Investigating B-to-B Social Media Implementation: E-Marketing Orientation and Media Richness Perspective

Social media usage keeps exploding all over the world which makes it an incrementally important resource to be more competitive in both business-to-customer and business-to-business marketing. However, even though social media has been widely used in B-to-B, previous researches still claim that B-to-B marketers are far behind B-to-C marketers either in the level of use or in the sophistication for social media. Building on the electronic marketing orientation (EMO) proposition and media richness theory, this research conducted a series of in-depth interview to understand inter-relationships between research constructs in a B-to-B context. Using a survey approach, the study shows that organizational cultural and cross-department coordination have significant influence on the implementations, adoption and business performance of B-to-B social media. These results of 103 respondents can prove the important references for academicians to conduct further empirical validations, and helpful for professionals to identify their marketing strategies to facilitate B-to-B business.