Social Media Monitoring Project - Part Two

2017 is absolutely an important year for Nintendo, after the releasing of Nintendo Switch, its share price increased by 95% at the end of 2017, which created the highest value of Nintendo in the past nine tears. In the social media monitoring project part two, I will continue to talk about social media monitoring of Nintendo Switch, give a competitive and SWOT analysis of Switch, and provide the recommendation for Nintendo based on the analysis.

Except Nintendo Switch, there are other two similar and famous products in the video games console market, SONY's PS4 and Microsoft Xbox One. This is the Google Trends of theses three key words of the past one year. Based on the image, we can see that the google trends of theses three products have relatively the same fluctuation. 

SONY's PS4 is the most popular in Google trends compared with the Switch and Xbox One. During November 19 to November 25, there are significantly increase on all three of them, because of the BLACK FRIDAY, the biggest annual discount day in the United States. 

The peak appeared during the period from December 24 to December 30, then let's take a look at the key words people search on Google related to these three items.

"Fortnite" is the most frequently searching key words related to all of these three products. Fortnite  is a co-op sandbox survival game developed by Epic Games and People Can Fly, which is one of the most famous games in 2017. The game was released as a paid-for early access title for Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on July 25, 2017, with a full free-to-play release expected in 2018. The "free-to-play" for fortnite in 2018 may be one of the important reason for the growth on Google Trends.


Let's take a look at these three products on the social mention.

SWITCH

PS4

XBOX ONE

Switch and PS4 has relatively the same situation, high strength value, sentiment tends to be neutral and positive, high reach value, while PS4's passion is a little more than Switch. 

The likelihood of the discussion of Xbox One in social media tends to be neutral, and it has lower influence compared with the other two products, while the reach value is only 24%. However, the sentiment and passion for Xbox One are much more positive than Switch and PS4.

SWOT Analysis

Strength 

• Nintendo as the top and leading brand in the video games market has a great reputation and brand loyalty in the society. People trust the brand and its product, which is a key strength for Nintendo Switch to win the customers.
• Nintendo Switch advertised itself as "let people can play games at home, on the go, and everywhere in between", which means that Switch is super portable and flexible that allowed customers play at anywhere and anytime with anyone they want. It is the other advantage compared to its competitors.
• Nintendo Switch provides lots of games for the players, and they keep putting updates on its social media platform. It not only involved the many classic games but also many new and popular games, which provide lots of choices for the players, no matter what kind of games you are interested in, you can always find it in Nintendo Switch.

Weakness

• As I mentioned in Social Media Monitoring Project Part One, Nintendo Switch Lacks the communication with its customers on social media platform, it didn't give the response to its followers' comments below their posts.

Opportunities

• We are now situated in the social media age, information spread extremely fast in  social media platform, which provides a great opportunity for Nintendo to promote and market its brand to more people on social media. Moreover, it's also a great chance for Nintendo to build a positive brand image and gain more followers and attention.

Threats

• Nintendo Switch is just a handheld video game console, its reality and diversity are not as good as PC games. In addition, the range of communication is not as widely as PC games.
• With the rapid development of technology, electronic products are replaced faster and faster, which is the biggest threats for Nintendo Switch, it must be creative and innovative to continually update its products, or it will be soon replaced by other new products.
• According to the data from Google Trends and Social Mention, PS4 is more popular compared with Nintendo Switch, which is also an important threat. 

Recommendation

• Nintendo needs to make changes on its social media strategy, pay more attention on embracing the groundswell, building a healthy and positive relationship with its customers, replying the questions that customers asked in the comments, and also connecting with those people who post negative comments, try to find solutions to solve the problems.
• Nintendo Switch needs to work on involving more and more interesting and positive games to grasp the customers. Also, it needs to continually do innovation, using fresh elements and creative ideas to avoid being replaced by other products.