Retail Firms’ Use of Social Media – Insights from Analysis of Large-Scale Twitter Data

While social media platforms have been used by retailers for a variety of purposes, there is limited research on how traditional retailers compete on social media platforms and what the effects of such competition are on related outcomes. Our paper seeks to fill this gap by examining whether retailers that are close competitors in the traditional context adopt similar content strategies on Twitter. We find that dissimilar firms have higher online engagement and acquire new followers faster. In examining the underlying mechanism, we find that this is attributable to their ability to leverage higher-level affordances of Twitter (i.e., relationship formation, meta-voicing, interactivity, collaboration, and competition). We find that it is the use of these higher-level affordances that leads to greater online engagement compared to the use of lower-level affordances, such as self-presentation and communication. Our findings have important implications for firms’ competitive strategies in online social media platforms

Social Media’s impact on Intellectual Property Rights

This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in Handbook of Research on Counterfeiting and Illicit Trade, edited by Peggy E. Chaudhry, published in 2017 by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, https://doi.org/10.4337/9781785366451. This material is for private use only, and cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher.Peer reviewe

A comparison of social media marketing between B2B, B2C and mixed business models

This paper explores the implicit assumption in the growing body of literature that social media usage is fundamentally different in business-to-business (B2B) companies than in the extant business-to-consumer (B2C) literature. Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement cycle is utilized to compare B2B, B2C, Mixed B2B/B2C and B2B2C business model organizational practices in relation to social media usage, importance, and its perceived effectiveness as a communication channel. Utilizing 449 responses to an exploratory panel based survey instrument, we clearly identify differences in social media marketing usage and its perceived importance as a communications channel. In particular we identify distinct differences in the relationship between social media importance and the perceived effectiveness of social media marketing across business models. Our results indicate that B2B social media usage is distinct from B2C, Mixed and B2B2C business model approaches. Specifically B2B organizational members perceive social media to have a lower overall effectiveness as a channel and identify it as less important for relationship oriented usage than other business models

The Economics of Internet Markets

The internet has facilitated the creation of new markets characterized by large scale, increased customization, rapid innovation and the collection and use of detailed consumer and market data. I describe these changes and some of the economic theory that has been useful for thinking about online advertising markets, retail and business-to-business e-commerce, internet job matching and financial exchanges, and other internet platforms. I also discuss the empirical evidence on competition and consumer behavior in internet markets and some directions for future research.internet, market, innovation, advertising, retail, e-commerce, financial exchanges

The performance of green communication across social media: Evidence from large-scale retail industry in Italy

Social media have surged prominently as communication channels for corporate social responsibility. However, little is still known about the performance of green versus non-green communication across different social media. We contribute by examining whether the presence of green features in social media communication exerts a beneficial effect on consumer response in terms of likes, comments, and shares. We also investigate how this effect hinges upon the social media platform where the content is posted as well as the richness of the format (text, photos, videos) utilized for the diffusion. To our scopes, we use an ad hoc dataset of posts of two major large-scale retailers in Italy across three major social media, namely Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Our results show that, while green content generally stimulates larger response than non-green content, its effect varies across social media, with the highest effect being observed on Instagram (at least for likes) and the lowest on Twitter (at least for comments). Moreover, the extent to which the positive effect of green content increases as media richness increases (i.e., moving from only text to text plus photo, and then to text plus video) is also contingent upon the social media platform. On Facebook, the moderation of media richness is positive and significant, while being insignificant on Instagram. On Twitter, the moderation is even nonmonotonic in the sense that the highest (positive) effect of green content tends to be obtained for either low or high media richness. Our findings offer remarkable implications for firms engaging in environmental sustainability

Understanding eINVs through the lens of prior research in entrepreneurship, international business and international entrepreneurship

In this chapter we examine the growing phenomenon of internet-based international new ventures, which we label “eINVS,” through the lens of previous research in the fields of entre- preneurship, international business and international entrepreneurship. Our purpose is to iden- tify where these existing bodies of research help us to understand eINVs, and where there are gaps that constitute important questions for future research. We define an eINV by adapting a widely used definition of international new ventures (INV) (Oviatt and McDougall 2005: 5): an eINV is a venture whose business model is enabled by a digital platform and that, from incep- tion, seeks to derive significant competitive advantage from international growth. With a focus explicitly on how extant research helps us understand eINVs, this review differs from that of Reuber and Fischer (2011b), who focus on firm-level internet-related resources that are related to the internationalization of ventures in general; that of Pezderka and Sinkovics (2011), who focus on risk and the online foreign market entry decisions of small and medium-sized enter- prises (SMEs); and that of Chandra and Coviello (2010), who focus on consumers using the internet to pursue international opportunities

The use of Twitter on fashion brands. A comparison between luxury and low-cost brands

En este artículo se analizó comparativamente la capacidad dialógica de las marcas de moda de lujo frente a las denominadas low-cost en la red social Twitter. Para ello, se recurrió a la metodología cuantitativa y se realizó un análisis de contenido de 1135 tuits publicados por H&M, Zara, Ralph Lauren y Hugo Boss. Se observó que no existe consenso entre las organizaciones para dirigirse a sus públicos, y si bien las marcas low-cost son las que hacen un mayor esfuerzo por mantener un diálogo, las firmas de lujo reciben más interacciones.In this paper, we made a comparative analysis about the dialogical capacity of luxury fashion brands and low-cost brands in the social network Twitter. For this, we used a quantitative methodology and conducted a content analysis of 1,135 tweets published by H&M, Zara, Ralph Lauren and Hugo Boss. We observed that there is no consensus among brands to address their audiences, and while low-cost brands make the greatest effort to maintain a dialogue, luxury brands receive more interactions.Ciencias de la Comunicació

Cutting through Content Clutter: How Speech and Image Acts Drive Consumer Sharing of Social Media Brand Messages

Consumer-to-consumer brand message sharing is pivotal for effective social media marketing. Even as companies join social media conversations and generate millions of brand messages, it remains unclear what, how, and when brand messages stand out and prompt sharing by consumers. With a conceptual extension of speech act theory, this study offers a granular assessment of brands’ message intentions (i.e., assertive, expressive, or directive) and the effects on consumer sharing. A text mining study of more than two years of Facebook posts and Twitter tweets by well-known consumer brands empirically demonstrates the impacts of distinct message intentions on consumers’ message sharing. Specifically, the use of rhetorical styles (alliteration and repetitions) and cross-message compositions enhance consumer message sharing. As a further extension, an image-based study demonstrates that the presence of visuals, or so-called image acts, increases the ability to account for message sharing. The findings explicate brand message sharing by consumers and thus offer guidance to content managers for developing more effective conversational strategies in social media marketing

The sustainability perspective of corporate entrepreneurship: Sustainable venturing at the intersection of established corporations and corporate start-ups

The topic of sustainability has found its way into the corporate entrepreneurship activities of large corporations. The Sustainable Corporate Entrepreneurship (SCE) strand is still in its infancy. Since most large corporations engage in corporate entrepreneurship and are exploring new business models inside and outside corporate boundaries, several questions arise from different viewpoints. First, from corporate perspective researchers and business leaders wonder which internal modes of SCE activities have emerged in business practice and how large corporations explore sustainable value propositions. Second, from entrepreneur and investor perspective, the question emerges which factors influence the likelihood of corporate ventures, such as spin-offs from corporations, raising venture capital to scale sustainable business models. Therefore, to further develop the field of SCE, this cumulative dissertation presents three research papers analysing sustainable corporate entrepreneurship at the intersection of corporations and start-ups