Case Study Analysis-Twitter Brand

Case Study Analysis-Twitter Brand

Factors That Contributed to the Loss of Confidence in the Twitter Brand

Several factors contributed to the loss of confidence in the Twitter brand. The major factor was due to declining financial performance. Based on the financial figures presented in the case study, the company failed to meet its financial expectations in 2020. Customers started to worry about whether the company would continue to grow revenue and operate without allowing expenses and costs to rise and reduce the overall income. Another reason behind the decline in confidence in the Twitter brand was the slow rate of growth as compared to its competitors. Notably, the number of active brand users remained relatively the same between 2017 and 2019 (Thompson et al., 2020). During the same period, competing companies such as Alphabet and Facebook recorded a significant increase in the number of active users. Further, the company did not have a clear approach to addressing the decline in financial performance. Consumers could have required an explanation from the company regarding why the decline had taken place, and as a result, their confidence in the brand was reduced. Essentially, these aspects could lay a basis for declining confidence in the brand.

The Question of Whether the Current Actions Present a Strategy That Would Improve Consumer Trust

The current actions do not present a strategy that would improve consumer trust. Essentially, the strategy entailed changing the way of reporting the monthly active number of users to ‘monetized daily users.’ However, this strategy was only meant to blind consumers from observing the significant decline in the number of active users. Based on the case study, even with the change, there is no positive impact on the company’s financial performance. Furthermore, the level of expenses increased, and the company ended up with a $2.6 billion deficit in 2017. Therefore, more proactive strategic action is needed to improve customer consumer trust. The strategy should focus on addressing the fundamental problem facing the company and not shifting the nature of reporting various aspects within the company.

Twitter’s Competitors

Twitter is a giant company in the industry, as described in the case study. However, many other competitors operate in the industry. Facebook is one of the major competitors. Facebook owns other strong sub-companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp. Other major competitors include Alphabet (Google and YouTube), Microsoft (including LinkedIn), and Snap (Mazza et al., 2019). Notably, these competitors are arising from within the local Twitter market. From the external market, there is significant competition from companies such as WeChat and TikTok, which originate from China. The identified companies pose serious competition that can determine the success of Twitter in the market. Outstandingly, all of the mentioned competitors have had an increase in the number of users and even income, while Twitter has not had a significant increase. A growth in income on the competitors’ side reflects a competitive risk to Twitter.

The internal environment of Twitter is favorable to that of Facebook, which is one of its major competitors. This is so because the companies share a common country with the same growth conditions. However, Twitter does not compete favorably with Facebook on the revenue side because while Twitter’s revenue declined, that of Facebook grew. A better income reflects a good internal strength for Facebook. As already mentioned above, there is a low probability that the actions taken by Twitter will result in a more sustainable competitive advantage in the long term because the current strategy is aimed at covering for the reduced financial performance. Therefore, the company should consider more effective strategies.

Suggested Business Strategy

Twitter should consider a marketing plan as its business strategy. The marketing plan should focus more on social media marketing by employing a variety of platforms, including competitor websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Although this may present legal issues that may be battled in court by the company, the company should consider entering into agreements for collaboration with competitors. For instance, Twitter can allow consumers to link to Facebook posts using links shared on Twitter. The same should be repeated by Facebook and other competitors. As a result, unhealthy competition will be eliminated, and long-term sustainability will be achieved. Further, the marketing plan should include a promotion effort. All the marketing messages undertaken by Twitter should convey their commitment to quality standards to ensure that the loss of confidence among consumers experienced in the past is avoided going into the future.

References

Mazza, M., Cresci, S., Avvenuti, M., Quattrociocchi, W., & Tesconi, M. (2019, June). Robust: Exploiting temporal patterns for botnet detection on Twitter. In Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on web science (pp. 183-192).

Thompson, A. A., Strickland III, A. J., Gamble, J. E., & Peteraf, M. A. (2020). Crafting & executing strategy: Concepts and cases.

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

We’ll write everything from scratch

---

**** Textbook Pages emailed to [email protected]******
Assignment Content

Read “Case 12: Twitter, Inc. in 2020” in your Connect textbook.

Write a 350- to 700-word response that addresses the following questions:

What factors contributed to the loss of confidence in the Twitter brand?
Do the actions taken to date present a strategy that would improve consumer trust? Why or why not?
Consider Twitter’s competitors. How does Twitter’s internal environment compare to the internal environment of one of its competitors? Based on this analysis, what is the probability that the strategic moves implemented by Twitter would lead to a sustainable competitive advantage? Explain.
Based on the information presented in this case study, what kind of business strategy would you suggest to help Twitter achieve a competitive advantage?