Samenvatting

‘Old’ marketing, such as flyers and newspaper ads, did not work that well anymore for Sport2000 Bakker, and was becoming too expensive. They assumed that social media would be a cheaper, more effective, and goal-oriented marketing tool. Sport2000 Bakker was also seeking more customer participation and engagement on its social media channels. Therefore, the aim of this research was to find out how Sport2000 Bakker could increase its customers’ engagement by the use of social media. The research methods that were used mainly consisted of literature review, qualitative research in the form of a semi-structured interview with the owner of Sport2000 Bakker, and quantitative research in the form of a questionnaire among its customers. Furthermore, research on the marketing process of Sport2000 Bakker has made it clear that the online marketing and promotional tools of Sport2000 Bakker were quite weak. The results have shown that the majority of the customers had not visited their social media channels yet. In addition, customer engagement was defined as having an intimate long-term relationship with customers, and building deeper interactions with them. With the results of this present research, the customer engagement behaviors (CEBs) at Sport2000 Bakker could be identified. It became clear that they should evaluate the CEBs by monitoring them over time, and eventually, they should (re)act on these customer engagement behaviors, and apply them to the company. Research results on their current level of customer engagement have shown that the majority of their customers are most likely delighted customers who are quite satisfied. Furthermore, this research has shown that the
six stages of social business transformation could be a useful strategy to reach better customer engagement through social media since the stages are approached from the perspective of the organization, and how they could make a change to reach a higher level of customer engagement among the target audience through social media. The results have shown that Sport2000 Bakker has probably already completed the first stage, which was the planning stage, since they had already made a presence on social media channels. In this case, they would currently be in the presence stage. They could make more process by using creative, informative, or sharable content to start creating social activity. Additionally, Sport2000 Bakker could keep track of the metrics of its social media channels. However, article 5 of the European ePrivacy Directive (Directive 2002/58/EC) could bring a legal pitfall for this since it requires permission from customers to track their activities. Another risk
became clear when customers were asked if they found the interaction on social media between them and Sport2000 Bakker important. The results have shown that 42% of the customers did not find interaction on social media important. As a result, it is recommended that Sport2000 Bakker should keep in mind that it is likely that moving too quickly onto the engagement stage would not be very profitable. It was also recommended to Sport2000 Bakker to evaluate the CEBs periodically by the use of a scoreboard to be able to recognize and monitor the different CEBs that are important for them.