Blogs And Customer Reviews: Their Influence On The Purchase Decision Process Essay." (70 Characters)

Students are required to write a 2000 word essay on the topic “Blogs and Customer Reviews” and their influence on the purchase decision process.

Enhancing Customer Loyalty Through Blogs

Marketing practitioners use the blog as an effective tool to communicate and connect with the customers and the target audiences. Customer loyalty is the most promising source of revenue for the companies and it helps the organisations to survive in market volatility and intense competition. As stated by Choi and Lee (2015), company employees are increasingly aware and realise the voice of the customers and not just the company to establish the deliverable value. For inspiration, the PR team looks to people and other companies to learn how they impress the customers. Therefore, the PR team of the small and large organisations keep on posting blogs and the PR team checks the feedback and reviews of the blogs in order to get the new piece of wisdom to apply on the business.

According to Waller (2017), 29% of the global management believe that customer satisfaction is the lead goal for an organisation. This result makes the shift away from the process of traditional marketing values where the organisations focused on mainly lead generation and making conversation with the customers and this shifting towards internet marketing and social media can bring prioritising positive experiences for the customers. Organisations post corporate blogs and it is the published blogs to reach the large numbers of the audiences. Corporate blogs mainly publish new ventures, corporate goals and objectives and new launches of the organisation. On social media pages and on the advertisements; the organisation cannot share the details about new objectives and think. Through the blog posts; the PR team share the organisational next venture and objectives of the organisation in detail way. The main benefit of the blog is that it can generate posts and comments from the audiences easily and it can reach the target audiences due to centralising hosting and generally structured conversation threads (Segev et al. 2014). As part of the new trend, the employers see the voice of the customers are the loudest and it means that the customers are driving the type of content they want to see. The organisations' blog posts are important in order to create great experiences for the customers and blogs can make the audience engaged. The customers or the target audiences respond to the blog posts to provide feedback. Therefore, the PR team of the organisation understand the customers and the management think forward about the adaptable digital strategies on right place. Zappos.com is an online platform where the customers can purchase clothes and shoes; this organisation publishes the ‘insight blogs’. Zappos embraces the driving change through blogs and it shares the blog posts regarding organisational culture, lifestyle and community posts. 

Types of Blogs

The primary focus of the blogs is the customers and certain corporate blogs must be subscribed in order to view the posts. The popularity of the blogs can be judged through the numbers of views, shared links on social media pages, blog comments and numbers of subscribers. According to Waller (2017), almost 18% of the marketers believe that digital strategy of blog posting is visionary for the organisation to engage the customers. The blogs can provide benefits to the organisation through providing the positive reviews by the customers and share the content. Blog posting is the right platform for communicating with the target audiences. There are mainly two types of blogs that the organisations share with the audiences. Internal blogs are accessed through organisational intranet and these blog posts can only be seen by the employees. As opined by Lu et al. (2014), internal blog posts encourage employee participation, collective intelligence and free discussion of issues, a sense of community and direct communication between management and various levels of employees. In addition, external blogs are publicly available weblog where the organisations PR team and management can share their views on various matters. The stakeholders of the organisation can see the blog posts and these blogs announce mainly new announcement of products or service or these blogs explain the organisational policies, clarify the policies and react to public criticism. Public blogs are very significant for the organisation as it gives the opportunity to the target customers. The customers can get to know about the company culture, however, blogs are treated as inferior to the press releases of the organisations. As pointed out by Elwalda et al. (2016), press releases and blogs; both want to accomplish the same things to reach wider customers. In case of the corporate blogs; all posts must go through the review before these blogs are posted. Blogs of the organisations can share the industry issues and leadership problems. In traditional communication channels, the PR team of the organisation becomes honest to share the views; however, in case of the blogs, the organisations become biased in nature.   

The popularity of the blogs is depended on the potential influences the blog posts made on the customers. The corporate blogs try to reach the customers in order to have high numbers of readers, shares, subscribers and comments. Marketers expect to have the product evangelists or influencers among the target audiences of the external blog posts. External blog posts have the reviews from the customers where the customers can share their thoughts and comments about the new ventures, products, services or the advertisements. Once the organisation find the influencers from the comments of the blogs, the PR treat the influencers like a ‘special person' through asking them to provide feedback on exclusive preview, market plan, product testing or the customer service audits (Kostyra et al. 2016). External business blogs provide additional value through adding the level of credibility and increased timelines of the ideas and information posted to blogs help with enhancing the accessibility and transparency of the corporate image (Buschken and Aallenby 2016). Moreover, business blogs help to interact with target audiences on personal level with the customers where the organisations build the link that helps to be tied back to the corporate sites.

Significance of External and Internal Blogs

Blog readers get to know about the new services or product launches; they get to know about the social responsibilities of the organisation. Therefore, within the minds of the customers'; the customers make a decision about the fairness of the organisations, products or services of the organisations through reading the blogs. Building trust in the minds of the customers is needed so that the customers can believe in the organisation. As stated by Goetsch and Davis (2014), is consistent across all the platforms and channels on the internet is needed to build the trust. Through blog posting, the management can tell the brand story and management team can respond to the comments and feedbacks. The management must be honest and transparent so that it helps to build the trust. Blog posts engage the customers and it adds values to the organisation's brand image. While making a purchase of the products and services, the customers buy the products which have a brand image and the customers get more loyal with whom they are familiar. Through blog posts, the management creates the contents which are entertaining and it helps the target customers to educate the customers about new products, FAQ and white papers. Most digital marketing helps to increase the brand awareness and on the blog page, the bloggers share the images, videos and the news that attract the customers. Customers become aware of the organisations' services or products through blog posts and they can identify their needs through these. The consumers consider the services or products available in order to resolve the problems (Buschken and Allenby 2016). After that, the customers decide to buy the products or services after reading the blog posts or the reviews of the customers on the comment sections. Blog posts can make an online community where the customers can share their reviews and organisation consider this opportunity to attract the customers. 

The first stage of consumers' decision-making process is problem recognition. The customers need to know what they want to have and the customers must feel like what they want to have. The customers need to determine when the target demographic develops and it would be perfect time to advertise them. The second stage of decision making of the customers is the information search when the customers search for the information about things and stuff. The customers search various products based on the previous experiences. The third stage of the customer decision-making process is based on the evaluation of the alternatives. Based on the previous searches, the customers try to evaluate the alternative as which one is best suited for them. Once the customers try to determine what would satisfy their needs, the customers start to begin to seek out the best deal for them (Elwalda et al. 2016). The customers' evaluation is based on the quality, price and loyalty factors which are important for them. Customers read many reviews and they also compare prices before they purchase the products. The customers read the reviews on social media, e-commerce sites, blogs and online platforms of the products in the evaluation stage. The fourth stage is purchasing when the customers purchase a product or service. The customers decide the products based on knowledge and the customers come to a logical conclusion which products to buy and they mainly connect through emotion, marketing campaigns and advertising (Vahlne and Johanson 2017). The fifth stage is about post-purchase satisfaction when the customers review the products after making a purchase. The products must be delivered on time if they purchase from the e-commerce sites. The products must meet the desire of the customers and the customers share their reviews on the website or in e-commerce sites (Wang et al. 2014). The customers can share positive feedback or they can share negative feedback on the company website. In addition, the customers can share their feedback to the friends and social media pages.

Influencer Marketing

 The decline of the organic reach and the rise of the ad-blocking technology on social networking sites forced the marketers to find more ways to reach the customers and get the feedback. The marketers post the blogs about a product or services and the customers post the reviews based on the products and services’ performances. The customers sometimes post on some add-on about the features of the products and services. Co-creation for the product development or the marketing planning can be done through customers’ reviews on blog posts (Bryson et al. 2017). Co-creation is not the clever marketing process; however, it is the way to develop the brand with customers. Blog posts attract the customers and the customers purchase the products through taking the decisions on reading the reviews. The customers also share the positive feedback and it improves the business performance. As stated by Block et al. (2016), co-creation is a network of organisations' engagement platform that begins with an indication of customers for the companies to participate in it. At first, the dialogue starts between customers and organisation; it causes the value process to be observed by reaction and action. In addition, access is the availability of the knowledge and information to analyse the benefits of the decision-making process. The corporate blog-posts allow the organisation to have the customers' reviews and organisations get the chance to know about the critical component of their products and what the customers want from the products or services. 

Corporate sectors need to write the blogs to share the media releases about any decision of the organisation or new product launches. A blog is simple as well as an easy-to-use platform for communicating with the target audiences and the marketers can share the relevant information through blog posts. Blogs are used as a direct communication channel and the marketers don't have to be professional bloggers to share the content. Without advanced graphics skills, blogs are content marketing efforts. Blogs provide the organisation with a voice to share their views and it let the brand's personality shine to show the people what the organisation offers. Most importantly, blog posts provide a two-way conversation with consumers, industry peers and prospects. Blogs encourage the interaction process, feedbacks and comments of the customers. The corporate marketers try to reply all comments as the main focus is to provide content marketing strategy. Blog reviews help to stay ahead of the competition curves and the corporate blogs provide confidence, sales and relationship with the customers. Customers look to the reliable sources to gain the knowledge and blogs provide the brand’s story.    

Reference List

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