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Generating and exploiting customer insights from social media data

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Abstract

Previous research has emphasized the virtues of customer insights as a key source of competitive advantage. The rise of customers’ social media use allows firms to collect customer data in an ever-increasing volume and variety. However, to date, little is known about the capabilities required of firms to turn social media data into valuable customer insights and exploit these insights to create added value for customers. Based on the dynamic capabilities perspective, in particular the concept of absorptive capacity (ACAP), the authors conducted multiple case studies of seven mid-sized and large B2C firms in Switzerland and Germany. The results provide an in-depth analysis of the underlying processes of ACAP as well as contingent factors – that is, physical, human and organizational resources that underpin the firms’ ACAP.

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Correspondence to Alexander Wieneke.

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Responsible Editor: Ulrike Baumöl

Appendices

Appendix A

Methodology used to identify research publications

Following the approach proposed by vom Brocke et al. (2009), our methodology for identifying publications that provided valuable information about preliminary constructs proceeded in four stages. First, we performed a search spanning multidisciplinary databases with access to academic journals and conference proceedings. The databases were queried on the basis of a keyword search in December 2014. Use of the search term “customer insights” (including the singular form “customer insight”) in the search fields title, keywords, and abstract identified a total of 228 candidate articles from various disciplines. Second, we excluded duplicates and articles not published in peer-reviewed outlets. Additionally, we examined the title, abstract, and introduction to evaluate whether the paper appeared to be concerned with the management of customer insights in the context of social media or at least in the context of customer relationship management (e.g., sales, marketing, and service). After the first evaluation round, the list included 86 articles. Third, the remaining articles were read thoroughly to extract those that provided valuable information on the dimensions of the ACAP concept and the contingent factors. As a result, our pool comprised 21 relevant articles. Fourth, conducting a forward and backward search (Levy and Ellis 2006), we identified 8 additional articles.

This systematic and comprehensive literature search resulted in a coding set of 29 articles. Table 6 shows the number of identified papers after each step.

Table 6 Results of literature search

Appendix B

Identification of preliminary constructs: Examples of the coding process

Table 7 Examples of the coding process

Appendix C

Interview questions

Introductory questions about customer insights

At first, I would like to ask you a couple of questions about your personal understanding of customer insights:

  • How would you describe customer insights in your own words?

General questions on firms’ generation and use of customer insights

To ensure a common understanding of customer insights, I would like to suggest the following definition: Customer insights describe the firm’s understanding of their customers, their needs, the reasons behind these needs, and how these change over time.

  • To what extent does your firm generate customer insights? And how are these insights used?

  • What role do social media play?

  • Which goals does your firm pursue with the generation and use of customer insights in general and through social media in particular?

Organizational prerequisites

In the following, I would like to learn more about your opinion concerning the prerequisites that should exist in your firm to effectively generate customer insights through social media and use them in your firm.

  • In your opinion, which prerequisites should exist in your firm to generate and exploit customer insights?

    • What processes are required to gather and process the data from social media? What does it take to turn the data into valuable customer insights?

    • Are there specific prerequisites regarding the technical infrastructure?

    • Are there specific prerequisites regarding the skills and knowledge of the employees?

    • Are there specific prerequisites regarding the corporate setup, e.g., governance mechanisms?

Challenges and outlook

  • What problems and challenges do you face when generating and using customer insights based on social media?

  • Which trends regarding customer insights do you expect to be relevant in the future?

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Wieneke, A., Lehrer, C. Generating and exploiting customer insights from social media data. Electron Markets 26, 245–268 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-016-0226-1

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