Rice University has published a Facebook study on Dessert Gallery (DG), a popular Houston-based bakery and café chain to assess “How effective Facebook marketing is on customer loyalty”.
Researchers in the Rice study claim that Facebook Fan Page membership changed customer behaviour for the better.
Facebook fans:
- Made 36 percent more visits to DG’s stores each month;
- Spent 45 percent more of their eating-out dollars at DG;
- Spent 33 percent more at DG’s stores;
- were more likely to recommend DG to friends;
- had greater emotional attachment to the company.
The research, conducted by Utpal Dholakia, associate professor of management at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, and Emily Durham, a Jones School alumna involved surveys of more than 1,700 respondents over a three-month period.
So, is Facebook an Effective Marketing tool for restaurants?
Although the study does not definitively assign causality between Facebook and customer behaviour, the link is intriguing and begins to answer the question for tourism businesses. ”Why should I have a Facebook Fan Page?”
According to Dholakia, the results indicate that Facebook fan pages offer an effective and low-cost way of social-media marketing.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I feel Facebook is a great tool for business marketing depending on how you decide to use it. If I were to market through Facebook you'd have to go full force in order to see an outcome. Create a fan page, put ads on the sidebar, share events, etc. You'd have to do it all and all right up front in the beginning or else your business would for sure get lost in the shuffle of other businesses using this marketing tool of Facebook. I would try to be unique and creative while doing as much as I can offered through Facebook, while putting my own twist on it to make it stand out as much as possible. The worst that can happen is you don't see a huge outcome, but that's it! Facebook is cheap to market on and has the ability to reach millions of people so why not try it?
I find the best way to use facebook for our restaurants is to click on the 'just fans' link and thank and engage them right there. We generally avoid the advert style, your guests want to be a part of something. Whether that's on FB, Twitter, 4Sq, Youtube, whatever.
Thanks AJ Bombers. Indeed if you click on the Just Fans link on your
Facebook fan page and all the content disappears, you are lacking
engagement.
It's a FAN PAGE.
People want to be part of something not advertised at.
An efficient, targeted,viable and effective strategy to promote any business service and or products is online marketing. This is the marketing system which could beat any market.
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