression management - the personal goal of managing one’s image through selfpresentation strategies, networking and socializing are common motivations for SNS use
[29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34].
But going deeper with an exploratory study made in 2009 for Romanian market [35], we
find out commonalities and differences between the most popular SNSs among Romanians:
Hi5.com, Neogen.ro, Facebook.com, Twitter.com.
Information, discussion, connecting, and impression management are common significant
motives for Romanians to use each of the top social networking sites. Entertainment and
playing games are significant motives mostly for using Hi5, but also for the use of Neogen
and Facebook In contrast, for Twitter the motives shopping and product inquiry are
significant.
In an effort to increase the likelihood that SNS users will behave desirably towards brands,
brands can benefit from understanding what motivates people to socialize on a certain site.
From a brand communication standpoint this means that brands must invest in impression
management on Twitter to gain an appropriate network of followers. If they are successful
on this, in order to generate sales they just have to have a good, honest offer and regular
promotions.
On the other 3 SNSs, Hi5, Neogen, Facebook brands must invest in impression management
according to the profile of each SNS but the main challenge for brand communication is
tailoring the brand presence to match users motivations like connecting, entertainment, or
playing games. For example, Facebook allow outside developers to create applications. An
application promoting a product or service can allow users to interact with the product or
service on Facebook. More than that, this can be done in an entertaining way or even as a
game to play with friends. Another example of gaining user's attention and engagement is
using funny ads for promoting the brand or announcing a specific offer. This would be an
efficient tool for all the 3 SNSs but will go viral especially with Hi5 as time as watching
funny ads and sharing them is a common and strong motivation for all Hi5 Romanian users.
Regarding connecting (networking and socializing) which is the general motivation for all
SNSs use, this paper also finds differences in the preponderance of social browsers or social
searchers among Romanian users. As Lampe [36] defined them, so-called social searchers
would use the site to investigate specific people with whom they share an offline connection
to learn more about them, whereas social browsers would use the site to find people or
groups online with whom they would want to connect offline. Twitter.com users are social
searchers and social browsers in the same time. They use Twitter for investigating their
acquaintances and supporting connections with them, but also for finding new people and
expanding offline connections. While Facebook.com and Hi5.com are used especially for
social searching, Neogen.ro is mostly used for social browsing, for finding reliable and
interesting strangers opened to offline connections. Information about social browsers vs.
social searchers preponderance in one SNS is useful from the branding perspective. For
example, a company can decide her brands' presence within a social browsers dominated
SNS like a series of campaigns related with events designed to support specific offline
communities, even local ones [35].
6. Conclusions
This paper reviewed theories from the two major branches of today business practice:
Economics of Long Tale and brand management in an effort to explore possible matching
points or combinations which would lead to a branding model adapted to Web 2.0 Age.
Economics of Long Tale literature highlights new Web 2.0 business models that enables a
greater degree in satisfying exactly what motivates consumers most: 1. being treated as
individuals not as masses; 2. access to an increased offer variety including items outside
their geographic area and rare or custom, personalized products; 3. lower prices.
Satisfying these three inner needs of consumers which strongly motivates them was only an
aspirational goal before Long Tail worked due to the impossibility of targeting large groups
of users that are in the low-intensity area of the distribution and because of the much higher
costs for: storage & distribution, product innovation & diversification, marketing research,
brand-consumer interaction, brand communication.
But on a closer view we can clearly see that both Long Tail and brand-lead businesses have
a common root: their customer centered approach oriented to delivering the promised value.
As a plus, leveraging the Long Tail as part of the business means the integration of customer
in the company's processes of value creation and thus a deeper customer centric strategy.
Our paper finds out that brand leadership and corporate branding provides the appropriate
business philosophy for facing the challenges of the Long Tail. At least four of today's best
practitioners of the Long Tail Economics are brand-lead businesses: Amazon, Google,
Facebook and Apple.
Already applying the appropriate business philosophy, the challenge for brand-lead
businesses remain to deeper integrate customers in their brand nurturing culture and brand
building process by upgrading themselves with Web 2.0 tools for organizing the day by day
interaction with users. Due to their mass adoption, social networking sites are a broader
medium for achieving consumers integration in the brand building process. Thus, companies
need to know for every market they operates the most popular social networks and user's
core usage motivations for each SNS. Because achieving brand effectiveness on SNSs
begins with understanding users’ motivations for online social networking.
On Romanian market, our exploratory study made in 2009 showed that information,
discussion, connecting, and impression management are common significant motives for
Romanians to use each of the top four social networking sites. Entertainment and playing
games are significant motives only for using three of them – Hi5, Neogen, Facebook, while
for Twitter the motives shopping and product inquiry are significant.
From a brand communication standpoint this means that brands must invest in impression
management on Twitter to gain an appropriate network of followers and consequently
generate sales by just having good, honest offers and promotions. On the other 3 social
networks brands must tailoring their presence to match users motivations like connecting,
entertainment, or playing games. Thus, for Facebook a game-like application for brand –
users interaction would gain user's attention and engagement. For Hi5 funny ads would go
viral. Regarding connecting we found differences in the preponderance of social browsers
vs. social searchers. Twitter users are balanced investigating their acquaintances and
supporting connections with them but also using the site to find new people and expand
offline connections. While Facebook and Hi5 are used especially for social searching,
Neogen is mostly used for social browsing. From the branding perspective, a company can
decide her brands' presence within a social browsers dominated SNS like a series of
campaigns related with events for supporting specific offline communities [35].
Overall, our paper states that Web 2.0 and social networks aren't just offering more media
choices but are a first step for meaningful interactions with consumers which leads to a
deeper customer integration in the brand building process. Consequently, following the long
tail rules, this will enable brands to offer exactly what strongly motivates consumers: being
treated as individuals not as masses; access to diverse, rare or custom products; lower prices.
In reaching this objective brand-lead businesses have a great advantage, but the starting
point for every company in gaining user's attention is understanding user's motivations for
online socializing.
Acknowledgements: This paper has benefited from financial support from the strategic
grant POSDRU/88/1.5/S/47646, co financed by the European Social Fund, within the
Sectorial Operational Program - Human Resources Development 2007-2013.
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