Paper ID

2921

Paper Type

full

Description

While social media platforms have been used by retailers for a variety of purposes, there is limited research on how traditional retailers compete on social media platforms and what the effects of such competition are on related outcomes. Our paper seeks to fill this gap by examining whether retailers that are close competitors in the traditional context adopt similar content strategies on Twitter. We find that dissimilar firms have higher online engagement and acquire new followers faster. In examining the underlying mechanism, we find that this is attributable to their ability to leverage higher-level affordances of Twitter (i.e., relationship formation, meta-voicing, interactivity, collaboration, and competition). We find that it is the use of these higher-level affordances that leads to greater online engagement compared to the use of lower-level affordances, such as self-presentation and communication. Our findings have important implications for firms’ competitive strategies in online social media platforms.

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Retail Firms’ Use of Social Media – Insights from Analysis of Large-Scale Twitter Data

While social media platforms have been used by retailers for a variety of purposes, there is limited research on how traditional retailers compete on social media platforms and what the effects of such competition are on related outcomes. Our paper seeks to fill this gap by examining whether retailers that are close competitors in the traditional context adopt similar content strategies on Twitter. We find that dissimilar firms have higher online engagement and acquire new followers faster. In examining the underlying mechanism, we find that this is attributable to their ability to leverage higher-level affordances of Twitter (i.e., relationship formation, meta-voicing, interactivity, collaboration, and competition). We find that it is the use of these higher-level affordances that leads to greater online engagement compared to the use of lower-level affordances, such as self-presentation and communication. Our findings have important implications for firms’ competitive strategies in online social media platforms.