Managing Information and Technology

Baliwag Polytechnic College

Dalubhasaan Kong Mahal

Case Scenario Assignment #2

LinkedIn, Umbria, Mattel, and Others:

Driving the “Buzz” on the Web

Group Member #1: Eliezer P. Raba

Group Member #2: Aires Sosa
Group Member #3: Rogelio Lim

1. How can companies benefit from the “cultural assessments”

regularly performed by Mattel? How could the information
obtained be used to create business value for those
organizations? Provide multiple examples.
A strong culture creates a buzz about a business in the
community. When the buzz is positive, it makes business look
exceptional and makes customers want to do business with you. It
increases productivity within your organization in myriad ways.
It also involves a culture assessment survey question that is
extremely helpful when it comes to collecting information from
within your organization. Every employee contributes to the
culture of organization. It relates to the structure of an
organization such as a company or nonprofit and the values,
sociology, and psychology of that organization.
Traditionally we think about value in business in terms
of assets- property, plants, equipment, inventory, and even human
resources. In fact, what many businesses today consider to be
their most valuable asset cannot be held in your hand because it
is the information generated by the collections of data. In order
to remain competitive businesses must find ways to increase
efficiency while maintaining quality standards for their
products, goods and services.
Managing Information and Technology

2. The case notes that, in spite of disconfirming evidence as

to the effectiveness of targeting online opinion leaders,
companies are nonetheless increasing their efforts to
identify and contact them. Why do you think this is the
case?
In recent years, with the development of Web2.0, enterprises,
government agencies, and traditional news media, which have been
positively influenced by opinion leaders, have been dedicated to
understanding leaders’ opinions on the web in order to seek
convergence. On the Internet, the roles of opinion leaders and
followers in the formation of these issues cannot be neglected.
According to the “theory of two-step flow” and Rosen’s definition
of opinion leaders’ characteristics, “social media initially pass
the information to opinion leaders, then opinion leaders spread
the information to followers and influence their attitudes" when
followers follow opinion leaders, the formers’ judgments and
attitudes will be influenced and changed by opinion leaders.
These opinion leaders can help expand the already existing trends
that are present in the people’s minds. It was found that it was
not very successful when a brand-new idea was instilled in
people’s lives through the use of an opinion leader. Using
technology is one way to help organizations. Utilizing
information technology is to study trends and patterns of thought
in society today by utilizing social media. Social networking
sites can be monitored to see what people are interested in or
talking about. These Internet technologies must be utilized to
filter through the existing social networks to find the opinion
leaders in the market.

3. One of the participants in the case states that “you want to

ride the wave rather than trying to start one of your own.”
What does she mean by that? If companies are not starting
these “waves,” where are they coming from?
On many social media platforms “waves”, also known as trend,
can erupt spontaneously. The “Wave” is a theme that is
generated by people on discussion boards and social networks
platforms which is gaining momentum over these mediums. The
discussions are pertaining to some posts in social media like
new video, product, service, meme, or others that can take
hold the public imagination and spread like wildfire. For
example, the Kony 2012 video received 40+ million views in a
few short weeks and now sits at 85+ million views. As this
Managing Information and Technology

huge increase in views about Kony, as nobody expected and

could have predicted the success of this campaigns, this
massive reaction has caught the attention of the media and
every marketer as they dream of one of their campaigns going
viral like this, but as we all know, it’s really difficult to
predict and achieve this kind of success.
These future trends are blooming and rapidly increasing as
they are shaped by several factors including the changing of
technology as it updates, the business, political and
environmental elements that affect the customers changing
needs towards the business community. As the technology
changes, the preference of the customers also changes as they
also follow what is trends and mostly needed by them. As when
companies take proactively track on the online conversations,
they are able to identify better the current trends in this
era. As they gather the information about these trends, the
companies can use it to give an instruction for leaders'
opinions as they drive these trends rather than in creating a
new one. The opinion from the leader will increase the
momentum of this idea and trends as they also increase in
popularity. When we say, “you want to ride the wave rather
than trying to start one of your own”. A new trend in e-
commerce advertising focuses on “riding the wave” as opposed
to creating your own momentum. It means that the companies
shouldn’t invest in starting new waves, but rather than riding
what this trend brings about, also hiring the opinion leader
who is going to do so. Instead of investing in new trends
which are really difficult to create, they should focus on
observing the community, to see the pattern of this trend
about how it started and to be able to have information that
can provide companies competitive advantage for their strategy
towards their competitors. So, who started these waves, the
waves didn’t start from the companies as it is difficult to
create? As we believe, these waves are seldom started by
individuals or companies, hence they can’t be forced because
it is unpredictable and always starts from the consumer’s as
they one who create a wave.
Dave Balter explained that “The sales data of our campaigns
didn’t match up with opinion leaders.” The waves come from the
consumer’s as they are the epicenter of this, so the
advertisers just ride the wave of popular conversation by
starting citizens to jumpstart campaigns of products and
services in ecommerce. It is not important for the advertisers
Managing Information and Technology

to create a new wave, but rather to listen to the needs and

learn from the customers through this social media platform.