Introduction
Social media creates a platform where businesspeople communicate and/or interact with their customers. Through social media, companies market their products to reach worldwide consumers. Social media platforms are increasingly being caught up in voyeurism, gaze, and shadowing since many people have been connected to the internet, thanks to the advancement of technology. As such, with the current adoption of this technology in business, the use of social media has culminated in image economy whereby pictures, photos, and some other vital business contents are exposed to public regarding a certain business entity, a person, or an organisation.
Such information, images, and pictures about a specific product or organisation will possibly influence consumer behaviour, both positively and negatively in the industry. This paper will bring to light the effects of the image economy on consumer behaviour. Besides, it will use the WikiLeaks Company, specifically the case of Julian Assange and The Guardian newspaper, to show the implications of image economy to consumer behaviour and the world at large.
Effects of Image Economy on the Society
Following the deployment of image economy in advertisements and promotions, businesses are required to provide stable relationships with their customers rather than providing one-sided sale. Therefore, organisations should establish narratives through images, photos, declarations, or informative documentaries that endorse their merchandise culture, as opposed to presenting the returns alone. This marketing strategy by the image economy exerts more costs and responsibilities in consumer motivation and attraction. Unfortunately, not all companies can cope with the technology of product motivation.
Therefore, only the financially stable companies that can dominate in terms of consumer preference and standards will survive. This situation is a challenge to other inferior businesses. Societies are pushed into making misinformed buying decisions where they purchase products, which they happen to see their images online, not questioning their authenticity. Hence, the image economy is bound to expose the society to counterfeit products, which may in turn have a negative impact on the consumers’ health. Does it mean that the image economy was established to harm the society? It is crucial to investigate the force behind image economy in an attempt to see how its establishment has evolved to become a challenge to the society.
The effects of social media on the business economy are broad and diverse. Nevertheless, the use of social media to promote and run businesses has had far-reaching challenges that inhibit consumer behaviour (Zarella 2010).
Tracking negative or misleading information is among the challenges that the image economy has caused through the social media. Social media is a tool that harbours enormous conversation involving a large group of connected people or businesses around the world. For instance, it is difficult for an organisation to track any misleading information, pictures, photos, or statements about their brands in all social media platforms. Therefore, the burden to track the misleading perceptions about the company’s products or brands becomes broader (Zarella 2010). These effects, which are linked to social media, may continuously affect clients’ purchasing power of specific products, following the negative exposure of the statements or information that is portrayed through image economy.
Unfortunately, some companies’ employees who have a deeper knowledge of the companies’ confidential information may reveal it through the social media image economy. The information may damage a company’s competitive advantage by paving a way for its competitors to deploy and even alter the information in favour of their clients. Initially, before the advancement of technology to internet-guided communication, a memo that was dispatched to an incorrect address or correspondence could be recovered without any damage to the sender or recipient.
However, through social media’s online economy image, once information or statement is publicised, it is impossible to undo the publicity since the information (image) spreads within seconds to masses. The perspectives about the product rank or individual’s reputation of the exposed company will influence the consumers’ purchasing power (Whitely 1984). Broadly, the consumption of the company’s products or brands may experience a sales decline due to the destroyed reputation exposure through the image economy.
It has become tricky for a business to keep an eye on workers’ online endeavours and/or stop them from releasing disapproved images, declarations, or information concerning the business through such online platforms. Even though it is upon the employees to have freedom to use social media to assert their responsibilities online, such freedom, which comes with the risk of a misleading post about the company’s perceived objectives and goals can destroy its reputation or cause investors to shy away from the company (Whitely 1984). The information that is exposed in the form of photos, statements, or pictures can cause low sales volume since consumers may not be willing to be associated with the company’s distorted picture.
Traditionally, negative experiences of a brand or product of a company were contained within the company’s framework. Nevertheless, the stories of bad experiences with company’s dissatisfying brands, products, or individuals spread quickly through the social media platforms. It is always hard for the organisations to handle the information from the community. Consequently, the products’ reputation and that of the company may be damaged. In return, competitors end up utilising the situation as their survival tool to convince consumers to prefer their better products. Therefore, a well-structured social technology will definitely capture the society’s attention in the context of preferences and tastes. As Zarella (2010) reveals, maintaining consumers requires a constant review of customer relations in line with online feedbacks and results.
The society’s participatory culture is the main element that is affected most by published media. The current progress in technologies, mainly private laptops and the internet, has simplified the process of tracking individuals, products, and information across the online platforms. In terms of the participatory culture, consumers respond creatively to electronic signals, images, photos, and commodities (Zarella 2010). The increasing access to the internet plays an important role in the expansion of participatory culture since it makes it easy for the society to collaborate with companies, generate, and disseminate creative ideas. This culture has faced some challenges following the introduction of the image economy (Ibrahim 2010).
The mutual relationship between businesses and the society pushes different consumers to be actively involved in buying and marketing regarding of a product or brand. The challenge that comes with the image economy is that it forces many consumers to be actively involved in irrelevant activities that tarnish the reputation and consequently the demand for a company’s products. This situation is evident when the publicised image does not appeal to the client. Moreover, the society is challenged in terms of determining whether a certain product image is worth the attached price and/or whether it is safe for its consumption. This situation can be illustrated using self-service restaurants and gas service stations, which have recently been introduced into the online market. The trend seems to have been copied by many industries whereby consumers perform different tasks by themselves as it is witnessed in banks through ATMs.
In terms of education, the effects of image economy with respect to social media include the participation gap, transparency problem, and the ethics problem. In terms of participation gap, the image economy poses a burden to the education system since it does not guarantee that all learners will get equal access of the image and/or interpret it as it intended. Such an individual may end up publicising information about an organisation after wrongly interpreting an image.
Hence, the issue of accountability comes into play (Whiteley1984). It is not easy to hold any social media user accountable of any post that he or she makes online. The most important role of social media in the education system is to teach learners how to embrace technology and/or correctly capture and interpret information (Ibrahim n.d). However, lack of clear guidelines on what the image economy can share with the society has been a challenge. Therefore, the society has been forced to consume immoral images and information, not because it chooses to do so, but because it has no power to dictate the boundaries of the image economy.
Much of the information that people share via the internet platform is personal. Image economy compromises the aspect of privacy. Technology has gone to the extent of allowing the distortion of a person’s image, even without his awareness. Nude photos of high-esteemed business people have been shared online. Although such images do not depict the real situation of the nude businessperson, it becomes difficult for the society to be convinced that it is not interacting with immoral businesspeople (Whitley 1984).
This situation has economic implications in terms of product consumption. In addition, there has been a problem of transparency of internet contents. The society has been tempted to invest in counterfeit online organisations without questioning their credibility. The society tends to rely much on what is put on display (Zarella 2010). Therefore, it is very important for learners and the society to get the right interpretation of the social media statements, photos, images, and information and determine whether the images are linked to wrong products or they have been distorted at the expense of manufacturing company.
With reference to social networking sites, individuals usually create and share pictures, photos, and pages through the internet platforms. Comments and posts by people from different career industries often accompany these images and pictures. Adults are expected to portray maturity. Their posts may include families or trips they went with their friends and relatives. However, teenagers’ posts reveal different messages since they seek to please the viewers. The online photos or pictures may reveal underage drinking, smoking, and partying. The state of the society is put to test since it has to consume these unprincipled images without holding any person accountable (Ibrahim 2010).
Some images end up influencing and/or pulling upright society members into such unrefined habits of sharing other people’s images, irrespective of their business positions. These inappropriate photos or pictures damage the reputation of the person whose image appears on the social sites. If the person holds a key position in an organisation, the society extends such a negative perception to the entire organisation.
Due to the constant use of technology, image economy is bound to dominate the society and/or influence its perceptions and beliefs. Through the image economy, the products’ public image and perceptions greatly affect the consumer decision-making process (Ibrahim n.d). Therefore, any information that aims to deflect from humanity in a way that it causes behaviour-conflict between individuals in the social media interactions leads to reduced confidence in the person from whom the idea originates (Whitely 1984). This image presentation lowers the individuals’ humanity. In addition, image economy affects the individuals and hence the society by isolating direct business and constructive interactions.
Furthermore, most of the employee workweek is spent in managing internal information and emails and/or tracking specific individuals who can help in specific tasks in the merchandise production process. Much appeal is achieved via image economy since quicker, competent, and successful partnership is possible among diverse ventures (Whitely 1984).
Generally, the amount of benefits that companies can reap from social technologies varies across different industries. In fact, organisations, which have invested highly in their human resources, can attain recommendable merchandise perfection in terms of goods or service superiority and cost-effectiveness through faster communication within the company social websites. Similarly, the organisations that focus heavily on the society’s contribution towards their profitability can possibly derive benefits from social media platform interactions. The companies can deeply monitor the conversations to achieve a higher brand image that is favourable and more preferred by the consumer (The Spyfiles 2001).
Therefore, for businesses to realise the utmost profits of the online platforms, especially the image economy, there is a need for them to streamline and renovate their practices and traditions to capture the confidence of the community. The WikiLeaks Company’s provides a working illustration of how the image economy has become a challenge to the society.
The WikiLeaks Case Study
The WikiLeaks Spy Files case study shows how the image economy has greatly enhanced the revelations of hidden facts in the modern world. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, had made a deal to partner with The Guardian newspaper to bring reports to the public. However, WikiLeaks parties were intelligent enough to gather facts that The Guardian had been concealing in favour of the US government, but at the expense of the society’s contribution. For instance, deploying the image economy technology, Assange publicised a scenario where US military forces in an aeroplane massacred innocent Iraqi news reporters.
The forces also went ahead and killed other people who had come to rescue the reporters. According to the report by the WikiLeaks, companies make a huge amount of money through illegal and confidential transactions at the expense of the society that tirelessly struggles to have its money ‘saved’ in banks (The Spyfiles 2001). WikiLeaks further gathered facts about several financial institutions that had been amassing funds by withdrawing its clients’ money without their consents. WikiLeaks goal was to have this immoral actions addressed and corrected to save the losing consumer. The deployment of image economy helped him to reach masses of consumers who then raised the alarm to have all corrupt companies, banks, and even people investigated.
Evidently, in the consumer image economy, some challenges are bound to occur with respect to the revelation of hidden information and facts about some companies. The effects that are likely to occur include damaged product and individual reputation and economic and political instability. The image economy operates on reputation. In the business field, consumer behaviour is bound to deflect accordingly if any bad image is created against a company or an individual.
The WikiLeaks Company’s agenda is to present crucial hidden facts to the society. The goal is to help the society to understand where the legitimacy lies. When the social media exposes illicit business operations through WikiLeaks’ Spy Files information, consumers will shift from buying the victimised company’s products due to the general public reputation damage (The Spyfiles 2001). For instance, at the dawn of 2009, WikiLeaks exposed 86-handset intercept footage of Peruvian political leaders and executives who participated in the 2008 Peruvian oil outrage. Such publicity revealed the truth behind the scandal while at the same time helping to let the participants face the law.
In addition, the effect of image economy through social media and networking causes unstable political systems. From the WikiLeaks report on Spyfiles (2001, Para. 5), ‘when citizens overthrew the dictatorships in Egypt and Libya this year, they uncovered listening rooms where devices…monitored their every move online and on the phone.’ Image economy helped Egypt to conquer authoritarian political administration (The Spyfiles 2001).
The process of overthrowing the regime was enhanced through tracking of individual phone conversations of various leaders before the capture. This revelation had great political and economical implications such that citizens had to change their voting decisions to focus on other democratic leaders. Moreover, the public domain seems to be controlled by the tracking companies that monitor the hidden businesses (Zarella 2010).
WikiLeaks has helped the society to get the best services from all businesses since they (businesses) are now aware that any misconduct can be monitored and shared with consumers, thanks to the image online economy. Once the company releases any negative information, for instance, concerning the telecommunications sector, consumers of the telecommunications have to change their consumption behaviours of products and services that are associated with such a sector.
Critique
The above theory reveals how today’s world of business has been dominated by visual consumption where product images have been deployed to lure customers to purchase items from any company, regardless o its geographical location. Contemporary clients are captured by what they see, rather than what they have tasted. Developers of the image economy were keen to observe this behaviour, although it was initially happening in business stores such as supermarkets where customers could go ahead and purchase good, not because they are familiar with them, but because they looked visually appealing to them.
Many of them could regret having bought items that could not find any useful application in their lives. This observation presents image economy as an ill-driven concept that does not have the needs of many customers at heart. It is clear that businesspersons have taken advantage of this weak point to drive in the visual consumption concept to customers whom they are supposed to be advising on how they can make the best buying decisions to enjoy value for their money. Hence, unless this form of corruption is addressed and/or replaced with new customer-friendly buying mechanisms, the whole concept of visual consumption, and hence image economy will remain a scam whose agenda is to exploit customers.
One expects the advancement of technology to simplify many activities. Technology has brought into live many media platforms through which businessperson can interact with clients in real time, irrespective of the distance. Technology has boosted globalisation to the extent that a company in the far west of the Asian continent can transact comfortably with another one in the east of the American continent. Marx’s theory of class and exploitation comes in handy to reveal the motive behind the image economy. The theory shows how high social class people whom he refers to as bourgeoisie develop business mechanisms whose outward appearance presents them as if they are helpful to the customer. However, Marx confirms how this class has deployed the image economy to abuse customers’ hard-sought money.
The image economy has defied the issue of privacy since no guidelines have been set to define the extent to which a third party can utilise another party’s data without permission. This claim is synonymous with the way people have utilised online media platforms to post product images to as many people as possible. Since no one questions, even if permission is not granted, to have the product retrieved from the company’s website and shared to other people, regardless of whether they are interested or not, other parties have gone ahead to infringe on companies’ right to privacy and confidential information.
Borrowing from Julian Assange’s case, although he worked within his mandate and mission of delivering information to the society in the name of revealing to it what usually happens behind the scenes, his degree of utilising image economy to invade The Guardian newspaper is questionable and worthy penalising. It is offensive to collaborate secretly with staff members to gather confidential information that is not worth publicising. Besides, Assange’s move to announce the status of some financial institutions is unrefined. Deploying the image economy to show the public issues that relate to banks’ bankruptcy can be likened to enjoying an individual’s ailing condition.
Hence, a panel that includes all stakeholders should establish guidelines such that the potential that comes with the image economy can be tapped to benefit all people, regardless of their position in the value chain. There should be clear policies that shun the emergence of counterfeit companies, and hence goods so that customers do not regret buying products online after seeing their images only to realise that they do not exist. Media companies should demonstrate their commitment to work with their employees towards a common goal.
Conclusion
The image economy comes along with social media to promote and reach distant consumers in the business world. Nevertheless, the image economy poses some challenges to the society and businesses. Businesses have deployed the image economy to share counterfeit goods to lure consumers to purchase them without providing a clear description of their authenticity. Since the society tends to be attracted by images, many people end up regretting after realising that the deals were counterfeit.
From another perspective, the image economy has exposed the society to demoralising information and images, which have tempted previously morally upright people into engaging in immoral behaviours. Following the evident lack of accountability concerning what is shared online, WikiLeaks, which the paper has deployed as a case study, has been established to monitor any illegal dealings. Its agenda is to expose such immoral arrangements to the society to help it discern the truth from counterfeit information or merchandise.
References
Ibrahim, Y 2010, ‘The Regulation of Gaze and Capture: New Media and the Image Economy’, International Journal of Technoethics, vol. 1 no. 3, pp. 49-63. Web.
Ibrahim, Y n.d, The Politics of Watching: Visuality and the New Media Economy, Queen Mary University of London, London. Web.
The Spyfiles 2001, WikiLeaks: The Spy Files.
Whitely, R 1984, The Intellectual and Social Organisation of the Sciences, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Web.
Zarella, D 2010, The Social Media Marketing Book, O’ Reily Media, Sebastopol, CA. Web.