The theme “Future Direction of Web 2.0. and Internet Marketing - Leveraging Social Media for Business Success” is, in a sense, consecutive study of the author’s MBA thesis titled “Concept and Maximization of Web Equity” submitted in March 2006. The author decided to start this series of articles from her awareness and quest about recent Web 2.0 survey results and social media discussions on the web, with the objective of making an attempt to clarify her awareness and quest, and share with marketing professionals about Web 2.0 and social media issues and ideas as a base in discussion of ideas.
Background of setting this theme was the fact that organizations had realized then that ROI perspective, i.e. some kind of means to measure success of web building and management contributing to business is necessary. Also, framework of customer equity measurement, and corporate and brand valuation had been developed, evolved and popularized, which triggered the emergence of the word “web equity” or concept of “value of an website” and there was (and still is) an Web Equity measurement model in Japan. However, to the author, the model needed (still needs) much debate, and neither official definition of “web equity” nor indicator(s) linked to true financial return/economic value exists.
From studying sources about web measurement, web equity in the paper was defined as “the value of web service created and provided to online customers through web building and web site management”.
The conclusion of the entire thesis was that webmasters should not be swayed by the existing web equity measurement programme but assess the reliability of research reports. They also must keep in mind that for web equity maximization for business success, they need to focus on aligning web management goal, strategy and measurement with those of the real world business, applying but tailoring traditional management and measurement framework, procedure and technique used in the real business. It is such web management and measurement that contribute to web equity, brand of the organization and its products/services, and ultimately to corporate value enhancement.
The series of articles is positioned as a discussion developed from the thesis, based on the above definition and conclusion. Although the topic of the articles may not necessarily are included in the 5 directions for further research stated in the thesis, it has good relevance to the thesis. It was explicitly mentioned that “stickiness” with rich content of the website is an important factor and that the future direction is community building to cultivate relationship with web users. Actually, what the author had in mind was social media vehicles of today.
Article on how Web 2.0 is used in companies and organization is to come next.
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