Social media's impact on market segmentation and CRM

While there is still debate about the added value to the discipline of many aspects of digital marketing, with some senior practitioners viewing the associated tools as little more than incidental additions to their available tactics, few argue with the view that the digital environment per se has brought about a step-change to the Marketing discipline. The interactivity, immediacy and individualisation made possible in the digital era have excited and challenged marketers. Perhaps the biggest challenge, though, has emanated from one facet of this digital world – social media. While social media networks have presented great opportunities for data capture, the testing of propositions, marketing communications with immediacy, the understanding of consumers’ responses and the support of digital brand communities and peer groups, social media use has also brought significant threats to brands and their marketers. Previously, marketers largely controlled what was communicated in terms of information about their products and brand positioning. Today, consumer-toconsumer communication via social media has transformed this situation, presenting both threats and opportunities to marketers and their competitors. Against this quickly evolving scene, the co-chairs of two of the Academy of Marketing’s special interest groups combined forces to stage a workshop exploring the impact of social media on targeting, segmentation and customer engagement strategies. This November’s event was co-run by the CRM and Services and the Market Segmentation and Marketing Strategy special interest groups chaired by Ana Canhoto (Oxford Brookes), Sally Dibb (the Open University) and Lyndon Simkin (Henley-Reading). Merlin Stone, the well-known pracademic exponent of CRM and customer engagement was invited to be the keynote speaker to introduce this event. The most interesting papers from this wellsupported workshop were selected to be developed into papers for this special issue of the Journal of Strategic Marketing. Specifically, the call for papers stated: