Talk less and listen more? The effectiveness of social media talking and listening tactics on export performance

Magnus Hultman, Abbie Iveson and Pejvak Oghazi

Journal of Business Research, 2023, vol. 159, issue C

Abstract: This research investigates the effect of social media talking and listening tactics on customer performance through firms’ networking capabilities and promotion adaptation strategies among entrepreneurial, emerging market, small and medium-sized enterprises (ESMEs). From a survey of 169 ESME managers, the study tests whether firms should use social media to listen and adapt to the foreign market or disseminate and network in the foreign market. The study's ultimate aim is to guide managers on how best to leverage social media in their international export campaigns. The results were analyzed using a series of nested structural equation models. We found that using social media tactics combining both talking and listening leads to significantly higher levels of customer performance than using talking or listening strategies singly. Moreover, we found that each tactic's mechanisms operating these effects differed. By showing, first, the mechanisms through which social media tactics affect customer performance and, second, the superiority of an ambidextrous social media strategy, the study provides ESME entrepreneurs with an understanding of how best to leverage social media to facilitate international exporting.

Keywords: Promotion adaptation; Networking; Export; Social media; SME; Ambidexterity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296323001091
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:159:y:2023:i:c:s0148296323001091

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.113751

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().