Title

Value Co-creation of Social Networking: A study of how on Twitter successful to delivery customer value

Abstract
Nowadays, the networking has changed people habits, expectation, and norms .People view internet as the information universe, not just library. Realizing the benefits of online communities, many organizations has start to adapt advertising their brand name and build better customer services through social networking to for example Twitter and Facebook. Therefore, building a good relationship with customer is an essential prerequisite to any organization today, which lead them successfully deliver value to their customer. In this research paper will investigate how Twitter applied value co-creation to deliver customer value and develop affective teams in the organization. Besides, CRM theory will be carry out to solve the problems and occurring issue. In the process of the research, primary data research on group of people will be conducted to collect the required data. Relevant secondary sources for more data also will be refer.Primary research will include both qualitative and quantitative research. Several methods will be implemented when carrying out the primary research. These methods include various types of interviews and questionnaires. However, there is a limitation of this research which is cannot directly interview with Twitter company to gains the team information. Most of the research will be conduct with local company and customer opinion. Thus, this research will provide understandings of social networks are creating a potentially transformational change in consumer behaviors.Theoretical and implications are discussed in this research.

Introduction
The rapid growth of social networking that has been observed over the last two to three years is indicative of its entry into mainstream culture and its integration into the daily lives of many people. (OFCOM, nd) Co-creation in which value is not created in the firm and then exchange with the customer, but in which value is co-created by the firm and the consumer. (Ramaswany, 2003) or in others words, value co-creation means that the customer (in some context) re-creates himself or herself through the process. (Phipps, 2009)This research proposed study on application value co-creation between the organization and customer. Social networkings are

very popular and useful in todays field of business which cans assists to expand their business globally. Twitter is a communication platform that helps business stay connected to their customer. Twitter.com (2006) Besides, Twitter provides free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Twitter as a place to build relationship, its help organizations doing business in another way such like advertising, customer services and others. The organizations can run their account that focuses explicitly on sharing exclusive coupon codes or sale information to the customer through Twitter. However, competitors is increasing such like Facebook which have the high ranking on social networking, MySpace, My Strands and others also provide different type of online services to the customers. Therefore, in order to attract more followers, Twitter need to solve their problems issue and make improvement to come out a better services compare to others.

Statement of the problem

Nowadays, the trends toward people driven become more interactive and informative. Internets play as important role to driving the trends( Appendix 1) and which are also the main cause of the recent explosion of activity in optical fiber telecommunication.( Carrolls , 2009) (Appendix 2)The high growth rates observed on the Internet, and the popular perception that growth rates were even higher, led to an expansion in research, development, and investment in telecommunications. Twitter is a social networking which provides micro blogging services utilizing instant messaging, SMS or a web interface. However, growth of the social networking is increase day of the day .For example, Facebook, MySpace and others. Although Twitter so successful today but is easier to be duplicate by others competitors. Twitter might not always be the favorite social networking of people because the threat of new entry and competitive dynamic is high and it does keep increasing. Competitors will also aim the same target as Twitter does and provide more good services and delivery more value to the users. People changing due to the rapidly change of trend, people like to update themselves with new things. Twitter tries to make improvement to sustain and attract more people at all the time. Multichannelthinking.com (2009) Limitation of this research is some people might lack sense of presence online services which can contribute them a lot of things especially people who are seldom use

internet. Besides, this type of people might not believe about the social networks can provides because they might have the perception which is using of services and there is a money transactions. Moreover, currently teenager group which prefer the social networks able entertain them most such like Facebook, this might bring harms to Twitter of this issue. (Appendix 3)

Project Background
Background to the Problem
Twitter is a offer people new and varied ways to communicate via the internet, whether through their PC or their mobile phone.Wikipedia, (2009) Twitter provides services which are allow people to easily and simply create their own online page or profile and to construct and display an online network of contacts, often called friends. Users of these sites can communicate via their profile both with their friends and with people outside their list of contacts. (Halpen and el_al, nd) Due to trends towards, many people will using the social networking as their new way to gaining new knowledge and communicate as well. Understanding the trend and apply the multiple language convert to the services system can help Twitter to deliver better services to the users. For example, Twitter can utilize better software which facilitates help to convert the comment, during chat, topic or contents of the users leave and others. Its help users can keep in touch with different languages with the people around the worlds and help users understand a profile of Russian, Spanish or European users and easily communicate with the people. (PRLog, 1999) As trends surrounding social networking move rapidly like competitors like Facebook had brought the harms to twitter and there is drop percentage of population of Twitter. (Schonfeld, 2009) (Appendix 3 & 5) (PRlog, 2009) The trends towards effect more people interesting with the new features from different social networking provides different services such like entertainment (game), test ( IQ) and others which can please them well. People like to explore themselves to new things. Twitter can apply CRM theory and co-creation with customer by conducts several surveyor or online questionnaires to understand the ethnography of consumer behavior. So Twitter can make improvement regarding to the result they gains.

However, there is challenge which is Social networking will be hard to determine the right value that the company exact want to provides to the customer because they have to focus on large amount of people and co-creation with these people and deliver to what they needs accordingly to the possible result. The CRM theory can be applied to solve the problems or issue occurring. Applying CRM theory with the mission statement of Twitter, its enable Twitter to search and organize the external and internal issue which they have facing currently. For example, helping an organization to monitors and integrates these forums into the customer support and development organizations (Loos, 2002)allowing them to hear the voice of the customer and to get information that can be used to further develop the product or service to better meet customer needs and requirements. (Morphy, 2007) Besides, some of the traditional behaviors people might more prefer the traditional way to communicate with people and they might not trust the website services. Non-users also appear to fall into distinct groups; these groups are based on their reasons for not using social networking sites:

Concerned about safety people concerned about safety online, in particular making personal details available online. Technically inexperienced people who lack confidence in using the internet and computers. Intellectual rejecters people who have no interest in social networking sites and see them as a waste of time.

In order to build up close relationship with people, Twitter can publicity their blogs at newspaper or magazine to gains public awareness about the networking such like the benefit of using social networking (low cost, speed and others) There is the challenge for twitter which is as users, policy makers, businesses, educators and parents seek to understand many-to-many communication such as social networking sites, it is essential Twitter understand current usage and behavior and identify potential problems so that they can be addressed. (OFCOM, nd)

Project Aims and Objectives

Research Objectives
The four main objectives for this study are as follows: To establish a suitable criteria on how value co-creation can be applied to develop effective strategy To determine how value co-creation can help an organization delivery customer value To describe the extent that organizations apply value co-creation as their strategy To examine the successfulness of value co-creation application to organization between customer (What is the factors lead Twitter success?) To examine how the social networking trend driver people to become tech savvy To investigate how the social networking can affect the future employability.

Research Questions
The main objective of this research, is proof that value co-creation is important to an organization to building a good communication and interact with customer to achieve its successfulness. Twitters apply value Co-creation and develop effective strategy by using it. It help Twitter can work more closer with the users and knowing what is their needs and make improvement to deliver better services to them.As services in which information is a key component become more valued, customer-created content, knowledge and opinion become vital assets of Twitter.(Kambil and et_al, 1999) The research objectives are to find out how twitter help customer revolutionizing problems solving through online co-creation. Twitter engage consumers in co-creation and get constructive insights for future company developments or publications. (Parrish, 2009) Twitter breaks new faster than other resources and it allow people knowing the latest news happened in the world. Twitter becomes an important source for people to sharing the basic elements of their way of thinking, culture and experiences. The co-creation helps Twitter to provide a platform that encourages the expansion of human knowledge and the exchange between different cultures around the world. Twitters apply co-creation as their strategy to create more value to the customer. Twitter successful delivery the benefit value proposition to the customer for example, Twitter-like systems can be seen as part of a messaging framework that can include IM,

SMS, RSS, voice mail, and e-mail, (and, even, push-to-talk) with e-mail, IM and SMS (and Twitter private messages) presented in the form of conversations, and status messages presented as a log or "feed." (Mednieks, 2009) Twitter is incredibly helpful for a brand or an individual who wants to get proactively involved in a conversation , its also an essential customer service tool in todays fast paced social media environment. (Wilkins, 2009)Many organization brand built up and services their customer more effectively by apply twitter such like Dell, Starbuck, Rapid KL and others. Instead, Twitter become totally essential customer services tool .Moreover, Twitter allows the users creating value on tweets, for example any comment and new things. (Appendix 4) These help Twitter build up co-creation relationships with those this users and followers. Hence, Twitter successful collaborating with users on co-creating new value all the time Besides, the objective of this topic research is to examine how the social networking trend driver people to become tech savvy. Currently, peoples are being driven by trend like global integration and advances in communication technology and they are preferred something can make the life easier and active. Hence, the convenient, speed, latest news, cost effective and trend will be the main cause increasing of social networking of today. The trend driven of social networking, it might affect the future employability because the convenient and the speed of network helps an organization reduce the cost ant time in a meantime. For example, handwriting letter change to e-mail, reduce the red tape and others. In future, entrepreneurship might increase due to the easier to build up a business by using social network as the strategy management and marketing .For example, Create studio advertising their brand name at Facebook and manage the redeem coupon vouchers to customer online. (Ivy, 2009)

Significance/Justification
Customer which doing business allow to be creating value at Twitter. In the future, social networking will become a key communication tool and it might as a substitute of mass media. Therefore, its become important to building a good relationship through social networking. People can comment each others at the web, communicate, searching and learning the new things at social networking. Besides, social networking site is transforming the concept of communication and makes way to new relationships between cultures.

People can learn the new way of communication and different ways of presenting and combining information. Nevertheless, this topic research will be useful information to all organizations when they for developing their teams. Twitter thought and insight helped to develop a better practice resource to all the organization. Moreover, social networking might be a great first step as company will take as their part of strategy to better manage, run and grow and makes deeper, more meaningful customer services improvement in the future.( Carrolls. J, 2009)

Research Program
Research Design
Methodology Primary and secondary data will be conduct in this research. Primary research will be carried out with two type group of people, business based group and users based group. The two groups of people are suitable because they are the users of Twitter. Primary research will include both qualitative and quantitative research. Qualitative research will involve a series of in-depth face to face interviews will be undertaken with business group members and the managers to ascertain their views on the use the purpose of using Twitter as the communication and advertising tools with their customer. Listen to their feedback of benefit and disadvantage of using Twitter. These interviews will be approximately 20minutes in duration for each interview conducted. Quantitative research will involve administering a closed questionnaire based on the research questions. The questionnaire will be distributed to team members and managers using a variety of methods, including face to face interview format. For those whom it is not possible to reaching will using the two formats which is phone interview format and online questionnaire or conduct the interview through direct online communication to understanding of how the users attitudes, perceptions, imagery, and think about Twitter and gains opinion on what and how Twitter can provide the platform to them as well. For example the company is from US, so the online questionnaire will be conduct with them. Sample will be convenience based on in-depth interviews with the customer based group user with 20 people and to ascertain their views on the Twitter whether is friendly user or useful for them.

The advantages of using in-depth interviews for this research are that they provide much more detailed information than what is available through other data collection methods, such as surveys. It also allows the people realizing the important of social networking currently due to the global trend driver people to explore more new knowledge. The business group and users group will also have the flexibility to use their knowledge, expertise, and interpersonal skills to explore interesting or unexpected ideas or themes. It also ensures that participants are interpreting questions the way they were intended. This interviews research can also provide the new ideas or system which areas Twitter need to make improvement in order to increasing it population. There are a few limitations of using interviews as a means of collecting data. Interviews are prone to bias. Some of the people might recommend some idea according to their personal interest only, thus their interview responses might be biased. The result might too wide which might affect the total of interview result. Besides, interviews can also be time consuming or constraint, because it had to takes time to conduct the interviews, transcribing them and analyzing the results. For the interviewee also to provide the most detailed and rich data, the interviewer must make them comfortable and appear interested in what they are saying. This makes interviews more challenging. On secondary data collection, secondary sources on the literature review and online questionnaire will be use to gains the resources to support the fact. There are the limitation of use of online questionnaire which is it could be time consuming because some people might not reply within the short period. They might take long time to reply the online questionnaire or some people may just ignore it. It may affect the timescale which been planning earlier, so it might take some time to collect and analyze the result of questionnaires. In addition, qualitative data will be analyzed using content analysis and quantitative data using SPSS to gains the accurate result from the questionnaires. However, to overcome these limitations effective interview and questionnaire techniques will be apply in order to avoid yes or no answers and also to ensure that all the questions are answered within the allocated time period. Conclusion and recommendations will be drawn from the data and written up into a report.

Keyword: Value co-creation, Delivery customer value, Relationship

Structure Planning

Timescale The table below explains how was this topic research will be done by timescale which to ensure that ability to finish this research project on time .Project will be divide into 9 months and show what would be carry out of each month The timescale will helps to organize and to conduct a research in a contingency manner. If everything goes according to the plan, this project will be able finish on time.

Target date/month 1st month

Tasks to be achieved Read literature. Formulate research topic. Formulate research problem. Formulate research question. Finalize objectives. Draft research proposal. Literature Review. Developing questionnaire Interview Holiday Exam period. Primary data collection. Secondary data collection. Collect and analyzing data. Review all Submission to the supervisor Waiting for feedback. Reversing the draft. Formulate for submission Printing. Binding Submission period.

2nd month

3rd month

4th month 5th month

6th month 7th month

8th month 9th month

N/B: Due to the limitations, the above dates might be changed

Thesis Structure The report will be structured into seven chapters. The following explains what will be discussed in each chapter. (Appendix 6)

Deliverables
Expected Results
Conclusion, based upon completing this study, the research shows moves towards a greater understanding about the communication of Twitter as a role to connect between the business and customer in the co-creation of value. Moreover, the findings will be very useful information on how to co-relationship with users or customer in order to achieve succeed. Besides, the trends of social networking might affect the future business due to the easier manage and low cost. Co-creating value with customers is a key ingredient in this process in any organization today. Moreover, social networking will be the key communication in the future. Nevertheless, todays online tools can deliver a greater degree of interactivity that can strengthen customer relations

Resources
References
Printed Publications Halpern.D, Ash.E.M, Hettinga.K.E, nd, Effect of a trend: The influence of user comments on readers' perceptions of online, [Online] http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/7/5/8/6/pages375864/p37 5864-1.php [Retrieved at 17th August 2009] Kambil. A, Friesen.G.B, Sundaram. A, 1999, Co-creation: A new source of value, [Online] http://www.accenture.com/Global/Research_and_Insights/Outlook/By_Alphabet/Cocreation Value.htm [Retrieved at 18th August 2009] Loos. P, 2002, Concept of customer orientation: Internet business model for customer driven output, [Online] http://wi.bwl.uni-mainz.de/publikationen/ecis02_models.pdf [Retrieved at 18th August 2009] OFCOM, nd, Social Networking, [Online] http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/socialnetworking/re port.pdf [Retrieved at 16th August 2009] Ramaswamy. P, Phahalad. C.K, 2003, creating value jointly with customer: Co-creation, [Online] http://www.12manage.com/methods_prahalad_co-creation.html [Retrieved at 15th August 2009] Online Resources Crum. C, 2009, Twitters Follower Limit, [Online] http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/04/21/twitters-follower-limit-good-or-bad [Retrieved at 15th August 2009] Carrolls. J, 2009, Accountancy in the Twitter era, [Online] http://www.jimcarroll.com/blog/accountancy-in-the-twitter-era.html [Retrieved at 17th August 2009] Ivy.K, 2009, Create studio, create_studio2008@yahoo.com

Mednieks. Z, 2009, The Twitter Phone, [Online] http://openmoodle.conted.ox.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2983&parent=15865 [Retrieved at 15th August 2009] Morphy. E, 2007, Social Networking and CRM Finally Hook Up, [Online] http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/SHNUbAuX2a0ZDr/Social-Networking-and-CRM-FinallyHook-Up.xhtml [Retrieved at 17th August 2009] Mutichannelthinking.com, 2009, Industry, online, consumer and mobile trends, [Online] http://multichannelthinking.blogspot.com/2009/02/industry-online-consumer-andmobile.html [Retrieved at 17th August 2009] Parrish. K, 2009, The Creation of Twitter Best Practices, [Online] http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2008/08/the-creation-of-twitter-best-practices-round-1/ [Retrieved at 15th August 2009] Phipps . B, 2009, Customer Value Co-creation, [Online] http://contactcenterintelligence.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/my-personal-definition-ofbusiness-with-customer-value-co-creation/#comment-222 [Retrieved at 15th August 2009] Schonfeld .E, 2009, Facebook grew twice as fast as Twitter in July, [Online] http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/12/facebook-grew-twice-as-fast-as-twitter-in-july/ [Retrieved at 17th August 2009] Twitter.com, 2006, what is Twitter, [Online] http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/ [Retrieved at 15th August 2009] Wilkins. K, 2009, Why Twitter should matter to you, [Online] http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2008/08/why-twitter-should-matter-to-you-102-uhaul-edition/ [Retrieved at 16th August 2009] Wikipedia, 2009, Twitter, [Online] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Privacy_and_security [Retrieved at 17th August 2009]

Appendices
Appendix 1

Three key trends are illustrating the bright future of Social Networking: 1) Interoperability, 2) Visual Insight, and 3) Enterprise Social Networking.

Interoperability. You may be familiar with these household names: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and Naymz. What you may not know is that Websites like TweetDeck.com and Ping.fm will allow the user to update multiple platforms with single inputs. It also permits the user to capitalize on the value of these social networking platforms.

Visual Insight. Next generation Social Networking will present key insights not just in text, but a visually appealing manner; from transactions to transformation; from raw data to visual insights.

Enterprise Social Networking is being used to bring all the functionalities inside a company to support the key goals and strategic objectives of the organization.

Appendix 2 Social Networks for Older Generation Another interesting fact was the growth of older generation users:

2 to 3 years back social networks was considered a marketing tool for the young generation but with the growth of the LinkedIns, Xings of the world, there has been a major shift. Facebook serves as a good example, it added twice as many 50-64 year olds visitors (13.6 million) than under 18s (7.3 million). Mobile Social Networks Mobile social networks are in fashion especially with the rise of the iPhone. Facebook again a leader in mobile social networks in the UK, not only has a generic mobile site but a Facebook site. In Europe/US market, UK mobile web users have the greatest propensity to visit a social network through their handset with 23% of them (2 million people) doing so, compared to 19% in the US (10.6 million people).

The rise in the number users choosing to go mobile to use social networks grew 249% in the UK.

Appendix 3 PRLog (Press Release) Aug 11, 2009 MySpace, Facebook and Twitter were created in 2003, 2004 and 2006 respectively by young minds that did not imagine what they could achieve. Today, they are the leading social networking sites with almost 250 million users in Facebook(1) and 45 million in Twitter(2) . It is also true that these sites are permanently faced with difficult challenges, such as confidentiality and security issues, users personal data protection and international legislation. (PRlog, 2009)

Appendix 4 For example, today David Alston (@DavidAlston) of Radian6 and tweetpr tweeted this: My wife just went through a totally rude customer service experience with our local UHaul rep. Downright rude. Do they want the business? David has over 1,500 followers on Twitter, who see his updates on Twitter or directly on their mobile devices. Within an hour, nearly two dozen others (including myself) had used Twitter to responded with their own UHaul woe.

Uhaul does NOT care. Period. @FreshFocus (415 followers) Ive learned never to use UHaul! They screwed up my move and offered me a $5 gift certificate?!?! @karimkanji (75 followers) UHaul has quite the reputation. Poor customer service is almost an art form. [link to Consumerist posts on UHaul" @jmoriarty (405 followers)

"In my experience, Uhaul has some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced. They don't care." @adamlevenson (213 followers)

"UHaul hands down has the worst customer service I have ever dealt with in my life. Phone and face-to-face." @paul177 (48 followers)

"Some of the absolute worst customer service experiences I have ever had came from dealing with UHaul agents [in Halifax]. @quietrevolution (153 followers) after my move on SaturdayI hate UHaulawful service @prkeener (52 followers)

Appendix 5

The population of social networking

1. Facebook.com 2. Twitter.com

Appendix 6 Chapter One: Executive summary (Abstract) In this chapter, discuss briefly about the all report, by mentioning what the report is all about, the research questions, objectives, literature review, data collection methods, data analyzed, limitations, and the conclusion of the report. Chapter Two: Introduction. In this chapter, will be explaining why chosen this particular topic and the objective for conducting the research. The research problem and questions will mention also in this chapter. Briefly explain about this topic and define the key concepts such as value co-creation will be mention. Chapter Three: Research methods and procedure. In this chapter, illustrate how the data will be collected, the methods to be used, and the reviewed literature. Explain how Twitter co-creation with customer and delivery the value to customer as well. Chapter Four: Data analysis/ procedures. This is the most comprehensive chapter. This chapter will illustrate how to present, analyze, and interpret the data collection result and information. Chapter Five: Conclusion and Recommendations. In this chapter, all the report will attempt to wrap up and give recommendations about the study for future knowledge. Chapter six: Limitations. Chapter six will explain the limitations faced while conducting the study. Chapter Seven: Appendices. This chapter will outline all the relevant diagrams, tables, graphs, and charts that explain more about my study. It will also include a sample of the questionnaire that will be used. Other than the chapters mention above, the reports will also have the title page, table of contents, acknowledgment note, and the bibliography or reference. N/B: Due to the format limitation, the above chapter might be changed.