Emerging Business Themes - Essay Example

It has a more than 7,500 restaurants in the United States and over 5,600 restaurants in 97 countries. (Yum! Brands, 2009). Social Media is defined as "a group of Internet-based applications that are build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan Andreas M., 2010) . Pizza Hut, which started spreading as a franchise restaurant has evolved over a period of time keeping pace with the latest developments.

Needless to say, that its diverse delivery format required huge investment in technology. Now, it is also investing in Social Media technology to keep up with its customers like many other ‘brands [which] are rushing to keep up with consumer behavior’ (Peter Kim, 2009). Pizza Hut is still testing grounds when it comes to social media technology. To find out what the customers want to hear, they engage in conversations with customers over the social media sites. It has initiated various campaigns targeted at increasing its online presence.

It has marked its presence on Facebook and Twitter and is offering ‘hot’ deals to the users of these websites. However, a well defined marketing strategy regarding its social media networking is yet not in place. Pizza Hut has set its communication goals as – 1) giving people an engaging and fun way to find news and information from Pizza Hut, and 2) creating two-way relationships with our customers, built on trusted conversation. (Fuller, 2009) Probably its communication goals led Pizza Hut to announce its intention to hire an intern for managing its Twitter account.

Although this piece of news was intended to establish camaraderie with the generation using Twitter, it gathered a lot of criticism from marketing gurus who thought it was a bad idea to let an intern handle an international brand on an international platform. (Evans, 2009) While social media technologies represent exciting new opportunities for