Social media marketing strategy for Batik SMEs using customer knowledge management

Abstract

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Thailand face the problem of attracting new customers to purchase their products online. Due to a lack of knowledge in digital marketing, this study aims to develop social media marketing strategy to improve customer engagement, specially focusing on Chinese customers. Somboon batik company is a case study to promote sales in batik training course to Chinese customers using social media. Customer knowledge management (CKM) is used as a framework in the research design. Text mining (TM) and root cause analysis were used during the first stage of knowledge audit to find out the critical problem. The following stage is knowledge capture and analysis to identify the critical knowledge used to solve the problem using gap analysis, SWOT and TOWS strategy, and Kano model. The result of critical knowledge will represent 'knowledge from customer and knowledge about customer'. Later stage is knowledge sharing which attempts to develop social media marketing strategy based on social media marketing concept and 'RACE' model. In knowledge applying stage, the implementation and evaluation of the proposed strategy has been conducted using Weibo and Wechat applications so that the prototype can be developed and tested. The result shows that Somboon batik has poor marketing strategy that causes the few customers purchasing and registering the batik training course. In knowledge capture and analysis, the result showed that critical knowledge includes: 1) to support Chinese booking channel and 2) to provide batik knowledge that the company must concern in the development of the social media marketing strategy and Weibo and Wechat are the adopted social media marketing tools and develops the prototype. In the evaluation stage, the result also showed that the proposed strategy helps the company gain more exposure and engagement to Chinese customers described by a number of fans, and the evidences of the contents read, post, share, and give feedback from the customers. Moreover, the manager's satisfaction level on the strategy also shows a high value with an average of 3.7 and insisted that social media marketing strategy is important and useful for the company.