Social media in marketing: A review and analysis of the existing literature

TLDR: The researchers were able to provide an overview of the main themes and trends covered by the relevant literature such as the role of social media on advertising, the electronic word of mouth, customers’ relationship management, and firms’ brands and performance.

About: This article is published in Telematics and Informatics.The article was published on 2017-11-01 and is currently open access. It has received 602 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Digital marketing & Influencer marketing.

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Table 1. Social Media Definitions

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What contributions have the authors mentioned in the paper "Social media in marketing: a review and analysis of the existing literature" ?

Accordingly, the main aim of this study is to systematically examine and review the current studies that have conducted over the related area of social media and marketing. By reviewing approximately 144 articles, the researchers were able to provide an overview of the main themes and trends covered by the relevant literature such as the role of social media on advertising, the electronic word of mouth, customers ’ relationship management, and firms ’ brands and performance. In this review, it has also studied the most common research approaches adopted to examine the related issues of social media marketing. Further discussion is also introduced followed by an explanation of the current review limitations and recommended directions to be examined by future studies. 

Q2. What future works have the authors mentioned in the paper "Social media in marketing: a review and analysis of the existing literature" ?

Thus, it could be worth considering these studies conducted over different areas by future studies. This could be worthwhile direction by future studies. Therefore, future studies could pay more attention in analysing these methods and which appropriate methods could help future empirical studies to have more valid and reliable results. This is in addition to the need to discuss how future studies could modify and improve new methods and techniques to examine the consumer behaviour in the social media marketing area. 

Q3. What kind of customer engagement behaviours were identified by Gummerus et al.?

Two kinds of customer engagement behaviours were identified by Gummerus et al. (2012) - they were community engagement behaviours and transactional engagement behaviours. 

Q4. What are the main factors that influence the acceptance of these posts?

In their content analyses of 355 posts shared by eleven global brands for six kinds of products, De Vries et al. (2012) noticed that the acceptance of these posts by users are strongly contributed by vividness, the post position, and interactivity as well. 

Q5. How many business firms have adopted and engaged such innovative platforms and tools?

Bennett (2013) reported that most business firms (about 93%) worldwide have adopted and engaged such innovative platforms and tools in their process to communicate and serve their customers. 

Q6. What criteria were also considered in filtering the papers collected?

A number of criteria were also considered in filtering the papers collected, such as the main theme of paper found should be within the area of marketing as mentioned above; the paper should be published in high impact journal; the language of paper should be in English; the paper should adopt a clear and scientific method. 

Q7. What is the main factor determining the level of involvement of customers in social media marketing?

Interactivity has been another important factor determining the customers level of involvement in the social media marketing communities. 

Q8. What factors were found to be key predictors contributing to travellers’ behaviour to share their experiences?

Three factors - enjoyment, internalisation and identification - were found by Kang and Schuett (2013) to be key predictors contributing to travellers’ behaviour to share their experiences on the social media platforms. 

Q9. What percentage of articles have argued the importance of social media on branding?

93% of these articles have strongly argued the crucial impact of marketing activities undertaken over social media platforms on the branding recognition and identity. 

Q10. What is the main obstacle to examining the customer’s perception and behaviour toward the marketing activities?

It is worth indicating that social media issues are still in their early stage so the lack of well-established measures could be the main obstacle to examine the customer’s perception and behaviour toward the marketing activities over the social media platforms (Gao and Feng, 2016).