Title: Social media's opportunities in business-to-business customer interaction in innovation process

Authors: Jari J. Jussila; Hannu Kärkkäinen; Maija Leino

Addresses: Tampere University of Technology, Korkeakoulunkatu 8, F1-33101, Tampere, Finland. ' Tampere University of Technology, Korkeakoulunkatu 8, F1-33101, Tampere, Finland. ' Tampere University of Technology, Korkeakoulunkatu 8, F1-33101, Tampere, Finland

Abstract: In the paradigm of open innovation, it is recognised that valuable innovation-related knowledge is being increasingly widely distributed to various actors, organisations and communities. Social media can provide novel and useful ways of interacting and collaborating in innovation, likewise for creating new information and knowledge about customers for innovations. These have not so far been much investigated because of the novelty of social media concepts and approaches. Furthermore, the opportunities of social media are not yet well understood in the contexts of innovation and customer interaction, and importantly, while the business-to-consumer sector standpoint has been more researched and understood, the business-to-business sector standpoint has been very little studied in the above contexts. With the help of a literature review and a survey in Finnish companies, we studied the current situation regarding the opportunities of social media in facilitating customer interaction in the innovation process.

Keywords: social media; internet; world wide web; social networking; networks; B2B; business-to-business; customer interaction; customer understanding; innovation processes; open innovation; customer knowledge management; co-creation; KM; innovation-related knowledge; B2C; business-to-consumer; Finland; technology marketing; markets; long-term positions; sustainable positions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTMKT.2012.046905

International Journal of Technology Marketing, 2012 Vol.7 No.2, pp.191 - 208

Received: 30 Jul 2011
Accepted: 02 Feb 2012
Published online: 29 Aug 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article