This article aims to provide a model with which to measure the degree of corporate social media use or, in other words, the extent to which companies are exploiting the potentialities of single or multiple social media platforms. This is, however, explicitly different from using metrics to assess the success of social media activities, as it is purely measuring how intensively a pre-defined group of social media is utilised, taking into account the frequency of social media activity by the brand as well as the related user reactions. The degree of corporate social media use helps companies and market researchers analyse single brands or companies and compare them with other brands, competitors or industry averages. The degree of corporate social media use is a useful indicator, which should be combined with social media metrics in order to draw better conclusions about where to increase or intensify social media activities.
In this article, the authors present the results from a structured review of the literature, identifying and analyzing the most quoted and dominant definitions of social media (SM) and alternative terms that were used between 1994 and 2019 to identify their major applications. Similarities and differences in the definitions are highlighted to provide guidelines for researchers and managers who use results from previous research to further study SM or to find practical applications. In other words, when reading an article about SM, it is essential to understand how the researchers defined SM and how results from articles that use different definitions can be compared. This article is intended to act as a guideline for readers of those articles.
If you think about the last television commercial for an Italian pasta \ud
brand you have seen, are you sure it is really Italian? In many cases, \ud
especially in the food sector, neither the company nor the product \ud
originate from the advertised country, meaning that the company \ud
is pursuing a foreign branding strategy and is trying to benefit from \ud
positive stereotypes customers have about the specific foreign \ud
country. By collecting both quantitative and qualitative data through \ud
a point-of-sale intercept survey, this article assesses the impact of \ud
alleged origins on customers’ willingness to buy (WTB) and willingness \ud
to pay (WTP) if the actual origin is disclosed. The sample consisted \ud
of 200 German customers who were asked to answer questions \ud
related to one of two hedonic products they had just bought. It is \ud
empirically shown that foreign branding has a positive impact on \ud
the brand’s performance. However, as soon as customers find out \ud
that they were misled with regard to the origin of the product, both \ud
their WTB and their WTP decrease. This study contributes to the \ud
knowledge on the role of products’ origins on customers’ WTB and \ud
WTP. In contrast to the vast majority of the studies in this field, the \ud
communicated origin of the product is based on a foreign branding \ud
strategy and not on the product’s actual origin. Consequently, it was \ud
possible to manipulate within-subject variables by disclosing the \ud
actual origin of the product. The results of our study suggest that \ud
foreign branding may be a successful strategy for companies to \ud
increase their customers’ WTB and WTP. At the same time, our results \ud
raise concerns about the suitability of foreign branding as a long-\ud
term marketing strategy, unless a company can successfully maintain \ud
its foreign image. Future research opportunities include the choice \ud
of consumers with a different cultural background, of other hedonic \ud
products or of utilitarian products
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