What and how do companies benefit from social media?:a review of seven company case studies

Abstract. Social Media (SM) has turned into our daily life in the information society. People are showing an increasing tendency to build and nurture their online social relationship on SM platforms. Organizational SM has become an important research area for both scholars and practitioners who are interested in online technologies. It is worth of studying what the researches have been done related to the SM usage in organizations, and how the organizations have utilized the SMs for own specific purpose. SM used in organization has grown continuously. Business enterprises quickly recognize the value of shared contents. They have been increasingly adopted in the workplace for decision-making, supporting corporate communication, knowledge management, facilitating communication both inside organization and the stakeholders outside organization, increasing the social capital, enhancing the brand value and promoting the marketing practice in organization, both in business to business and business to customers. Many corporations are using blogs, wikis, and social networking sites (SNS) as routine parts of their business operations. The performances of the usage of the SM can be generally classified as internal usage and external usage. All of them have the different purposes and tactics basing on various targeted users. For the thesis work, a literature review was conducted by studying the existing empirical research on the usage of SM in organizations from selected existing scientific articles. The current status of the organizational SM usage has been investigated. Two theories have been chosen which are both the affordances of SM (Visibility, Persistence, Editability, and Association) and the honeycomb functional building blocks of SM (Identity, Conversations, Sharing, Presence, Relationships, Reputation and Groups). Based on them, the case studies in seven companies have been explored, aiming to search some of the four affordances and certain amount of the seven functional blocks in organizational SM activities, and explain how they influences the organizational behaviours. Applying such two theories shows that the organizations may participant the SM platforms efficiently and effectively in various ways. Some good practises of the SM usage have been portrayed. The risks related of using SM platforms have been mentioned as well. The future potential research works related the organizational SM usage has been discussed

The Impact of Social media on Innovation in Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

This research explores the impact of social media on innovation in small and medium-sized businesses. Research during the recent years suggest that information systems in general and social media platforms in particular play a significant role in empowering open innovation networks, which involve a diverse set of partners, and have been known a key driver for the sustainable development of new products and services in organizations. Social media platforms present an opportunity for firms to create online communities where users engage in collaborative practices to create value by submitting product reviews, providing feedback, generating ideas, suggesting new solutions to the problems, and identifying new sources of innovation. There is a growing body of literature suggesting SMEs can reap significant benefits if they use social media to collaborate with their external partners, suppliers, customers, and other stakeholders, and to engage in open innovation activities with them, perhaps because they lack sufficient resources such as time, budget, and expertise, to innovate on their own. These benefits can be co-creation of new solutions, increased efficiency saving and economies of scale, improved metadata (knowledge of who knows what and who knows whom), and enhanced individual and organizational learning. However, previous studies have rarely examined the complexity of actual implementation of open innovation in the context of SMEs. Particularly, there have been few empirical studies to examine how social media can be integrated into the innovation process of SMEs. To examine the entire process of social media-enabled innovation in SMEs, this research has set out to address a main research question by exploring two sub-research questions as follow: How do social media-based interactions influence the innovation practices of small and medium-sized businesses? I. How does social media influence information sharing between small and medium-sized businesses and their external stakeholders? II. How is information from social media used internally by small and medium-sized businesses to support their innovation practices? The research focuses on two qualitative case studies of UK-based SMEs active in the education resources development, and legal aid services sectors. Netnography and semi-structured interviews were selected as the main methods for developing the case studies. In each case study, netnographic data was collected from the company’s social media interactions with external stakeholders. This was followed by semi-structured interviews with the key informants from each organization. The case studies were guided by the grounded theory principles, which also informed the assessment and analysis of the collected data to develop a new theoretical model that conceptualizes the social media-enabled innovation in the context of case studies. Hence, the newly-developed model has emerged from the empirical data and has been verified against the identified concepts from the literature review. The new model includes four main stages which are: Branding and socialization, information sharing, information use, and maturity. Each stage consists of two key components contributing to the fulfilment of the objectives set out for that stage. The research also identified two contextual factors that are likely to impact the successful adoption of the model in organizations. These two factors are: community culture and company size. This research is among the few empirical studies which have attempted to examine the end-to-end process of social media-enabled innovation in the context of SMEs and the methodological approach is novel in research into education resources development and legal aid services sectors

Assessing value creation in digital innovation ecosystems: A Social Media Analytics approach

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. This paper explores the creation of value through the interactions of consumer and professional stakeholders in digital innovation ecosystems. We examine this by applying the methodological approach of Social Media Analytics (SMA) which is an interdisciplinary approach that seeks to combine, extend and adapt methods for analysing social media data. By utilising the SMA framework to track user-generated contents published on social media platforms, we assess how consumer and professional stakeholders associate value to Storytel, a new entrant in the Swedish publishing industry that is offering digital subscription service for streaming audiobooks. Drawing from a dataset of 2633 user-generated contents, our findings illustrate the value-creating practices in which stakeholders in Storytel's ecosystems associate value to Storytel's digital innovation. Our findings further highlight that the value-creating practices arising from the interactions of consumer and professional stakeholders in social media give rise to the hybridisation of value, where multiple values drawn from existing value categories become merged in the studied case. This study contributes to extant literature on management of innovation and information systems by (i) shedding light on how value is created by examining value-creating practices as a result of the interactions between stakeholders and (ii) examining the resulting merging of value categories within digital innovation ecosystems and thus exploring the hybridisation of value

What If 140 Characters Can Impact Your Company’s Market Value? Tweeting Corporate Social Responsibility and Stock Prices in the Financial Sector

Many firms signal, announce, and conduct organizational activities on the prevalent Information and Communication Technology Twitter. Then, do firms financially benefit from tweeting those activities? In this paper, we focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) signaled through tweets and examine via the event study methodology the impact of CSR tweets on organizational effectiveness measured in abnormal stock returns. Our findings show that Twitter has a broadcasting power like tradition media; tweeting CSR impacts stock prices. Managers thus may want to announce organizational activities on the more cost-effective tool Twitter, rather than on press releases. We also demonstrate that tweeting CSR less frequently is more impactful on stock prices than tweeting CSR more frequently. Managers should also take advantage of these findings; tweeting similar messages over and over again might not be as effective in getting across a particular message

NOT ANOTHER NEW WINE IN THE SAME OLD BOTTLES – MOTIVATORS AND INNOVATION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT E-SERVICE DEVELOPMENT

E-services hold the potential to innovate how the public sector operates, and to increase the transparency of public services. Numerous research initiatives have illustrated the innovation power of e-services; with new technology and new solutions to existing problems. Research on this topic also emphasizes that in order for public e-services to reach their full potential, they need to be designed in a way that users find useful and beneficiary. Interestingly, in practice, only fragments of this claimed innovation seem to take place. Today, most public e-services launched are merely electronic versions of existing services with no, or very low, degree of innovation. In this paper, we analyse empirical data from local government e-service providers. The aim is to explore the current practices in local government e-service development with respect to how aspects related to innovative and high quality service provisioning are handled. In doing so, we analyse what basic motivators there are for local governments to offer e-services in the first place, and how such motivators influence innovation in local government e-service development. The analysis concludes that local governments are facing a challenging situation in terms of a general lack of resources regarding time, competence, and skills, as well as a dispersed user segment where needs and wills often are hard to grasp. Furthermore, local governments are facing conflicting interests and agendas. At the end of the day, the heights of innovation are then hard to achieve. We call for further research on the applicability of previous research findings in other research areas in order to promote more innovative e-service provisioning

Business Value of Social Media Technologies:Evidence from Online User Innovation Communities

Social media technologies allow user-generated content and provide new opportunities and challenges for firms to transform their business. In particular, more and more firms have started strategically using the online user innovation communities (OUICs) for open innovation initiatives. The extent to which firms are able to derive business value from OUICs, however, has not been systematically examined. Drawing on a multi-theoretical foundation from the framework of dynamic capabilities and the view of innovation value chain, we conceptualize two OUIC-enabled capabilities, which are, ideation capability related to collecting user-generated ideas about potential innovation from OUIC, and implementation capability related to selecting user-generated ideas for innovation development and introducing developed innovation via OUIC. Using a large-scale panel data set consisting of 1676 firm-day observations from Dell and Starbucks, we examine the impacts of OUIC-enabled capabilities on firm value. We find robust evidence that OUIC-enabled ideation capability actually does not influence firm value, whereas OUIC-enabled implementation capability increases firm value. Novel theoretical and managerial implications are discussed

Evaluation and decision-making in social media marketing

Purpose - As organisations are increasing their investment in social media marketing (SMM), evaluation of such techniques is becoming increasingly important. This research seeks to contribute to knowledge regarding SMM strategy by developing a stage model of SMM evaluation and uncovering the challenges in this process. Design/methodology/approach – Interviews were conducted with eighteen key informants working for specialist SMM agencies. Such informants are a particularly rich source, since they manage social media campaigns for a wide range of clients. An exploratory research was conducted and thematic analysis surfaced the key components of the SMM evaluation process and associated challenges. Findings – The Social Media Marketing Evaluation Framework is developed. This Framework has the following six stages: setting evaluation objectives, identifying KPI’s, identifying metrics, data collection and analysis, report generation, and management decision making. Challenges associated with each stage of the Framework are identified, and discussed with a view to better understanding decisionmaking associated with social media strategies. Two key challenges are the agencyclient relationship and the available social analytical tools. Originality/value – Despite an increasing body of research on social media objectives, KPI’s and metrics, no previous study has explored how these components are embedded in a marketing campaign planning process. The article also offers insights in the factors that make SMM evaluation complex and challenging. Recommendations for further research and practice are offered

Evaluation and decision making in social media marketing

Purpose – As organisations are increasing their investment in social media marketing (SMM), evaluation of such techniques is becoming increasingly important. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to knowledge regarding SMM strategy by developing a stage model of SMM evaluation and uncovering the challenges in this process. Design/methodology/approach – Interviews were conducted with 18 key informants working for specialist SMM agencies. Such informants are a particularly rich source, since they manage social media campaigns for a wide range of clients. An exploratory research was conducted and thematic analysis surfaced the key components of the SMM evaluation process and associated challenges. Findings – The SMM evaluation framework is developed. This framework has the following six stages: setting evaluation objectives, identifying key performance indicators (KPIs), identifying metrics, data collection and analysis, report generation and management decision making. Challenges associated with each stage of the framework are identified, and discussed with a view to better understanding decision making associated with social media strategies. Two key challenges are the agency-client relationship and the available social analytics tools. Originality/value – Despite an increasing body of research on social media objectives, KPIs and metrics, no previous study has explored how these components are embedded in a marketing campaign planning process. The paper also offers insights in the factors that make SMM evaluation complex and challenging. Recommendations for further research and practice are offered

Drivers, types and value outcomes of customer-to-customer interaction: An integrative review and research agenda

Purpose Customer-to-customer (C2C) interaction plays a significant role in service. The purpose of this paper is to identify the drivers that motivate customers to interact with other customers, the interactions through which customers affect other customers and the value outcomes of C2C interactions for the participants.Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on a systematic literature review of C2C interactions. The authors analyzed 142 peer-reviewed articles to synthesize existing knowledge about C2C interactions. A generic value framework is used to categorize earlier research and reveal areas for further research.Findings The main outcome of this study is an integrative framework of C2C interaction that bridges C2C interactions and customer value. The findings indicate customer-, firm- and situation-induced drivers of C2C interactions. Outcome- and process-focused C2C interactions are identified to result in functional, emotional and social value outcomes. Avenues for additional research to explore issues related to current technology-saturated service settings are proposed.Research limitations/implications The paper proposes an agenda for future research to extend the C2C interaction research domain and explore how such interactions create value for the customer. The role of the service provider is not explicitly addressed but is an important area for further research.Practical implications Companies can use the framework to understand how they can become involved in and support beneficial C2C interaction.Originality/value This paper reviews empirical studies on C2C interaction, offering a systematic review of C2C interaction and producing an integrative framework of C2C interaction. It identifies a research agenda based on the framework and on topical issues within service research and practice