Devoid of the identical balance as China and more storied pass on of Japan, South Korea is occasionally disregarded by enterprises that are considering investing in Asia. South Korea is the fifth biggest marketplace in Asian continent regarding internet consumers, and digital marketing can touch a substantial share of the populace because of the 85% of the marketplace infiltration. The unique structures that make this market striking for the internet marketing are the high and stable GDP of the nation which is the fastest developing over the past years stirring to a comparable level as Hong Kong (Kim and Jun 2008, p. 131).
Moreover, the country has stronger conversion rates for the global brands which are frequently up to 166% advanced than China. The country also has lower CPCs compared to the nations in the APAC areas. The same merchandises are frequently at present sold more extravagantly in these regions, and the Koreans are witty enough to have a comparison of the charges online and obtain from foreign brands if they are inexpensive (Kim and Jun 2008, p. 133).
Country
Internet Penetration
GDP per Capita
AVG CPC
AVG CVR
South Korea
83%
18K
-14%
+26%
Mainland China
40%
4K
-14%
-8%
Hong Kong
70%
23K
+2%
+2%
Singapore
73%
30K
-5%
+1.4%
Taiwan
75%
13K
-14%
-13%
Japan
78%
24K
+10%
-6%
The blend of high levels of one-use revenue, cheap CPCs and extreme elevated exchange rate make the country of the most striking B2C e-commerce marketplaces globally. Koreans always make effort to purchase on English language sites since they have faith in the legitimacy of such global products likened to their local reseller websites that frequently store a great amount of phoney products (Kim and Jun 2008, p. 135).
Online Landscape
Digital advertising in South Korea is extremely multifaceted and necessitates a broad comprehension of the native platforms that are exclusive to this precise market. Korean search marketing scenery is largely comprised of native portal search engines such as Daum, Nate, and Naver though also has a marginal manifestation (Kim and Jun 2008, p. 136).
Overview of Japan Digital Market
The digital market of Japan is often overlooked due to various reasons. The first reason is language barrier. Japanese is not an easy language for the Westerners, and it is also difficult to find other people that are conversant with the Japanese language as opposed to other languages. Population size is also a significant challenge and although there are many Japanese, very few non-Japanese speak the language (Kim and Jun 2008, p. 137). Therefore, when comparing between Russian, English, Portuguese or Chinese, the target population is relatively smaller. However, the socio-economic level caters for that in numerous segments. Because it is more difficult to mount a campaign in Japanese which means that the competition will be less. Barriers of entry are low, and there is no firewall and Yahoo and Google are much easier to work with compared to Baidu and Naver. Although the population is smaller compared to the number of people who speak English or Chinese, for numerous segments, the number of clients is substantial. Examples of the services of Japan in digital marketing strategy include PPC advertising on Google and Yahoo. The users of the Japanese are split between Google and Yahoo (Kim and Jun 2008, p. 138).
Significance and Purpose of Research
The main purpose of this review is to assess the impact of social media design in Japan and South Korea. To investigate the usage of social media in the two countries as a marketing platform, the study leveraged on various social media platforms that are common in these two countries which is mainly Facebook and Twitter. The present research also facilitated exploration of other new social media platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram to come up with a comprehensive overview of how social media impact the hegemony of traditional methods of marketing. The structure of this review is arranged thematically to highlight relevant issues in the topic area. The study used qualitative type of research to conduct analysis of various past literatures on social media design in digital marketing. The main research methodology in this particular study is case study on Japan and South Korea popular and other relevant digital platforms.
RQ1 how has social media impacted the traditional methods of marketing?
RQ2 how has social media affected the management of luxury brands?
RQ3 how does social media marketing benefit brand in a competitive marketplace?
Social media design in a digital marketing is an important study because it advances the comprehension of the digital marketing where various brands invest in the platform for maximised profits through reaching out to a wide consumer base. Social media design in digital marketing is an area of current interest and has not been widely researched.
Literature Review on Social Media in a Competitive Market
According to Mike Thornhill et al., marketing has always progressed with the variations in technology, and this has compelled marketing departments in Asia-pacific (Japan and South Korea) to shift focus and budget on social media. A good number of marketers in this region are focusing on monitoring in social media to inform general scheduling compared to more than any other source and the reason behind this is the fact that the platform does not merely offer the dealers in this places means to communicate to the customers but also creation of space for the brand of the organizations (Thornhill et al. 2017, p. 88). The growth of social media platform as a marketing instrument reflect on the growth of Facebook pages, and this platform has allowed the marketing departments in the Asia-pacific to focus on customer relationship management and to prioritise other development areas. Examples of other developments that are identified in this region include product development, innovation, social media analysis, and real-time marketing. With an elevating concentration on purchaser relationship management on how to convey the unsurpassed client experience, ahead of the customary objective of accumulative product responsiveness, most of important touch points of the customers are connected to the service of the customers, communications with in-store staff and online service consumer platform networks (Thornhill et al. 2017, p. 90). Through this, there has been an upsurge in the popularity of social media and as a result, has facilitated extensive interactions between the customers and firms.
What is critical in the social media platform as means of advertisement and marketing is its threefold perspective in that there is better tracking, better targeting, and better response. However, it is important to mention that better response as threefold perspective may be partially effective because there are always many instances of negative feedback from the consumers regarding certain brands in the digital marketing platform. Compared to the conventional forms of advertising, social media enables new better-targeted forms of advertising in media. Through this, more important development area of advertisement concerning innovation has been product development and innovation in the Asia-pacific region. With so many areas of development hovering between 40% to 50%, a general assumption might be that there is no particular marketing practitioner tendency in this region at the moment that are focused on the consumer experience instead of vexing exclusively on sales (Miller and Lamas 2010, p. 2).
Learning towards the merchandise can be mapped out through cooperation instigated advertising through which the customers gather the preliminary organisation information such as the particulars of the product, service provider as well as features. Similarly, the sensation of the item for consumption can be mapped out through the engagement of the customer in the form of OSM views through which the end users can converse product experience with other users to establish extra bond with the product through similar engagement (Miller and Lamas 2010, p. 5). As much as the conversation of the users regarding the experience of the product to other users is critical, users who have bad experience with the product may not hesitate to communicate their bad experience to other users. Therefore, to void such negative publicity, the only way is to ensure quality brand. Companies tend to constantly harness and analyse data to establish their approaches to promote stronger customer relationship. Establishing systems that try to forecast the conduct of the customer using his experience has proved to be unsatisfactory. Information is converted into making the consumer experiences more seamlessly, and it is important that businesses tie together the copious information that is contemporarily available to comprehend their clients.
As the consumers search for brands in a social media platform, ad-based information may be essential in the course of their resolutions. Brand-generated content on social media platform offers a reduced cost approach for the customers to inquire on merchandises and services and it is open and frequently offers evocative data to enable the user to learn about the product. The whole idea is based on engagement in that social media facilitates direct engagement with the customers, and they can receive direct responses to their input (Miller and Lamas 2010, p. 7). The customers can have immediate acknowledgement as the customer can participate in live content or comment. There is generally rapid interaction between the customers and the marketers and allows a platform to give feedback much faster than before hence enhancing cooperate affiliation and responsibility. Interaction in social media is either user to content or user to user. User to user refers to a type of interaction where people interact with each other via email, instant messages, message boards, and other digital platform venues. User to content takes place when the users are required to rate the content, share with others and post comments regarding a particular content.
Talking about content, there should be content neutrality. According to research, Qzone and Facebook grasp the highest sum of dynamic consumers in Japan and South Korea (Miller and Lamas 2010, p. 8). But in most regions in the two countries, social media consumers are active in various platforms. Chat applications such as Whatsapp, Wexin, Line, and Kakaotalk have been popular in the recent years. Instagram and Twitter continue to grow in popularity in these two countries as well. Therefore, it is imperative for the organisations to avoid placing all their eggs in one basket. The dealers must generate a content that the consumers will be able to allocate from one platform to another hence allowing the users to carry on with talk on their standings with various systems. The strategy will also assist the organisation not to depend profoundly on audiences that use precise platforms. Social media consumers in Japan and South Korea are fast to embrace new platforms and dealers may be surprised to discover the followers and the likes they shape in one platform become rapidly inappropriate as the users transfer on new networks and platforms (Miller and Lamas 2010, p. 9).
All these factors are promoted by augmented internet infiltration and great social media engagement and a mobile fast customer ethos which are constructing the basics of e-commerce in Japan and South Korea. The users of Facebook in Japan and South Korea access the service through cell phones. Such a movement grants some significant openings for the dealers whether it is through linking with the individuals when they are using a product or when they out socialising with friends. Important to note is the variation in the context of Asian mobile and that of the Western nations (Rutkauskaite 2013, p. 16). Data connection is slow across South Korea, and a good number of people are not able to access a 3G network with Japan being exceptional. Besides, most of the mobile connections are prepaid, and this means that the charge of mobile data and internet usage is still a problem in this region.
Therefore, the marketers need to establish a carefully balanced content plans. However, products need to evade a one-size-fits-all approach if they aim to prosper as they need to accept and appreciate diverse languages, religions as well as the shopping culture of these countries that affects the marketing strategy. Asia is a diverse region that comprises distinct cultures and what can work in one culture is likely to see the opposite results in another culture. Therefore that is the reason why more people use Facebook in Thailand compared to countries like Japan and South Korea (Rutkauskaite 2013, p. 17).
There has been an increasing concern in comprehending how the consumer-generated earned messages specifically virtual word-of-mouth (WOM) would affect the acquisition of a given brand and other marketing performance measures. WOM enables people in the social media to connect and exchange information at the same time with more people by using weaker and stronger ties as well as connections. On a digital platform, the weak ties are used easily and enable for more input when it comes to making decisions. WOM on an online platform can enable the online consumers to obtain higher quality expertise on a given topic area. People tend to search information from others to get information that may reduce the decision time and effort to more decision outcome that is satisfactory. Therefore, WOM on an online platform is a satisfactory powerful communication form (Thornhill et al. 2017, p. 96).
The goal of WOM approach is to reach maximum amount of potential clients. The marketer should also aim to keep customers from a relationship development viewpoint (Rutkauskaite 2013, p. 21). However, the author fails to pinpoint drawbacks of WOM when used inappropriately as there can be damaging social media communication instances and when created by the consumers, it can be viral and spread rapidly hence damaging a brand in a short period (Thornhill et al. 2017, p. 98). The rationale behind this is that the damaging message is rapidly broadcast to broader groups of customers, leveraging the network and exponentially dispersing the message that is negative (Rutkauskaite 2013, p. 22). The good news is that there are ways that companies can deal with adverse consumer-generated social media drives even though they are limited. In case of negative WOM approach on the social media platform, the affected company can deploy a delay strategy which involves delaying the response by the organisation to live the undesirable social media drive to die down on its own (Rutkauskaite 2013, p. 2,2). The approach may be viable since the collective memory of the consumers of South Korean and Japan is short similar to other countries around the world (Thornhill et al. 2017, p. 100).
Literature Review on the Potential of Social Media for Luxury Brand Management
According to an article by Seung Annie Jin, the developments in internet defined by social (SNS) networking sites and user-generated contents (UGC) have noteworthy inferences for the examination of the cultures of the consumers (Annie 2017, p. 687). The internet platform has given rise to a new age of user-generated contents hence intimidating the domination of traditional content creators such as expert reviewers and advertisements as the fundamental sources of authentic information. However, this threat is meaningless in the marketing perspective, and UGC is a vote of confidence. The concept works through the organisational biggest fans writing reviews, snapping photos and publishing the blog posts to promote the products of an organisation without any prompting. The user-generated content acts as a social proof. Seeing the content from real customers increases the organisational credibility and brings the promises of brand into perspective (Annie 2017, p. 689).
A good example is the Ovolo Hotel in Sydney that went through renovation to become the first world instagrammable hotel and invited the visitors to snap and take pictures and share from inside the hotel. However, when dealing with user-generated content, it is clear that at some point it will lead to negative perceptions of a company that is online. Brands need to be conversant with the fact that UGC can result in negative feedback which is visible for all other potential customers. Moderation efforts are likely to prevent such negative feedback from showing up on organisational site. However, this brings a dilemma because censoring a valid feedback because it is negative can backfire on the business. The issue of communities, therefore, comes in. If a brand needs to assume a local method to social media in the Asian continent, then it is better to avoid classifying the audience by nation. Rather, the organisation needs to look for interests, attitudes, and motivations and use them to define the audience. People tend to be drawn to other that they empathy for and when it derives to the social media platform that is borderless, then the affinity will depend on passion that is in place. Marketers must use new tools to complement fresh values and not just to interpose in new methods in new types of marketing. Luxury social products are not simply products with a social media manifestation, but they are products that put social thinking at the core of all their promotion (Lai 2017, p. 23).
As brands are increasingly embedded on SNS such as Twitter and Facebook and other vibrant platforms such as YouTube, the brands co-direct their competitive strategy. Luxury products are projected to induce exclusivity and uniqueness through high quality and measured dissemination. With the elevated development of different social media and SNSs face the problems in how brand reliability can be maintained while coupling the supremacy of UGC and SNSs (Annie 2017, p. 690). It is improbable that luxury product will be dealing with the similar opportunities and problems in every market. Therefore, it is imperative for the organisation to adopt the approach of the home-grown requirements. Much of this correlates to the audience framework in every marketplace. For instance, does the organisation need to edify individuals or support what the people by now know? Or what is the specific place that the luxury brand holds in the market? The content of the luxury brand needs to adopt a conversational approach to the specific needs of the brand for the things like environmental factors and new launches (Alves et al. 2016, p. 1029). It is imperative also to take note of the local legislation since they also have an impact on the activities of the brand on social media. Japan, in particular, has strict laws that govern the features like the product prerogatives, struggles or even whether definite merchandises such as liquor can be openly promoted.
The fundamental way of selling the luxury products is through the offline stores because the luxury products tends to pursue exclusivity through a delivery that is strictly controlled. Therefore, the managers come across a pressure between the necessity to preserve the trends in social media and to maintain the reputation of their brands. However, the brands tend to account to a substantial portion of the consumer products sales (Alves et al. 2016, p. 1031). Despite the decline of the economy in this sector in the recent past, the industry has been experiencing growth in both worth and capacity. The buoyant nature of the luxury products implicate the necessity for healthier comprehension of the dynamic aspects that promotes the utilisation of luxury brands and the vital study of superfluity brand administration in the contemporary social media platform. However, it is imperative first to comprehend the meaning of luxury brands (Alves et al. 2016, p. 1032).
Despite the omnipresence of luxury brands in the daily lives of people, defining the term luxury brand is not easy since it is subjective and relative. For instance, a wealthy individual flying on a business class will treat that as normality, but for the ordinary employee that would be luxurious. While some regions of the world taking shower in the morning is normal, in others that would be perceived as a luxury. Therefore, luxury stands for a lifestyle that is extravagant and the meaning of extravagant relies on a common sense about what is normal at a specific region for an average individual (Alves et al. 2016, p. 1034).
People in Japan and South Korea especially the millennial are spending 20% of their online time on social media and a good percentage of marketers are already promoting their content using this platform. However, using this media effectually is becoming an overwhelming assignment. For instance, if one shares a link through Facebook, they have the prospect to generate a post that will accurately stand out amongst the rest and all the organisation needs and headline that grabs attention, a clean, relevant image that tempers attention and a brief, captivating narrative (Alves et al. 2016, p. 1034). There are effective ways to promote a luxury brand using social media, and a good example is to embrace the visual. The visual refers to three of the modern social networks which include Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat which are purely founded on images (Alves et al. 2016, p. 1036). In this visual concept, it is better not only to create a branded feature image to share the post, but it is also important to create distinct images for each of the key points in the content of the organisation so they can be repeatedly shared.
A new title should be created specifically for sharing content on social media. The branding manager should not simply focus on one title, and the content must be posted multiple times, and that means the importance of creating multiple titles. The process can also be facilitated by doing A/B analysis to see which captions are more operative to support the content and the luxury brand on social media (Alves et al. 2016, p. 1037). When sharing the content, it is important to use the customisable features on every social media platform, and this comprises the headline, description and the image of the content or the brand that the organisation is sharing. Sharing needs to be done at the right time, and it is true that many marketers tend to oversee this modest idea. For all-out engagement, the brand that the organisation is sharing must reach as many individuals as possible, and that means one needs to go where the crowd is and when they are on the web platform and lively. One should have in mind that diverse social media platforms may not have similar peak times (Alves et al. 2016, p. 1038).
Like mentioned earlier, luxury goods were unenthusiastic to embrace social media for dread of misplacing their uniqueness in the past, but the nature of platform has compelled their hand. With or devoid of the luxury brands, customers have hijacked the conversation that surrounds the products. Smart luxury brands have started utilising social network sites and applications to comprehend their audience better and drive the path of their community image (Cuneo et al. 2012, p. 253). Such brands listen to the conversation of their audiences in social media and assume a style that makes it laidback for them to converse with the organisation. Japan and South Korea have numerous social networks, and all are established around different needs, technological functions and interest. However, they have one thing in common which is conversation.
Managing a conversation in these areas poses numerous challenges especially when marketing a luxury brand. People in these countries speak their mother tongues, and even if the audience of the brand speak English, they may not be at ease con-versing it (Cuneo et al. 2012, p. 254). When it comes to social conversation, individuals favour speaking language that permits them to express themselves. Even when they communicate the same language, there are numerous diverse ways of speaking the language, and that is in the nuances of routine slang to the ever-changing societal vocabularies such as “LOL,” “LMAO” among others. The critical point, therefore, is to recall that successful communication is not determined by what other people comprehend (Cuneo et al. 2012, p. 255).
According to previous research, there are two purposes of luxury products that are determined by the functional theories of attitude that include self-expressive function and social-adjustive function. When the consumers have a value-expressive attitude towards the luxury brands, they are inspired to utilise them as a means of self-expression to converse their principal standards. For example, a customer might buy a Gucci bag since the brand replicates the beliefs and character of the consumer (Annie 2017, p. 692). When the customers have social-adjustive attitudes towards a luxury product, they are interested to utilise that particular brand to express a specific societal image and gain support in the societal circumstances.
For example, a customer might buy a Gucci bag for the reason that the brand echoes a social position symbol the customer needs to show to other people which self-presentation. Perception of luxury can further be clarified through personal and non-personal perceptions. Socially oriented consumers tend to purchase certain brands to show their status, distinction and success in a specific peer group. The brand, therefore, works as a symbol of prominence and indicates the membership of an individual in a certain social group. Personal perceptions on the other hand functions to impress other people (Annie 2017, p. 694). They stand for individually effective benefits as hedonic pleasure, personally symbolic benefits as expression of the internal self of the consumer and utilitarian benefits.
Based on the current study of South Korea and Japan, future research on impact of social media on digital marketing could be generated. Even though social media is becoming a dominant platform when it comes to marketing, its marketing applications are in its early stages (Annie 2017, p. 696). From the case study, it is clear that effectiveness of social media marketing may differ in different cultures. The varying economic circumstances may also cause different attitudes or responses to social media as a promotion platform among the users in these countries. Besides, the diverse transaction and infrastructure systems of the social media may also explain why social media is used inversely in Asian nations such as Japan and South Korea related to the Western nations. The current literature review may trigger more productive future research on social media as a contemporary marketing platform to help in promoting various brands (Annie 2017, p. 698). However, the research has some limitations and gaps that need to be addressed in future studies. The study did not assess the variation of offline purchase and online purchase. By researching both offline and online purchase then there is a greater knowledge on the desired parameters. Besides, the study is limited only to two Asian countries in determining how social media has impacted marketing. Future research should focus on many countries around the globe to come to a wholesome conclusion concerning the impact of digital design on marketing.
References
Annie Jin, S.A., 2012. The potential of social media for luxury brand management. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 30(7), pp.687-699
Alves, H., Fernandes, C. and Raposo, M., 2016. Social media marketing: a literature review and implications. Psychology & Marketing, 33(12), pp.1029-1038.
Cuneo, A., Lopez, P. and Jesus Yagüe, M., 2012. Measuring private labels brand equity: a consumer perspective. European Journal of Marketing, 46(7/8), pp.952-964..
Kim, M.J. and Jun, J.W., 2008. A case study of mobile advertising in South Korea: Personalisation and digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB). Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing, 16(2), pp.129-138.
Lai, P.C., 2017. The literature review of technology adoption models and theories for the novelty technology. JISTEM-Journal of Information Systems and Technology Management, 14(1), pp.21-38.
Miller, R. and Lammas, N., 2010. Social media and its implications for viral marketing. Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal, 11(1), pp.1-9.
Rutkauskaite, I., 2013. Successful Brand Strategy Execution on Social Media.
Thornhill, M., Xie, K. and Lee, Y.J., 2017. Social media advertising in a competitive market: Effects of earned and owned exposures on brand purchase. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 8(1), pp.87-100.
