3.1 The Concept and Why It is Innovative

PREFACE

The power of social networking cannot be overlooked as trivial. Social media has brought a new level of transparency into the restaurant industry (Harbison, 2011). Restaurants now need to be more "on guard" with their service. In this age, they must know how to market their brands, connect directly and effectively with their customers and generate buzz in order to gain a larger loyal customer base. Social media is a cost effective method to achieve this (Finch, 2009). For patrons, online collaboration is not only convenient but also advantageous in evaluating, confirming and finalising the decision-making process. Furthermore, restaurants are beginning to realise that online reviews, with virtually no limits as to who can post and view content, if negative, can have detrimental effects on their businesses. Beneficial to the demand side, it is a way to “democratis[e] the landscape” in the service industry (Vardy, 2012), ensuring that everyone is treated equally with the same service.

MAIN OBJECTIVES

The idea of Currant originates from the above concepts and customer need and attempts to address some of the issues highlighted thus far. The goal of this mobile application is to decrease the intangibility of the food and beverage service experience. Its main purpose is to increase and facilitate the communication between business owners and patrons by means of providing a medium where loyalty and trust can be built over a microblogging social network. It is a location-service-based online platform where time-sensitive user-generated microtext-based content and business specific recommendations is collected in one central database and displayed in a user-friendly and simple mobile layout. The idea is that it can be accessed by Currant members as well as restaurant managers that wish to build one-to-one relationships with loyal clients within a wider community based on “many-to-many”-type communications (Chan et al., 2011). Managers accessing the database can retrieve first-hand customer information and feedback that can be beneficial in developing marketing and branding strategies. Therefore, Currant can also be viewed as a customer relationship management (CRM) tool as it provides, in principal and in a virtual environment, the opportunity for businesses to “proactive[ly] seek[…] out customer’s needs” (Martinez-Lopez et al., 2010). 

THE PROCESS

Currant-Specific Lingo

• Pick a Vine: Selecting a 24-hr fresh review thread
• Make a Splash: Making a micro-blog post (140 character limit)
• Re-Splash: Reply to an existing Splash
• Award a Currant: Similar to Likes on Facebook, if a review has been useful, users can award other users with Currants
• Squash a Grape: The opposite of awarding a Currant
• Collect Currants: A system where Currants at be collected to achieve the status of a Vintage user, releasing certain user privileges
• Harvest a Vintage: For Vintage-grade users, redeeming any exclusive promotions and deals sent to mobile devices by businesses

Rules of Currant

•  Access limited to “splashes” posted within the past 24 hours; older posts are archived and can only be made public or accessible if you have collected a certain amount of “currants”
•  The number of publicly released “currants” displayed on a user profile has direct impact on the type and quantity of promos, freebies and deals available to the user
• To initiate the Vine, user can only Make a Splash if he or she is within walking distance (2km) of an establishment
• A “splash” is only made available to other users who is within 5 km radius of the posting user; another Currant member can only “re-splash” on an existing vine if he or she is within walking distance (2km) of the establishment
• Users who have accumulated a certain number of “currants” can be upgraded to different “Vintage” grades, where businesses can award exclusive promotions, which are pushed onto mobile phones based on current location of user (when the user is within walking distance of establishment)

WHAT MAKES CURRANT BETTER

The concept’s innovation stems from its goal to benefit demand-side decision making as well as to expedite the implementation of customer-centric marketing (CCM) (Niininen et al., 2007) from the perspective of food and beverage businesses, an issue that is not addressed by any food-related social networking sites out on the market at the moment. Using an instant-review recommender system, it benefits customers because it can organise, categorise and analyse personal information that allows the system (i.e. the database) to fine tune and improve their profiles as customers, thus “augment[ing] personalisation of [the] web experience” (Martinez-Lopez et al., 2010). But the more innovative aspect of this system, and arguably the key interest of this project, is the way that it can be useful for businesses. It makes it possible for businesses to gather pertinent marketing information—such as age, gender, social status, values, dining history, choice-making habits and purchase-motivating factors, and in this case particularly, other Vines which the user follows—more directly and efficiently. The marketing process becomes more specific and personalised. Since businesses are slowly realising the need to connect to customers through technology, that they are missing out on information regarding their businesses that could be detrimental to brand image, it will be a true incentive for businesses to join this network. Therefore, unlike Yelp and FourSquare, two social networking sites that are oriented to serve the demand side, it can be said that Currant is an app that builds a relationship of trust between businesses and patrons which studies show can lead to loyalty (Tran et al., 2012). It is about linking the customers to customers as well as customers to businesses, a concept is currently lacking in existing social platforms.