Online Community of Apple iPhone 4 - Case Study Example

ONLINE COMMUNITY REPORT Table of Contents Introduction 2 Content Analysis 4 Characteristics and Interaction of Users of iPhone 4 Forum 4 Personnel ofiPhone 4 Forum 5 Analysis of the posted statements 5 Potential for iPhone 4 users to Learn from Apple Discussion 9 Conclusion 10 Recommendation 11 Bibliography 12 Introduction Siegel (2006) presented a model which describes the contents of developing an online website. Most of the online communities have been created to offer discussion platform and informative content to the user and they may share same web marketing plan and most of the online community ideas and features are similar. However, content and web design brings a huge change in how an online community looks like. Construction of website and its interface are the determinants of user-friendliness. Moreover, once an online community is launched, and then how the company manages and promotes it also create a huge difference among communities. Diagram I: Online Website Development Source: Siegel (2006), Internet Marketing Siegel (2006) defined Web Marketing Strategies, and the diagram below shows that Customer Relationship Management strategy is an important part of Web Marketing. Through online community of iPhone 4, Apple aims to develop and manage its customers. Diagram II: Online Community Strategies Source: Siegel (2006), Internet marketing Apple is a Brick and Click company and its market coverage makes it a global company. The online iPhone forum offers great benefits to the company especially in the market research. Moreover, by creating discussion forum for iPhone 4, Apple may also aim to achieve its performance objectives such as to increase relationships with the customers, to allow them easy downloading of software and to offer free subscriptions. The tools like interaction of the customers on site, specific page views by users and purchase behaviour can help Apple to achieve the performance objectives. Content Analysis Characteristics and Interaction of Users of iPhone 4 Forum In order to analyse the characteristics of community members of Apple iPhone 4, the top ten users of Forum on 22nd September 2010, have been selected. Following table shows the login name, status level, registered date, geographical location, total posts and nature of posts of the users. It is interesting to note that most of the users have got registered on the forum 2006 onwards. All users belong to the United States of America. This extremely small sample also supports the statistics that USA has the highest number of internet users of 159,000,000 (CIA World Factbook n.d.). The number of posts and activity of the users determine the status level of the users. Most of the users have sent the posts related to iPhone hardware and using iPhone. The information has been taken from the profiles of the users (Apple 2010). One of the reasons because of which no international user has been identified in the top users of iPhone 4 forum could be the lack of language community. By establishing language communities, companies may increase the access of users from various countries of the world to the content published on the discussion forum, however, Apply discussion forum has not developed any language communities. Characterises of Top Users of Online Community Forum for iPhone 4 Name Status level Registered Geographical location Total posts Nature of posts Allan Sampson 5 5/12/03 The Lone Star State 64,576 iPhone hardware, using iPhone Wjosten 4 7/27/09 USA 9,159 Using iPhone, iPhone hardware Roaminggnome 4 9/7/07 Utah 25,187 Using iPhone, iPhone hardware, iTunes W7ox 3 7/13/06 L.A Area 4,883 iPhone hardware StevenB4 2 7/20/08 Seattle WA 652 iPhone hardware Rbrylawski 2 6/21/10 Tampa, FL 1,191 iPhone hardware Gdgmacguy 3 5/30/06 Los Angeles, CA 4,087 Using iPhone Kwopau 2 10/1/07 USA 1,773 iPhone hardware EBSkater 2 10/21/09 Planto, TX 1,423 iPhone hardware Joe Z in VA 2 6/12/09 VA/DC 632 iPhone hardware Personnel of iPhone 4 Forum The personnel of iPhone 4 forum and other Apple Forums can be categorised into three groups including Administrators, Apple Hosts and Apple Employees. Administrators are the employees of the company and they are responsible to maintain, upgrade and enhance the discussion forums and they are also responsible to maintain a proper decorum of the forum. Apple Hosts are also the employees of the company and they are responsible to gather technical feedback and forwarding it to Apple group and they also identify suitable content for Apple knowledge base. Apple Employees assist the users about the company’s products and they are the volunteer personnel participating in the forum. The interaction of the community members is quite quick however, Administrators and Apple Hosts may not respond very quickly, or at all, because they are busy in managing the technical aspects. The volunteer Apple employees are also not available all the time, because assisting users fall outside their formal responsibilities. Analysis of the posted statements Apple is getting huge benefits from its discussion forum for iPhone 4. The positive feedback of the customer becomes a powerful word-of-mouth for this product of the company. Good experience of a user may insist him to post a good feedback on the discussion forum, which may convince guest users to purchase this product. Two recent posts have been selected from different topic categories. Post 1 show that Bdaddy 25 has found iPhone as the best phone he has ever used, regardless of what anyone has to say about it. His positive feedback has attracted the attention of various other users on the forum as evident from 17 replies. The Post 2 also shows the positive feedback of a user on iPhone 4 however, he did have mentioned a few problems which he has faced after using this product. On the other hand, negative feedback in Post 3 and 4 create negative word-of-mouth, which may discourage other users to buy this product. However, in general iPhone 4 forum offers more benefits as compared to disadvantages. Post 1: iPhone 4 is the best1 Post 2: Best Things about iPhone 42 Post 3: iPhone 4 and Apple Let Down3 Post 4: iPhone 4 and Apple Let Down4 Potential for iPhone 4 users to Learn from Apple Discussion The Forrester Research has found that customer wants 84% convenience, 41% greater product depth, 36% experience, 31% content, 26% value and 11% customer service (Siegel 2006). Apple iPhone 4 discussion forum offers the users a convenient way to get support on anything related to this product such as hardware or software. Users can learn and solve the hardware problems of iPhone 4 such as unlocking iPhone 4; fixing iPhone 4; connecting iPhone 4 to computer, wifi; using iPhone 4 overseas etc. Users can also learn how to use this product by entering into “using iPhone 4” category. Actually, this discussion forum is user-to-user support forum. To allow the users to get most of their purchase, this forum offers solutions to various queries, tips, advices and much more. Even if the user does not find the answer related to his/her query, he/she can post a new question and there are many who are willing to respond to the answer within a few minutes. In this way, iPhone 4 discussion forum has offered convenience, product in-depth information, good experience, quick customer service and informative content. Conclusion Based on the above content analysis, it has found that like other products of Apple, online community for iPhone was established to achieve the marketing objectives like customer relationship management, product awareness and sales promotion. The significant level of activity on the platform shows that marketers are achieving performance objectives through this discussion forum. The user-to-user interaction is not only promoting the product purchase by identifying its positive aspects but through this interaction, users are also getting solutions to their queries. As iPhone 4 is a latest and innovative technology, therefore, through this platform, markers have also achieved the aim of delivering functional knowledge to the users. The free signup option has given the advantage to guest users to freely achieve the online support. On the other hand, free signups also allow the bad customers or those with bad experiences to spread bad word-of-mouth. Bad word-of-mouth results in anti-promotion of the product of Apple. Moreover, opinions of diversified users may also distort the image which company aims to create in the mind of consumers, thereby, again negative influencing the product and company image. Therefore, marketers of iPhone 4 should come up with such a practical strategy that negative feedback could be reduced at the largest. Consumers should be given liberty to post any comment on the discussion forum, however, administration and Apple Hosts should become more active in maintaining the forum decorum. Although it is difficult for administration to respond to the complaints of every customer, however, if admin finds that a specific thread is badly influencing the product, then Apple representatives should make their efforts to resolve the users’ complaints. Managing a huge volume of customer is difficult and appears as a challenge but after all, Apple is making huge money out of it. Moreover, online community actually appears to be a strong, easiest and cheapest way to reach out customers for the marketers; therefore, more ideas should be adopted to make this community better. If Apple can spend a huge part of its revenues on its offline promotion then by investing a little more on online promotion, could give more benefits to the company. Recommendation In order to attract more traffic on the discussion forum of iPhone 4 or for other products, the Apple marketers should not adopt a focused marketing strategy. Since it is an online community and people from diverse backgrounds and cultures are interested in such discussion forums therefore, it is recommended to the company that Language communities should be created in the discussion forum. Although managing foreign languages will appear as a challenge for Apple however, it will surely offer a long term benefit to the company. Apple should create its image as a global and not an international company and to achieve such aims, understanding the local communities is important. Company can only start communities for top most used languages. The major chunk of the personnel participating in this community is Apple employees. Truly speaking, a user might only be interested to make a few posts and once the answers to his queries are found, he might not be interested to further participate in discussion forum. In order to improve participation of guest users and to retain them, along with the points rewards, company should also explore other ways such as free iPhone 4 contests, Most helpful user etc. Therefore, for making Apple iPhone 4 online forums, a distinct community, company should think out of box and offer what the customers want. This community has been developed from customer relationship management point view, therefore, more emphasis should be given to attract and retain the users of the forum. Bibliography Apple . Apple Discussions. September 22, 2010. http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1378 (accessed September 22, 2010). CIA World Factbook. Countries with the most Internet Users. http://www.aneki.com/internet.html (accessed September 22, 2010). Siegel, Carolyn. Internet Marketing. Publisher, 2006. Read More