Fiskars Case Study: Consumer Behavior, WOM & Online Engagement

This assignment provides a comprehensive analysis of the Fiskars case study, examining how the company utilized word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing through its "Fiskateers" program. It explores how enlisting Fiskateers helped build brand awareness and loyalty, particularly within the scrapbooking community. The assignment also discusses strategies for companies like Fiskars to maximize the benefits of WOM programs, including overcoming internal obstacles and measuring the success of such campaigns. Furthermore, it delves into the reasons why individuals, especially young women, are drawn to online interest groups like Fiskars' fan page, highlighting the role of shared interests and community engagement in fostering brand affinity. The analysis references external sources to support its findings and provide a well-rounded perspective on Fiskars' marketing strategies and their impact on consumer behavior.

Running head: MARKETING CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
Marketing consumer behaviour
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Note

2MARKETING CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
Table of Contents
1. How did enlisting Fiskateers help the brand?........................................................................3
2. How can a company like Fiskars gain the most out of a WOM program? What obstacles
may have to be overcome internally?.........................................................................................3
3. How do you measure WOM success?....................................................................................4
4. Why do people, in particular young women, want to be part of an online interest group
such as Fiskars’ fanpage?...........................................................................................................5
Reference List and Bibliography...............................................................................................6

3MARKETING CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
1. How did enlisting Fiskateers help the brand?
The enlisting of Fiskateers helped the company to create a powerful source of Word
of Mouth publicity. Particularly, the act of recruiting more Fiskateers, enticed the existing
group of Fiskateers. The Fiskateers organised local gatherings like the crops initiative
helped in brand endorsement immensely. The engagement, online discussions, as well as
face to face meetings among the Fiskateers ensued string brand promotions and the target
customers began to recognise Fiskars as a premium brand (Fiskarsgroup.com, 2017). As
evident in the case study, immense online chatter of Fiskateers in different online social
forums, resulted in the increase of the number of online website and blog visits to 1.5
million. The responses on the Facebook fan page of Fiskars gathered immense responses
from the 4000 followers (Fiskarsgroup.com, 2017). The fans posted photos as well as
videos of the various scrapbook projects the fans had prepared, using Fiskars scissors and
this reflect that the direct impact of the Fiskateers’ activities were being exhibited through
a dramatic increase of the product sales of
Fiskars.
2. How can a company like Fiskars gain the most out of a WOM program? What
obstacles may have to be overcome internally?
The product that Fiskars developed is a versatile and utility tool that is frequently
created by a large number of companies. Hence, the main purpose that the WOM
publicity campaign served for the company was the development of the brand loyalty.
Products like scissors are required by all household members and the price of such a
product is also nominal. Hence, if the customers realise that they can get hold of a
branded product at the same price, they generally go for the branded product only. As,
Ochman (2007), opines, this is the impact of brand cautiousness and brad awareness

4MARKETING CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
among the customers. Another important business activity that helped Fiskars to gain the
most out of their WOM campaigns, was the identification of a community that they could
count on for active WOM support. For Fiskars the community of scrap bookers did the
job.
The most important challenge for Fiskars was to attract the community of scrap
bookers. There are other brands of art scissors that could help the cause of the scrap
bookers also. However on this occasion, the success of the company depended much on
the achievement of the goals of the apart time ambassadors of Fiskars (Fiskars.com,
2011). Other than the production, sales and marketing department, company also had to
manage a craft works development team which developed ideas regarding how the
Fiskars scissors could generate value for the scrap bookers. Another important challenge
for the company was to ensure the maintenance of the equal level of interest of the
Fiskateers. The authority of recruitment that the Fiskateers enjoyed, helped the company
to entice them for a sustainable period.
3. How do you measure WOM success?
There is a large amount of design thinking effort associated with the implementation
of a WOM publicity campaign. For an organisation like Fiskars, which had selected
WOM as their principle advertising medium, it is essential that more than 10 to 15% of
their sales volume are gathered as an impact of WOM promotions. However, there are
certain parameters to measure the contribution of WOM to the whole sales output. The
first criteria is that the WOM business campaigns should contribute to two-third of the
measured business impacts. In the case of Fiskars, the immense fan support and active
interest over the campaigns of the Fiskateers exemplified the fact that the Fiskars
Company enjoyed more than two-third publicity from their WOM campaigns

5MARKETING CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
(Fiskars.com, 2011). Another factor is measurement of what percentage of the production
budget goes behind traditional advertising after the implementation of the WOM publicity
for achieving the desired sales volume. In this context, the Fiskars attained major share of
the customers’ attention (5 media attention is equal to 1 sales value) through their WOM
campaigns (both online Fiskateers forum and offline meeting and activities of the
Fiskateers).
4. Why do people, in particular young women, want to be part of an online interest
group such as Fiskars’ fanpage?
The young women generally showed a growing propensity towards liking and
reacting to the activities on the Fiskars fan page because of the fact that they take
scrapbooking more passionately than the boys. Another fact is that they consider
scrapbooking a medium of highlighting their literary and crafting skills and also
document their personal history records and as per Biraghi, Gambetti and Quigley (2018),
it is evident that girls to preserve and share records of their life history more than the girls
and as an outcome, the membership of the young women on the Fiskars fan page is the
highest.

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Reference List and Bibliography
Biraghi, S., Gambetti, R. C., & Quigley, S. (2018). Distributed Leadership: When People
Claim Brand Ownership. In Engaged Leadership (pp. 313-333). Springer,
Cham.
Fiskars.com, (2011). Fiskars Annual Reports 2011. Retrieved on 09th October 2018.
Retrieved from
https://www.fiskarsgroup.com/fiskars/report/fiskars_vsk_11_low_eng.pdf
Fiskarsgroup.com, (2017). Making the everyday extraordinary. Annual Review 2017: The
Fiskars Group. Retrieved on 08th October 2018. Retrieved from
https://www.fiskarsgroup.com/sites/default/files/FiskarsGroup_AR17_web.pd
f
Ochman, B, L, (2007). Fiskateers Case Study: How a Social Community Became a
Veritable Sales Force. Retrieved on 09th October 2018. Retrieved from
http://www.whatsnextblog.com/fiskateers_how_a_social_community_became
_a_veritable_sales_force/
Pitta, D. A., Patino, A., & Maddox, L. (2016). Social Media Influences on Building Brand
Equity. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 10(3), 17.
Steenkamp, J. B. (2017). Global brand strategy: World-wise marketing in the age of
branding. Springer.