Social media opportunities for market-driven firms

The emergence of social media has provided a new and essential way to reach customers. In fact, in many industries, more and more firms are seeking to approach social media for business purposes; thus, it becomes essential to understand how social platforms can be managed for corporate decision-making. The aim of this chapter is to give a better understanding of social media in the strategic management field; no study to date has examined the role of social media in market-driven firms. In particular, a novel conceptual framework is proposed to show how the integrated management of social media provides several opportunities to market-driven firms. First of all, social media enables market-driven firms to acquire data and information that is useful for monitoring the competitive environment. In addition, social media allows firms to develop greater customer knowledge and to improve customer relationships by attracting new customers and by engaging old ones.