What else than the Coca-Cola Company? The king of marketing

Coca-Cola is a brand recognized by 94 percent of the world’s population (Coca-Cola, 2016). The first marketing efforts were implemented in year 1887, with coupons promoting free samples followed up with newspaper advertising. Today, the brand identifies as fun with high consumer engagement (Coca-Cola, 2016). In the mid-2002 with the rise of Web 2.0, the marketing challenges of digitalization came to shift the power of marketers to the power of consumers (Hennig-Thurau, et al., 2013).

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Positive electronic Word-of-Mouth on Social Media in China How to market your business with the help of 730 million internet users

In 2010, the American fast food chain McDonald’s launched the “Love McWings” campaign in China, which became a huge success. Over two million Chinese people shared their love to McDondald’s spicy chicken wings online on social media after the campaign announcement the campaign. The company promised to hand out free chicken wings in seven McDonald’s restaurants for seven days, if one million people will participate on the Chinese McDonald’s website (Harward Business Review, 2010). An important trigger for the campaign to become so popular was a fan site set up by McDonald’s on the Chinese social platform QQ. After all, masses of people had to be restricted, because of the huge demand of free chicken wings at the seven shops (Portfolio, 2010). 

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Power is shifting through social media, consumers are taking the driver’s seat

Power is shifting through social media, consumers are taking the driver’s seat, brands may find them self´s demoted to passengers. Social media has altered the power balance between consumers and brands. Consumers are no longer passive bystanders, they have the power to create content and affect brands in a way that before social media was if not impossible, at least extremely challenging.  However now consumers has a myriad of social media tool at their disposal, through which they can enforce power over brands and affect them in numerous ways. In other words social media is shifting the power, from brans to consumers. Thus the aim of this paper aims to investigate how consumers enforce their power is enforced on social media. 

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