Communicating with younger consumers – The digital marketing of multinational firms

Abstract

The digital growth is responsible for many changes in the business context. In a general way, these changes tend to occur towards a digitalization of firms’ activities, responsible for the rise of Digital Marketing, which consists in the process of using digital technologies to acquire customers and build customer preferences, promote brands, retain customers and increase sales. Overall, these changes contribute to the globalization and ultimately may enhance firms’ overall performance, thus giving background for research on the topic. This empirical study specifically focusses on the Digital Marketing tools used by Multinational Firms to reach and communicate with younger consumers. As a questionnaire-based study, the aim is to reveal which Digital Marketing tools are more effective at reaching, engaging and communicating with Millennials. Based on a sample of 218 individuals, results have shown that individuals prefer to search for information about products or brands on browsers, instead of increasing their brand awareness through advertising displayed online. Similarly, individuals showed a tendency to visit brands’ websites more often through browser searches. Furthermore, and extensively supported by prior literature, Social Media Marketing proved to have an important role throughout the different stages of the Customer Decision Journey. One example of this role is the proven increase in customer satisfaction reached through the integration of Social Media in the Customer Relationship Management strategy of firms. Additionally, Earned Media proved to have a higher influence on customers’ purchase intent compared to Owned Media, which shows that individuals tend to picture User-Generated Content as a more reliable, trustworthy and non-biased source than content generated by the brand.