Social media analytics and customer value creation through it

Abstract

The popularity of social media has continued to rise during the last decade, which has led to the development of a relatively new research area in information systems, social media analytics. Social media analytics includes gathering, evaluating, and making conclusions of data. The user-generated data is often called the ‘big social data’, as it has the characteristics of big data, but is collected only from social media. Recently, social media analytics has gained attention from both companies as well as academics for the possibilities offered in areas such as innovation, stakeholder management, and marketing. However, it still lacks a theoretical core, and its value creation methods remain largely unexplored.

The research objectives of this study are to explore the concept of social media analytics and its value for the customers whose content on social media is analyzed. A literature review was conducted on social media analytics and important concepts of social media and the big social data behind it. The literature review is structured by the framework of Stieglitz et al. (2014) for social media analytics. Furthermore, customer value, which can be understood as value for customers, is discussed. Customer value of social media analytics is assessed through dimensions of customer value as well as channels of value creation from the framework of Paniagua & Sapena (2014).

The results of this study suggest that social media analytics can create customer value through channels of customer’s revealed preferences, social marketing, and social capital. Value creation ways are innovation, personalized offers, improved customer service, improved price competition, and better availability of popular products. Therefore, social media analytics can create value for customers, but also for businesses, as customer value is a central part of a company’s purpose.