Elements of strategic social media marketing: A holistic framework

Social media marketing is an integral element of 21st-century business. However, the literature on social media marketing remains fragmented and is focused on isolated issues, such as tactics for effective communication. The current research applies a qualitative, theory-building approach to develop a strategic framework that articulates four generic dimensions of strategic social media marketing. Social media marketing scope represents a range from defenders to explorers, social media marketing culture includes the poles of conservatism and modernism, social media marketing structures fall between hierarchies and networks, and social media marketing governance ranges from autocracy to anarchy. By providing a comprehensive conceptualization and definition of strategic social media marketing, this research proposes an integrative framework that expands beyond extant marketing theory. Furthermore, managers can apply the framework to position their organizations on these four dimensions in a manner consistent with their overall corporate mission and objectives.     

User engagement for mobile payment service providers – introducing the social media engagement model

Twitter is being used by mobile wallet firms for customer acquisition, relationship management, marketing and promotional purposes. This study examines service advertisement and promotional tweets by mobile wallet firm's on Twitter. For this study, timeline data of top four mobile wallet firms of India, Paytm, MobiKwik, Freecharge and Oxigen Wallet were extracted from their Twitter screen (firm generated tweets). The user generated tweets were also extracted, using the search terms as firm's name. This study proposes a Social Media Engagement model for understanding user dynamics. The study provides three interesting inputs for promotional marketing tweets, firstly, firm should post mix of the tweets with respect to content type (i.e. informational, entertainment, remuneration and social). Secondly, a periodic campaigning is needed by the firms; and lastly, firms should focus on increasing their network size. The implications of these findings can help firm's managers and marketers in planning effective social media marketing campaigns.     

Give or Take on the Internet: An Examinationof the Disclosure Practices of Insurance Firm Web Innovators

Theories of corporate social responsibility suggest that there ought to be a balance between what business takes from society and what it gives back in return. Recently, the practice literature within the insurance industry has been heavily pushing for the development of the Internet as a tool for commerce while virtually ignoring the role it could play in terms of information disclosure to stakeholders. This study examines whether insurance firms themselves reflect this emphasis, or whether companies that are industry leaders with respect to web innovation for product marketing are also leaders in using the web for information disclosure. A study of the web pages for 40 property and casualty firms drawn from Franzis (2000), shows that financial disclosure for the overall sample is at best moderate. The disclosure of social responsibility information on these web pages is quite low, on average. Further, and importantly from a social balance perspective, the web innovators in terms of product marketing are not industry leaders in terms of information disclosure.     

A study of the structural integration of the marketing and PR functions in the C-suite

Recently, a number of firms have structurally integrated the distinct yet related functions of marketing and public relations (PR), under the leadership of a single corporate-, or C-level, executive. Such actions, as well as turf wars between the functions over social media ownership and related stakeholder management conflicts, have reignited the debate over whether marketing and PR should be separated or unified. By drawing on the pros and cons of integration, as suggested by prior conceptual research on integrated marketing communications, and using secondary data for a set of Fortune 500 firms, this study empirically tests this issue for multiple outcomes and contingencies. Results show that the integration of marketing and PR has positive benefits for firm reputation, an effect that is weakened as firm size increases, and positive effects for firm profitability in service-oriented firms.     

Social media in marketing research: Theoretical bases,methodological aspects,and thematic focus

The widespread use of social media as a marketing tool during the last decade has been responsible for attracting a significant volume of academic research, which, however, can be described as highly fragmented to yield clear directions and insights. We systematically synthesize and critically evaluate extant knowledge of social media marketing extracted from 418 articles published during the period 2009–2021. In doing so, we use an organizing framework focusing on five key areas of social media marketing research, namely, social media as a promotion and selling outlet, social media as a communication and branding channel, social media as a monitoring and intelligence source, social media as a customer relationship management and value cocreation platform, and social media as a general marketing and strategic tool. Within each of these areas, we provide important theoretical, methodological, and thematic insights, as well as future research directions. We also offer useful managerial implications derived from the articles reviewed.     

Social Media for Socially Responsible Firms: Analysis of Fortune 500’s Twitter Profiles and their CSR/CSIR Ratings

The instrumental benefits of firm’s CSR activities are contingent upon the stakeholders’ awareness and favorable attribution. While social media creates an important momentum for firms to cultivate favorable awareness by establishing a powerful framework of stakeholder relationships, the opportunities are not distributed evenly for all firms. In this paper, we investigate the impact of CSR credentials on the effectiveness of social media as a stakeholder-relationship management platform. The analysis of Fortune 500 companies in the Twitter sphere reveals that a higher CSR rating is a strong indicator of an earlier adoption, a faster establishment of online presence (followers), a higher responsiveness to the firm’s identity (replies and mentions), and a stronger virality of the messages (retweets). Incidentally, the higher CSIR rating is also found to be associated with the stronger virality. Our findings also suggest that socially responsible firms can harvest proactive stakeholders’ participation (user-driven communication) without investing more resources (firm-driven communication). As the first study that conceptualizes the social media as a proponent of CSR, this paper contends that “being socially responsible” makes more practical sense for firms with the rise of social media.     

Towards a framework for innovation in retailing through social media

Retail firms are increasingly using social media for purposes other than traditional marketing, such as innovation. Yet, while the innovation literature has established the benefits of involving customers in the development of products/services through open innovation, the role of social media in innovation is not well understood. Accordingly, we investigate how social media drives innovation in retail businesses. Using data from 414 firms, we find that social media positively relates to radical and incremental innovation, mediated by multiple digital channels and moderated by digital capabilities. Consequently, we propose a social media dynamic capabilities framework to guide future research and innovation in retail business.     

Social Media Communications and Marketing Strategy: A Taxonomical Review of Potential Explanatory Approaches

The growth of social media has captured the attention of companies, which have responded by increasing their advertising efforts toward social media users. Previous studies have devoted considerable effort to developing social media marketing strategies, but minimal effort has focused on examining the types of messages presented on firms’ social media platforms to communicate with customers. Practitioners face the challenge of identifying which types of social media message content to choose. In addressing this challenge, this article provides a comprehensive framework of social media content strategy, delivery, and impact on the consumers, including a taxonomical approach that helps firms’ understanding of firm-generated content on social media platforms.     

The thesis of “doux commerce” and the social licence to operate framework

The “doux commerce” thesis holds that commerce acts as a civilising force, contributing to the advancement and well-being of societies by inculcating certain core moral values in individuals (such as honesty, tolerance, and fair-dealing). This idea has a venerable history. However, I suggest that it faces a particular challenge in the current era in light of examples of systemic misbehaviour by global companies. This paper explores the nature of this challenge, taking the events around the financial crisis of 2007–2008 as a case study, and suggests that if we are to preserve the idea that commerce contributes to the common good then greater mechanisms of constraint on the worst excesses of business behaviour will be needed. In particular, I argue that we must recognise the need for all firms to have a social purpose and suggest that the “social licence to operate” framework, familiar from the mining and extraction sectors, could be used to provide crucial leverage on the behaviour of multinational firms.     

Digital marketing and social media: Why bother?

Changes in consumer behavior require firms to rethink their marketing strategies in the digital domain. Currently, a significant portion of the associated research is focused more on the customer than on the firm. To redress this shortcoming, this study adopts the perspective of the firm to facilitate an understanding of digital marketing and social media usage as well as its benefits and inhibitors. The second generation of Internet-based applications enhances marketing efforts by allowing firms to implement innovative forms of communication and co-create content with their customers. Based on a survey of marketing managers, this article shows that firms face internal and external pressures to adopt a digital presence in social media platforms. Firms’ digital marketing engagement can be categorized according to perceived benefits and digital marketing usage. To improve digital marketing engagement, marketers must focus on relationship-based interactions with their customers. This article demonstrates how some firms are already accomplishing just that.     

Business and the Public Affairs of Slavery: A Discursive Approach of an Ethical Public Issue

This article aims at understanding how “ethical public issues” are created, and dealt within a public arena. Here, we view ethical public issues as social constructs, which are the results of issue framing contests. Such an approach will enable us to understand how ethical public issues emerge and are shaped by strategizing actors (including firms, NGOs, the media, and governments), in an attempt to impose their own definition and preferred solution to the issue. We also propose key factors which explain the success of a framing attempt, and evidence of such success. The empirical case of the labor conditions in West Africa’s cocoa industry is used to illustrate this theoretical framework and methodological approach.     

Managing Customer Acquisition Risk Using Co-operative Databases

Acquisition of new customers involves both opportunity and risk, and it is important for firms to predict and manage the risks involved in customer acquisition. Despite its importance, the management of customer acquisition risk has not been the subject of much academic research. This paper develops a framework for firms to manage customer acquisition risk using co-operative databases. We illustrate this framework in the context of the optimal selection of customers for direct mail with a ‘buy now, pay later’ payment option when the acquisition risk manifests as bad debt risk. Using data from a large scale direct marketing campaign, we show that our empirical model that incorporates bad debt risk substantially outperforms suboptimal targeting schemes that overlook bad debt risk. We also demonstrate how alleviating bad debt risk is one beneficial outcome of a fairly recent trend in database marketing, namely the emergence of co-operative databases.     

International entrepreneurship: A critical analysis of studies in the past two decades and future directions for research

International entrepreneurship (IE) is an emerging field with a rapidly growing body of knowledge. This paper examines gaps, issues and trends of the IE in the last two decades. First, it suggests an integrative framework based on international business, entrepreneurship, strategic management, social network and marketing theories. The suggested model highlights the significant role played by the entrepreneur/team, firm and network resources that act as antecedents to international opportunity development and value innovation. Second, it suggests four typologies of firms (born global, enduring global, early exporter and mature exporter) that can be studied under the IE theme. Finally, we discuss future research directions.     

Feel the VIBE: Examining value-in-the-brand-page-experience and its impact on satisfaction and customer engagement behaviours in mobile social media

A critical issue for marketing managers is how best to orchestrate branded social media consumption experiences via mobile applications. This is important because in a mobile first world, these experiences are perceived to be valuable to consumers which in turn facilitate positive consumer behaviour toward the brand. So far, marketing literature offering managerial guidance on this issue remains limited. To this end, this study investigates for the first-time consumer perceptions of ‘Value-In-The-Brand-Page-Experience’ (VIBE), a multidimensional construct, in an emerging market setting of China. China represents an appropriate contextual condition to study given its high mobile penetration and its integration within consumer's lifestyle. This study further examines the impact of VIBE on customer satisfaction and customer engagement behaviours toward the brand via a survey of 714 Chinese consumers. The results substantiate the VIBE framework which contributes to the sparse conceptual development of value perceptions in mobile social media. Furthermore, it confirms the existence of a value–satisfaction–customer engagement behaviour chain. The findings are managerially relevant and focus on leveraging the components of VIBE. These components act as key mechanisms for unlocking customer satisfaction and customer engagement behaviours for brands in the domain of mobile social media.     

Social Media Marketing Management: A Conceptual Framework

Managers today face many challenges when using social media in their marketing strategies. Drawing from social media literature, this study introduces a new framework to assist managers in developing and using social media as a marketing tool. This framework has four dimensions related to the actions managers perform when implementing and engaging with social media: messaging/projecting, monitoring, assessing, and responding. Each dimension of the framework may be applied differently based on the firm’s strategic direction or focus. The framework provides an opportunity for a firm to examine the entire scope of social media marketing from a broad strategic perspective as well as a more tactical perspective. Propositions formulated by the authors suggest how organizations with different strategic characteristics may manage social media differently. The study provides an understanding for managers of the variety of issues related to the specific aspects of maintaining a firm’s online presence based on a firm’s scope, culture, structure, and governance.     

From Firm-Controlled to Consumer-Contributed: Consumer Co-Production of Personal Media Marketing Communication

Fueled by the sociocultural shift from firm-controlled to consumer-contributed media, the researchers explore the idea of adapting a co-production strategy from service marketing to marketing communication sent to personal media. Eleven field experiments with firms, along with a structural model tested on survey data, provide empirical evidence supporting a co-production approach applied as a communication strategy in the context of a text message mobile coupon marketing campaign. The results demonstrate a co-produced direct marketing communication strategy that increases attitude toward the communication, purchase intent, and purchase activity, while also acting as a risk-reducing mechanism. Furthermore, perceived customization of the communication interacts strongly with risk perception and marginally with coupon proneness as related to attitude toward the communication when marketers enter the world of consumers' personal media. A push versus pull framework and a co-produced communication framework are put forth to suggest various areas marketers can make available for consumers to co-produce in a marketing communication exchange.     

If you love something,let it go mobile: Mobile marketing and mobile social media 4x4

Social media applications—including collaborative projects, micro-blogs/blogs, content communities, social networking sites, and virtual worlds—have become part of the standard communication repertoire for many companies. Today, with the creation of increasingly powerful mobile devices, numerous social media applications have gone mobile and new entrants are constantly appearing. The purpose of this article is to take account of this evolution, and provide an introduction to the general topic of mobile marketing and mobile social media. Herein, we define what mobile social media is, what it is not, and how it differs from other types of mobile marketing applications. Further, we discuss how firms can make use of mobile social media for marketing research, communication, sales promotions/discounts, and relationship development/loyalty programs. We present four pieces of advice for mobile social media usage, which we refer to as the ‘Four I's’ of mobile social media. Finally, we conclude by providing some thoughts on the future evolution of this new and exciting type of application.     

Where is the Security Blanket? Developing Social Media Marketing Capability as a Shield from Perceived Cybersecurity Risk

Although cybersecurity is important for any organization, firms have little understanding of the ramifications of perceived cybersecurity risk and how marketers can avert its negative marketing outcomes. The inability of firms to prevent massive data breaches in the recent past has heightened cybersecurity risk perceptions of customers and cybersecurity-related marketing challenges and opportunities. This study links cybersecurity risk with firm risk through firm reputation by developing a conceptual framework grounded in perceived risk theory in conjunction with dynamic capabilities and social network theoretical perspectives. Our findings show that social media marketing capabilities enable firms in mitigating the adverse impact of cybersecurity risk in declining firm reputation and value. Thus, this study provides significant implications for marketing theory and practice.     

Social media influencers and consumer engagement: A review and future research agenda

The rise of social media influencers (SMIs) in the recent decade garnered wide interest from academicians and marketers. Academicians try to understand the effect of influencers on consumer behaviour, while marketers use influencers as part of their strategy to achieve marketing objectives. Although, plenty of practical and conceptual research is available in this area, literature reviews in the domain of SMIs and consumer engagement are scarce as it is still developing, and most of the studies have focused on these two concepts separately. In this study, the authors attempted to combine and understand how social media influencers affect consumers engagement. This systematic review of the literature offers a comprehensive view of previous research on social media influencers and consumer engagement. The study reviewed articles published in the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC), Scopus, and Web of Science indexed journals till 5 June 2021. To understand consumers' engagement with SMIs, authors identified and theorized the antecedents, decision and outcome of such engagement. It also discusses the influencer-follower parasocial relationship on different social media platforms. The study proposes an integrated conceptual framework that can be further used to test and validate the impact of social media influencer's marketing efforts on consumer engagement. This framework also may serve as a foundation for marketers to develop effective influencer strategies for brand promotions. The review concludes the discussion by highlighting theories, methodology, and context of studies conducted by past researchers.     

Strategic and Ethical Considerations in Managing Digital Privacy

Individualized customer information is at the heart of on-line commerce. Using increasing amounts of customer-specific data enhances the success and value of one-to-one on-line marketing; but the extensive gathering and use of data specific to individuals also causes alarm over the loss of digital privacy, setting up a confrontation between e-commerce and society. Governments and nations, particularly in Europe, have reacted with a reliance on sweeping laws governing digital privacy protection while other nations such as the U.S. have generally preferred to allow companies and industry associations to regulate themselves. This tenuous balance is under attack from both sides. In this paper, we set up a framework which incorporates the environmental context, ethical perspectives and firm-specific considerations to help firms develop a strategy for handling digital privacy concerns.