1. 4th International Business and Social Science Research
Conference
Aarne Töllinen, Joel Järvinen & Heikki Karjaluoto
Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics
FINLAND

2. how eWOM can be collected from SM applications
by automated SMM and how useful that data is
from the B2B firms’ point of view.
1. How actively people discuss B2B companies on social
media sites and on which sites?
2. How B2B company staff interpret the eWOM on their
company found on social media sites?

3. • Social media has gained significant interest both in science and business
• Marketers are interested in behavioral targeting
• eWOM is a good reflector of overall WOM and can effectively influence
web users’ mindset and buying decisions
• There is an uncertainty about how to measure the effectiveness of the
communications of the interactive digital media
• Recent technological advancements enable the measurement of eWOM
awareness and persuasiveness, which has great potential to become a
modern way to measure brand awareness and image that demands little
effort

4. Social media
• SMM tracks and mines online discussions
• It is organizing eWOM in a structure that allows a user to slice and
dice, drill down, and see how conversations interconnect in one
holistic view
• It involves collecting data and conducting analysis based on the data
• The SMM industry was born in 2004–2005

5. • SMM is useful in customer research for collecting information
• SMM is a solution to listen to stakeholders
• SMM is a vital part of an up-to-date social CRM-system
• SMM has enabled marketers to gain insight into what customers
think about the company
– Using SMM allows a company to gather information that would previously have
required and interviews
• Through SMM, companies can identify brand advocates
• SMM is a tool for evaluating the effectiveness and health of a firm’s
image

6. • SMM cannot replace a human researcher; to create
deep-understanding, traditional person-controlled
research is required
• The major challenge in SMM is sentiment analysis
• Private discussions and closed interfaces
• It is difficult to unify the stars, grades and percentages
with free-form text and determine the overall
sentiment of eWOM

7. • Interpretive case study as its methodological approach
– context-sensitive investigation
– in-depth learning from contemporary phenomena (Yin 1981)
• The empirical data is collected from two B2B companies
operating in the manufacturing industry
• Eight qualitative theme interviews within the case
companies
– how B2B companies experience the buzz on SM around them
• A two month monitoring period on SM around the case
companies
– the volume, media spread and sentiments of the buzz

8. • Companies are interested in SMM and have tested its possibilities
• SMM is considered important now and it is believed that it will only gain in
importance
• There are not many discussions of the company or its products
• Volume of buzz depends greatly on the industry the company operates in
• Customers do not discuss the company’s products or services on SM (only investor
speculations
• The greatest opportunities are related to listening and participating in online
conversations (crisis management)
• SMM information is untrustworthy and misleading
• Important platforms (e.g Linkedin) are not open for SMM
• Firms are not satisfied with the information generated by SMM

9. • Case companies and
their products are
popular topics on SM Company Media # of mentions % of total mentions
– Average daily mentions Blogs
Comments
656
19
48 %
1%
regarding company X and Message Boards 115 8%
its products 22,regarding Microblogs 493 36 %
Company X
company Y 40 Social Network 25 2%
– Most of the discussions Videos
Wikipedia
50
0
4%
happen on blogs, and the TOTAL 1358 100 %
least used platform is
Wikipedia Blogs 1055 42 %
– Well known blog Message Boards
Microblogs
93
1065
4%
43 %
publication platforms (e.g. Company Y Social Network 86 3%
Wordpress) are categorized Videos 190 8%
by the monitoring program Wikipedia 2 0%
as blogs TOTAL 2491 100 %

10. • Sentiment analysis is a major challenge for
SMM
– software recognizes less than 10% of the buzz as positive or
negative content
– software does not understand contexts
Company Sentiment # of mentions % of total mentions
Positive 96 7%
Negative 20 1%
Company X
Neutral 1242 91 %
TOTAL 1358 100 %
Positive 123 5%
Negative 35 1%
Company Y
Neutral 2333 94 %
TOTAL 2491 100 %

11. • B2B companies are interested in SMM, but
– practices to utilize software are totally disorganized
– the knowledge is fragmented among staff
• B2B companies perceive their customers to be passive
online
• There is far more eWOM around both the B2B sector and
our case companies, than those companies are aware of
• Sentiment analysis is still an insurmountable challenge
• SMM does not tell the whole truth about eWOM
• SMM should be a ‘listening tool’ for marketing departments
• SMM will be accepted as a reasonable tool to be deployed
alongside the more traditional news monitoring software

12. Limitations Further research
Used only one SMM product More research is needed to verify
the results of this study
concerning the whole B2B
Focused only on content sector
written in English
More empirical research is
needed to examine social
Focused only on two media marketing performance
companies measurement in general
– How marketers formulate their
key performance indicators for
social media marketing?
– How SMM can help in the
formulation of those
indicators?