Digital Trust proposes new strategic models to create and reinforce consumer trust and build corporate value through social media platforms.
Digital Trust provides an overview of how e-SMEs can use social media platforms to conduct their own research into increasing trust and engagement, with the positives and negatives highlighted for specific industry considerations. For enterprises that rely on e-commerce, engaging customers and building brand trust is vital for driving sales and achieving long-term success. Trust plays a critical part during the online shopping process and is a key precursor for consumer patronage, and social media can provide the ideal environment for SMEs to gain customer trust as part of their online operations.
This book covers the challenges that e-SME branding is currently facing in the rise of digital and social media platforms, which facilitate and enable greater transparency, consumer empowerment and online activism. As a result, new strategies are required for optimizing these opportunities as well as avoiding potentially disastrous pitfalls. Developed from his own research, Barry Connolly explores the ways in which e-SMEs can successfully and authentically engage within social media communities in order to positively influence their brand trust and reputation.
Industry Reviews
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networks have become one of the main touch-points through which consumers engage with brands. Yet, businesses often underestimate the significance of these platforms, not recognising them as major assets that should be protected and developed. In Digital Trust, Barry Connolly uses frameworks and case studies to demonstrate how businesses can improve their branding strategies by harnessing the full potential of social media to develop digital trust. -- Dave Chaffey, Co-Founder and Content Director, Smart Insights
There may not be a more important topic in business these days than trust. In this carefully constructed and thoughtfully explicated examination, Barry Connolly offers academically sound and managerially practical tools to help firms build and leverage their perceptions of trust. -- Kevin Lane Keller, Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
Trust is the outcome of what an organization says and what it does. In Digital Trust, Barry Connolly explores how an organization can use digital platforms to communicate, engage and build trust with both stakeholders and consumers. -- Stephen Waddington, Managing Director, Metia and Visiting Professor at Newcastle University
Barry Connolly has produced a book that reminds marketers of the central role of trust in the relationship between consumers and brands. At a time when consumer data is being used in ever more complex ways in the digital and social media spaces, the need for businesses to behave in ways that develop and reinforce trust has never been greater. This book delivers a timely and useful guide to why and how this should be achieved. -- Matthew Housden, Principal Lecturer in Marketing, Greenwich University
