Purpose: The study provides insights into the utilization and goals of digital marketing, and examines factors that influence the adoption and use of digital marketing channels in SMEs.Design/methodology/approach: The data comprises semi-structured theme interviews in SMEs among 16 managers and 421 survey respondents in Central Finland. Findings:The results of this study reveal that SMEs seem not use the full potential of the new digital tools, and so are not deriving benefit from the opportunities they provide.Furthermore, the results also raise the question of whether SMEs have understood the fundamental change in the nature of communication brought about by digitization. Research limitations:The data comes from one region and thus the research context limits the generalizability of the results. Practical implications:SMEs seem not to be keeping pace with digital developments, mostly due to the lack of knowledge of digital marketing. Most of the studied SMEs do not apply the full potential of the new digital tools and hence are not benefitting fully from them. Social implications:Discussions on the future regional development of SMEs have called for training programmes to help SMEs exploit digitization. This is something that the government should take note of. Originality/value: Whereas the adoption process of new technologies such as IT in general and the internet in particular have been examined in the SME literature, this is among the first studies examining adoption and usage of digital tools from the marketing perspective.
a b s t r a c tThe growing importance of the Internet to B2B customer purchasing decisions has motivated B2B sellers to create digital content that leads potential buyers to interact with their company. This trend has engendered a new paradigm referred to as 'content marketing.' This study investigates the organizational processes for developing valuable and timely content to meet customer needs and for integrating content marketing with B2B selling processes. The results of this single case study demonstrate the use of marketing automation to generate highquality sales leads through behavioral targeting and content personalization. The study advances understanding of the organizational processes that support content marketing and shows how content marketing can be combined with B2B selling processes via marketing automation in ways that achieve business benefits.
This paper examines the service experience in an online support community of consumers to understand the nature of social support and how it is experienced and enacted by vulnerable consumers. Design/methodology/approach: A netnographic study was conducted to examine vulnerable consumers' participation in an online support group for weight management. The Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) program was used and additionally data were coded using open coding. A hybrid approach to data analysis was undertaken using inductive and deductive methods. Findings: The findings suggest online social support groups can be used as an online "third place" to support vulnerable consumers, with vulnerable groups engaging with the online support group differently to those in the normal weight group. Social support was also found to be bi-directional in nature. Research limitations/implications: This study only investigates one online support group. To gain deeper insights other support groups should be examined over a longer period of time. Practical implications: This paper demonstrates that transformative services have the hidden capacity to optimize their services to enable vulnerable consumers to co-create social support in a safe place, thus providing a non-judgmental environment with the end goal of improving their health and wellbeing. Social implications: Findings reveal how services can enable marginalization and stigmatization to be overcome and inspire social action through the use of online support groups. 2 Originality/value: This research is unique in that it used a netnography approach to examine how vulnerable consumers such as the overweight and obese interact in an online service setting, reducing self-report bias and allowing for a natural research setting.
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