Putting social media to work
[READ IN FULL at source, the complete brief text] Bain & Company (2011). 'Putting social media to work.' Brief by C. Barry, R. Markey, E. Almquist & C. Brahm, 12 September 2011, bain.com. THE TRADE MULTIPLE, TRACED TO THE END. The claim sits in the page's own summary line, 'Customers who engage with companies over social media are more loyal and they spend up to 40 percent more with those companies than other customers', and in the body with its evidence attached: 'Our recent survey of more than 3,000 consumers helped to identify what makes social media effective. We found that customers who engage with companies over social media spend 20% to 40% more money with those companies than other customers. They also demonstrate a deeper emotional commitment to the companies, granting them an average 33 points higher Net Promoter score (NPS).' It is repeated verbatim in the sidebar 'Making the business case for social media'. WHERE THE TRACE STOPS, STATED PRECISELY: at a Bain survey of more than 3,000 consumers, reported in a 2011 client-facing brief, with no sample frame, no categories, no questionnaire, no comparison design and no published method of any kind. There is no academic paper behind it and the brief does not claim one. It is a cross-sectional difference between people who engage and people who do not, which is the exact comparison Nelson-Field and colleagues showed is contaminated by heavy buyers and the exact comparison Algesheimer and colleagues set out to replace with an experiment. The figure is not a finding about what community does, it is a description of who joins. TWO FURTHER UNSOURCED FIGURES ON THE SAME PAGE, worth one sentence each because they show the house style: 'While the average billion-dollar company spends $750,000 a year on social media, according to Bain & Company analysis', and 'Bain & Company research shows that the average Facebook user
[READ IN FULL at source, the complete brief text] Bain & Company (2011). 'Putting social media to work.' Brief by C. Barry, R. Markey, E. Almquist & C. Brahm, 12 September 2011, bain.com. THE TRADE MULTIPLE, TRACED TO THE END. The claim sits in the page's own summary line, 'Customers who engage with companies over social media are more loyal and they spend up to 40 percent more with those companies than other customers', and in the body with its evidence attached: 'Our recent survey of more than 3,000 consumers helped to identify what makes social media effective. We found that customers who engage with companies over social media spend 20% to 40% more money with those companies than other customers. They also demonstrate a deeper emotional commitment to the companies, granting them an average 33 points higher Net Promoter score (NPS).' It is repeated verbatim in the sidebar 'Making the business case for social media'. WHERE THE TRACE STOPS, STATED PRECISELY: at a Bain survey of more than 3,000 consumers, reported in a 2011 client-facing brief, with no sample frame, no categories, no questionnaire, no comparison design and no published method of any kind. There is no academic paper behind it and the brief does not claim one. It is a cross-sectional difference between people who engage and people who do not, which is the exact comparison Nelson-Field and colleagues showed is contaminated by heavy buyers and the exact comparison Algesheimer and colleagues set out to replace with an experiment. The figure is not a finding about what community does, it is a description of who joins. TWO FURTHER UNSOURCED FIGURES ON THE SAME PAGE, worth one sentence each because they show the house style: 'While the average billion-dollar company spends $750,000 a year on social media, according to Bain & Company analysis', and 'Bain & Company research shows that the average Facebook user
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Brief by C. Barry, R. Markey, E. Almquist & C. Brahm, 12 September 2011, bain.com