New Rice research shows that Facebook fan pages are effective marketing tool

BY DAVID RUTH
Rice News staff

Companies that use the popular social-media site Facebook and its fan page module to market themselves to customers can increase sales, word-of-mouth marketing and customer loyalty significantly among a subset of their customers, according to new research from Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. The study is featured in the March issue of the Harvard Business Review.

	JEFF FITLOW
	According to research by Rice’s Utpal Dholakia, Facebook fan pages offer an effective and low-cost way of social-media marketing.

Research for the article, “How Effective is Facebook Marketing?”, was conducted by Utpal Dholakia, associate professor of management, and Emily Durham ’99, a Jones School alumna and founder of Restaurant Connections, a Houston-based restaurant consultancy.

Dholakia and Durham surveyed customers of Dessert Gallery (DG), a popular Houston-based café chain. Prior to the study, DG did not have a Facebook presence.

The study, based on surveys of more than 1,700 respondents over a three-month period, found that compared with typical Dessert Gallery customers, the company’s Facebook fans:

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