Abstract
Digital economy has become a priority for companies and countries since consumer profile and consumption habits have greatly changed. Companies have begun to transfer the services they offer to the Internet. Also, a digital economy creates networks amongst individuals, communities, companies, and markets. With digitalization, not only have consumers' profiles changed, but marketing tools have changed as well. Social media marketing (SMM) is the product of this trend and is marketing through social media channels (SMCs). Therefore, this chapter examines social media use within business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) contexts. Moreover, the authors focus on the differences of SMCs adoption in B2C and B2B contexts.
TopBackground
The concept of social media is one of the biggest changes since the industrial revolution (Smith & Zook, 2011, p. 9). The foundation of social media today is based on many of the popular social media sites introduced in the 1990s (Figure 1).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Web 1.0: The first stage in the WWW, which only offers people one-way communication such as reading the contents.
Web 2.0: The second stage in the WWW, which offers people two-way communication such as showing their opinions or feelings.
Social media: Websites and applications consist of platforms where individuals or organizations can create, share, and exchange information with people and build online relationships, and communities.
Social Media Marketing (SMM): Part of Internet marketing that is marketing through SMCs.
Business to Consumer (B2C): A concept describes the commercial relationship conducted by companies directly with consumers.
Business to Business (B2B): A concept where business is handled between companies rather than companies and individual customers.
Social Media Channel (SMC): A platform is classified according to the social presence or media richness and answers some kind of consumer needs.
Customer Lifecycle: A term used to determine the process a customer goes through when considering, buying, using, and maintaining loyalty to a product or service.