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Exploring social media impact within service contexts

Guest Editors:

• Professor Mark Durkin and Dr Aodheen McCartan, University of Ulster
• Professor Mairead Brady, Trinity College Dublin

The extent to which social media can add value within various service contexts is not well understood. While at a general level it would seem that a direct and immediate interactive communication channel with customers and stakeholders would be of benefit in terms of general communications, relationship management and marketing processes, the integration of new media with more traditional marketing activities is not without difficulty. Many organisations appear seduced by the capabilities of new technological communication channels, but evidence suggests that those same organisations may have limited sensitivity to the appropriateness of employing social media to add value to the customers’ service experience. Launching social media initiatives is low cost and fairly straightforward, technically, but managing the subsequent interactions and engagement appropriately can often be beyond a firm’s resources and competencies.

Accordingly, the aim of this special issue is to develop a set of papers which explores the challenges of managing at the interface between various service contexts (including B2C and B2B) and increasing understanding of social media adoption.

Topics include but are not limited to;

• The impact of social media on marketing strategy development and tactical implementation.
• Talking ‘with’ the empowered customer in various service contexts – exploring issues of conversational content and appropriateness.
• Managing the service customer’s expectations and perceptions through social media.
• The impact of social media in managing public relations within health service provision.
• Appropriate interventions of social media in the customer search-buy process within service contexts.
• The use of social media in service customer acquisition, engagement and advocacy activities.
• Managing relationships between the increasingly empowered external customer and the internal employee in service firm contexts.
• Managing a brand in the socially networked world.
• Managing the integration of social media into the full-service advertising agency business model.
• Enhancing service innovation processes through social media channels including sharing and discussion platforms.
• Co-creation and /or co-destruction of value through social media adoption and utilisation.
• Exploring company motivations for adoption of social media and the influence of firm size on the nature of adoption processes employed.
• The impact of social media on network development / management / enhancement by smaller service firms.
• Developing a social media strategy in larger firms – the influence and impact of employee age profile.
• Adopting social media in service firms – exploring issues of staff competency and capability.

All papers will go through the regular double-blind review process to ensure relevance and quality, and must follow the SIJ Style Guidelines (see ).

Papers should be submitted online at .

Please select the tab for the special issue on "Social Media" when you submit your paper through the online platform.

Important Dates:

• Window for online submission of manuscripts: 1 April to 1 October 2013
• Planned date of publication of the Special Issue: 2014

 

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