I wish I knew how to quit you, Tumblr
– John Green
Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Reddit, to Wikipedia. There are many different types of Social Media created with different purposes. With the emerging use of Smartphones in the last decade, social media usage is now at all time high with a projected 3.1 billion social media users in 2021. Admit it, we’re glued to our phones. The constant flow of information, the never-ending new content, or FOMO. Maybe you don’t relate?
That maybe because as social media consumers, we are divided through our degree of creation and consumption. I personally enjoy consuming and creating content, a devotee one might say. You might be an entertainment chaser, nor connection seeker. Different users will have different types of target marketing strategies.
Companies would target your favourite Instagram influencer to promote their products influencing you to buy their items. One example would be Sugar Bear Hair.
Sugar Bear Hair is a hair supplement company that is famous for its tasty, gummy bear shaped supplement. It first went viral due to Kylie Jenner’s post on Instagram with the hashtag #sugarbearhair. Soon, smaller influencers are endorsed by Sugar Bear Hair to promote their products on social media especially Instagram.
As the new era approaches, there are many types of e-business models in the internet such as brokerage, advertising, subscription, infomediary, merchant, and community model. One of the most popular ones are subscription models
What’s your favourite e-business model?
Two of my favourite subscription models that I entirely enjoy is Netflix and Spotify. These two online businesses have great UI/UX that completely envelopes users to stay inside their services. Netflix ‘Next Episode’ button that loads every time I finish the series ended up making me binge watch more than I would like to admit. In fact, Netflix had become the largest global video streaming traffic, with 26.6% share! What’s even more mind-blowing is that users of Netflix watched a total of 1 billion hours on movies. Weekly.
To be honest, as long as the company’s are set on putting their customer on number 1 and keep on improving their businesses to cater the customer, more will come and would not mind spending a dime for it.
digital diary 
Hi! I couldn’t agree more with the importance of understanding consumer behaviour to better cater products/services to them. I’ve noticed that many companies have now took it a step further into creating personalisation through this. do you think it is necessary for companies to have personalised products/services?
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I believe that it is necessary for some companies with little differentiation and tight competition with each other to have personalised products/ services as a USP for their products. Thank you for reading the blog post!
Warmest Regards,
Sabrina
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I really love how u used Netflix and Spotify as ur examples, cuz honestly, they are my favourites too!
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Thank you nicola! I believe that Netflix & Spotify’s UI/UX is really beautiful and streamlined to enhance usage and keeps you engaged in the application. How they don’t lag and continue to the next one is just really seamless. They are the prime example for streaming services!
Warmest Regards,
Sabrina
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The e-business models are introduced mostly require commitment. I noticed that from you have written , companies are trying to get more consumers to commit to their product and services. For me personally as a consumer i would just choose any company that benefits me more. What do you think about that?
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In order for you to choose a company that benefits you more you need the information to differentiate them. This is where marketing comes in social media, where it gives you the information on it. Now that you can differentiate them you then have to choose, should I buy the cheapest? should I buy the most ethical? These questions are on consumers mind and as these consumers vary, the target market for those companies also vary. That specific target market with similar vision with the company is the one marketers are looking for. Thank you for reading and I hope my explanation helped!
Warmest Regards,
Sabrina
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It was a great article, Sabrina. I enjoy reading your post and understand more through the relevant examples given in the article. I also use Spotify and Netflix to watch movies or listen to music and I found it very helpful for me to spend my leisure time. Social media is a very effective tool to promote these brands and they have become successful by using this platform. However, I found one concept that I did not quite understand. Would you mind to tell me what is UI/UX means? Thank you for answering my question.
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Thank you for reading!
UI/UX is User Interface Design and User experience design. It is basically how it looks and how smooth your experience is in. While user experience is a conglomeration of tasks focused on the optimization of a product for effective and enjoyable use, user interface design is its complement; the look and feel, the presentation and interactivity of a product. You can read here for an extensive definition of UI/UX
https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/the-difference-between-ux-and-ui-design-a-laymans-guide/
Warmest Regards,
Sabrina
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Thank you for clarifying and answering my question, Sabrina. I have gained new insight and knowledge about this topic because you are able to provide more detailed information about it.
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Great post! Thanks for sharing. One of my favorite e-business is simply Alibaba, we can obtain many products at very low prices, with reasonable quality. However, i notice Alibaba has very low interations with the general social medias like facebook and instagram. This is due to China policy of restriction access of these platforms. What are your thought?
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Thank you for reading my post and sharing your experience!
I personally feel the platform Alibaba, despite its massive amounts of products, really hard to utilise and simply have too may ads for my liking. I may not be their target market? Despite it not being in the social media, they already established their name through being a first mover with unique business model, unconventional profit model, reliable credit model, great customer services, sensitivity to business opportunity, new transaction patterns and an integrated ecosystem than just putting themselves as an e-commerce company.
There are many ways to market yourself and the way Alibaba did it is extremely hard to do because they had created an entirely new business model AND sustain their customer base through being fundamentally strong in their customer services. This is also a way to market your company without digital marketing, but hey we’re here to learn more about DM aren’t we? Great insight on Alibaba!
https://www.bbntimes.com/society/seven-reasons-for-alibaba-s-ground-breaking-success
Warmest Regads,
Sabrina
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I really like your the idea of this post! I agree by putting customer’s to the company main priority could help company improve their business. However, is there other way to improve businesses? Thanks.
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