Social Media And Marketing Analysis Of The Walt Disney Company

Embracing social media to attract consumers, The Walt Disney Company should pay attention to the magnifying change of consumer behavior and social media. To begin with, outreaching information by sharing is reshaping the sphere of consumption. Consumers tend to make decisions based on others’ recommendation. Additionally, the impact of engagement between consumers and firms is magnifying. What is more, as myriad social media platforms continue to incorporate, they still preserve their own characteristics. Shifting patterns of consumption and intergration on social media ecosystem represent opportunity to Disney. Therefore, Disney can craft marketing strategy to make judicious use of social media by realizing and understanding revolution in

According to Zhu and Chen (2015), “self-presentation” motivates users to express themselves to develop a relationship with firms (p.340). Likewise, Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden argue that “consumers are adopting increasingly active roles in co-creating marketing content with companies and their respective brands”. This offers firms an opportunity to gain more advocates. For example, confronted with declining share of viewers on television, Grammy Awards transferred to social media as platform to create intimacy with customers. Offering consumers online platform to vote for their favorite artist, it attracted 26 millions viewers and achieved best rating(2015, P.271). Obviously, increasingly active engagement is magnifying the positive impact on companies. On the contrary, it can be detrimental to the brand in the case of lack of response. For instance, United Airlines’s passive respond to Dave Carroll’s post “United Breaks Guitars” stirred up 3 million viewer’s dissatisfaction (Killian & McManus, 2015). Therefore, it is critical to gain insights from engagement with consumers. However, there is little commitment for Disney in this aspect (Ratcliff, 2014, para.33). Disney should put in more efforts to create dialogues with consumers in order to inspire brand advocates and reinforce brand

In order to reach the largest possible audience, firms are incorporating different social media. Meanwhile, considering the nuances and fully exploiting the unique roles of different platforms will utilize the benefit from aligning(Killian & McManus, 2015, p.548). Similarly, Zhu and Chen (2015) agree that integration may over-generalize social media as a whole, so firms begin to focus on “developing strategies suited to different social media functionalities” (p.336). Based on distinctive features of different social media, this integrating method ensures diverse content delivered by companies. The ecosystem of Grammy Awards set a good example. It divided media into three types: “owned media”, “paid media” and “earned media”. After distinguishing the discrepancy, it brought disparate parts together. For instance, it utilized Youtube to deliver content while Facebook to share(Hanna, Rohm, &Crittenden, 2015, p.270). This aligning while reserving difference approach offers an opportunity for Disney to remain dynamic. However, currently Disney only leverages social media by integrating different channels such as Facebook, Youtube and Twitter while conveying identical content. The overlapping content may result in negative attitudes among audience(Ratcliff, 2014, para.34). In view of this threat, Disney should notice the distinctive features of