Social media and value co-creation in multi-stakeholder systems: A resource integration approach

This paper provides a theoretical framework of multi-stakeholder systems to explain value co-creation through the contextual means of actor-to-actor (A2A) interactions. In applying the A2A model, we explicate the resources provided by three actors in particular – customer, firm and social media platform in co-creating value via resource integration. The resources afforded by social media platforms positions these actors as “systems resource integrators” in both B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) contexts. The role of social media platforms as systems resource integrators is to provide a technological platform that exposes its modular resources to facilitate higher order resource formations through the active participation of non-intermediary actors (i.e. customers and firms); which otherwise limits the ability of firms and customers to realize their optimal value co-creation potential.Six propositions are derived from the conceptual framework provided in this paper. Through the higher order resource formation analogy underpinning the discussion in this paper, we argue the significance of understanding the qualities of social media resources for managers to facilitate more efficient resource configurations in the creation, transformation and renewal of resources via resource integration in actor interactions. The paper concludes with the strategic implications of the conceptual framework provided and future research directions.     

Resource integration: Adopting a paradox perspective to inform the management of tensions in customer resource allocation

Service-dominant logic maintains that value is created collaboratively through a process of resource integration. Knowledge-intensive business services, the context for this study, are heavily dependent on customer resources for the fulfilment of the value proposition. Value co-creation is compromised when resources are not allocated in appropriate quality or quantity. While there is a growing body of research identifying antecedents to customer resource input, few studies investigate how customers might overcome barriers to resource allocation, particularly when faced with competing demands. This article uses a paradox perspective to explore the management of tensions affecting resource allocation. Empirically, we draw on interviews with service providers to identify perceived resource deficiencies, and with customers to explore resource allocation management. We show that it is possible to manage resource allocation tensions by devising novel solutions that integrate the two opposing demands. In addition, these solutions can result in an ‘augmented’ resource, particularly if the service provider is permitted to influence customer resource deployment. Finally, these novel solutions can activate an unintended by-product or secondary resource, enhancing the relationship between provider and customer.     

B2B SME management of antecedents to the application of social media

This paper elucidates how business-to-business (B2B) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can manage antecedents to the application of social media for potential contributions to their business. This in-depth qualitative research study was conducted at four plastic-producing SMEs from October 2013 to October 2014, with follow-up interviews in October 2015.The findings reveal two important antecedents to the application of social media that overcome the gap between acknowledging the usefulness of social media and its actual limited application in practical B2B contexts. First, open collaborative business model innovation is needed to apply social media in local business processes. Second, central and distributed leadership must be integrated to create ownership and responsibility across the SME organisation and beyond to customers and partners. These findings differ from the social media application stages and the gaps between them identified in the previous literature. The developed model makes a contribution to the B2B SME field and to academia by recognising the importance of integrating critical antecedents before social media application can enhance business in B2B SMEs. This understanding is beneficial for the B2B SMEs and for society.     

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.     

Individual customers' use and integration of resources: Empirical findings and organizational implications in the context of value co-creation

This article addresses the call for empirical work to contribute to the ongoing critique of service-dominant (S-D) logic, and for an assessment of its potential reach to practitioners. It examines the appropriateness of a model of the resource-based view of consumers in an organizational context — the British Library (BL) — and concludes that the model can be adapted to include individual customers with varying motivations (personal/business) for using the BL's services. A detailed analysis of individual customer's operant resources (enabled through access to 565 messages posted to a BL user support forum) provided a different lens through which the organization could consider strategies to support value co-creation. The outcomes, from a collaborative research process, with executives and senior managers of BL, suggest that a sub-division of customer operant resources into physical, cultural and social has empirical support and managerial relevance, and that a focus on individual customer resources can provide insights into how to manage co-creation of value.     

Social media,customer engagement,and sales organizations: A research agenda

Organizations continue to make investments in social media with the hope that it will help their sales force in improving engagement with customers. The academic literature on social media use in business markets has supported the growth and utilization of such technology; however, much more work is needed. This article, building upon the recent scholarly advances and considering a managerial perspective, offers suggestions to guide future academic research examining the links between social media use and customer engagement within the B2B sales domain. Several research questions are presented under the four broad topics, namely utility of social media technologies, context matters, social media pitfalls, and futuristic social media applications.     

Customer referencing as business actor engagement behavior – Creating value in and beyond triadic settings

The rising impact of customer engagement is increasingly evident in business markets. This paper studies customer referencing as an important manifestation of engagement behavior in the business-to-business (B2B) context. To extend extant research, which has thus far examined referencing almost exclusively from the seller's viewpoint, we study how referencing affects value creation in business networks. We explore resources contributed and gained though referencing and the resulting value outcomes for the entire reference triad (the seller, the reference customer, and the prospective buyer). Empirically, the paper draws on an extensive field study conducted in knowledge-intensive business service industries. The results explicate how customer referencing affects value creation within and beyond the triad, by i) enhancing or impairing actors' internal processes; ii) strengthening or damaging relationships between the triad actors; and iii) facilitating exchange in their broader business network. The paper contributes to research on customer referencing by explicating its role in value creation on a network level. As one of the first studies on engagement in the B2B context, this paper contributes to the emerging actor engagement research by analyzing how influencing behavior operates in a business network. These insights can help firms to facilitate exchange in complex markets.     

Sharing is the name of the game: Exploring the role of social media communication practices on B2B customer relationships in the life sciences industry

The inclusion of social media as a communication channel in a vendor's B2B digital marketing strategy is growing in importance. Understanding the effect of such practices upon customer relationships is crucial for firms as they increasingly engage in this way. This paper presents and tests a model that explores the effect of vendor social media communication practices upon trust and loyalty in B2B customer relationships. A study using quantitative data from 196 business customers of a United States life sciences firm is reported. The model indicates that trust and loyalty are influenced by a) the social media shared beliefs between the vendor and the customer; b) the nature of the vendor's social media communication with the customer; and c) the extent to which the vendor's social media communication practices enable effective customer-to-customer communication. Trust is found to have a mediating role between these indicators and loyalty. Managerial implications are discussed.     

Functions of industrial supplier relationships and their impact on relationship quality

Although recent scholarly work on business relationships often discusses relationship quality as a major issue, especially with regard to the phenomenon of vendor stratification, there is still little empirical research on this important construct. In this paper, the authors provide a thorough conceptualization of relationship quality and its possible antecedents, i.e., the direct and indirect functions of the relationship for the customer. Drawing on an empirical base of 230 buyer questionnaires, the authors show that the extent to which a supplier fulfills direct and indirect functions in a relationship has a direct positive impact on the relationship quality perceived by the customer. This impact is especially strong when the customer can easily replace the supplier or, in other words, when the supplier faces competition. The findings are discussed and the authors provide managerial implications for decision-makers from both buyer and supplier organizations.     

Affinities between multi-agent systems and service-dominant logic: Interactionist implications for business marketing practice

The contrasting marketing principles of service-dominant (S-D) logic and goods-dominant (G-D) logic are examined in this article from the perspective of current research themes in the information science community. The conclusion is reached that much of the distributed multi-agent literature is complementary to the issues being explored concerning S-D logic, and that some multi-agent research may therefore be pertinent to the business marketing community. This article discusses the modelling approach of interactionism as an underlying principle of both S-D logic and multi-agent systems technology. The two domain technologies are compared, and implications for business marketing practice proposed.     

IMP and service-dominant logic: Divergence, convergence and development

This article arose directly from discussions at the 2nd Otago Forum on Service-Dominant (S-D) logic held at the University of Otago in December 2008. It builds on the papers presented and discussions at the forum, on previous papers within the S-D logic field and relates these to the research of the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) Group. The article focuses on two important conceptual issues that appear to need further development by both S-D logic and IMP researchers: Firstly, the identity and characteristics of the business actor in an interacted business landscape and second, the nature of value and its creation and delivery. The article also seeks to use some IMP ideas on business interaction in an attempt to refine and clarify the central S-D logic concept of ‘service’ between companies. Finally, the article attempts throughout to draw tentative conclusions about the implications of this conceptual analysis for practitioners.     

Customer engagement through omnichannel retailing: The effects of channel integration quality

While many retailers have turned to omnichannel retailing to remain competitive, engaging customers across channels has become one of the biggest challenges they face. Drawing on social exchange theory, we proposed and tested a research model of customer engagement in the context of omnichannel retailing. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the research model with customers of two emerging omnichannel retailers, Apple (n = 269) and Kroger (n = 221). The results showed that channel integration quality dimensions (including breadth of channel-service choice, transparency of channel-service configuration, content consistency, and process consistency) positively influenced customer engagement which in turn led to positive word-of-mouth and repurchase intention. The research model was examined using both high-involvement products (e.g., Apple) and low-involvement products (e.g., Kroger) despite the varying effects of channel integration quality on customer engagement. This study adds to the growing body of knowledge on customer engagement vis-à-vis omnichannel retailing and provides retailers with actionable insights into engaging customers across channels.     

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.     

The Ability to Minimize the Timing of New Product Development and Introduction: An Examination of Antecedent Factors in the North American Automobile Supplier Industry

The importance of overall timing in the new product development and the new product commercialization processes has been widely recognized in the literature. We examined 14 firm-level practices, later reduced to four factors, that influence the ability to minimize new product development and introduction times overall relative to competitors. The factors are (1) human resource management, (2) synergistic integration, (3) supplier closeness, and (4) the design-manufacturing interface. An empirical study of the North American automobile supplier industry found some support for the four-factor model of antecedents to timing ability: synergistic integration and supplier closeness were both significantly related to development and introduction time minimization ability. The implications of these findings for product development managers and academic researchers are discussed.     

Preparing industrial suppliers for customer integration

In real world markets and business markets in particular, the idea of customized products and services receives increasing attention. A management tool called customer integration has been developed as an approach to master the challenges originating from customization for a supplier. Customer integration competence is the organizational quality that results from this tool after being implemented. Putting this together, we can hypothesize a causal relation between customer integration competence and market success. In order to confirm this hypothesis, the paper presents a conceptualization of customer integration competence. To accomplish this, references are made to competence models from psychology, success factor research and organizational science. The concept was validated through a survey with 78 industry experts from business markets responding. Customer integration competence measured in this way was then contrasted to a second measure capturing market success. Regression analysis supports our hypothesis strongly. Finally, implications for marketing research as well as marketing practice are presented.     

How employees engage with B2B brands on social media: Word choice and verbal tone

Marketing scholars and practitioners are keenly interested in brand engagement in social media because brand engagement has strong links to brand equity. However, much of the marketing literature focuses on customer brand engagement and often in a consumer market setting. This paper advances this literature in two ways by (1) focusing on employees, not customers, as important stakeholders who frequently engage with brands on social media, and by (2) observing brand engagement in a business-to-business context. We develop a conceptual framework based on a theory of word choice and verbal tone to understand the content of engagement observations (i.e., reviews) that breaks into five content dimensions—activity, optimism, certainty, realism, commonality—and four calculated dimensions—insistence, embellishment, variety, and complexity. Then, we examine over 6300 job reviews authored by employees of B2B firms to explore the differences in the way employees engage with both highly-ranked, and -rated brands versus low-ranked and -rated brands. We find that there are significant differences in nearly all the theoretical dimensions, yet the effect sizes are much larger between high versus low review ratings compared to high versus low B2B brand ranking. We close with some important managerial implications and future research directions.     

Customer and Supplier Involvement in Design: The Moderating Role of Incremental and Radical Innovation Capability

More and more firms are leveraging design as a resource to gain the upper hand in today's competitive business market. To this end, this study draws on the resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm to examine the relationship between customer and supplier involvement in the design process and new product performance. The research also extends the RBV to a contingency lens by introducing product innovation capability (incremental and radical) as a moderator to draw the boundary conditions of the impact of customer/supplier involvement in design on new product performance. Using data collected from Canadian high‐tech companies, the findings provide strong support for the hypotheses in that customer involvement in design helps new product performance under high incremental innovation capability but harms new product performance under high radical innovation capability. In contrast, supplier involvement in design was beneficial to new product performance under both high incremental and radical innovation capability. The managerial implications for the role of design under different innovation capabilities are discussed.     

Social media-related tensions on business-to-business markets – Evidence from China

Previous research has established the benefits of using social media in support of engagement in business-to-business settings. Yet the study of problems that arise from social media use in business relationships remains limited. Utilizing a dyadic perspective, this study addresses the gap by focusing on tensions in buyer-supplier relationships that arise from social media use. Findings present three dualistic tensions: active engagement anticipated by suppliers versus passive monitoring practices of the buyers; increased transparency through business-to-business social media versus invisibility; as well as tensions between local versus international business-to-business social media engagement practices. The study draws on 52 semi-structured in-depth interviews with senior managers who work in relevant positions at manufacturing firms based in China. By identifying characteristic tensions pertaining to business-to-business social media, this study aims to contribute to research on the ‘dark side’ of business relationships as well as to literature on business-to-business social media engagement.     

Marketing solutions in accordance with the S-D logic: Co-creating value with customer network actors

In the last ten years industrial companies have gone from offering products to offering products/services and then to offering solutions. At the same time, the theory of marketing has also evolved to provide, under the heading of S-D logic, an enlarged conceptual framework. In this article we apply the conceptual framework of S-D logic to the marketing of solutions. Based on two case studies, we highlight the limits to current offering strategies in terms of co-creation and involving customer network actors. We suggest an approach to co-create value in customer networks based on a switch from customer value proposition to customer network value proposition.     

Effects of Supplier and Customer Integration on Product Innovation and Performance: Empirical Evidence in Hong Kong Manufacturers

While the beneficial impacts of supplier and customer integration are generally acknowledged, very few empirical research studies have examined how an organization can achieve better product performance through product innovation enhanced by such integration. This paper thus examines the impact of key supplier and customer integration processes (i.e., information sharing and product codevelopment with supplier and customer, respectively) on product innovation as well as their impact on product performance. It contributes to existing literature by asking how such integration activities affect product innovation and performance in both direct and indirect ways. After surveying 251 manufacturers in Hong Kong, this study tested the relationships among information sharing, product codevelopment, product innovativeness, and performance with three control variables (i.e., company size, type of industry, and market certainty). Structural equation modeling with correlation and t‐tests was used to test the hypothesized research model. The findings indicate a direct, positive relationship between supplier and customer integration and product performance. In particular, this study verifies that sharing information with suppliers and product codevelopment with customers directly improves product performance. In addition, this study empirically examines the indirect effects of supplier and customer integration processes on product performance, mediated by innovation. This has seldom been attempted in previous research. The empirical findings show that product codevelopment with suppliers improves performance, mediated by innovation. However, the sampled firms cannot improve their product innovation by sharing information with their current customers and suppliers as well as codeveloping new products with the customers. If the adoption of supplier and customer integration is not cost free, the findings of this study may suggest firms work on particular supplier and customer integration processes (i.e., product codevelopment with suppliers) to improve their product innovation. The study also suggests that companies codevelop new products only with new customers and lead users instead of current ones for product innovation. For managers, this study has demonstrated that both information sharing and product codevelopment affect performance directly and indirectly. Managers should put more emphasis on these key processes, especially when linked with product innovation. Managers should consider involving their suppliers and customers in the early stages of design. Information sharing with suppliers is also important in product development. As suggested by this study, extensive effort on supplier and customer integration should be made to directly augment current product performance and product innovation at the same time.