Contentserver (3).pdf

Cadbury India’s Customer Engagement Campaign in Kolkata: A Field Study Kisholoy Roy * Sprihi Kanodia**, Arpita Sanyal*** and Dipraj Bhattacharjee**** In the contemporary era, brands are nothing but customer perceptions and the amount of relevancy they enjoy in the lives of their target audiences. Add to this, there is severe competition in almost all product categories. In such a scenario, marketers need to develop initiatives that could engage and the customers with each other and with their brands because it is communities formed around brands both offline and online and the emotional attachment developed between customers and brands that enhance the durability of brands. In the context of online customer engagement, social media have been found to play a key role. The present study deals with Cadbury India’s customer engagement campaign in the Kolkata market whereby it was observed that Cadbury India appealed to the mishit (sweet) eating habits of the Bengali population over there in an innovative manner. They weaved the concept of marriage (Mishti Weds Cadbury) around the campaign, were found to involve celebrities from the Bengali film industry and optimally leveraged the strengths of social media to propagate the campaign and thus generate significant awareness, affinity and involvement among the target audiences of the engagement program. Introduction

O

ver the years, it has been observed that customer engagement campaigns strategized and executed by marketers have served the purpose of either engaging customers with each other or engaging customers with a company or a brand. Customer engagement programs can be both online as well as offline. They create an interactive, customized and coordinated experience across the channels which help in strengthening customer loyalty and emotionally tie them to the company or the brand. In the contemporary era, a majority of customers are online at all times and hence there are certain words that are often used to describe them like mobile, social, connected, informed and influential and in order to gain the loyalty of such customers, companies are adopting innovative ways to engage them with their brand(s) and also with each other to form communities around the brands. Cadbury Mishti. Shera Shristi is a customer engagement initiative of Cadbury India that

was introduced in Kolkata in 2012. It involved celebrities from the Bengali film industry who were found to endorse and in the process garner votes for the various participating sweet shops. In the year 2013, the campaign was reintroduced in a different avatar‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’. To execute the campaign, Cadbury India tied up with chains of twenty sweet shops in Kolkata which prepared more than 100 varieties of Cadbury Mishti during the course of the campaign. It used local media and invited people to bless the newlywed couple (Mishti and Cadbury) by giving missed calls to a unique toll free number. Cadbury also stationed volunteers who would click pictures of the “guests” visiting the contesting sweet shops which would be uploaded on their Facebook. Cadbury India was further found to promote the campaign by creating a buzz around it through a video upload that showcased a range of stars from the Bengali film industry participating and enjoying the joyous occasion of ‘local girl’ Mishti marrying Cadbury, the ‘groom’. After a passage of time, people were asked to share their own recipes of Cadbury Mishtis which was found

to further instill engagement between the people and brand Cadbury. The present study is aimed at understanding and assessing people’s attitude towards the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign (the second edition of Cadbury Mishti. Shera Shrishti) and the extent of their interest and involvement with the brand’s customer engagement initiative. Literature Survey Customer engagement is a concept that captures the total set of behavioral activities of customer towards a firm (Gummerus et al, 2012). There are certain tangible effects of customer engagement behaviors on perceived relationship benefits and relationship outcomes. Customer engagement behaviors have been found to be classified into two viz. Community engagement behaviors and Transactional engagement behaviors. The engagement behaviors have been found to have influenced the benefits received like social benefits, entertainment benefits and economic benefits. It has been observed that

*Assistant Professor, Globsyn Business School, Salt Lake Electronics Complex, Kolkata **Student, (PGPM-10, 4th Sem) Globsyn Business School, Salt Lake Electronics Complex, Kolkata ***Student, (PGPM-10, 4th Sem) Globsyn Business School, Salt Lake Electronics Complex, Kolkata ****Student, (PGPM-10, 4th Sem) Globsyn Business School, Salt Lake Electronics Complex, Kolkata

38

Journal of Marketing & Communication

while the influence of Community engagement behavior on customer satisfaction is partially mediated by social and entertainment benefits, the effect of Transactional engagement behavior on satisfaction is fully mediated through the same benefits. The proliferation of the social media has led to an increased interest in the phenomenon of customer engagement (Sashi, 2012). Social media has been found to offer opportunities to marketers to build close relationships with customers. The process of customer engagement can be well understood with the help of tools like customer engagement cycle and customer engagement matrix. There are various stages within the customer engagement cycle viz. connection, interaction, satisfaction, retention, loyalty, advocacy and engagement. The customer engagement matrix identifies four types of customer relationships based on the degree of relational exchange and emotional bonds. The identified customer relationships are transactional customers, delighted customers, loyal customers and fans. Customers are evolving in a big way in terms of their awareness and knowledge of issues around them and hence it is important for marketers to be able to influence all the touch points between a brand and its customers (French et al, 2012). The marketers need to graduate from having a function-by-function view of customer engagement to improving the coordination of activities across the broad range of touch points they must care about and pay attention to. They need to identify customer engagement needs, enable more rapid responses and build internal lines of communication. Five ‘no regrets’ moves have been suggested to companies worldwide for superior customer engagement. They include holding customer engagement summits, creating customer engagement council, appointing a chief content officer, creating a ‘listening center’ and challenging total customer engagement budget. The customer engagement phenomenon has its conceptual roots in the fields of psychology and organizational behavior (Hollebeek, 2011). It has been observed often that engaged consumers exhibit greater September - December 2013 Vol. 9 Issue 2

loyalty to focal brands. However the engagement concept has been more or less unexplored by many marketers. Any consumer engagement process has been found to possess three dimensions viz. activation, identification and absorption. It has been found that customers by interacting amongst themselves have often created value for firms in a variety of ways (Kumar, 2010). Marketers thus should not be assessing value of customers based solely on their transactions. Rather they should be valuing their engagement behavior correctly to avoid undervaluation and overvaluation of customers. Four components of customer’s engagement value (CEV) with a firm have been proposed. They are customer lifetime value, customer referral value, customer influencer value and customer knowledge value. Any brand building effort can actually yield positive results for the marketer when the brand in question is truly engaged with its customers (Tripathi, 2009). Marketers have often been found to opine that the success of a brand is due to their efforts but then the fact is it’s a myth. Until and unless a brand is well received by customers and the brand is well engaged with its customer base, it can never prosper. It would be incorrect to dismiss the customer engagement phenomenon as a fad; rather it should be looked at in a holistic manner. There are certain tangible benefits for companies if they have greater number of engaged customers for a brand. The benefits include increased frequency of purchase, sales, profits, customer retention, positive wordof-mouth and increased market share. A field study has been conducted in the Kolkata market to analyze the level of respondents’ awareness, their extent of involvement, overall perception and various other aspects involved with the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign. Research Objectives •

To analyze the level of awareness of the target market regarding Cadbury Mishtis and the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign

•

To study the overall perception of the target audience regarding the ‘Mishti

Weds Cadbury’ campaign •

To analyze the extent of involvement of the target audience with the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign

•

To study the buying behavior of the target market at participating sweet shops during the course of the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign

•

To analyze the target market’s perception of the marketing adopted for the Cadbury Mishtis

•

To study the perception of target audience regarding the involvement of social media for promoting the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign

Research Hypotheses H1: There is no significant difference between the genders of informants and their overall perception regarding the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign H2: There is no significant difference between the genders of respondents and their extent of involvement with the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign H3: There is no significant difference between the genders of informants and their buying behavior at sweet shops during the course of the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign H4: There is no significant difference between the genders of informants and their overall perception of the marketing mix adopted for Cadbury Mishtis H5: There is no significant difference between the genders of informants and their perception regarding the involvement of social media for promoting the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign Research Methodology 60 individuals in the age bracket of 21-40 years were surveyed. Majority of the respondents were students of various Post Graduate courses while the rest were service holders. Out of 60 individuals surveyed, 32 were male and 28 were female. A combination of judgmental and convenience sampling was used to select the informants for the study. A structured questionnaire was used 39

to collect responses. Responses were sourced from the Kolkata market through personal interview method. Research Findings Respondents for the survey were asked about their level of awareness regarding the Cadbury Mishtis. It was observed that majority of them (56%) were moderately aware of the product – Cadbury Mishti while 26% had high awareness and 18% had low awareness about the same. Majority of the respondents (32%) cited the Internet as the primary source of awareness for Cadbury Mishtis. Out of the rest, there were informants who mentioned either the television, local dailies, sweet shops or wordof-mouth as their primary source of

awareness for Cadbury Mishtis. Informants of the survey were also asked to mention their level of awareness regarding the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign. 56% was found out to be moderately aware, 29% highly aware, 11% with low awareness and 4% with no awareness. When asked about the primary source of awareness of the “Mishti Weds Cadbury” campaign, 37% was found to mention the Internet as the primary source followed by local dailies, television, sweet shops and word of mouth.

Cadbury campaign’, 30% opined that it as a “win-win” scenario for Cadbury, the participating sweet shops as well as the customers; 27% of the informants termed it as an innovative approach; 20% loved the campaign for the way it involved mass audience while 23% of the respondents felt that it was just a marketing gimmick. [TableI] highlights the overall perception of informants regarding the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign.

6.1 Overall Perception Regarding ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ Campaign When asked to mention about their overall perception regarding the ‘Mishti Weds

Table I Overall Perception of Informants Regarding ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ Campaign Overallperception

Gender

Marketing gimmick

Mass audience involvement

Win-Win

Total

Innovative Female

6

7

9

6

28

Male

9

9

3

11

32

15

16

12

17

60

Total

A chi square test was undertaken to understand if significant differences existed between the genders of informants and their

overall perception regarding the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign. The p-value of

which was found to be 0.166 [Table II (a) and (b)].

Table II (a) Value

df

Asymp. Sig. (2- sided)

Pearson Chi-Square

5.076a

3

.166

Likelihood Ratio

5.220

3

.156

N of Valid Cases

60 Table II (b)

Nominal by Nominal

N of Valid Cases

40

Value

Approx. Sig.

Phi

.291

.166

Cramer’s V

.291

.166

Contingency Coefficient

.279

.166

60

Journal of Marketing & Communication

Since the p-value is greater than 0.05(p>0.05), H1, which states that there is no significant difference between the genders of informants and their overall perception regarding the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign stands accepted. Extent of Involvement with the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ Campaign

comment on the extent of their involvement with the ‘Mishti weds Cadbury’ campaign, it was observed that 42% of them were limited to being aware about the campaign only while there were 33% of the respondents who visited the participating sweet shops and tried out Cadbury Mishti. There were some who tried Cadbury Mishtis and also voted

for their favorite shop. The rest did not try Cadbury Mishti but were inclined to know more about the campaign updates. [TableIII] highlights the above mentioned details.

Respondents for the survey were asked to Table III Respondents’ Extent of Involvement with the Campaign Extent of involvement

Gender

Aware only

Incline to know

Visited and tried

Visited and vote

Total

Female

12

6

3

7

28

Male

17

2

4

9

32

29

8

7

16

60

Total

A chi square test was conducted to confirm if significant differences existed between the genders of informants and their extent of in-

volvement with the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign; the p-value of which was found

to be 0.391 [Table-IV (a) and (b).

Table IV (a) Value

df

Asymp. Sig. (2- sided)

Pearson Chi-Square

3.002a

3

.391

Likelihood Ratio

3.087

3

.378

N of Valid Cases

60 Table 4 (b)

Nominal by Nominal

N of Valid Cases

Since the p-value is greater than 0.05 (p>0.05), H2, which states that there is no significant difference between the genders of respondents and their extent of involvement with the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign stands accepted.

September - December 2013 Vol. 9 Issue 2

Value

Approx. Sig.

Phi

.224

.391

Cramer’s V

.224

.391

Contingency Coefficient

.218

.319

60

Buying Behavior at Sweet Shops Respondents for the survey were asked to mention whether they visited the participating sweet shops out of curiosity/ impulse or did they visit due to their loyalty

to Cadbury as a brand or the their loyalty towards a particular shop. Majority of the respondents (36%) mentioned that it was just out of curiosity/impulse that made them visit the shops during the course of the customer engagement initiative by Cadbury while there

41

were some who voiced they loyalty towards a shop. They were further asked if they would be visiting the shop after the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign was over to which 60% of the respondents answered as ‘Yes’. A

Mann-Whitney U-test was undertaken to understand and analyze if significant differences existed between the genders of informants and their buying behavior at sweet shops during the course of the ‘Misti

Weds Cadbury’ campaign; the p-value of which was found to be 0.188 [Table-V (a) and (b)].

Table V (a)

av1

Gender

N

Mean Rank

Sum of Ranks

Male

32

29.61

947.50

Female

28

31.52

882.50

Total

60

Table V (b) av Mann-Whitney U

360.000

Wilcox W

888.000

Z

-1.315

Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed)

Since the p-value is greater than 0.05 (p>0.05), H3, which states that there is no significant difference between the genders of informants and their buying behavior at sweet shops during the course of the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign stands accepted. 6.4 Perception regarding marketing mix adopted for Cadbury Mishtis Informants of the survey were asked to comment on various elements of marketing mix adopted for the Cadbury Mishtis. They were asked to opine on the quality and presentation of Cadbury Mishtis at the sweet shops to which majority of respondents opined as ‘Good’ but then they felt that the Cadbury Mishtis were ‘somewhat high priced’. 45% of the respondents felt that the media mix adopted for the campaign was ‘Effective’ and they opined that the involvement of celebrities was necessary for attracting eyeballs to the campaign and enhance footfalls at the participating shops. A Mann-Whitney Utest was conducted to analyze if significant differences existed between the genders of informants and their overall perception of the marketing mix adopted for Cadbury Mistis, the p-value of which was found to be 0.672 [Table-VI (a) and (b)]. 42

.188

Table VI (a)

av1

Gender

N

Mean Rank

Sum of Ranks

Male

32

29.61

947.50

Female

28

31.52

882.50

Total

60 Table VI (b) av1

Mann-Whitney U

419.500

Wilcox W

947.500

Z Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed)

Since the p-value is greater than 0.05 (p>0.05), H4, which states that there is no significant difference between the genders of informants and their overall perception of the marketing mix adopted for Cadbury Mishtis stands accepted. Perception Regarding Involvement of Social Media Social media was found to be used in a big

-.424 .672

way for the campaign and hence respondents for the survey were asked to comment on the YouTube video of the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign and also on the involvement of Facebook with the campaign. 45% of the respondents felt that the YouTube video ‘was a great concept and it provided an initial fillip to the campaign’. 45% of the respondents believed that the involvement of Facebook was ‘effective from the perspective of wooing the youth only’. Journal of Marketing & Communication

A Mann-Whitney U-test was conducted to analyze if significant differences existed between the genders of informants and their

overall perception regarding the involvement of social media for promoting the ‘Cadbury

Weds Mishti’ campaign; the p-value of which was found to be 0.151 [Table-VII (a) and (b)].

Table VII (a)

av2

Gender

N

Mean Rank

Sum of Ranks

Male

32

27.56

882.00

Female

28

33.86

948.00

Total

60 Table VII (b) av2

Mann-Whitney U

354.000

Wilcox W

882.000

Z

-1.435

Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed)

Since the p-value is greater than 0.05 (p>0.05), H5, which states that there is no significant difference between the genders of informants and their perception regarding the involvement of social media for promoting the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign, stands accepted. Implications of the Study The survey revealed certain interesting insights regarding the ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign. The campaign along with Cadbury Mishtis was found to generate significant awareness among the respondents through the Internet as well through the local dailies and sweet shops. Majority of the respondents perceived the campaign to be offering benefits to Cadbury, the sweet shops as well as the customers who got to savor certain innovative sweets made of Cadbury chocolate. There were of course few respondents who dismissed the customer engagement initiative of Cadbury as a marketing gimmick. Majority of the informants were found to visit sweet shops and try out the Cadbury Mishtis. In most cases, they visited the participating sweet shops out of curiosity and mentioned that they would keep visiting a particular shop

.151

even after the customer engagement campaign is over. The campaign as such was not responsible for forging/enhancing any relationship between the buyers and the participating sweet shops. Most of the informants of the survey liked the quality and presentation of Cadbury Mishtis and the way they were promoted on various media vehicles but they felt that the prices of Cadbury Mishtis were somewhat on the higher side. Majority of the respondents felt that the YouTube video along with the involvement of Facebook actually garnered the eyeballs and enhanced footfalls at the sweet shops but then they wooed the youth only. Limitations of the Study •

•

Majority of the respondents were within the 25 years age bracket. A more diverse sample in terms of age profile could have offered more interesting insights Respondents for the survey visited few of the sweet shops that participated in the engagement program. Perceptions of informants might have been differed had they visited some more of the participating sweet shops

•

Certain more factors could have been considered for the survey to get a more holistic understanding of the customer engagement phenomenon

Conclusion In the contemporary era, consumers are speaking for brands more than the marketers. It is the consumers who are endorsing and owning brands and are forming communities around them. Under such circumstances, marketers have been found to engage their customers with each other and with their brands through various customer engagement initiatives. These programs are aimed at enhancing the stickiness of the target audience with a brand. The ‘Mishti Weds Cadbury’ campaign was found to woo the Bengali community’s Mishti (sweet) eating habits and has been labeled as a ‘winwin’ proposition for Cadbury, the participating sweet shops and customers by many. The involvement of celebrities with the campaign along with the involvement of social media was found to trigger significant interest among the Bengalis in Kolkata especially among the youth.

References Gummerus Johanna, Liljander Veronica, Weman Emil and Pihlstrom Minna (2012), “Customer engagement in a Facebook brand community”, Management Research Review, 35(9), pp 857-877 Sashi C.M. (2012), “Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social media”, Management Decision, 50(2), pp 253-272 French Tom, LaBerge Laura and Magill Paul (2012), “Five ‘no regrets’ moves for superior customer engagement”, McKinsey Quarterly, Issue 3, pp 119-125 Hollebeek Linda D., (2011), “Demystifying customer brand engagement: Exploring the loyalty nexus”, Journal of Marketing Management, 27(7-8), pp 785-807 Kumar V., Aksoy Lerzan, Donkers Bas, Venkatesan Rajkumar, Wiesel Thorsten and Tillmans Sebastian (2010), “Undervalued or Overvalued Customers: Capturing Total Customer Engagement Value”, Journal of Service Research, 13(3), pp 297-310 Tripathi M.N. (2009), “Customer Engagement – Key to Successful Brand Building”, Vilakshan, XIMB Journal of Management, March 2009, pp 131-140

September - December 2013 Vol. 9 Issue 2

43

Copyright of Journal of Marketing & Communication is the property of Journal of Marketing & Communication and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.