Should tweets differ for B2B and B2C? An analysis of Fortune 500 companies' Twitter communications

Business-to-business (B2B) marketers hesitate to embrace social media as a marketing tool, unlike their business-to-consumer (B2C) counterparts, and they struggle to implement successful social media strategies due to their limited understanding of the phenomenon. Drawing on communication and word-of-mouth theories, the authors investigate how marketers use Twitter differently across contexts and predict key factors likely to influence the message strategies used in each. A longitudinal content analysis and logistic regression support the assessment of a sample of more than 7000 tweets by Fortune 500 companies. Marketers in B2B and B2C settings exhibit significant differences in their branding and selling strategies; their use of message appeals; and the use of cues, links, and hashtags to support information searches. Whereas B2B marketers tend to use more emotional than functional appeals in their tweets, neither B2C nor B2B marketers have adopted “hard sell” message strategies.     

Social media marketing of IT service companies: Analysis using a concept-linking mining approach

The IT service industry values the experience of social familiarity, which is based on routine interactions with suppliers and customers and is at the frontier of social media marketing. To further understand how IT service companies use social media to engage their customers or potential leads, the objectives of this research are to delineate the differences between IT service companies’ use of social media and users’ expectations based on knowledge extracted from user-generated content on Twitter. We applied a text mining approach called two-tier concept-linking analysis to extract patterns in Twitter posts from top IT service companies as well as the related tweets from the Twitter users. We further compare the yearly similarities and differences of the key concepts from the company’s official account and from the users. Besides, the key concepts between users’ expectations and IT service companies’ social media use were compared on the basis of first-tier concepts and further elaborated by their corresponding second-tier concepts. Our approach contributes to further understand the socio-cognitive insights underlying the dynamic social media data, from which organizations and individuals in charge can note the objectives they wish to maintain and the marketing gaps they wish to improve on.     

The untapped potential of B2B advertising: A literature review and future agenda

Academic research has not kept pace with the growth of and investment in B2B advertising. Important topics need to be addressed and critical questions remain unanswered. This review systematically analyzes, consolidates and identifies knowledge gaps in prior research related to B2B advertising in order to motivate dedicated future study. Based on a methodical, concept-centric approach, B2B advertising literature is categorized by: 1) type of article; 2) theories applied; 3) message appeals, content, and strategies used; 4) media selected; 5) effectiveness and performance measurement; and 6) budgeting approaches. The review indicates limited and outdated research on several topics including message strategies and appeals, advertising budgets, advertising effective measures related to buyer and financial outcomes, and media usage. Furthermore, research on overall B2B integrated marketing communications strategies is lacking. The review highlights research opportunities and questions with the potential to provide guidance to B2B marketing managers.     

Speak to head and heart: The effects of linguistic features on B2B brand engagement on social media

Brand engagement on social media increasingly draws B2B brands' attention as it may produce positive WOM and bring branding and financial benefits. However, B2B marketers face challenges in creating compelling brand posts on social media. Beyond ‘knowing what to post’, what is even more challenging for B2B marketers is a lack of knowledge of ‘knowing how to communicate’, i.e., knowing how to design the non-informational cues in brand posts to stimulate brand engagement and generate social media WOM. This research makes initial attempts to address this gap by investigating the impacts of post language on B2B brand engagement on social media. Building on the model of B2B effective communication and theories in linguistics, we identify six linguistic features (i.e., post length, language complexity, visual complexity, emotional cues, interpersonal cues, and multimodal cues in rich media) that influence brand engagement, captured using Twitter likes and retweets. Through analyzing 229,272 tweets collected from 156 B2B brands in 10 industries, we found that, in general, linguistic features that facilitate the central or peripheral route processing will have positive effects, while those that hinder the processing will have negative impacts on brand engagement. This research contributes to our knowledge of B2B social media communication by revealing the power of brand language in driving brand engagement and introducing linguistics as a valuable conceptual lens for maximizing the benefits of B2B marketing content on social media. This research also highlights the interpretative nature of social media communication – B2B brands must go beyond the content purpose and strategy decisions to consider the specific language use and communication style of the message.     

Analyzing the impact of user-generated content on B2B Firms' stock performance: Big data analysis with machine learning methods

Marketing scholars are interested in the big data of user-generated content (UGC) from social media platforms. However, the majority of current UGC studies have been conducted in the business-to-consumer (B2C) context. To fill the knowledge gap in business-to-business (B2B) research, we investigate whether UGC has differential impacts on stock performance for B2B and B2C firms by using big data. We collect a large dataset of 84 million tweets from 20.3 million Twitter accounts and 8 years of stock data for 407 companies from the S&P500 index. The results from machine learning methods are transformed into a monthly panel data. We conduct fixed effects model on the panel data. We find that UGC has a significant impact on firms' stock performance and that its impact on stock performance is much stronger among B2C firms than among B2B firms. While consumers' positive sentiment does not play a significant role in stock performance, consumers' negative sentiment and WOM significantly impact stock prices.     

How Do Social Media Affect Analyst Stock Recommendations? Evidence from S&P 500 Electric Power Companies' Twitter Accounts

Research summary : The importance of firm‐stakeholder relationships is gaining increasing attention. Although a theory of the drivers and consequences of stakeholder pressure has been developing, it focuses on pressures from organized stakeholders such as shareholders, NGOs, and activists, and does not incorporate the emerging possibility that individual voices may matter. By exploring corporate Twitter, which facilitates movement of individual stakeholders such as customers to a higher stakeholder class by providing them with a greater sense of power and urgency, we study the circumstances under which customer voices significantly affect analyst stock recommendations. We find that favorable reactions to firm‐initiated messages matter, directly or indirectly, depending on the messages' growth implications. Customer‐initiated negative messages have a significant impact only with high volume and formal institutions that support customer opinions. Managerial summary : Social media is increasingly used by firms for disclosing information and engaging stakeholders. Yet, we know little about whether and how social media usage matters. We show how corporate Twitter usage may influence analyst stock recommendations. Our interviews of securities analysts suggest that social media is not institutionalized yet, but increasingly used as a source of channel checks, especially for vibes, validations, and so on. Our analyses of corporate Twitter accounts show that both firm‐initiated and customer‐initiated tweets can have significant impact on analyst recommendations under certain conditions. For firm‐initiated tweets, the extent of retweets is an important factor, along with the content of tweets, in particular, growth implications. For customer‐initiated tweets, negative tweets matter, but only with high volume and regulatory structure that supports customer protection. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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 organizational practices in relation to social media marketing in B2B, B2C, Mixed B2B/B2C and B2B2C business models. Utilizing 449 responses to an exploratory panel based survey instrument, we clearly identify differences in social media 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.     

Joining hands for the greater good: Examining social innovation launch strategies in B2B settings

The practice of forming brand alliances is common among companies in business-to-business (B2B) settings that seek to launch social innovations. Research evidence on the efficacy of such practice is, however, scarce. Based on the perspective of organizational buyers, we examine how social innovations should be launched by companies in B2B settings, whether through alliances with nonprofits or for-profits, or via independent ventures, across two experimental studies. Underpinned by the stereotype content model, we find that alliance launch strategies with nonprofits or for-profits result in greater purchase intentions, along with perceptions of warmth and competence, when compared to independent ventures. Further, we demonstrate that communicating societal benefits accruing from a social innovation favors an alliance launch strategy over an independent venture. Alliance strategies show comparable advantage to independent ventures when both societal and company-focused benefits are communicated. Our research advances knowledge on organizational buyers' evaluations of alliances and social innovations, the psychological mechanism underlying organizational buyers' evaluations of social innovations launch strategies, and in communication management. Our findings provide insights for companies seeking to launch social innovations, and guidelines on partner selection.     

Growth hacking: Insights on data-driven decision-making from three firms

Theoretical backgroundThe work explores how Big Data analysis can reshape marketing decision-making in B2B sector. Deriving from Data-Driven Decision-Making (DDDM) approach, the Growth Hacking model is employed to investigate the role of cognitive computing and big data analytics in redefining business processes.PurposeThe main objectives of the study are: 1) to assess how a data-driven orientation to the use of big data analytics and cognitive computing can reframe marketing decisions in B2B segment; 2) to explore whether the adoption Growth Hacking can be helpful in exploiting the opportunities offered by big data analytics and cognitive computing in B2B marketing.MethodologyThe paper is based on Action Research (AR) methodology that permits researchers to participate actively in the observation of businesses and to examine how decisions are undertaken and managed over time.ResultsThe main findings allow identifying the most common strategies and tactics employed in three companies operating in different B2B sectors to exploit the opportunities offered by cognitive computing and big data analytics according to a data-driven marketing approach. Based on the application of the Growth Hacking model, the tools of analytics and the main objectives, outcomes and implications on marketing decision-making are revealed.OriginalityThe identification of the main objectives and outcomes produced across the three dimensions of the Growth Hacking model (data analysis, marketing and programming) can help academics and practitioners to understand the main levers to attain marketing goals, such as the enhancement of relationship with customers (CRM), continuous learning and development of new products and potential innovation.     

What messages to post? Evaluating the popularity of social media communications in business versus consumer markets

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 media message strategies in terms of branding, message appeals, selling, and information search. Using Bayesian models, they find noteworthy differences in the propensity of viewers to popularize brand posts. Specifically, the results indicate that the inclusion of corporate brand names, functional and emotional appeals, and information search cues increases the popularity of B2B messages compared with B2C messages. Moreover, viewers of B2B content demonstrate a higher message liking rate but a lower message commenting rate than viewers of B2C content.     

Web-based B2B portals

A portal development frenzy is sweeping through commerce in an attempt to capture the growing business-to-business (B2B) Internet market. However, the very tactics employed to attract users have blurred the significance and, consequently, the effective utilization of portals in B2B strategies. This research analyzes the development of portals to propose a classification based on the informational/transactional, horizontal/vertical, and public/private dimensions of portals. Clarification of portal dimensions should provide B2B marketing managers with a superior focus in the production of efficient portal strategies for achieving business objectives. Strategic implications for acquiring and maintaining users and a five-step approach for developing an effective B2B portal strategy are presented.     

Social media in B2B sales: Why and when does salesperson social media usage affect salesperson performance?

The importance of social media usage by B2B salespeople has been well documented in the sales literature. In particular, a B2B salesperson's use of social media to prospect for customers and adapt their sales approach have primarily been shown to explain sales performance. However, an increasing body of literature in the sales domain has called for B2B salespeople to be ambidextrous by engaging in service activities aimed at helping their customers. We argue that by giving B2B salespeople an opportunity to communicate directly with their customers, social media is used by salespeople to proactively service their customers and hence can play a critical role in driving sales performance. Drawing from the Task-Technology Fit theory, we develop and test a conceptual model in which B2B salesperson social media usage affects salesperson performance indirectly through value-oriented prospecting and proactive servicing. Additionally peer social media usage was a key moderator in the relationship between B2B salesperson social media usage on the one hand and value-oriented prospecting and proactive servicing on the other hand. We test the model with data from 171 B2B salespeople and find that salesperson social media usage relates positively with proactive servicing and value-oriented prospecting. While we did not find support for the relationship between social media usage and adaptive selling, we did find support for the impact of all three sales activities salesperson performance. In addition, results show that peer social media usage has positive moderating effects on the B2B salesperson social media usage and value-oriented prospecting/proactive servicing relationships.     

In search of employment: online technologies and Polish migrants

This paper seeks to advance our understanding of recruitment strategies focusing on a hitherto undeveloped research area, which scrutinises the relationship between social media and recruitment strategies in the context of facilitating international migration. The case study used to explore this activity is migrant workers from Poland seeking and engaging in employment in the UK hospitality sector. Using empirical findings, the paper outlines the role of the Internet fora as a transnational platform for job searching and job advertising, emphasising migrants' role as recruitment agents.     

Positioning through B2B carrier signals: Understanding how service quality is communicated via websites

Today's marketplace requires B2B motor carriers to connect with shippers in salient ways. To accomplish this, B2B carriers communicate signals of service quality in order to position themselves uniquely from the competition. Signaling theory describes how inequity in information between parties is filled by sending signals to convey missing information (Spence, 1973). Signaling theory was used as a foundation to investigate information used by B2B carriers to signal service quality and create positioning strategies. Results of a content analysis of 490 B2B motor carrier websites for signals of 12 dimensions of service quality are used to develop a typology of U.S. B2B motor carriers. These are: Minimalist, User-Friendly, and Safety First. Associations with firm revenues, firm size, credit score, and number of NAICS codes used are discussed along with implications.     

Through the mud or in the boardroom: Examining activist types and their strategies in targeting firms for social change

Research summary : We examine the variety of activist groups and their tactics in demanding firms' social change. While extant work does not usually distinguish among activist types or their variety of tactics, we show that different activists (e.g., social movement organizations vs. religious groups and activist investors) rely on dissimilar tactics (e.g., boycotts and protests versus lawsuits and proxy votes). Further, we show how protests and boycotts drag companies “through the mud” with media attention, whereas lawsuits and proxy votes receive relatively little media attention yet may foster investor risk perceptions. This research presents a multifaceted view of activists and their tactics and suggests that this approach in examining activists and their tactics can extend what we know about how and why firms are targeted. Managerial summary : The purpose of this study was to examine how different types of activist groups behave differently when targeting firms for social change. We find that traditional activist groups rely on boycotts and protests, whereas religious groups and activist investors rely more on lawsuits and proxy votes. Additionally, we find that protests and boycotts are associated with greater media attention, whereas lawsuits and proxy votes are associated with investor perceptions of risk. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

What impacts customer experience for B2B enterprises on using AI-enabled chatbots? Insights from Big data analytics

Many B2B firms have widely accepted AI-based chatbots to provide human-like service interaction at different customer touchpoints in recent years. One of the objectives behind introducing this technology is to provide an enhanced, live channel Customer Experience (CX) all round the clock. Researchers have focused on delivering the CX by improvising the chatbot's internal algorithm, giving limited attention to CX theories from management literature, which leaves a gap. With the proposed paper, we have investigated the influencing factors of AI-based chatbots from the lens of CX theories for B2B firms. In this paper, a model for organizing CX has been proposed using the diffusion of innovation theory, trust commitment theory, information systems success model, and Hoffman & Novak's flow model for the computer-mediated environment and verified using the social media data. The methodology used for this study is the social media analytics-based content analysis method (sentiment analysis, hierarchical clustering, topic modeling) for data preparation, followed by lasso and ridge regression for model verification. The results suggest that CX in B2B enterprises using chatbots is influenced by these bots' overall system design, customers' ability to use technology, and customer trust towards brand and system.     

Supporting New Product Launches With Social Media Communication and Online Advertising: Sales Volume and Profit Implications

The question of how important firms’ investments in digital communication formats are for the commercial success of new products remains unexplored in the product innovation management literature. Drawing on reactance theory, the authors examine the extent to which investments in social media communication and online advertising are related to the sales volume and profits of new products within six months of being launched. Using dyadic survey data, an analysis of new products launched by 122 consumer durable goods firms reveals that sales volume and profits of new products are associated with (1) social media communication in a positive but diminishing shape, and (2) online advertising in an inverted U‐shape. Further analyses show that those curvilinear relationships are steeper for social media communication and flatter for online advertising at respective (1) higher levels of customer product involvement and (2) lower levels of product superiority. The results imply that there is an optimal level of investment in social media communication and online advertising, with the optimum dependent on a new product’s consumer involvement and superiority levels.     

Feel free to feel comfortable—An empirical analysis of ergonomics in the German automotive industry

The purpose of this paper is to examine ways to improve ergonomics on the manufacturing shop floor. In particular, the impact of certain ergonomic practices on companies' economic and social objectives is investigated empirically. In order to do so, a survey has been conducted among manufacturing managers of 55 companies in the German automotive industry. The managers have been asked about their estimations on harmful tasks within the production process and on the effectiveness of various practices in the context of ergonomics and health. Worker-oriented and work-oriented practices of ergonomics are operationalized using factor analysis. By means of a cluster analysis, companies with a high degree of implementation of ergonomic practices are identified. The analysis shows that plants with a higher implementation degree of ergonomic practices show a better performance in terms of economic and social objectives. Furthermore, the results reveal that work-oriented practices lead to better performance with respect to the investigated economic and social objectives, whereas worker-oriented practices play a supporting role only. Finally recommendations for manufacturing companies with regard to the field of ergonomics are derived from the empirical results.