Title: Social media marketing as an entrepreneurial learning process

Authors: Stefan Lagrosen; Pernilla Josefsson

Addresses: University West, Economics and IT, Gustava Melins v2, 46186, Trollhattan, Sweden. ' University West, Economics and IT, Gustava Melins v2, 46186, Trollhattan, Sweden

Abstract: The purpose for this paper is to explore social media marketing from the perspective of entrepreneurial learning. The theoretical basis consists of contributions from the fields of organisational learning and entrepreneurship. An empirical study involving ten companies has been carried out. The data were analysed with methods inspired by grounded theory. Categories describing the companies' social media presence from an entrepreneurial learning perspective are provided. The value of using organisational learning as a framework for social media marketing is shown. Thus, the paper presents a novel way of studying social media activities which should contribute to the theoretical fields of organisational learning and entrepreneurship as well as to the understanding of social media marketing. For practitioners, the findings provide additional knowledge that should be useful for their own social media activities.

Keywords: social media marketing; entrepreneurship; organisational learning; marketing communications; grounded theory; relationship marketing; entrepreneurial learning; systems thinking; social networking; microblogging.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTMKT.2011.045912

International Journal of Technology Marketing, 2011 Vol.6 No.4, pp.331 - 340

Published online: 30 Sep 2014 *

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