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Despite the prevalence of technology in health care, marketing research on social media in the birthspace is limited. The purpose of this paper is to explore how birthing women leverage social media for transformative well-being in the liminal context of birth.

A qualitative study of women who had recently experienced birth was undertaken. Thematic analysis of data from in-depth interviews reveals birthing women’s digital practices and social media capabilities for well-being in a liminal space.

Within the birthspace, women use social media and digital platforms in an effortful and goal-directed way for role transitions and transformation, curating self and other history, goal striving and normalizing experience. These digital practice styles facilitate consumer integration of the liminal digital birthspace and in situ service encounter enabling diverse value outcomes. Drawing on liminality and social presence theories, the authors interpret these practices as demonstrating three interactive liminal stages of suspending, comprehending and transforming. Multi-modality and rapid connection afforded by digital devices and social media platforms provide social presence (according to perceived immediacy and intimacy) enabling transformative well-being outcomes.

This study is unique, as it provides insights into the traditionally private health service experience of birth. Further, the authors extend the understanding of liminal spaces and use of digital technology, specifically for transformative outcomes, by proposing a framework of consumers’ digital practice styles for well-being in liminal spaces.

This paper aims to investigate small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) adoption of social media platforms and how they integrated them within their marketing strategies during the COVID-19 outbreaks. Dynamic capabilities – observed as the interplay between sensing, seizing and reconfiguration capabilities – represent the principal theoretical framework used in this research to explain challenges in social media adoption and their effects on these businesses.

This study adopts the grounded theory approach to analyze semistructured interviews with 19 key informants from Italian SMEs belonging to diversified industries.

The findings of this research are summarized in a holistic framework that explores three types of capabilities (i.e. sensing, seizing and reconfiguration capabilities) and the marketing outcomes of social media adoption among SMEs.

This study attempts to unpack the specific dynamic capabilities that allowed SMEs to be successful in social media adoption during COVID-19 outbreaks.

This paper constitutes the first academic study to be made of Google Discover as applied to online journalism.

This paper constitutes the first academic study to be made of Google Discover as applied to online journalism. The study involved conducting 61 semi-structured interviews with experts that are representative of a range of different professional profiles within the fields of journalism and search engine positioning (SEO) in Brazil, Spain and Greece. Based on the data collected, the authors created five semantic categories and compared the experts' perceptions in order to detect common response patterns.

This study results confirm the existence of different degrees of convergence and divergence in the opinions expressed in these three countries regarding the main dimensions of Google Discover, including specific strategies using the feed, its impact on web traffic, its impact on both quality and sensationalist content and on the degree of responsibility shown by the digital media in its use. The authors are also able to propose a set of best practices that journalists and digital media in-house web visibility teams should take into account to increase their probability of appearing in Google Discover. To this end, the authors consider strategies in the following areas of application: topics, different aspects of publication, elements of user experience, strategic analysis and diffusion and marketing.

Although research exists on the application of SEO to different areas, there have not, to date, been any studies examining Google Discover.

The peer-review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2022-0574

The purpose of this paper is to explore the tension in brand management created through the rapid transformation of social media, mapping the maintenance of increasingly complex B2B relationship dynamics with key intermediaries.

In-depth interviews with 17 social media practitioners from leading fashion brands, agencies and platforms in the UK and Australia informed this study. Analysis used grounded theory, and results were interpreted through the lens of network and stakeholder theories.

Social media platforms have evolved into critical brand stakeholders, serving as gatekeepers in an increasingly unbalanced system between provider and marketer. The perpetuation of a hierarchical power dynamic affects the development of both practitioner and firm capabilities with negative implications and consequences for organisational control of branded social media communications. Three theoretical propositions are offered relating to the nature of platform hegemony, the notion of social media democratisation and the limiting impact of rapid change on the formation of relational ties.

This study extends the conceptualisation of communal custody of brands in social media settings to incorporate a growing number of commercial stakeholders, challenging the traditional dyadic consumer-brand relational paradigm. This study sheds new light on the impact of digital transformation on power distributions in social media communities not hitherto addressed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how business-to-business (B2B) companies operating in durable goods use digital communications after the COVID-19 outbreak. In particular, this paper focuses on the objectives of these digital communication tools for the marketing strategies of B2B white goods firms.

As the research objective is explorative, the authors conducted a qualitative analysis by collecting 13 semi-structured interviews with B2B marketing professionals working for white goods firms in Italy. Primary data was triangulated with secondary data about the white goods industry, such as sector reports.

The findings of this paper show an acceleration in the adoption of digital communication tools among B2B firms after COVID-19. The authors also discuss the effects in the use of such tools both in the short and long term.

This paper attempts to contribute to the B2B marketing literature by providing an original analysis of the consequences of the COVID-19 outbreak focusing on the use of digital communication tools among white goods firms. It also provides managerial implications for firms operating in B2B.

The purpose of this research is to undertake a bibliometric analysis of digital marketing research in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The study examines papers over the last two decades and performed performance analysis, co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling and scientific mapping.

The study examines 247 documents retrieved from the Scopus database using bibliometric analysis, performance analysis and thematic clustering. The study looked at the scientific productivity of papers, prolific authors, most influencing papers, institutions and nations, keyword co-occurrence, thematic mapping, co-citations and authorship and country collaborations. VOSviewer was employed as a tool in the research to conduct the performance analysis and thematic clustering.

The most productive year was 2021 with 56 publications and the most impactful institute and countries are the University of Birmingham, UK, and the country is United Kingdom, respectively. Similarly, the most influential journal is “Industrial Marketing Management”, and the most productive journal is “International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising”. Furthermore, the most cited article is “Usage, barriers and measurement of social media marketing: An exploratory investigation of small and medium B2B brands”. The authors also identified five thematic clusters of digital marketing research in SMEs.

It informs and directs researchers on the current state of study in the field of digital marketing literature in SMEs. It also outlines future research directions in this field.

This is the first study which provides the performance analysis and scientific mapping of the digital marketing literature in SMEs.

Many studies have examined the use of social media by either customers or firms, especially in developed markets. However, little is known about why young individual entrepreneurs use digital channels (DCs) as business platforms in emerging markets (EMs) and how they integrate them into their marketing activities. This paper aims to try filling this gap.

Given the exploratory nature of this research, the authors employ a qualitative approach based on a focus group (12 participants) and semi-structured interviews (8 participants) with young entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia. The authors adopted a deductive thematic analysis based on pre-determined theoretical frameworks to analyse and interpret the data.

The authors found that the young entrepreneurs mainly used Instagram, Snapchat and, to a moderate extent, YouTube as digital marketing channels for advertising purposes. However, they used WhatsApp for establishing direct contact and personalising communication with customers. The entrepreneurs used these channels because they are useful, easy to use, cost-effective, fun and widely used by local customers. The authors also found that the entrepreneurs used social media and offline channels conjointly in three main marketing activities (communication/promotion, transactions and customer service) to boost the customer purchasing process. The complementarity of social media and offline channels was found to improve brand visibility, enlarge markets and strengthen the customer relationship. However, the achievement of these benefits varied across small firms depending on the entrepreneurs' abilities in coordinating multiple channels and according to the distinctiveness of their businesses.

This study contributes to the entrepreneurial literature by extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to explain the motives behind the use of DCs amongst individual entrepreneurs. Furthermore, this paper proposes a novel theoretical framework for studying the interaction between online and offline marketing channels during the purchasing process. Through this framework, the study provides new insights into channel coordination and multi-channel customer behaviours from the entrepreneur's perspective.

This study helps understand why small firms use different DCs. Likewise, it shows how young entrepreneurs coordinate online/offline channels in a complementary manner. The findings could also help in designing appropriate programmes encouraging young entrepreneurs to use online channels and social media to enhance their business activities.

This study offers a novel attempt at explaining the use of DCs and their interaction with traditional channels from the entrepreneur's perspective and brings new insights to why and how young entrepreneurs use DCs in an emerging market.

Based on both quantitative and qualitative analyses, this study revisits public relations (PR) and marketing practitioners' perceptions of PR function and its relationship with marketing function in the digital context.

An online survey targeting 234 PR and marketing practitioners was first conducted, followed by a total of 27 in-depth interviews with PR and marketing practitioners.

Results from the two phases of analysis show that both PR and marketing practitioners perceive market functions as sales-oriented, whereas media relations is interpreted as more of a PR function. Content marketing and influencer marketing via digital communication channels help to enhance the convergence of PR and marketing functions. PR and marketing practitioners believe that PR and marketing functions are integrative, and they are willing to work flexibly for both functions within workplaces.

This study presents a continuum of PR and marketing functions in the digital era that illustrates the role of digital communication in the convergence of PR and marketing functions. The results help to advance the theoretical discussion on both the functional (excellent PR practices and relationship management) and critical (the social role of PR in the participatory culture) approaches of PR in the digital context. Managerial implications are also discussed in addition to the theoretical contributions.

The purpose is to offer a discussion of how we can conceive of the organization of knowledge in digital culture and its changing nature. The article proposes to view of it as both a decentered (communicative) and centered (analytical gaze).

This study involves comparative analysis and discussion.

The analysis and discussion argue for the two positions of the organization of knowledge and point to how and what we can understand about features of digital culture’s collection practices.

The originality of this article is the conceptualization of the organization of knowledge as both a decentered and centered practice in digital culture, from which is developed a particular knowledge organization perspective on social reality.

The unstoppable and exponential growth of social media use has given rise to concerns about the consequent effects on users. Among the major concerns are the psychological consequences, which have received considerable academic attention. The current mixed-methods research aims to examine women's social media use and its effects on their psychological well-being in a patriarchal culture, namely Pakistan.

This study employs a mixed-method research methodology. The quantitative section collected data from 240 women and used structural equation modelling to test the proposed hypotheses. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the in-depth interviews with ten women.

The integration of the findings revealed increased use of social media by women and its beneficial effects (communication and socialisation, escapism and self-presentation), though qualitative findings revealed the cultural implications and obstacles that women face (online anonymity and digital asylum). The study calls attention to women's social media usage patterns and the resulting effects on women's psychological well-being in a low-income country with a patriarchal social structure.

Most research remains limited to Western societies and young populations. The situation is somewhat different in developing economies with traditionally preserved cultures compared to Western societies. This study uniquely examines the influence of social media on psychological well-being in a developing country with a special cultural context.