Abstract The objective of this research is to increase understanding about B2B company-led user engagement on social media content. Building on hierarchy-of-effects (HoE) theory, we explore how the world’s leading B2B companies use content objectives (why), strategies (how), and tactics (what) on Twitter. We first integrate B2B advertising and social media research on companies’ content objectives, strategies, and tactics. Then, using qualitative analyses, we examine the existence of objectives, strategies, and tactics in the most engaging tweets (N = 365) of the worlds’ ten leading B2B brands, covering five industries, in 2017. Finally, we quantitatively examine how the use of diverse objectives and strategies differs between the most engaging tweets (N = 318) and least engaging tweets (N = 229) of the companies in 2018. The companies use objectives, strategies and tactics that relate to creating awareness, knowledge and trust, interest, and liking in the majority of their most and least engaging tweets, and express preference, conviction and purchase aspects much less. Differences exist in general, industry-wise, and company-wise. The study is a rare attempt to integrate the extant B2B advertising and social media research, and compare the most and least engaging B2B social media content.
Last. Brian P. Brown(VCU: Virginia Commonwealth University)H-Index: 15
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Abstract Existing studies offer limited explanations regarding the determinants of business-to-business (B2B) brand sensitivity: the degree to which brand stimuli are actively considered during buyer deliberations. This research addresses this gap by comparing the relative influence of organizational buyers' functional versus imagery beliefs on brand outcomes in B2B professional service settings. Specifically, it compares the influence of buyers' perceived operational competence and prestige sen...
Abstract This paper examines Twitter use by product and service companies in the healthcare sector. This four company study aims to identify the type of content posted in Twitter that drives engagement in terms of likes, retweets and comments. A sample of 838 tweets were thematically coded as to the perceived tweet function. The tweets were analyzed to determine whether the function was significantly associated with greater or lesser engagement. Linguistic content of the tweets was then analyzed...
Purpose This study aims to explore why and how business-to-business (B2B) companies use social media and which users and stakeholders they communicate with. Design/methodology/approach The study employs a case study approach because of its exploratory nature. Data from three companies consisted of interviews and observation of websites. The analysis includes within-case and cross-case displays to find patterns and themes in the data. Findings The study shows that companies in a B2B contexts use ...
#1Jari Salo(UH: University of Helsinki)H-Index: 35
Abstract Since the emergence of social media, industrial marketing academics and marketers have also been intrigued by the influence of such media on the discipline. As, social media research in the field of industrial marketing has been of increasing interest, this research attempts to review and assess the advances in social media research in the industrial marketing field. From the literature review conducted, it can be identified that some of the research areas have witnessed steady theory d...
#2George R. Milne(UMass: University of Massachusetts Amherst)H-Index: 40
Last. Naveen Donthu(J. Mack Robinson College of Business)H-Index: 55
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Abstract Although social media usage in business markets continues to grow, managers still struggle with designing popular brand message posts. This research investigates the key factors that contribute to Facebook brand content popularity metrics (i.e., number of likes and comments) for Fortune 500 companies' brand posts in business-to-business (B2B) versus business-to-consumer (B2C) markets. Building on psychological motivation theory, the authors examine key differences in B2B and B2C social ...
Purpose Reaching customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in a business-to-business setting is still an area of rising interest to both researchers and practitioners. Compared to consumer branding, there is notably very little known about the success factors of industrial branding and how to convince buyers rationally and emotionally in business-to-business markets. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the success factors of branding in a business-to-business setting and analyze their performanc...
The present research explores the relationship between impulse buying and unethical consumer behavior. This work is based on the surprising results of an unrelated study, during which we observed that participants shopping for impulse products were more likely to cheat to obtain a more expensive product than participants shopping for regular products. Based on these findings and building on previous research on the relationship between impulsiveness and delinquency, three studies were set up to ...
Purpose Mobile social media (MSM), an interaction, exchange of information and creation of user-generated content, mediated by mobile devices, is becoming the locomotive that drives forward evolution of the online world. Fewer academic studies have touched upon the MSM subject, with all the papers being of a conceptual nature to provide recommendations to business-to-business (B2B) firms. This paper aims to explore how B2B firms use MSM in reality. Design/methodology/approach This paper adopts t...
Social media has moved beyond personal friendships to professional interactions in high-knowledge industries. In particular, online discussion forums are sponsored by firms aiming to position themselves as thought-leaders, to gain more insight in their customer base and to generate sales leads. However, while firms can seed discussion by posts, they depend on the forum members to continue the discussion in the form of reactions to these posts. The goal of the current study is to investigate what...
#1Martin Eisend(European University Viadrina)H-Index: 30
#2Farid Tarrahi(European University Viadrina)H-Index: 4
This study measures the degree of advertising effectiveness in previous advertising research studies. By analyzing 324 meta-analytic effect sizes taken from 44 meta-analyses that included more than 1,700 primary studies with more than 2.4 million subjects, the meta-meta-analytic effect size of .2 shows that advertising is effective. The findings differ across advertising inputs and outcomes, and identify different hierarchies of effects due to different underlying processes. The source primarily...
Abstract Although various critical elements, such as media publicity, word of mouth, legislation, and environmental factors, are not under the control of a company, they play a significant role in influencing its brand image. Uncertainty over how different social networking sites can support brands is one of the crucial reasons for the delayed acceptance of social media (SM) in business-to-business (B2B) transactions. SM possesses immense potential in relation to gathering customer data and assi...
Abstract Social media (SM) constitutes a valuable source of market intelligence, characterised by great ease and efficiency of interactions between networked partners, and by facilitation of individual expressions of self and brand engagement. Thus, SM can enable interaction, collaboration, and networking, thereby strengthening the relationships between actors within networks. Nonetheless, research into B2B organisations usage of SM for relationship management remains limited, fragmented and lac...
Social media plays an important part in the digital transformation of businesses. This research provides a comprehensive analysis of the use of social media by business-to-business (B2B) companies. The current study focuses on the number of aspects of social media such as the effect of social media, social media tools, social media use, adoption of social media use and its barriers, social media strategies, and measuring the effectiveness of use of social media. This research provides a valuable...
Digital Visual Content (DVC), as sets of meanings, constitutes a pictorial representation of phenomena and may lead users of Social Networking Sites (SNS) to specific behavioral activities, i.e., connected with the expression of emotions. The goal of this research paper was to create a methodology of analysis and visualization of SNS users’ emotional responses to the hitchhiker archetype, built on the basis of a semantic decomposition of photos shared by hitchhikers in a closed group of Facebook...
This study analyses the impact of the use of digital technology on economic growth for 39 African countries from 2012 to 2016. This analysis applies a system GMM estimator to understand the extent to which the usage of digital technology facilitates growth using a measure of digitalisation from the Networked Readiness Index. Unlike previous research, we distinguish between the impact of individual, business, and government ICT usage on growth and show that only individual usage has a positive im...
Last. Yichuan Wang(University of Sheffield)H-Index: 22
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Abstract The use of the internet and social media have changed consumer behavior and the ways in which companies conduct their business. Social and digital marketing offers significant opportunities to organizations through lower costs, improved brand awareness and increased sales. However, significant challenges exist from negative electronic word-of-mouth as well as intrusive and irritating online brand presence. This article brings together the collective insight from several leading experts ...
YouTube (YT) is the largest online video digital channel with more than 2 billion users, and over a billion hours of YT videos are viewed every day, particularly among young consumers. YT has become a massive marketing communication platform, which serves as a medium to target the lucrative Generation Z cohort (first born in the late 1990s), and influence this generation’s infamously unpredictable purchase decision process. The main aim of this paper was to consider the effect of YouTube marketi...
Last. Hatice Kizgin(University of Bradford)H-Index: 10
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Mobile phones have become an integral part of human lives with majority of people using them to access product and services for their day-to-day needs. However, mobile shopping adoption across the globe is not wide or fast as expected. In addition, the research is very scant in understanding various predictors of consumer adoption towards mobile shopping. The objective of this study is to identify most significant and non-significant predictors of consumer mobile shopping acceptance. Systematic ...
Abstract Although promising links have been established between social information processing capability (internal capability), customer co-creation (external capability), and social media agility, empirical studies have not offered sufficiently convincing evidence on the benefits of using social media. This study adopted the dynamic capability view that assesses the development of internal capability by combining information acquisition, communication, and responsiveness and examines the effect...