Article

_{DOI: 10.22167/2675-6528-20210002}

^{E&S 2021.2: e.20210002}

Marcelo Victor Teixeira

The uses and appropriations of digital media by consumers and companies have intensified in recent years, especially from 2015 onwards. An exogenous factor of extreme importance, the social isolation necessary due to the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 anticipated results and revealed an increase in the number of connections. In fact, data indicate that 70% of Brazilians were connected in January 2020 and with 66% of the population having at least one active profile on social media (We Are Social, 2020).

The concept of social presence, proposed by Short et al. (1976), highlights the degree of importance between two communicators using a given communication medium, given that media differ in their degree of social presence and these differences play an important role in how people interact. In the case of social presence in digital environments, Gunawardena and Zittle (1997) add that online interaction depends heavily on each of the actors involved in the communication process. In this sense, communication differs depending on the chosen social media and the willingness of the communicators to interact.

Although used by various business segments, retail companies find in the digital ecosystem opportunities to establish connections and emotional bonds with their follower users, crystallizing formats that combine points of sale (physical and digital) with digital media for communication support. This is digital presence, defined as the way brands select and appropriate digital environments, in an integrated manner, oriented towards the visiting user – follower – consumer, to achieve four strategic objectives: brand positioning, relationship, sales, and research (Teixeira, 2019).

Challenges arise directly related to consumer protagonism and their main characteristics and consumption habits in digital environments. In this sense, brands need to interact with their visitors, not only through the publication of various posts, but by responding to doubts, comments, compliments, and complaints posted on their corporate profiles. Such publications need to be relevant, aligned with the brand’s positioning, and in a volume and frequency that do not characterize invasive advertising in the receiver’s perception. It is a fact that in a highly diverse communication environment, the impacts that visitors receive are numerous, not only from brands that offer benefits, but on various everyday topics. Thus, a new competitive model is characterized where consumer attention is disputed by many actors.

In anticipation of combining the sensation of time compression and the variety of consumption options, the consumer seeks experiences that motivate them to focus on certain content, looking for advantages, practicality, and security.

Integration strategies between points of sale become fundamental to ensure consistency and communication unity with the public. This is “omnichannel”, which can be guaranteed due to the mobility of some technologies, allowing users to interact in real-time from anywhere and at any time. By linking online and offline in a single proposal of contact points for consumers, they highlight the need for interaction of all with channels selected by companies to establish a digital presence.

The integration between physical and digital points of sale ensures the coherence and unity of the brand’s positioning. The consumer must be assured that they are in contact with the same brand, regardless of the chosen point of contact, as well as experiencing the same type of service and, above all, the same solutions. The experience lived in interactions that occur on social media should be the same when the consumer visits the physical store, or when they resort to customer service channels, for example.

In the vast menu of options presented, companies can establish a digital presence on e-commerce sites, applications, marketplaces, and physical stores. The user-consumer is thus delegated the choice of how they intend to interact when searching for products and services. From the simple search for products and prices to the acquisition of goods, the consumer defines the point of contact with the brand. Conducting online research with purchases in physical stores (webrooming) or researching in physical stores with purchases in virtual stores (showrooming), it becomes increasingly important for brands to establish new forms of management and measurement of results, treating the integrated operation as a whole, without segregating online from offline operations.

The most used digital presence models incorporate social media, important dialogue media between consumers and companies, as well as blogs and games (less frequent). Social media play important roles in the scope of companies’ digital strategy, favoring positioning, generating traffic to points of sale, due to visibility strategies, and collaborating for consumer activation and retention.

Brand positioning and its support throughout the creation and development of digital presence are achieved through content strategies, which encompass, beyond posted messages, the entire range of interactions, positive, negative, and neutral, that appear as comments, reconfiguring the original brand communication. Responses to these interactions reorganize the original content and should be especially considered to ensure communicational unity and brand positioning.

The number of visitors reaching points of sale should be the most important metric for measuring the strength of social media in digital planning. Other metrics available on social media, such as number of followers, post likes, content sharing, and comments, serve to ensure that digital presence is effective, validating content production strategies. However, brands’ digital presence on these social media will only be effective if it generates traffic to points of sale, unless the brand’s strategic objective is related to positioning, relationship, or research.

Visibility strategies are, therefore, supported by content created and distributed on social media, potentially generating organic results, understood here as those that do not depend on investments in paid advertising, such as, for example, post boosting, use of influencers, and ads in other digital environments. In addition to visibility that leads the visiting user to the point of sale defined by the brand, from interactions on social media, it is possible to use other strategies such as sending promotional messages, sporadically.

Activation strategies should favor the generation of interactions within social media environments themselves. It makes no sense to create a social media profile if it does not result in dialogic interactions between brands and their audiences. Thus, activated visitors are those who express sentiment towards the brand’s positioning, through likes, shares, and comments. In addition, retention strategies should be considered with the objective of turning these visitors into followers and having them mark the profile to receive future content.

In this sense, the digital marketing plan combines the two pillars: points of sale and marketing support through social media, making it possible, as presented, to carry out advertising actions in non-proprietary environments.

Although they do not have physical points of sale, brands and other product and service providers can build their digital presence exclusively on social media. Thus, these environments can be used from the perspective of the four strategic objectives of digital marketing.

Brand positioning and support occur from the moment the profile is created and as long as it remains active through publications, updates, and responses to comments. The management of digital presence is, therefore, a factor of extreme importance to ensure the effectiveness of positioning. Brands may opt to use external suppliers and service providers, but they usually create their own content production and interaction management teams.

If the brand establishes as a strategic objective to create deeper bonds with its followers, it can use digital media to clarify operational aspects of the product or service offered, answer questions, and adapt the digital environment as a point of service for any demands related to the customer’s purchase journey. Kotler et al. (2017) consolidate the social factor as fundamental in the decision-making of many consumers. Recommendations and experiences shared by friends, family, and brand followers often have greater relevance than the content made available on company profiles. New concepts of space and time have brought other ways of experiencing the identity of belonging, resulting from different ways of being together (Baccega, 2008).

Aiming to exclusively conduct sales on social media, brands must create virtual commerce points for purchase completion or utilize resources such as messengers and applications.

Finally, and of outstanding relevance as a competitive advantage, brands can optimize their established digital presence through research that uses the digital traces spontaneously provided by users. From a netnographic perspective, as Kozinets (2010) points out, virtual communities consolidated on social media provide important data on consumer habits and behaviors.

It is thus concluded that social media present themselves as an important complement in retail operations. Objectives must be precise and efficiently measured, promoting strategic analyses that allow for consumer focus. Engagement, the ability to listen to customers, the use of language appropriate to segmented audiences supported by collected data, humanized contacts with users mediated by digital interfaces, among others, are some of the main challenges that arise and change in the communication environment of high connectivity and mobility. In this sense, there is no single format, and each brand must organize its digital presence according to its strategic objectives, products and services offered, territorial scope, and, above all, the profile of the target audiences.

References

Baccega, M.A.(Org.). 2008. Comunicação e culturas do consumo. Atlas, São Paulo, SP, Brasil.

Gunawardena, C.N.; Zittle, F.J. 1997. Social presence as a predictor of satisfaction within a computer-mediated conferencing environment. The American Journal of distance education 11(3): 8-26.

Kotler, P.; Kartajaya, H.; Setiawan, I. 2017. Marketing 4.0 do tradicional ao digital. 1ed. Editora Sextante, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil.

Kozinets, R.V. 2010. Netnography: doing ethnographic research online. Sage Publications Ltda., London, England

Short, J.; Williams, E.; Christie, B. 1976. The Social Psychology of Telecommunications. John Wiley & Sons, London, England.

Teixeira, M.V. 2019. Marketing Digital. Editora Pecege, Piracicaba, SP, Brasil.

We Are Social. 2020. Digital in 2020. Disponível em: <https://wearesocial.com/digital-2020>. Acesso em: 11 nov. 2020.

Como citar

Teixeira, M.V. 2021. Mídias digitais no varejo. Estratégias e Soluções, 2: e.20210002.

Sobre o autor

Mestre em Comunicação e Práticas de Consumo. Consultor em Estratégias de Marketing Digital. Professor MBA USP/Esalq. 

Editorado por: Edson Pereira da Mota

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