Analysis of Consumer Awareness on Twitter Communication and Brand Equity of Bear Brand Milk

Social media has become a favourite non-conventional marketing media. Important aspects in social media are word of mouth (WOM) and the number of communication form and conversation between different parties. Bear Brand milk is a product built by its consumer through WOM. The objectives of this study were to analyze consumer awareness on Bear Brand milk communication program in twitter, and to analyze the relation between twitter communication and brand equity from Bear Brand milk. The method used in this study was a descriptive method to answer questions in problem statement which was a non-hypothesis testing. The data collection process was a questionnaire spreading through email toward consumer that used social media and consume Bear Brand milk. The sample collection technique was a non-probability sampling method through convenience sampling. The results showed that from 125 respondents, 88 respondents (70,4%) were aware of the communication conducted by Bear Brand milk and then from that 88 respondents, 58 respondents (65.9%) continued with a reaction towards its communication. The respondents reaction toward Bear Brand milk communication was consider as the spread from word of mouth. The overall results of this study showed that there was a relationship between communication through twitter social media with brand equity which consisted of brand awareness, brand association, quality preception and brand loyalty. Keywordsbrand equity; communication; consumer awareness; social media twitter; word of mouth


INTRODUCTION
Since the entry of the internet in 1998 in Indonesia, the development and use of the internet has grown very rapidly.Based on data from the Association of Indonesian Internet Service Provider (www.apjii.or.id), internet users in Indonesia have reached 63 million.Indonesia with a population of 237 million (www.bps.go.id), the penetration of Internet users in Indonesia is about 27%.This penetration is supported by the increasing number of mobile phone users of smart phone types, and the affordable internet charges for the people of Indonesia.Based on reports from www.wearesocial.sg,the number of internet users in Indonesia was ranked fourth in Asia, after China, India and Japan (www.wearesocial.sg,2012).With the great number of internet users, marketers see that the communication with consumers is not only limited through the conventional media such as newspapers, radio, or television.At present, the use of non-conventional media is the part of a communication strategy.Demands to keep looking for new things in the communication make marketers to explore the existing potential in the non-conventional media.One type of nonconventional media that is becoming a trend today is social media, because consumers do not only receive information but also can spread information or make comments on the information received.According to Kaplan and Haenlein [6], social media is a group of internet-based applications made under the framework of the ideology and thoughts of web 2.0 technologies, thus allowing the formation of a creation and exchange of information from internet users.Based on the basic understanding of Ahlqvist et al. [1], social media is an online technology that facilitates the creation and distribution of content.Social media allows the interaction, information sharing, and discussion among social media users.Interaction is formed from one-way to two-way or from a vertical to a horizontal.In Indonesia, active internet users in the form of social media are quite high when compared to other Asian countries.Social media sites that are quite popular in Indonesia are facebook and twitter.In Indonesia, 80% of internet users access Facebook in the one previous month, while 41% of internet users access twitter (www.wearesocial.sg,2012).According to Weinburg [10], twitter is a website owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which offers a social networking and micro blogging service to make its users enable to send and read messages called tweets.One of the highlights of the social media is that it allows users to create profiles, invite or accept a friend to join and become involved in the interaction between the two sides.According to Kotler and Keller [7], an important aspect in social media is Word of Mouth (WOM) and a number of forms of communication and conversations between different parties.According to Arndt [2], WOM is a communication of person-to-person through oral between the receiver and communicator, who see that the recipient is not considered a commercial for a brand, product or service.According to Brown et al. [3], WOM occurs when consumers talk to others about their opinion on a brand, product, service or services acquired.WOM is a major factor behind the 30% -50% of all consumerpurchasing decisions.Basically, WOM has become an effective communication for long time, the present of internet further facilitates the delivery of communications.In line with the development of internet, WOM has changed to be electronic word of mouth (eWOM).According to Hennig-Thurau et al. [5], eWOM is positive or negative statement made by the potential consumer, actual or old about a product or companies that its statement is available to all individuals and institutions over the internet.One product that has a sufficiently strong WOM is Bear Brand milk of PT.Nestle Indonesia.WOM owned by Bear Brand milk is formed naturally from opinion of its customers.For its consumers, Bear Brand milk is not just ordinary milk but it is believed to provide health benefits for the consumers, such as maintaining stamina, helps healing from sickness, neutralize body after smoking or drinking alcohol.In 2012, Bear Brand milk began using twitter social media in delivering communications to consumers, especially for the younger generation.In one year, Bear Brand milk conducted communication programs via twitter at least two times a year with a period of 1-2 months for each program.Based on the information obtained from PT Nestle Indonesia, the results showed quite satisfactory with a tweet reached around 200,000 contacts per week, yet Bear Brand milk does not use or have its own twitter account.Delivering information or messages from the communication program was run using the twitter account of key opinion leaders (KOL).All marketing activities undertaken by Bear Brand milk, either through conventional media and non-conventional media, were designated for the development process of brand so that would have an impact on the added value of the product in the eyes of users or consumers, which is referred to as brand equity.Brand equity is the value given to a product and service that can be used as a reflection of how consumers think, feel and react to a brand and price, market share and profits given to the company brand (Kotler and Keller, 2009: 263).The new approach undertaken by Bear Brand milk in twitter social media would give value to brand equity in view of social media users are mostly young.Although brand equity of Bear Brand milk has already established by WOM without communication that is always encouraged by PT Nestle Indonesia, the use of social media is one of the strategies in the regeneration of WOM for the Bear Brand milk consumers in the future.The objectives of this study were (a) to analyze consumer awareness of communications programs that have been conducted by Bear Brand through twitter, and (b) to analyze the relationship between twitter communication and brand equity of Bear Brand milk of PT Nestle Indonesia.

Research Design, Sample, and Data Collection
The study was conducted using a descriptive method adopting a non-hypothesis testing.Sampling was conducted using a non-probability sampling method through the procedure of the ease of obtaining a sample (convenience sampling).Samples chosen were twitter social media users and Bear Brand milk consumers.Primary data were obtained by distributing a questionnaire via e-mail to consumers who used twitter social media and consumed Bear Brand milk.The form of questions in the questionnaire was structured by using a list of closed and open questions.Respondents were asked to give an assessment according to their most appropriate questions given in the questionnaire.Statements in the list of closed questions were made by using a Likert scale of 0-5, where 0 = do not know, 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree and 5 = strongly agree.As a complement of primary data, this study was also supported by secondary data derived from the study of literature, and data from PT. Nestle Indonesia.

Research Variables
Variables used in the study were the profile of respondents, twitter communications, and brand equity.Brand awareness is a depiction of an ability to recognize, recall a brand as part of a particular product category.Indicators of brand awareness are (a) easy to know the brand content, (b) easy to understand the brand content and (c) believe that the content is not advertising or promotion of a particular brand.Brand association is everything related directly or indirectly to the memory of consumers to a brand.Indicators of brand association are (1) suitability of the activities, (2) suitability of the lifestyle and (3) credibility of the brand content.Perception of quality is the person's perception of overall quality or superiority of a product or service that is the same as the expected purpose.Indicators of quality perception are (1) quality of the product, (2) benefits or efficacy of the product, and (3) perception ability of the product.

2.2.1
Brand loyalty is the result of accumulation of consumer experience while using the product.Satisfaction is a direct measurement of the consumers who are loyal to a brand.Brand loyalty indicators are (1) level of satisfaction, (2) devotion and (3) commitment to the brand.

Data Analysis
Profile characteristics of respondents and respondents' reactions to the communication awareness through social media were summarized in the form of a frequency distribution.Validity and reliability tests were conducted using the method outlined by Malhotra and Birks [8].An item is considered to be valid if the value of Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin (KMO) is greater than 0.5 and the significance value of Bartlett's test of sphericity is smaller than 0.05.Reliability test was carried out using Cronbach formula.The selection of this method was because the factors were measured using a Likert scale of 0 to 5. Data are said to be reliable if the value of Cronbach's alpha is greater than 0.6.A descriptive analysis was performed for data related to questionnaire distributed to the respondents.The respondents' answers to the questionnaire that measured using a Likert scale of 0 to 5 were analysed descriptively.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The respondents involved in this study were 150 persons, but the questionnaires that were filled out completely amounted to 125 respondents.Meanwhile, 25 respondents did not fill out the questionnaire with complete information and admitted to not using twitter social media and not consuming Bear Brand milk.Respondents having two types of social media were dominant; amounting to 58 persons (46.4%), followed by respondents having three types of social media as many as 44 persons (35.2%).Based on the level of use of social media, the majority of respondents who used twitter tended to access everyday as many as 73 persons (58.4%).This could also be seen at respondents who used facebook and accessed everyday were as many as 85 persons (68.0%).

Characteristics of Respondents
The habit of respondents in consuming Bear Brand milk was dominated by respondents who have a habitual pattern of consuming one time in the last 6 months or only consumed it when it was needed / ill, as many as 49 persons (3.2%).The next category was respondents who never consumed one time of Bear Brand milk in the last 12 months, as many as 36 persons (28.8%).Based on the demographics of social media usage of the respondents, it was recorded that respondents of aged 18-24 years amounted to 36.8%.This is consistent with the objectives of the Bear Brand milk marketer team in communication via social media to get closer to the younger generation.
Based on information from PT Nestle Indonesia, the Bear Brand milk consumers were in the age range of 25-45 years when compared to its competitors.
If observed from its psychographic, consumer habit in consuming Bear Brand milk was more in the category of consumption rate of only one time in the last 6 months (only when it was needed / illness), i.e. 39.2%.In view of this, the Bear Brand milk consumption rate of respondents who used social media were still low, so the potential is good for the Bear Brand marketer team to increase their Brand Bran milk consumption through proper education or communication in twitter social media.

Unaided Exposure
Respondents who looked at the tweet / retweet / hashtag and explained it to the questionnaire were only 15 persons (12.0%), and 73 (58.0%) claimed to have looked at the tweet / retweet / hashtag without describing the types of information or content they looked at.Therefore, the overall respondents who looked at the tweet / retweet / hashtag (#) of Bear Brand milk were 88 persons or 70.4% of 125 respondents.If cross-tabulation between the level of twitter usage and unaided exposure was made, it is known that the increasingly frequent use of twitter did not necessarily guarantee that the respondents would look at the tweet / retweet / hashtag containing information about Bear Brand milk (Table 1).Respondents with one time of twitter usage in the last 6 months who tended to look at the tweet was 80% higher when compared to respondents with the level of use twitter every day, i.e. 69.9%.This condition could occur in view of the increasingly frequent respondent's access the twitter, the more information that is received on his twitter timeline so that the information or communication about the Bear Brand milk may be missed or not seen.

Reaction or Response
Data presented in Table 2 show that the number of respondents who did tweet / retweet / hashtag (#) and explained the types of information disseminated were 7 persons (5.6%) and then as many as 52 persons (41.6%) stated that they did tweet, but did not explain the type of information.Therefore, the overall respondents did tweet / retweet / hashtag (#) of Bear Brand milk were as much as 59 persons (47.2%) of 125 respondents.
If cross-tabulation between questions of unaided exposure and the reaction or response was made, it can be seen that from 88 respondents who looked at tweet there were 58 persons (65.9%) were then tweet / retweet / hashtag (#) to inform others about Bear Brand milk (Table 2).Having reactions or responses made by the respondents, the information or communications received will be the beginning of a word of mouth.In addition, there was only one respondent (2.7%) who expressed no view, but did the tweet / retweet / hashtag (#) communication or information about Bear Brand milk.This shows the possibility of these respondents received communication or information about Bear Brand milk from media other than twitter.

Aided Exposure
Respondents were asked to name the hashtag (#) that they could remember about Bear Brand milk communication in twitter social media.This question was intended to determine the exposures that have been received by the respondents by pointing it to the hashtag; in addition, the hashtag is the identity of a communication program carried out.The data presented in Table 3  If cross-tabulation between unaided exposures and aided exposure was made, it showed that there were 88 respondents who had previously claimed to have looked at the tweet / retweet / hashtag (#); as many as 52 persons or 59.1% of 88 respondents could mention hashtag (#) on Bear Brand milk (Table 4).With these results, communication or information that most respondents looked at was information that used certain hashtag (#), although the actual purpose of these questions was to help respondents in considering the type of communication from Bear Brand milk in twitter.Based on the above results, the first research question of "Are consumers aware of the communications made by Bear Brand through twitter?" could be answered that consumers were aware of the communications made by Bear Brand milk in twitter social media.Respondents who were aware of the communications made about Bear Brand milk were 88 respondents, and whose then made reaction or response to such communication were 58 respondents.The reaction or response made could be considered as a form of word of mouth spread.However, when looking at the ability of respondents to remember the hashtag (#) they used, there was only 59.1% of respondents who looked at tweet / retweet / hashtag who could remember correctly.

Validity and Reliability Tests
Validity and reliability tests were conducted for 125 respondents.A questionnaire is said to be reliable if Cronbach's alpha is greater than 0.6 [10].A questionnaire is said to be valid if it meets the following requirements, (a) the KMO value of measure of sampling adequacy test should be above 0.5 and the significance should be below 0.05, (b) value of communalities should be above 0.5, and (c) value of rated load factor as component matrix should be above 0.5 [10].Results of validity test on brand awareness, brand association, perception of quality, and brand loyalty variables, which each consisted of 3 questions, showed that an all questions at those variables met the requirements of validity (Table 5).Thus, all questions on these four variables were declared valid.
Results of reliability test on brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality and brand loyalty variables, which each consisted of three questions, showed the values of Cronbach's alpha were 0.868, 0.901, 0.856, and 0.798 for brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality and brand loyalty, respectively.All variables were declared reliable because the values of Cronbach's alpha were above 0.6.

Test of Descriptive Statistics
The test results presented in Table 6 show that each variable of brand awareness, brand association, perception of quality, and brand loyalty had the average value of 3.2100 (standard deviation of 0.1852), 3.2787 (standard deviation of 0.1476), 3.4533 (standard deviation of 0.0441), and 3.7253 (standard deviation of 0.3758), respectively.The results showed that the average value of brand awareness variable was the smallest, while the value of brand loyalty variable was the greatest among all variables.This indicates that the respondents have already had good experience with Bear Brand so that the perceptions of quality and brand loyalty of respondents have a greater value than the brand awareness and brand association.

Based on the type of social media owned
The data presented in Table 7 show that based on the types of social media owned by the respondents, brand loyalty had the highest average value of 3.73 when compared to the other variables.In addition, the average value of brand association increased with increasing types of social media owned by the respondents, namely one type of social media = 2.50, two types of social media = 3.05, three types of social media = 3.40, four types of social media = 3.49, and five types of social media = 4.00.For brand awareness, respondents having more than one type of social media had a better average value of 1.83 than that of respondents having only one type of social media.Perception of quality and brand loyalty had good average values, but did not increase with increasing types of social media owned by the respondents.This shows that there were relationships between the number of types of social media owned by the respondents with brand awareness and brand association.While the perception of quality and brand loyalty for the respondents already had their own judgments based on experience or information received previously.

Based on the level of twitter usage
Based on the level of twitter usage, respondents had the highest average value on brand loyalty, which was 3.73 (Table 8).Looking at the results of brand awareness and brand association, the average value of the respondents experienced changes, but this was not in line with the level of twitter usage with the respondents.This indicates that the more often respondents accessed to twitter, then the information received was also more and more, so the respondent could not capture all of the information being viewed.The average value of perception of quality increased with increasing frequency of the respondents accessed twitter social media, namely 3.13 when they only used twitter one time in 6 months, and then 3.85 when they used twitter every day.Similarly, the average value of brand loyalty increased with increasing frequency of the respondents accessed the twitter.The results indicate that the respondents have already had good perception of quality and brand loyalty to Bear Brand milk based on previous experience, while getting additional information from twitter further strengthened the perception of quality and brand loyalty.

Based on Unaided Exposure
Brand loyalty had the highest value of 3.73 (Table 9).
When respondents looked at communication via twitter, the average value for all variables was better compared with those who did not look at the communications.Brand awareness and brand association of respondents who looked at communication via twitter would have a better average value than respondents who did not look at the twitter.Respondents who looked at twitter communication about Bear Brand milk and could describe the information they looked at, had very good values compared to respondents who had only looked at without being able to explain the information obtained.It can be concluded that communication through twitter social media that has been done by Bear Brand milk has a relationship with the brand awareness, brand association, perception of quality and brand loyalty.Differences in the average value on brand awareness and brand association were quite visible between respondents who looked at the tweet / retweet / hashtag with respondents who did not look at the tweet / retweet / hashtag.10 show that the average value of brand loyalty was the highest (3.73).Respondents who did tweet / re-tweet / hashtag on communications received by Bear Brand milk had the better average values of brand awareness, brand association, perception of quality and brand loyalty than those of respondents who did not tweet / retweet / hashtag.When the respondents could explain information they received, the average value for brand awareness and brand association increased to become 3.90 and 3.81, respectively.It can be concluded that communication through twitter social media had relationship with the brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality and brand loyalty, especially if the information was useful for respondents so redistributable.Differences in the average values on brand awareness and brand association were quite noticeable among respondents who did tweet / retweet / hashtag with respondents who did not tweet / retweet / hashtag.

Based on Aided Exposure
The brand loyalty had the highest value of 3.73 (Table 11).Respondents who only mentioned one type of hashtag had the higher values of brand awareness and brand association than respondents who mentioned two types of hashtag.On the other hand, respondents were able to name more than one hashtag had the better values of perception of quality and brand loyalty, that respondents who only mentioned one type of hashtag.It can be concluded that the use of one type of hashtag was more effective in shaping the brand awareness and brand association because the information given was more focus.However, the hashtag that was more than one type also gave respondents the good perception of quality and brand loyalty because it showed that the respondent assumed the spread of the word of mouth that this did not come from the Bear Brand marketing team.The overall results showed that communication through twitter social media had relationship with brand awareness, brand association, perception of quality and brand loyalty.The average value held by respondents who looked at or did communication from tweet / retweet / hashtag was above 3.00, while that of who did not look at or communicate tweet / retweet / hashtag was below 3.00.

CONCLUSION
Respondents who were aware of the communications made by Bear Brand milk amounted to 70.4%, then the respondent went on to tweet / retweet / hashtag as a form of reaction or response was equal to 46.4%.The form of reaction or response could be considered as a form of word of mouth spread.The more often respondents accessed twitter then the average value of brand awareness and brand association declined.However, the more often respondents accessed twitter then the value of the average perception of the quality and brand loyalty increased.Based on the average value of the difference between respondents who looked at or did tweet / retweet / hashtag about Bear Brand milk with respondents who did not look at or did not tweet / retweet / hashtag about Bear Brand milk, it could be seen that there were relationships between communication through twitter social media and brand equity which consisted of brand awareness, brand association, perception of quality and brand loyalty.

Table 1 .
Cross tabulation of the use of twitter and unaided exposures

Table 2 .
Cross tabulation of unaided exposure and reaction / feedbackThis indicates that memory to recall hashtag communication was only 52 persons or 41.6% of the total 125 respondents, so it appears that the use of the hashtag in Bear Brand milk communication was not always effective.

Table 3 .
Number of Hashtag remembered by respondents

Table 4 .
Cross tabulation of unaided exposure and aided exposure

Table 5 .
Validity of brand awareness, brand association, quality perceptions and brand loyalty

Table 6 .
Results descriptive statistics test on brand equity

Table 7 .
Comparison of average value of social media type and brand equity

Table 8 .
Comparison of average value of twitter usage and brand equity

Table 9 .
Comparison average value of unaided exposure and brand equity Unaided

.4. Based on Reaction or Response Data
presented in Table

Table 10 .
Comparison of average value of reaction or response and brand equity

Table 11 .
Comparison of the average value of aided exposure and brand equity