Modern Retailers: How Intense, Engaging and Differentiating is their Communication on Facebook?

Abstract

At present, marketing debate focuses mostly on the tremendous potential provided by social media for brand communication. Facebook is the buzzwords of the moment. The goal of the research presented in this paper was to study whether leading modern retailers on the Romanian market differ in terms of their marketing communication on Facebook. The studied retailers were the leading chains of the hypermarket, supermarket and discount formats. The research objectives referred to the study of the following aspects: the intensity of their posting behavior during a predefined period, the level of generated engagement (likes, comments and shares), the themes of the posts made by these retailers. Recommendations are made to practitioners of modern retailing, in order to improve the impact of their communication in social media. This paper brings two contributions to the research field. The former is the fact that, to the best of our knowledge, this research is the first study of the communication on Facebook of these leading modern retailers in Romania. The later consists in the formulation of specific recommendations based on the points of parity and the points of differentiation identified in the comparative study.

Keywords

• modern retailers
• facebook
• social media
• marketing communication
• engagement
• differentiation