Social media research: Theories, constructs, and conceptual frameworks

Social Media as a Destination Marketing Tool for a Sustainable Heritage Festival in Nigeria: A Moderated Mediation Study

This study explored how social media is used as a destination marketing tool for the sustainability of heritage festival quality in Nigeria, drawing on the theory of planned behavior. The festival, which is an exploration of heritage, was specifically premeditated to celebrate the slave trade period by highlighting the unique connection of African American history to the diaspora ancestors who were literally taken away as slaves through “the point of no return” in Badagry, Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was utilized as a research instrument to gather information aimed at examining the influence of social media (SM), website quality (WQ), and online word of mouth (eWOM) on tourists’ festival satisfaction (FS) and festival revisiting intention (FRI). Data were gathered from samples of 473 diaspora tourists at Badagry Diaspora Festival in Nigeria and analyzed using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) with the aid of WarpPLS (7.0). The findings of the study revealed that social media (SM), festival quality (FQ), website quality (WQ), and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) had a positive and significant relationship with tourists’ festival satisfaction. Additionally, this study found that festival quality had a positive impact on the intention of the tourists to revisit the Badagry Diaspora Festival because tourist attitude is influenced by the socio-cultural background of tourists. Moreover, the result revealed the partial mediating effect of festival satisfaction in the relationship between (a) SM, (b) FQ, (c) WQ, and (d) eWOM and tourists’ festival satisfaction. Similarly, cultural motivation was also found to mediate the relationship between tourists’ festival satisfaction and festival revisiting intension (RI). Based on the findings, the implications of the festival sustainability and future research directions were discussed.

A Social Media Organizational Productivity Model: Insights From Public Health Professionals

Background

Many previous studies have explored socialization-oriented social media (SM), but their reach has been limited to the context of information exchange for common personal interests. This study focuses on work-oriented SM, which can enhance organizational networking and productivity levels in the context of public hospitals.

Objective

This study aims to provide a theoretical framework to explain how the use of SM can enhance the skills of health professionals and levels of organizational productivity in uncertain environments.

Methods

A total of 2 distinct forms of data collection techniques were combined: focus groups and semistructured interviews. Both were conducted with doctors and nurses in Saudi public sector hospitals.

Results

The findings reveal that the use of SM can create professional socialization at the level of the institution, and this can enhance skills, knowledge, decision making, and the overall level of organizational productivity. The increasing use of SM creates collaboration between health experts (particularly endocrinologists and pulmonologists in this case) who arrange video calls to share best practices in terms of medication, diet, and health care plans for patients with multiple diseases. Many of these patients are particularly vulnerable, given the wider context of the current global pandemic.

Conclusions

This study culminates in the Social Media Organizational Productivity model, which provides insights into how SM has increased the accessibility of health professionals through the use of technology. Access to such professionals creates a patient-centric approach and a culture of shared communication for dealing with high-risk patients during the current global pandemic.

Relationship Orientation, Justice Perception, and Opportunistic Behavior in PPP Projects: An Empirical Study From China

An equal and high-quality partnership between public and private sectors is essential to the sustainable development of public-private partnership (PPP) projects. However, in the special social circumstance in China, the public sector has a strong voice in PPP projects. According to the existing research on PPP project failure, the government's dishonest performance and negative cooperative attitude and the private sector's speculative behavior of concealing information will lead to termination or even failure of project. The attitude and behavior that reflect the relationship orientation of public sector may determine whether the private sector adopts an opportunistic behavior. However, few studies have revealed the mechanism of relationship orientation on opportunism in PPP projects. This paper proposes the connotation of the public sector's relationship orientation and designs a measurement scale from three aspects: emotional relationship orientation, instrumental relationship orientation, and rent-seeking relationship orientation. Based on the data from large construction enterprises, financial institutions and investors, and scholars with practical experience in PPP projects, this paper explores the mechanism of the public sector's relationship orientation on the private sector's justice perception and opportunistic behavior by using the structural equation model (SEM). The results show that the public sector's relationship orientation significantly affects the formation and development of the private sector's justice perception and opportunistic behavior, justice perception plays a mediating role in the process of relationship orientation acting on opportunistic behavior, and the instrumental relationship orientation is more conducive to reducing the opportunistic behavior. The results provide new ideas for changing the public sector's concept and attitude and regulating behavior in PPP projects.

COVID-19 on Instagram: A content analysis of selected accounts

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to characterize the representation of public health information related to COVID-19 posted on Instagram in 2020.

METHODS

This qualitative content analysis study was conducted in Iran as one of the countries with the highest number of confirmed cases of COVID-19. Data were collected from the contents published from February 19 to April 3, 2020, on Instagram. The search feature of the Instagram app was used to find the posts related to Coronavirus or COVID-19. Overall, 1612 posts from 92 accounts were retrieved and analyzed using thematic analysis.

RESULTS

A total of 23 themes emerged from the analysis of the retrieved posts. These themes include epidemiology and statistics, training and caring, general prevention guidelines, hygiene, healthy diet and lifestyle, patients, diagnosis and treatment, personal protective equipment, traditional medicine, psychology, children, cultural aspects, socio-cultural impacts, religious, misinformation, and wrong behaviors, animals, satire, condition of the healthcare system, politics, quarantine, operations of the Iranian National Disaster Management Organization (NDMO), economic impacts, and world news.

CONCLUSION

The contents analysis of Instagram posts during a public health crisis can provide new and realistic insights into the crisis and identify the topics of interest or concern of the public. Furthermore, the information collected in this way can help policymakers identify the most critical issues from the public perspective and utilize the gained knowledge to manage the ongoing and future pandemics.

The Adoption of Social Media Marketing by Home-based Businesses in Saudi Arabia

Social media applications have revolutionized doing business and attracted the attention of practitioners, scholars, and policymakers. Social media applications offer business owners plenty of benefits as it enables businesses to get exposed, gain competitive advantage, and communicate with customers. However, limited studies have considered measuring the adoption of social media marketing by micro-businesses, such as home-based businesses. This research examines social media adoption by home-based companies in Saudi Arabia using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). A self-administered online questionnaire is utilized to collect data. A total of 188 home-based business owners completed the questionnaires. Structural equation modeling using SPSS, Amos is utilized for data analysis. The findings show that perceived usefulness and social influence positively impact the Intention to use social media marketing. Ease of use positively influences perceived usefulness. Further, the Intention to use has a subsequent impact on user behavior. The study has implications for policy, decision-makers, and the General authority of SMEs (Monsha’at) in Saudi Arabia. The research results show that social influence is a significant positive predictor of social media marketing usage. Besides, the Intention to use social media marketing has a statistically positive impact on user behavior. The study validates the TAM model in a rarely studied context due to its invisible nature. The authors also describe a profile of HBBs owners in Saudi Arabia by explaining their demographic and behavioral characteristics regarding owners’ gender, age and education, and prior experience. This paper contributes original empirical evidence on the adoption of social media marketing by the HBBs in Saudi Arabia. Given the lack of previous studies on this micro-business sector in general and Saudi Arabia, these findings are essential. The present study demonstrates several managerial implications. First of all, policymakers should consider this micro-business sector when developing policies and strategies to provide support and support. The government should establish an electronic platform that connects all business owners.

Social media usage in Indian beauty and wellness industry: a qualitative study

Purpose

Advancement in technology has increased the use of social media among Internet users. People are on social media all day and brands cannot miss this opportunity to turn these users into potential customers. The purpose of this research paper is to identify the prominent social media platforms in Indian beauty and wellness industry and to establish dimensions of social media activities.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a qualitative study in which in-depth interviews were conducted with owners and managers of beauty and wellness centres, who use social media for promotion of their business.

Findings

This study establishes 5M's of social media activities (Motives, Media, Management, Merits and Metrics) that play a major role in social media promotion. It also identifies that Facebook and Instagram are prominent social media platforms for this industry, followed by Snapchat, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Research limitations/implications

Being a qualitative study, it is exploratory in nature and confined to beauty and wellness centres only, thus, findings cannot be generalised. Research implication is that social media still preserves its popularity over traditional media for marketing purposes.

Practical implications

The results of the study are useful for business owners, promoters and marketers, who are struggling to effectively use this low-cost marketing tool.

Social implications

The result of the study are useful in providing awareness and the importance of social media in promoting benefits to the society.

Originality/value

Social media is extensively used for promotion of beauty services but there are very few theoretical studies on the same. This paper provides rich understanding about how to use social media effectively using 5M's.

Examining the Factors Affecting SME Performance: The Mediating Role of Social Media Adoption

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have become a vibrant and dynamic sector of the world economy. Information technology plays a vital role in improving the productivity and competitiveness of SMEs. The dynamic business environment has brought fierce competition among SMEs and, therefore, requires the owners to interact with internal and external members actively. Hence, this study aims to investigate the impact of technology, organization, and environment as important factors in the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises. It also examines the mediating role of social media adoption. Items were developed to measure the various purposes of social media use in organizations, which contribute to increasing the measurement of social media usage. For the empirical investigation, this paper used a closed-ended questionnaire. Using a quantitative method, we observed 423 responses through structural equation modeling. The findings of the study indicate that technology, organization, and the environment play effective roles for SME performance. More importantly, social media adoption positively mediates the relationship between technology, organization, environment, and SME performance. The study also helps organizations realize the advantages of using social media and specifies the rationale behind an organization’s investment in social media.

COVID-19 challenges to dentistry in the new pandemic epicenter: Brazil

A nationwide survey of dentists was carried out in Brazil, a new pandemic epicenter, to analyze how dental care coverage has been affected in public versus private networks, changes in routine and burdens, and how local prevalence of COVID-19 affects dental professionals. Dentists were recruited via email and Instagram®. Responses to a pre-tested questionnaire were collected May 15-24, 2020. COVID-19 case/death counts in the state where respondents work was used to test associations between contextual status and decreases in weekly appointments, fear of contracting COVID-19 at work, and current work status (α = 0.05). Over 10 days, 3,122 responses were received (response rate ~2.1%) from all Brazilian states. Work status was affected for 94%, with less developed regions being more impacted. The pandemic impact on clinical routine was high/very high for 84%, leading to varied changes to clinic infrastructure, personal protective equipment use, and patient screening, as well as increased costs. COVID-19 patients had been seen by 5.3% of respondents; 90% reported fearing contracting COVID-19 at work. Multilevel models showed that greater case and death rates (counted as 1000 cases and 100 deaths per million inhabitants) in one's state increased the odds of being fearful of contracting the disease (18% and 25%). For each additional 1000 cases/100 deaths, the odds of currently not working or treating only emergencies increased by 36% and 58%. The reduction in patients seen weekly was significantly greater in public (38.7±18.6) than in private clinics (22.5±17.8). This study provides early evidence of three major impacts of the pandemic on dentistry: increasing inequalities due to coverage differences between public and private networks; the adoption of new clinical routines, which are associated with an economic burden for dentists; and associations of regional COVID-19 incidence/mortality with fear of contracting the disease at work.

Sharing of fake news on social media: Application of the honeycomb framework and the third-person effect hypothesis

Sharing of fake news on social media platforms is a global concern, with research offering little insight into the motives behind such sharing. This study adopts a mixed-method approach to explore fake-news sharing behaviour. To begin with, qualitative data from 58 open-ended essays was analysed to identify six behavioural manifestations associated with sharing fake news. Thereafter, research model hypothesizing the association between these behaviours was proposed using the honeycomb framework and the third-person effect hypothesis. Age and gender were the control variables. Two data sets obtained from cross-sectional surveys with 471 and 374 social media users were utilized to test the proposed model. The study results suggest that instantaneous sharing of news for creating awareness had positive effect on sharing fake news due to lack of time and religiosity. However, authenticating news before sharing had no effect on sharing fake news due to lack of time and religiosity. The study results also suggest that social media users who engage in active corrective action are unlikely to share fake news due to lack of time. These results have significant theoretical and practical implications.

Kid influencers in Spain: understanding the themes they address and preteens' engagement with their YouTube channels

This research analyses the contents of the videos of the ten Spanish children's YouTube channels with the highest number of followers and video plays to identify correlations between the thematic axes of the videos and the increase in digital engagement data. Little is known about the topics that the most popular Spanish-language YouTube influencers share with preteens and young adults' audience. In response, this exploratory study will use content analysis to examine this gap and contrast the themes that its videos reflect against others. For this purpose, interpretive-based content analysis is carried out based on an analysis sheet validated by expert judgment. Among the main results, it is shown that most of the children who are the lead character of the channel are currently between 10 and 12 years old, having created the channels an average of five years ago, which shows how early many YouTubers are starting in this industry. There are also differences in the thematic axes of the channels' videos according to the gender of the children's influencers, with a higher representation of male YouTubers devoted to gameplays, while their female peers have a more significant presence in videos in the lifestyle category. It is concluded that there is a need to supervise the contents accessed by children on this platform since it can deepen not only gender gaps but also become a wrong reference of role models.

Do researchers use open research data? Exploring the relationships between usage trends and metadata quality across scientific disciplines from the Figshare case

Open research data (ORD) have been considered a driver of scientific transparency. However, data friction, as the phenomenon of data underutilisation for several causes, has also been pointed out. A factor often called into question for ORD low usage is the quality of the ORD and associated metadata. This work aims to illustrate the use of ORD, published by the Figshare scientific repository, concerning their scientific discipline, their type and compared with the quality of their metadata. Considering all the Figshare resources and carrying out a programmatic quality assessment of their metadata, our analysis highlighted two aspects. First, irrespective of the scientific domain considered, most ORD are under-used, but with exceptional cases which concentrate most researchers’ attention. Second, there was no evidence that the use of ORD is associated with good metadata publishing practices. These two findings opened to a reflection about the potential causes of such data friction.

Electronic participation via Facebook: the potential from Brazilian municipalities

Purpose

This paper aims to measure the potential for electronic participation of Brazilian citizens via Facebook as social media, identifying latent factors that provide a favorable environment for such participation by Brazilian municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Based on these factors, the Potential Index for Electronic Participation (PIEP) of municipalities is calculated.

Design/methodology/approach

The theoretical discussion is based on the literature on electronic government and citizen participation. In the methodology, exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis have been used to identify latent factors and to classify PIEP according to the clusters.

Findings

The results of the research point to serious regional discrepancies regarding the level of participation in social media, highlighting an urgent need for national e-government policies to be rethought from a regionalized point of view.

Originality/value

The research enhances understanding of the relation between sociodemographic indicators such as income, education, employment and those concerning the access to and effective use of social media technologies by citizens and local governments.

A two-factor theoretical model of social media discontinuance: role of regret, inertia, and their antecedents

Purpose

Although materializing the benefits of social media substantially depends on sustained user participation, social media service providers are experiencing a decline in the number of users. Despite the relevance of studying and managing discontinuance behaviors, a systematic empirical investigation remains lacking. The present study draws on the idea of a two-factor model and aims to examine the enabler, inhibitor and their antecedents in the context of social media discontinuance.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed theoretical model was empirically validated through an online survey study of 238 social media users in China.

Findings

Findings indicated that two negative outcomes of social media use (i.e. social overload and invasion of privacy) induce regret experience and ultimately foster discontinuance intentions. The development of discontinuance intentions was undermined by the level of inertia, which is rooted in social media habit, sunk costs and affective commitment.

Originality/value

This study draws attention to the fundamental difference between continuance and discontinuance behaviors, advances the existing understanding of postadoption behaviors by focusing on discontinuance inhibitors (e.g. inertia) and develops the first two-factor model for social media discontinuance by integrating the regret and status quo bias literature.

Social customer relationship management factors and business benefits

Purpose

This study aims to identify the business benefit of and factors affecting the use of social customer relationship management (SCRM) in Indian organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

Building on theoretical foundations, a conceptual model of factors affecting SCRM in Indian organizations is developed and empirically tested through a survey and corresponding analysis using SPSS and AMOS software.

Findings

The study presents empirical evidence that technological competence, environmental characteristics and organizational environment positively impact the actual use of SCRM on Indian organizations. Additionally, leadership support of organizations impacts positively the actual use of SCRM in organizations, while the trust factor insignificantly impacts the latter. The actual use of SCRM in organizations was found to have a positive impact on their business benefits.

Research limitations/implications

The theoretical model is built on the constructs of the technology, environment and organizational framework. It has added new factors, such as leadership support and trust, and thereby identified the business benefits of organizations using SCRM mediating through the organizations’ actual use of SCRM. The proposed model is simple, implementable and has a high explanative power of 81 per cent.

Practical implications

The study provides practitioners with evidence and practicable knowledge regarding the means and impact/benefits of SCRM use in Indian organizations.

Originality/value

The study is one of few empirical studies on the topic and contributes valuable knowledge to extant works through additional factors, theoretical conceptualization and empirical scientific findings of both scholarly and executive worth.

What drives Instagram usage? User motives and personality traits

Purpose

Social networking sites (SNS) have become extensively used communication environments as a result of the advancements in online technologies, and among various SNS platforms, Instagram is currently the most prominent image-based network. Since usage motives for alternative SNS environments with different outstanding benefits are expected to vary, this study has focused mainly on extracting the key context-specific usage motives of Instagram. Another purpose of this study is to figure out personality traits differences among Instagram user segments.

Design/methodology/approach

An online survey was designed, and a total of 690 fully completed questionnaires was collected, and 507 of the respondents were Instagram users. After conducting factor analysis, six main usage motive categories have been revealed and named as self-expression, recording, socialization, recreation, creativity, and prying.

Findings

Instagram users have been clustered as passionate, distant, and spectator users based on their usage motives. Ultimately, personality differences among these clusters have been explored using the Big Five Inventory (BFI) and two additional traits, social interaction anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation. Openness to experience, social interaction anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation were found to be significantly different among these clusters.

Originality/value

Discovering the motives of SNS usage, segmenting users based on these motives, and then portraying the personality traits of each segment gives important clues about how SNSs can better design their interfaces and generate content for attracting users in different segments.

A Systematic Review of Social Media Acceptance From the Perspective of Educational and Information Systems Theories and Models

The study of social media acceptance and adoption is not a new research topic. However, the analysis of the educational and information systems (IS) theories/models that are used to examine the social media acceptance and adoption is considered an important research direction. To examine these theories/models and provide researchers with a clear vision of this research topic, we should be aware of the leading educational and IS theories/models used in this line of research. To this end, this systematic review retrieved and analyzed 2,382 articles. The retrieved articles were then critically examined to meet the inclusion and exclusion criteria, in which 122 articles published between 2009 and 2018 were eventually selected for further critical analysis. The main findings indicated that the uses and gratifications theory (U&G) and the social constructivism theory were considered the most widely used educational theories in social media. Besides, the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) were considered the most extensively used IS models in studying the social media acceptance and adoption. These results afford a better understanding of social media studies related to the educational and IS theories/models and form a constructive reference for future research.

Interaction Models for Detecting Nodal Activities in Temporal Social Media Networks

Detecting nodal activities in dynamic social networks has strategic importance in many applications, such as online marketing campaigns and homeland security surveillance. How peer-to-peer exchanges in social media can facilitate nodal activity detection is not well explored. Existing models assume network nodes to be static in time and do not adequately consider features from social theories. This research developed and validated two theory-based models, Random Interaction Model (RIM) and Preferential Interaction Model (PIM), to characterize temporal nodal activities in social media networks of human agents. The models capture the network characteristics of randomness and preferential interaction due to community size, human bias, declining connection cost, and rising reachability. The models were compared against three benchmark models (abbreviated as EAM, TAM, and DBMM) using a social media community consisting of 790,462 users who posted over 3,286,473 tweets and formed more than 3,055,797 links during 2013–2015. The experimental results show that both RIM and PIM outperformed EAM and TAM significantly in accuracy across different dates and time windows. Both PIM and RIM scored significantly smaller errors than DBMM did. Structural properties of social networks were found to provide a simple and yet accurate approach to predicting model performances. These results indicate the models’ strong capability of accounting for user interactions in real-world social media networks and temporal activity detection. The research should provide new approaches for temporal network activity detection, develop relevant new measures, and report new findings from large social media datasets.

#StateOfMind: Family Meal Frequency Moderates the Association Between Time on Social Networking Sites and Well-Being Among U.K. Young Adults

Family belonging may influence relationships between the amount of time spent on social networking sites (SNS) and well-being. We examined the SNS and well-being association among young adults and investigated whether different markers of family belonging moderated this association. SNS, well-being, and family data (n = 2,229) were collected from adults aged 16-21 years living with their parent(s) in the United Kingdom. Participants were classed as nonusers (0 hours/weekday spent chatting or interacting with friends through social Web sites), moderate (nonzero to 4 hours/weekday), or heavy users (4+ hours/weekday). Multivariable linear regressions examined the SNS use and well-being associations; interaction terms tested whether these varied by family belonging (family meal frequency, strength of family support, and importance of family to personal identity). Well-being scores were lower for heavy users of SNS compared with moderate users (p = 0.044), and for those sharing few or no family meals (p < 0.001). The SNS use and well-being association was significantly moderated by family meal frequency (p = 0.009). Among those reporting no family meals, well-being scores were lower for heavy users versus nonusers (22.4 vs. 25.3). Well-being scores were similar across the SNS use categories among those having more family meals. Among heavy users of SNS, young adults having no family meals may be particularly vulnerable to the harms of being online. Our findings highlight the importance of minimizing the harms of heavy SNS use, including support for families to enable them to develop and build young adults' resilience to the stresses and anxieties that potentially accompany online social networking.

Asia-Pacific Students' Awareness and Behaviour Regarding Social Networking in the Education Sector

Social networking (SN) technology has been presented to human beings as a means of communicating, collaborating, connecting, and cooperating to exchange knowledge, skills, news, chat, and to maintain contact with peers world-wide. This article examines SN awareness in the Asia-Pacific (AP) education sector (ES) with a specific focus on the advantages and disadvantages of SN; and investigated whether AP culture influences SN adoption by the ES. An online survey was distributed to 1014 AP students and a total of 826 students responded. Several new advantages of adoption emerged from the data analysis. SN enabled students to accomplish their study tasks more quickly; it allowed them to communicate and collaborate with peers world-wide; and it fostered sustainability. The disadvantages perceived by students include depression, loneliness, and distraction, lack of interest in pursuing traditional activities, and security and privacy concerns. Finally, culture does influence SN adoption by ES institutions in AP countries.

Role of Social Media Marketing Activities (SMMAs) in Apparel Brands Customer Response: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

This study analyzes the influence of apparel/clothing brand social media marketing activities (SMMAs) on brand equity and customer response in Pakistan. First, the current SMMAs are examined; then, we propose new attributes, i.e., fundamental social media marketing activities (FSMMAs) and sophisticated social media marketing activities (SSMMAs) such as interactions, sharing, and trendiness. Second, the influence of innovative components, i.e., FSMMAs and SSMMAs, are analyzed regarding brand equity and customer response toward apparel brands. A survey was conducted with a total of 406 Pakistani customers who used apparel brands, and the collected data were analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Hayes PROCESS macro in SPSS. From the empirical results, we concluded that apparel brand equity (i.e., brand awareness, brand image) significantly mediates the relationship between FSMMAs and customer response (price premium willingness, customer loyalty). Moreover, it is also determined that SSMMAs moderate the indirect association of FSMMAs and customer response via brand equity.

An overview of systematic literature reviews in social media marketing

Systematic literature reviews (SLRs) adopt a specified and transparent approach in order to scope the literature in a field or sub-field. However, there has been little critical comment on their purpose and processes in practice. By undertaking an overview of SLRs in the field of social media (SM) marketing, this article undertakes a critical evaluation of the SLR purposes and processes in a set of recent SLRs and presents a future research agenda for social media marketing. The overview shows that the purposes of SLRs include the following: making sense (of research in a field), developing a concept matrix/taxonomy and supporting research and practice. On SLR processes, while there is some consensus on the stages of the process, there is considerable variation in how these processes are executed. This article offers a resource to inform practice and acts as a platform for further critical debate regarding the nature and value of SLRs.

Success of Social Media Marketing Efforts in Retaining Sustainable Online Consumers: An Empirical Analysis on the Online Fashion Retail Market

This research examines the overall performance achievement of social media marketing (SMM) in Bangladesh by determining whether social media is successful in creating brand consciousness (i.e., brand preference, brand attachment, brand association, and brand loyalty) toward online consumers, which in turn may lead to buying commitment. In total, 564 Bangladeshi consumers were surveyed to monitor their responsiveness toward social media-aided motivations. We selected the online buying environment in Bangladesh, which is an emerging market established less than one decade ago. We specifically choose the entire local fashion industry as our target market, excluding the websites of international fashion brands operated overseas. We used the holistic concept of the five aspects of SMM, namely, interaction, entertainment, customization, electronic word of mouth (eWOM), and trendiness. Moreover, we statistically calculated the performance of social media through the consequences of five measures, namely, brand loyalty, brand preference, brand attachment, brand association, and buying commitment. We used regular linear multiple regression, correlation, and descriptive statistics to obtain statistical results. The study found strong evidence that SMM efforts (SMMEs) of the local Bangladeshi fashion industry are successful in establishing consumer attachment and preference. However, they fail to secure committed buyers when the measurement scale is below 50%. In line with the results of previous studies on consumer loyalty, our results demonstrate that SMMEs fail to create committed buyers. Lack of loyalty and association drive consumers to become uncommitted buyers.

Toward a maturity model for the application of social media in healthcare

Purpose

The advent of new technologies and change of patients’ behavioral patterns have triggered the provision of medical services through social media. Although the intersection between social media and health has received considerable research attention, there is little research on how health institutions implement social media strategy; thus a roadmap is required to navigate these technological initiatives. So, the purpose of this paper is to overcome this challenge by developing the Health 2.0 maturity model in the healthcare field.

Design/methodology/approach

To obtain this aim, the mixed method was applied in this research. In the first step, qualitative research method was used. In this step, along with comprehensive literature review, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the healthcare professionals to find the practices and capabilities of Health 2.0. In the second step, the proposed key dimensions (KD) were assessed and prioritized based on the views of the healthcare professionals using the quantitative survey method. Finally, by considering the architecture of Health 2.0 maturity model, the KDs were assigned to maturity levels based on their priority of implementation using a focus group.

Findings

The proposed maturity model is composed of six KDs and five maturity levels based on the Capability Maturity Model Integration architecture. The KDs, as well as their implementation order and weights in the proposed maturity model are presented as a roadmap for applying Health 2.0 effectively.

Practical implications

Employing the Health 2.0 maturity model enables health institutions to assess the current social media capabilities and guide them to select appropriate strategies for progress. Due to the descriptive nature of the proposed model, it allows managers to conduct process-based assessments regarding health 2.0 implementation.

Originality/value

Health 2.0 has been a recurring theme on the agenda of healthcare institutions, but no sensitive tool is available to measure its growth processes. This paper explores the much ignored but critically important subject of Health 2.0 maturity model and its implementation roadmap. The main contribution of this paper is to introduce an integrated roadmap containing the most important capabilities of Health 2.0. The proposed model is both descriptive and prescriptive in nature, and has a significant theoretical contribution to healthcare studies. This paper provides a mechanism to benchmark Health 2.0 efforts and to develop a progressive strategy that would improve its activities.

The contribution of social media to project management

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to determine the social media (SM) tools that are the most prevalent for project management activities, ascertain the areas of project management that are most benefited by SM, elucidate enablers and inhibitors to adoption of SM and identify the implications for virtual teams.

Design/methodology/approach

A Delphi study was used to explore why and how SM is being utilized in projects. In total, 32 participants contributed to three rounds of Delphi study, comprising two rounds of questionnaire followed by confirmatory interviews. The vulnerabilities and difficulties associated with the use of SM were examined by qualitative interviews.

Findings

Information sharing SM tools, such as YouTube, Dropbox, SlideShare, flickr, CrowdStorm and Instagram, are the most advantageous to project management. However, the tools utilized differ at different stages of the project lifecycle. The major benefit of SM is that it enables project teams to communicate efficiently and positively affects virtual team dynamics. Adoption can be inhibited by the absence of infrastructure in rural areas and differing preferences for SM tools in global regions. There is also a perceived lack of maturity of policies and procedures to govern SM adoption and use.

Research limitations/implications

The research was conducted based on the Project Management Body of Knowledge version 5 project management processes.

Practical implications

The findings will enable practitioners to select SM tools that are suitable for project activities and forewarn about potential shortfalls. The findings also facilitate a qualitative analysis of SM attributes and their effect on project management.

Social implications

Project practitioners can use the findings to adopt SM for their project management.

Originality/value

This study extends the literature concerning the use of SM for project management, provides a foundation for future research and may present as a useful guide for the adoption of relevant SM tools.