Contribution of social media marketing capability to business performance of Thai firms
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2019
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eng
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199 leaves
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b211056
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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National Institute of Development Administration. Library and Information Center
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Penpattra Tarsakoo (2019). Contribution of social media marketing capability to business performance of Thai firms. Retrieved from: https://repository.nida.ac.th/handle/662723737/5308.
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Contribution of social media marketing capability to business performance of Thai firms
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Abstract
Social media has become a part of people’s daily lives by allowing billions of people from all around the world to create, communicate and exchange contents virtually with each other. The use of social media has become a part of business strategies for both large and small enterprises. From the marketing perspective, the social media has become crucial because social media marketing provides a significant opportunity for businesses as a tool to engage both existing and new customers at lower cost as well as to promote and sell their products or services. However, many social media marketing initiatives tend to be unsuccessful. Therefore, it is important to understand how to develop social media marketing capability in order to enhance business performance. Although there is growing interest in social media marketing, research on the association between social media marketing capability of firms and business performance is still lacking. In order to fill this research gap, this research aims to provide empirical evidence of the social media marketing capability contribution to the performance of Thai firms, to build a conceptual foundation of social media marketing capability as well as provide the guidance for Thai firms to integrate social media on marketing activities effectively so as to enhance firms’ competitiveness. This study conceptualizes social media marketing capability as multidimensional constructs based on Day (1994) perspective consisting of 1) outside-in capabilities (market-sensing capability, customer-linking capability, and channel-bonding capability), 2) inside-out capabilities (technology development capability and human resource development capability), and 3) spanning capabilities (pricing capability, product development capability, marketing communication capability, social media marketing planning capability, and social media marketing implementation capability). Regarding firms’ performance associated with social media marketing capability, this study considers three aspects of performance outcomes consisting of 1) customer relationship performance, and 2) market expansion. These two aspects of performance outcomes subsequently link to 3) financial performance. To explain the relationship between social media marketing capability and performance outcomes, the Resource-based view (RBV) is a theoretical foundation to explain that the heterogeneity of firms’ resources and capabilities leads to heterogeneity in their performance. In the context of social media marketing capability, firms that have stronger social media marketing capability are able to utilize their social media marketing-related resources and implement social media marketing activities more effectively, thus leading to superior performance. The main hypotheses of this research are that the level of social media marketing capability of firms would positively determine the level of customer relationship performance and market expansion, which in turn, influences financial performance. Survey data were collected from entrepreneurs who attended seminar and training courses organized by the Ministry of Commerce. To ensure that the sample was valid, they were pre-screened by being asked whether they use social media as a marketing tool. Of the 736 questionnaires distributed, 400 usable questionnaires. Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression was used for data analysis. The results show that only spanning capability is positively associated with both customer relationship performance and market expansion. The positive effect of spanning capability on these two variables is also statistically significant. On the other hand, outside-in and inside-out capabilities were not associated with customer relationship performance and market expansion. However, the results from PLS analysis shows that that both outside-in capability and inside-out capability are positively associated with spanning capability, and the coefficient was statistically significant. Thus it can be indicated that outside-in and inside-out capabilities can enhance firms’ performance by playing supporting roles in facilitating spanning capability, which is a critical aspect of capability that directly determines firms’ performance. In this regard, these three aspects of firms’ social media marketing capabilities need to be integrated to enhance firms’ performance. Therefore, business owners and marketers should pay attention to various aspects of social media marketing capabilities and develop themselves to utilize social media for marketing activities to enhance business performance.
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Thesis (Ph.D. (Management))--National Institute of Development Administration, 2019