Industrial Marketing Management

Special Issue on

Social Media and Social Networking in Industrial Marketing

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline for Submission February 28, 2015

Social media and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have become extremely popular over the past five years. The adoption and use of these channels apply not only to social activities but to commercial sectors as well. Companies now use video, blogs, podcasting, social network communities and other online media to release news and directly approach customers. These marketing platforms operate 24/7 and provide attractive interactive environments for customers and companies.

The commercial adoption of social media has attracted widespread attention in such academic disciplines as marketing, information systems, human resources and organizational behaviour. However, there remains a shortage of theoretical frameworks on how those platforms can increase brand equity and enhance business performance in business-to-business markets. While research has focused on the marketing of consumers’ products rather than business-to-business marketing and channel relationships, it is clear that social media also facilitates collaboration between trading partners through innovative, visual, and timely communicative media including, in particular mobile channels.

A survey done by Duke University and the Chief Marketing Council 2013 shows that current social media spending is about 6.6% of the total marketing budget and it will grow to 9.1% in twelve months and to 15.8% in five years indicating a 140% increase. Nonetheless, the survey also reveals that only 15% of the companies studied have proven quantitative benefits, with 36% showing some qualitative impacts, and a significant 49% unsure of any benefits. Interestingly, the results also conclude that between 2011 and 2013 the effectiveness measurement of using social media for marketing has not changed. So despite that the importance and wide recognition of using social media and social networking for marketing as reported by practitioners in the survey, the companies, themselves, are not effectively integrating social media with their marketing strategies.

Although the social media and social networking trend is promising, it is not yet clear whether or not these socio-technologies can be applied to industrial marketing. As mentioned, theoretical frameworks and proven methodologies using social media to create the content and relationship building processes that can create effective marketing and networking efforts are lacking. There is also a need to identify constructs and formulate models for measuring the return on investment of social medial adoption in the B2B market place. Little is known how to maximize the utilization of social media and networking to enhance collaboration between trading partners for distribution and product development and to increase brand equity. Better understanding of how and why organizations choose their practices for utilizing these platforms has significant implications for industrial marketing.

As such, the objectives of this special issue will reflect the most recent advances on the marketing theories and the organizational adoption of social media and social network for industrial marketing and branding and to explore future research directions. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

 Advertising of industrial products via social media and social networking sites
 Theoretical development and extension of relevant networking and marketing theories applied to business markets
 Social Media and Best Practice in industrial organizations
 Social media case studies in industrial marketing management – the story of launching, producing, and maintaining market leads and gaining profits
 Issues related to B2B brand equity and recognition
 Frameworks for industrial corporate branding
 Customer services and experiences
 Industrial Content Marketing
 B2B relationships in cyberspace
 Marketing capabilities and relational performance
 Social marketing in social media
 Marketing personnel and information systems
 Strategies in industrial marketing
 Collaborative projects with partners via social networking
 Social media and viral marketing in the industrial market
 Social networking and supply chains
 Social media (big) data and business marketing strategies

In this special issue, we especially seek original contributions of successful real-life applications and empirical research of social media and social networking and their impacts on marketing theory. Conceptual papers and other related topics, supported by strong theoretical background, are also welcome.

Manuscript Preparation and Submission
Manuscripts should comply with the scope, standards, format and editorial policy of the Industrial Marketing Management. Manuscripts should be submitted as an e-mail attachment with a single MSWord file containing the complete manuscript (Title, text, figures, tables, appendices, references) to the guest editors with a copy to plaplaca@journalimm.com. All papers will be reviewed through a double-blind peer review process. In preparation of their manuscripts, authors are asked to follow the Author Guidelines closely. A guide for authors, sample articles and other relevant information for submitting papers are available at: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/indmarman

Important Dates
Deadline for manuscript submissions February 28, 2015

Guest Editors
Associate Professor William Yu Chung Wang
Department of Business Information Systems
Faculty of Business and Law,
AUT University, New Zealand
e-mail: william.wang@aut.ac.nz Associate Professor David Pauleen
School of Management,
Massey University
Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: d.pauleen@massey.ac.nz