IMPACT OF SOCIAL NETWORKING ON CUSTOMER LOYALTY

Abstract

The thesis is dealing with social networking and the marketing activities related in business to consumers segment that is B2C.the research is dedicated to relation between customer loyalty and its impact on sales of the company. Social networking is a diversified channel of online marketing and it has different tools. It facilitates businesses to interact with its customers in order to solve problems and dilemma of customers to make them retain and satisfy. In other words it has opened the gate for companies to participate and involve in social interactions and make customer involved and inform in certain decisions, discount vouchers, coupons, activities and the development of new product and services. It also helps in peer-to-peer communication and has opened the door for organizations to directly engage and communicate with customers by build community and create content which help monitoring and controlling the word-of-mouth activity more efficiently. Social relations have been also changed not only for businesses but also for consumers because this is fast and inexpensive mode of keeping in touch with their friends and families. The revolution of communication and technology decrease the gap or distance between people to interact with each other. Therefore it is a challenge for companies to keep their image good and satisfy customer by giving them importance and listen to them whatever they are saying and be consistent in their promises because facebook and other social networking sites will hurt the image of the company when users will post negative comment about the company or its particular brand or product. Companies consider customers as a strategy which should be carefully selected monitor and implemented because in this era loyalty of customers is a vital part of marketing strategy. Because it is customers who can increase company share of market its growth and its profit. It is also defined as deep commitment of consumers to repurchase a preferred service or product continuously in the future i.e. repetitive buying of the same brand despite the situational or environmental influences and marketing efforts having the ability to cause switching behavior of the consumer Facebook is the biggest and rapidly growing social community which is chosen for the research platform. This thesis explains the background of social networking and its impact on loyalty of customers and the sales of the businesses. Users are communicating actively with each other, building their own pages. Along with benefits social networking has also its disadvantage which can boost the company image or hurt its goodwill because people share their negative or either positive ideas, experiences, perception with other people which can affect the buying behavior of the other consumers and this is the very fast medium of passing information to others. This is also called social networking facebook cycle when the post-purchase service or brand experience affects the pre- purchase consideration phase. Businesses also develop their networking strategy in order to set marketing objectives and controlling and evaluation system.