Title: A comparison of global companies' performance on Twitter and Weibo

Authors: Mike Chen-Ho Chao; Bela Florenthal

Addresses: Cotsakos College of Business, William Paterson University, 1600 Valley Road, Room 3053, Wayne, NJ 07470, USA ' Cotsakos College of Business, William Paterson University, 1600 Valley Road, Room 3058, Wayne, NJ 07470, USA

Abstract: To assess the strategic approach of multinational companies to microblogging sites, this study compared: a) global companies' performance on localising the content of their posts for target customers with different cultural backgrounds and determined; b) whether the companies vary in their utilisation of interactivity on microblogging sites. Content analysis was used to address the above research propositions. Two existing validated measures were used to analyse 548 tweets and 589 weibos posted by American Dell, Nike, Chinese Lenovo, and Li-Ning over a one-month period on Twitter in the USA and on Sina Weibo in China. The results indicated that these companies performed better in terms of interactivity on Weibo than on Twitter and that US (Chinese) companies performed better on Twitter (Weibo) than on Weibo (Twitter) individually and comparatively. With respect to cultural customisation, Chinese companies were able to match their US counterparts in providing Western content on Twitter.

Keywords: microblogging; Twitter; Weibo; cultural customisation; interactivity; multinational corporations; MNCs; firm performance; multinationals; culture; USA; United States; China; social media.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBE.2016.079691

International Journal of Business Environment, 2016 Vol.8 No.3, pp.242 - 264

Received: 02 Dec 2015
Accepted: 22 Apr 2016

Published online: 09 Oct 2016 *

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