How companies evaluate their investment in social media? : a field study of B2B and B2C cases

• Autor(a) principal: Almeida, Sara Catarina Resende de
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/26591
• topic: Social media; Social media marketing; Social media marketing return on investment; ROI; B2B; B2C; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Purpose – The primordial purpose of this thesis is to understand which are the main measures of return on investment (ROI) used by B2B and B2C companies to evaluate social media marketing (SMM) programmes. Secondly, the research aims to understand how these companies invest in these kinds of marketing programmes and the metrics used to assess their effectiveness. Method – A multiple case-studies approach was employed for this study. Data was collected from personal interviews with eight marketing managers responsible for social media activity, from four B2B and four B2C companies, in order to understand the importance of their presence on social platforms for their companies, the budget allocated to social media marketing and the measures of ROI used. Then, to go deeper in the study, an online survey based on the results of case studies was performed with 28 other companies’ marketing managers. Findings – In general, marketing managers for both B2B and B2C companies are closer to the vision that SMM programmes “can be readily measured” through simple metrics. The principal measures used by the cases studied relate to objectives of awareness, engagement, reach and revenue. Some of the metrics identified are interaction data, conversions to sales and number of leads. Moreover, some constraints have been noted when explaining the ROI measurement process of SMM campaigns in certain companies. The case studies show some differences between B2B and B2C companies in the management of SMM, but the survey just confirms differences in the definition of SMM goals. Research limitations and future directions – Given the complexity of the topic approached and the differences between the findings of the case studies and the survey, interviews with marketing managers from more companies or more answers to the digital survey would provide a more comprehensive view of the topic as well as the generalisation to the population. Practical implications – The research identifies several measures for B2B and B2C companies to evaluate the effectiveness of SMM programmes. Theoretical implication – Given the increasing development of social media and its use for business purposes, this thesis is an exploratory step toward the ways firms use and evaluate the return of their investment in these channels, namely for B2B companies, where there is still little research.