On its European website, Muji, a Japanese retail company which sells a wide variety of household and consumer goods, states that it aims to “develop new simple products at reasonable prices by making the best use of materials while considering environmental issues”. Which ultimately results in “low-priced, high-quality products”.

However, hopping into some Chinese pedestrian conversations online about Muji, the general sentiment is that Muji products are quite highly priced, especially when compared to its more hip competitor brand Uniqlo:

“Muji’s cotton goods are of good quality too, but prices are quite steep. People with low income like me might as well go to Uniqlo.”

“Muji was praised very highly by my teacher. The second time I visited a Muji store, there was still only one word in my mind – ‘expensive’.”

As Muji is present also in Western markets, the question raised now is whether the Western buyers have the same perception of Muji products as the Asian ones?

Consumers of the same brand expect different things in different regions

Rather than saying that brand perceptions are different in Asia than the Western markets, it is more accurate to say that consumers in different regions expect different things from brands.

For example, across both Asian and Western markets, consumers perceive Uniqlo as a go-to brand for “fast fashion”, which has “cheap”, “affordable” products.

Muji is uniformly associated by both markets with “quality” and “design”. However there are some slight differences in the degree to which consumers find their products “reasonably priced”. In Asian markets, most notably in Taiwan and China, Muji is mostly associated with keywords such as “expensive” or “costly”.

On the other hand, consumers in Europe are not as concerned about the price of the products, but more about the design. In other words, we could say that they are willing to pay a certain premium price for good design. In the UK in particular, consumers tend to have particular interest in the individuality given by the choice of one brand or another.

Measuring the distance between what brands want to communicate and what really happens out there

There is some distance between what these Asian brands want to communicate and which are the consumer perceptions in reality. In Muji’s case, most consumers do see it as a “quality” brand, however it is not widely seen as “affordable design”. This happens especially in Asian markets such as Taiwan and China, where the price is a dominant factor when choosing among brands.

We could say that the “simple lifestyle” brand philosophy that Muji is trying to push is overlooked by the average Asian customer.

The interesting things is that those who produce positive hype about Muji usually have great empathy with the brand philosophy and are willing to show support by buying Muji products.

On the other hand, Uniqlo has done a great job at getting its brand message of “affordable, fast fashion” across both Asian and Western markets. This may be due to their aggressive and often creative online advertising campaigns, such as the Lucky Line campaign, where consumers join a virtual queue on Twitter in a bid to win Uniqlo vouchers.

Western and Asian consumer choices of social media channels to discuss about such brands

In Asian markets, blogs are by far the most dominant source of buzz generated surrounding brands. People seem to prefer more intimate channels of expression:

On the other hand, there is a balance of buzz coming from European blogs and news, especially in the UK. Additionally, consumers in Europe are open to sharing their brand experiences/anecdotes on forums:

Interestingly, a sizeable proportion of buzz in the US originates from forums:

Tips for Asian brands?

Since brands are ultimately trying to meet the demands of customers, it makes perfect sense to pay attentio to what those demands really are. This study shows that a brand looking for wide acceptance in an Asian market should have a good price/design balance, whereas one that hopes to break into the European market must pay more attention to product design and developing a cohesive brand philosophy.

But first, let me introduce myself: my name is Titia Vanbael and I am a Belgium based Business Management student (focus on Marketing). I am quite ambitious, which led me to accepting a quite challenging thesis subject. A non-profit organisation asked me to calculate the monetary value of blog posts mentioning their organisation in one way or another. At first I thought I would be able to answer that question, despite the fact that I am a total layman in the social media field and that I had no clue on where to begin.

But after a few months of internet research, attending some events and interviewing some social media ‘experts’, I was not much further in answering my question. There is still no measurement standard for the ROI of social media, so I thought I should take a closer look to the practical side of social media monitoring and analytics. That way I could understand better how social media is monitored today and what could possibly be the ROI. During my research I stumbled upon Attentio, the only social media monitoring company in Belgium so far.

I contacted them immediately, asking if they could teach me how they monitor social media, how they analyze the data and eventually turn that data into reports. That way I could see if there was a possibility to calculate the ROI of a blog post and if not, I would still have learned a lot that I could use as an input for my thesis. They were really enthusiastic and after a short interview I could start as a social media intern the week after.

Being a social media novice, I had a lot of things to learn. But all of the Attentio staff were very patient and explained everything there was to know. So after a few days I was able to work with the dashboard quite independently; downloading documents, setting up projects and even analyzing some data (at least when it was in a language I could understand). After a few weeks, setting up a dashboard did not held (a lot of) secrets for me anymore and therefore I could do quite independently. Although I became more familiar with the dashboard, setting up keywords still is a difficult job (although it may seem easy). It is time-consuming and quite hard to make sure all the results in the dashboard are relevant. I also realised that social media monitoring is not (yet) 100% accurate, but that it can give some really helpful and good insights.

So after almost two months of working with the Attentio dashboard, I think I can now say I am not a social media novice anymore. I am so thankful to all of the Attentio staff for every single minute they spent with teaching me how to use the dashboard. I am also very grateful for the opportunity they gave me to learn something that was really useful, not only for my future career, but also for the thesis I wrote on social media ROI.

Although I was not able to find the answer to my question, at least I could think independently about the ROI of social media and come up with some possible alternatives, all thanks to the practical training. I was also able to answer all the questions the jury asked me during my thesis presentation.

Simon’s presentation described how this kind of event gains an increasingly important online presence and how the Attentio Brand Dashboard can capture and analyse this buzz.

“Basically social media is a place where people go to get the most current information, discuss their frustrations and find new influentials. Eurocontrol and some airlines made a “good name” for themselves by updating fresh and relevant information”, said Simon McDermott.

Other panelists were Aurelie Valvat, from Eurocontrol, with an excellent presentation about their ad-hoc social media strategy applied during the “volcano crisis”, Philip Weiss, from ZN, who gave an input on how people can organise themselves using social media and access the information that they need without waiting for the following day’s newspaper, and Gilles Gantelet, from the European Commission, who offered the public a pan-European vision of the crisis and gave details about the passenger rights and the obligations of airlines.

The conference was organised by ZN and the Web2EU group of IABC and moderated by Teresa Küchler, journalist for the national daily Svenska Dagbladet.

Check out Simon’s presentation here:

The Attentio office in Brussels is a hive of activity surrounding the opening of our Singapore offices. The staff here are falling over themselves to ‘take one for the team’, fly out to Singapore and work for Attentio Asia.

As can be seen from the graph above, Mr Clegg is leading the way in online buzz on Twitter with regards to the TV debates and with two very noticeable peaks around the time of the debates themselves. With the last one having taken place last night, it will be very interesting to see how this will play out.

If nothing else, Mr Clegg is causing an unsettling stir (at least for David Cameron and Gordon Brown) since he may actually cause a hung Parliament. This does, unfortunately, not involve the hanging of MP’s (in my opinion the only way to truly change politics in the UK) but would mean Gordon Brown staying in office a little longer because no party has won a clear majority. History shows that a hung Parliament can cause uncertainty in the upper echelons of Government which then trickles down to the masses and can lead to ‘unsettling’ times.

Also, what can be observed from the pie charts below is that Mr Clegg is clearly the winner when it comes to the buzz around TV debates across social media sites Facebook and Twitter.

In addition to the increase in Twitter and Facebook chatter, Mr Clegg also has the TV debates working in his favour since it has launched an almost unknown political figure into the stratosphere of political life. As can be seen from the Attentio BrandMaps picture, he is being talked about much more with regards to TV debates and hung Parliaments than the unimportant things like the economy, and spending cuts.

Oddly enough, very few people are talking about tax which probably serves all three leaders politically since it is widely speculated that a tax increase is on the way whoever is in charge.

In the next blog post, I will be talking about the parties in relation to social media and whether or not they are using it to their advantage.

If you’re following us on Twitter or if you’re our fan on Facebook, drop us a comment or reply and let us know what your favourite brand is.

We’ll then post the results on our website and let you know.

SgParents has chosen Fujitsu:

And Gilles Dufrane chose his favourite brand Porsche:

Or is it?

Amid mass hysteria about the video sharing site going down, it does not seemed to have occured to anyone to try clicking a link in YouTube. If they did, they would realise that it appears that only the homepage is not working.

My Tweetdeck nearly exploded when I added the search term ‘YouTube’. It took over 15 minutes before people realised the truth and started tweeting about.

I will follow up with blog talking about the impact of this within the next few days…

I find myself once again perplexed. I really must stop this inconvenient habit of being surprised by things that don’t warrant it because, working in social media, anything can happen and if I continue to be surprised, I may very well end up in an early grave with a head stone that reads:

“Here Lies Will. RIS”

I want you to try something for me. I want you to stop reading and think about what might have been the most talked about sport in social media during the winter Olympics… Aaaaaand go!!!

Did you do it? What did you come up with? Snowboarding? Ski cross? Hockey perhaps?! Well my friends, you would be wrong. The sport that created the most buzz in social media during the winter Olympics was… (drum roll)…

3… 2… 1…

Curling!

Yes folks, in a recent study done and presented by Attentio at I-COM in Lisbon, it would seem that curling was the most talked about sport during the 2010 winter Olympics. Therein lies the source of my surprise.

Digging a little deeper, I found that I was not alone. It seems that the majority of buzz created online was by people who were actually themselves surprised to be watching it. How interesting. The people that where driving the popularity of this broom filled, kettle pushing sport are the very ones who didn’t want and hadn’t planned to be watching it in the first place.

I call this the “Big Brother Live” syndrome. The art of watching something whilst, at the same time thinking “Why am I doing this? This is valuable time I will never get back”.

What this means is that people are very often surprised as to what is popular in social media and it can give very interesting insights into what people are thinking and talking about.  This is of particular interest to companies that think they have their finger on the pulse when the truth may be that they don’t.

Oh well, while I think about this little dilemma, I’m off to watch ‘Something for the Weekend’ on BBC. Believe me, there is nothing better than listening to Tim Lovejoy for switching off the mind and slipping into a philosophically induced coma. Try it.!

My intentions were good but I got side tracked. And no, not in the way that a twenty-something year old male would usually be distracted by the Internet but by the fact that, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many tweets I sifted through, I could not find one person, not ONE who had anything positive to say about Barclays. That has to be some kind of record!!

“How do I get hold of Barclays UK CEO am being ripped off and fobbed off”

“Getting seriously peed off with Barclays. A DD went out yesterday, there was plenty of money in for it & all was fine. Now they are saying..”

“This is because it took Barclays 6 months to give me access to the account and then they forgot to give me all info I needed to quote!”

“Tried ringing Barclays Local Business Manager mobile for York and am now talking to Darlington! Second lot of millions of security checks”

“Dear Barclays, when I ring the local business manager in York please could you put the call through to York and not via India,”

This is just a few of the posts that I looked at and they all fall within a half hour window. Now, I can understand that banks are not the most popular institutions at the moment but this is a worrying trend. How is it that in every other industry, if people feel that companies are not listening or reacting to them, they go elsewhere but with banks, this doesn’t seem to be happening? There doesn’t seem to be an upsurge of people keeping their money under their mattresses or going to ‘Dave the happy smiley money lenderer guy.

I also decided to check the Barclays website to see if they advertise any of their social media strategies (do they have a Twitter account, Facebook etc..) and there is nothing. I also did a search for Barclays on Facebook and could only find one group, which is private.

Don’t believe me? Try it yourselves. Go to http://search.twitter.com/ and type in any bank name. You will get similar results for NatWest and Lloyds to name but a couple.

Why is there such a divide between banks and their customers? Why are customers accepting it? Why are most banks ignoring it?

Whilst pondering this, I will phone my local bank manager and ask…. Oh, wait!

* In my next post, I will try and uncover what banks are actually doing about it if anything. In the meantime, if you have any news regarding this, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.