ANALYSIS OF TAIWAN’S IMAGE
4.3 Analyzing Taiwan’s Current Image
4.3.3 Facebook Research of Corporations
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The Amazon analysis indicates that Acer in the laptop category is ranked much higher by users than by editors on previous lists. In addition, Amazon.com also shows that ASUS, but especially Acer have much better reputations than the above identified big competitors.
Apple was the only brand which was ahead of both. In the cell phone category, however, Apple is the only one which is behind HTC compared to the other competitors (see: Table 14 and 15).
4.3.3 Facebook Research of Corporations
In the last few years Facebook has become the most popular Social Networking Site in the world. According to the Alexa Web Information Company’s traffic ranking, Facebook is the second most popular website globally, visited by approximately 43% of global Internet users daily. It currently has more than 773 million users globally. The majority of these users is between the ages of 18-44 and has at least college education. There are about 4.5 million websites that have an inbound link to Facebook.com. (Alexa, Oct. 29, 2011;
‘CheckFacebook’, Oct. 29, 2011).
Through such a visitor traffic and extensive functions for self publishing and social interactivity (see: Ch. 2), Facebook has enormous opportunities in store for organizations which are concerned about their image. Despite of these easily accessible possibilities, it appears that most of the organizations do not utilize Facebook to its full extent (McCorkindale, 2010).
In order to discover how actively companies utilize Social Media, an analysis of corporate Facebook pages was conducted in this study. The previous subsection (4.3.2) identified Taiwan’s biggest competitors related to the reputation of its corporations. The Facebook pages of these along with the three top Taiwanese companies were examined. The
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goal of the research was to identify those factors that make some companies attractive to the general public by using Social Media (=Facebook).
The analysis was conducted between October 29 and September 29, 2011. The number of fans and the number of people talking about a brand are determined according to data of October 29, 2011. Only in the case of Samsung, the company had to be separated into two groups on the basis of product categories, because it did not have a general Facebook page. In addition to the number of fans and of the people who talk about a brand, wall posts, discussion boards and events were taken into account.
The results showed that Samsung Mobile has the most fans: 3.5 million; and it is also the one which most people talk about. It is followed by HTC, then Sony and finally, Dell takes the forth place on the score of ranking by the number of fans. In the contest of which company people talk about the most, Samsung got the first place, regardless of product category; it was followed by HTC, HP and then, Toshiba. In the overall ranking by the number of fans, HTC was the 2nd, Acer the 7th and ASUS the 10th out of 12.
A wall post is a public message that can be posted, viewed and commented by anyone visiting the site. It can be removed anytime by the administrator of the page. In this research, only the wall posts that were published by the company itself were counted. Regarding these posts, Lenovo had the most (64), followed by Samsung Mobile (56), ASUS (49) and Dell (48) in the examined one month period. Most of the posts were about product or company promotion and questions or issues to generate public discussion.
Discussion boards are similar to wall posts, since those also allow anyone to post, reply and view the content. However, comments cannot be deleted entirely, as a “discussion board item deleted” note will be left on the page (McCorkindale, 2010). Discussion boards are more transparent than wall posts as those are organized by topics which can be commented or replied anytime. In this research, only those topics were counted which had
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comments within the examined one month period. The results showed that less than 50% of the concerned companies take advantage of discussion boards. The list is led by Samsung Mobile, then HTC follows, the third is Sony and the forth is Dell. Apple although had the link to discussion boards, but the latest post was written two months ago.
Facebook pages also let users to give information about upcoming events. However, only six companies out of 12 used this option. Information about upcoming events was not given by any company, but there were some past events listed. The most was posted by HP, followed by HTC and then, Dell. Acer had a link to events, but did not list any upcoming or past event.
Table 16: Analysis of Top Taiwanese Companies’ and Worldwide Top Companies’ Facebook Pages between October 29-September 29, 2011.
Most companies had links to other SM sites of the company, which were generally YouTube or Twitter. None of the companies had a special link to Corporate Social Responsibility, although HP emphasized its Live Green project. Most of the eligible options to click on (besides the already mentioned) were general information, photos, videos and
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product-introductions. None of the companies indicated their origin country under the ‘Info’
option or anywhere else.
Three companies: Acer, Lenovo and Samsung (Notebook) used the option ‘Questions’
through which companies can get feedbacks. There are several product or company related questions, which users can answer and thus, enable the companies to better understand the needs of customers.
Six companies used the option ‘Notes’ which allow users to publish anything that it is on their mind in a full rich format (Facebook Help Center). These six companies were: Sony, Motorola, HTC, HP, Dell and Samsung (Notebook). Most notes gave information about events, news, products, contests or the company itself. HP had a special reference to reviews of Tech Media Websites/Blogs of HP products.
To summarize, the research showed that the examined companies are all taking advantage of Facebook, but do not utilize it to its fullest extent. Most companies are encouraging discussions either on their wall, discussion board or under the ‘notes’ option. In addition, they are customer oriented, offering product introductions and product deals. Most companies (Toshiba, Motorola, HTC, Samsung Notebook, Lenovo and Dell) frequently reply to wall posts, but there is a lack of response on the sites of HP, Sony, ASUS, Acer and Apple.
While some companies are using the functions of questions, discussion boards and notes, most of them do not take advantage of these opportunities, however, these would be the most important in order to understand customer needs. Other widely ignored functions are the special indications of CSR, origin country and job postings. Companies should spend more time in developing their Facebook pages in order to provide more information on these.
Nation branding and corporate branding sites should be interlinked on Facebook in order to establish connections in consumers’ mind. Facebook is especially suited to such a function as users can quickly jump around on the webpage by clicks.
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This research aimed to identify factors that played a role in making some companies more attractive to the public compared to the examined three Taiwanese companies. The research showed that the Facebook pages of HTC, ASUS and Acer are not remarkably different from those of the most reputable companies. In addition, they similarly do not indicate their origin country on their page, moreover they also ignore the indication of CSR projects. Interestingly, HTC had much more fans and was doing much better in Facebook marketing than Apple, Motorola or Sony, which are its biggest competitors in the phone industry. Although, ASUS was not too popular on Facebook, but it got much better rankings on Tech Media Websites/Blogs than other examined notebook producer companies. On Facebook, Acer was ahead of many companies, which got better rankings on Tech Media Websites/Blogs or even on official rankings (Samsung, Lenovo, Toshiba and Apple). As a consequence, this research did not support the original assumption that more reputable companies have better constructed Facebook pages.
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4.4 Chapter Summary
This chapter presented a case study analysis of Taiwan’s national image and corporate reputation. Data was collected from official rankings and rankings of Social Media websites.
The major purpose of the chapter was to evaluate Taiwan’s current image and understand what nation-branding project would be suitable for it. This assessment was conducted by Taiwan’s comparison with the most reputable economies, moreover by the comparison of its best-ranked brands with the most reputable global brands.
The first analysis examined Taiwan’s national image according to official ranking lists.
It was found that Taiwan has a good reputation concerning its technological development, innovative nature and product-quality. In addition, some reports also stated that many people think that Taiwan is culturally exciting and has interesting tourist attractions. It was also seen that the most reputable economies in the world do not build their nation-branding project on the basis of tourism.
In the second part of the chapter, corporate reputation was analyzed. Three top Taiwanese companies: Acer, HTC and ASUS were chosen to test the arguments. It was seen that these brands are quite successful in their own industry. However, official rankings did not rate them as high as Tech Media Websites/Blogs. There were also some differences between the rankings of editors and users on these blogs. A Facebook research was also conducted, examining the pages of the most reputable companies compared to the three Taiwanese brands. No remarkable differences were found between these Facebook pages.
It was concluded that ranking lists on Tech Media Websites/Blogs can better satisfy the interests of consumers about products and brands than official rankings. It was also seen that Taiwan has a middle-good reputation, which could be improved by a more extensive use of Social Media websites. Although many of the most reputable companies do not utilize
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Facebook to its full extent either, the immense opportunities offered by this Social Networking Site are seen as a good way for improving images. This is mainly the consequence of the high popularity of these sites.
Due to the good reputation of Taiwanese companies in the information and communication technology industry, it is proposed that instead of tourism, Taiwan should concentrate on the promotion of these elements to improve its image. Social Media websites are perceived to be the most suitable tools to achieve these goals.
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