Taco Bell, Dunkin' Donuts and more test Facebook loyalty scheme

A loyalty scheme run by start-up Plink will give Facebook Credits to consumers in return for purchases at Taco Bell, Dunkin’ Donuts and others.

This aims to take advantage of the boom in virtual currency, which is currently a $2.1bn industry.

After registering a credit card with Plink, users are rewarded with Facebook Credits each time they make a purchase in participating stores - Plink then takes a percentage of each sale.

Customers can use the virtual credits to buy additional content while playing games like FarmVille and The Sims

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Source: http://econsultancy.com

House of Fraser targets students with Facebook discounts

The social media campaign mirrors a discount that is already available in-store as House of Fraser (HoF) tries to bring consistency to its online and offline offerings.

The voucher app on its Facebook page was launched in partnership with the National Union of Students (NUS) last week.

After entering their NUS card number, the student is given a code that gives a 10% discount when entered at HoF's online checkout.

The app, which will also offer 'flash sales' discounts, is aims to use Facebook to attract a younger demographic than those who normally visit the House of Fraser website, while encouraging first time purchases among students.

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Source: http://econsultancy.com

What motivates consumers to review a product online? A study of the product-specific antecedents of online movie reviews

In recent years online product review forums have been exerting an increasingly powerful  influence on consumer choice. Not surprisingly, several firms are becoming interested in  leveraging this phenomenon, proactively trying to induce consumers to “spread the word”  about their products online (Godes et al. 2005). Interestingly, however, even after one  controls for the variance in sales volumes, there appears to be substantial variance in  consumers’ propensity to discuss different products online. A deeper understanding of the  forces that motivate consumers to write online reviews is, therefore, emerging as a  question of both theoretical and practical significance.


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Sources: Chrysanthos Dellarocas,  Ritu Narayan

Effects of Word-of-Mouth Versus Traditional Marketing: Findings from an Internet Social Networking Site

The authors study the effect of word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing on member growth at an Internet social networking site and compare it with traditional marketing vehicles. Because social network sites record the electronic invitations from existing members, outbound WOM can be precisely tracked. Along with traditional marketing, WOM can then be linked to the number of new members subsequently joining the site (sign-ups). Because of the endogeneity among WOM, new sign-ups, and traditional marketing activity, the authors employ a vector autoregressive (VAR) modeling approach. Estimates from the VAR model show that WOM referrals have substantially longer carryover effects than traditional marketing actions and produce substantially higher response elasticities. Based on revenue from advertising impressions served to a new member, the monetary value of a WOM referral can be calculated; this yields an upper-bound estimate for the financial incentives the firm might offer to stimulate WOM.

The full article

Source:  Michael Trusov, Randolph E. Bucklin, & Koen Pauwel

How Online Tracking Companies Know Most of What You Do Online (and What Social Networks Are Doing to Help Them)

3rd party advertising and tracking firms are ubiquitous on the modern web. When you visit a webpage, there's a good chance that it contains tiny images or invisible JavaScript that exists for the sole purpose of tracking and recording your browsing habits. This sort of tracking is performed by many dozens of different firms. In this post, we're going to look at how this tracking occurs, and how it is being combined with data from accounts on social networking sites to build extensive, identified profiles of your online activity.


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Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation, PETER ECKERSLEY

Cyberstalking

"Cyberstalking can be defined as threatening behavior or unwanted advances directed at another using the Internet and other forms of online and computer communications."
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Source: http://www.ncvc.org/