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Despite decades of scientific and practical experience in the field of integrated marketing communication (IMC), little is known about the role of IMC in the era of new media. The purpose of the present paper is to undertake a first step to close this gap by proposing thought-provoking impulses for customer-centric IMC. This is done by discussing central premises of customer-centric IMC in terms of the changed conditions on the media markets, its challenges and principles and its implementation issues.

The paper provides a conceptual approach to customer-centric IMC by deriving new lines of thinking from a review of existing literature relating to the concept of IMC.

The paper positions customer-centric IMC as an important advancement of IMC. It shows that the most important new lines of thinking which could be adopted as strategic components of customer-centric IMC are relationship orientation, content orientation and process orientation. The paper thus suggests that customer-centric IMC is a balancing act between a company’s own branding activities and the integration of customer-centered issues.

The originality of this paper resides in a detailed conceptual discussion of new insights into a customer-centric IMC. In contrast to existing work on IMC, this paper threads together the existing perspectives on IMC (inside-out and outside-in) to highlight the potential role of IMC in the era of social media (customer-centric IMC) by adding an outside-out view to the concept of IMC.

The purpose of this study is to clarify business-to-business (B2B) firms’ strategies of social media marketing communication. The study aims to explore the factors contributing to the formation and adoption of integration strategies and identify who the B2B firms target.

A multiple case study approach is used to compare four multinational corporations and their practices. Face-to-face interviews with key managers, and extensive readings and observations of the firms’ websites and social media platforms have been conducted.

The study results in a model, illustrating different processes of selection, adoption and integration involved in the development of social media communication strategy for B2B firms. Major factors involved in determining the platform type, and strategies used within different phases and processes are identified.

As the chosen methodology may limit generalizability, further research is encouraged to test the model within a B2B context especially within small and medium enterprises as only large multinational corporations were investigated in this study.

The paper provides insight into how B2B marketers can align social media with their firms’ goals through the strategic selection of platforms to reach the targeted audience and communicate their message.

The study uncovers the benefits gained by B2B firms’ through interaction with individuals on social media. This is a significant contribution as the value of such interaction was previously undefined and acted as a barrier for adopting social media in some B2B firms.

The development of social media provides new opportunities for recruitment and raises various questions. This chapter aims to clarify areas of agreement and disagreement regarding the integration of social media in recruitment strategies.

A Delphi study was conducted among a panel of 34 French experts composed of 26 practitioners and 8 academics.

Three quantitative results and five qualitative results are presented. Social media appear as an opportunity to raise the strategic role of HR professionals through employer branding strategy, internal skills development, and a greater involvement of managers within the sourcing process.

This study points out several barriers and limits regarding the integration of social media in recruitment strategies and encourage HR professionals to take up the challenge. Multiple recommendations are addressed to HR professionals.

This chapter is based on an innovative application of the Delphi method. Moreover, it offers a more comprehensive and critical look on the integration of social media in recruitment strategies.

Social media usage is becoming ubiquitous across the world and communicators, either corporate, independent or activist are increasingly adopting the new medium. This chapter focuses on the uses of social media for marketing communications, in particular for public relations and corporate social responsibility (CSR) by Pfizer’s European offices. In doing so it evaluates the relationship between public relations and CSR as well as reviews some of the uses of social media for healthcare communications and CSR.

Using a deductive approach and a methodology that combines qualitative content analysis aimed at identifying communication themes and social media audits on brand integration and communication coherence, this chapter aims to identify how Pfizer’s European offices use social media to communicate online.

To establish the corporate line and branding general guidelines for Pfizer, we have recorded from the company’s official website (www.pfizer.com) its corporate overview and corporate responsibility information, embedded into the ‘About us’ section of the website. From the home page, social media links were then sought. To ensure all links were recorded the researchers used two gateways, one using the social media links on the website and one through each country’s website and their social media links on their home page. The Pfizer official accounts were excluded from this analysis, the interest being on the country uses of social media and not Pfizer’s official general channels.

General traffic and engagement data automatically reported by each social media platforms such as number of tweets, followers, fans, and number of views were recorded manually. For more insight into Twitter activity FollerMe was then used to capture and record each account’s most recent activity as it enabled the discovery of each account’s creation date and the most frequently used words and hashtags in its tweets. It also helped assess the levels of performance of each country on Twitter by looking at the reported ratios of replies, mentions, tweets with links, hashtags or media to the last 100 tweets sent from the each account. For Facebook and YouTube data, only the publicly reported data was recorded. The text in the Twitter bios and about sections was also recorded and compared with the company’s corporate and CSR descriptions included on the main website.

Out of the 20 countries that do have a Pfizer country office, only 10 of them have a social media presence. Turkey and Spain have four social media channels each and Belgium has three. All the other countries are present on only one social media platform. They show an overall integration and coordination of messages with themes mirrored from one platform to another. The channels also show an overall compliance and consistency with the brand, most of them displaying bespoke backgrounds, bios and links to the country website.

When it comes to social media integration, the accounts are poorly integrated and interlinked. Moreover, although social media provides a platform for dialogue, two out of the three platforms analysed have very little user interaction. This high concern for message control can be indicative of a variety of elements: a lack of certainty/security in handling social media, a risk-averse attitude towards social media, a lack of training of staff about how to handle social media or perhaps a lack of resources.

The platforms used have all different functions and address different target audiences. YouTube proves to excel as a public information/CSR medium for the general public, the most popular content fitting into those categories. Twitter is a corporate communications environment by excellence, a true mouth-piece of the organization. Finally, Facebook is Pfizer’s user engagement environment but within Pfizer’s own comfort and rules, the presence of a policy document making the boundaries of communication very clear.

Although looking only at one company and its social media communication practices and although it uses only publicly reported data, this chapter raises a variety of questions about the use of social media by big, multinational corporations, the resources they allocate and the amount to which they perceive these channels as anything more than just another company mouth-piece. It also raises questions about how companies choose to portray themselves on social media in comparison to joining conversations, commenting on current trends and celebrating their partners and employees. Perhaps future research could explore these aspects in more depth.

Pfizer who declares itself the ‘world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical company’ is currently among the most influential companies in the world, occupying currently the 148th position in the Global Fortune 500 list. Due to its position within the industry, Pfizer has been the subject of previous research materials including marketing and health communications; however, no study yet has analysed Pfizer’s uses of social media. By analysing the social media communications of Pfizer in Europe and by pointing to the inconsistencies between country accounts, this chapter raises further questions about social media strategy and its implementation by corporations.

Social media is a popular communication tool for college students in many countries including Malaysia. Even though the literature indicates that the use of social media in a higher learning environment is likely to enhance academic performance of college students, the mechanism that explains such association is yet to be explored. Based on the claims that the integration of social media use is purposeful to enhance student engagement, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of student engagement as a potential mediator between social media use and academic performance of college students in Malaysia.

A total number of 227 business students in one of the public universities in Malaysia were randomly chosen to participate in this study. Questionnaire was used as the main data collection technique, which was personally administered during class sessions. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling-partial least square (SEM-PLS).

The result showed the multidimensionality of student engagement. It also indicated that cognitive engagement mediated the relationship between social media and academic performance, but not behavioral, emotional, or agentic engagement. The result suggests that social media has the potential to be used in a learning environment as it promotes cognitive engagement of students in class and subsequently their academic performance and success.

One of the limitations of the present study is that the generalizability of the finding to a much larger population of students may be limited as the sampled students were recruited from business students in one of the public universities in Malaysia only. Students of different academic programs in different universities may have a different pattern of using the social media.

This study will help higher learning institutions and educators think of ways to integrate the use of social media in learning activities to help students achieve better academic performance. As shown by the findings, such use can encourage students to be cognitively engagedt in class in which the students can be more active learners.

The present study adds to the literature in social media use by addressing the issue of how it helps enhance academic performance of college students in a single model. Past studies tended to examine the role of social media and student engagement and the effect of student engagement on academic performance separately. Furthermore, this study took into consideration various types of social media used by college students who tend to have multiple accounts.

The purpose of this paper is to research the key role of eParticipation and social media in the construction and diffusion of a European identity for European citizens, as a valuable means of acculturalisation, through the creation of a common sense of belonging and self-identifying with the European ideals.

The paper argues that the limited success of current EU institutions' communication strategy and eParticipation initiatives could be partly attributed to a communication gap between the means currently used on the one hand, and the preferences of targeted audiences on the other.

This communication gap is demonstrated by combining empirical data on EU eParticipation initiatives addressing young people, young citizens' involvement in EU affairs, the penetration of social media on young citizen groups and the social media presence of EU political entities.

These empirical data could be enriched with more detailed statistics, and monitored across time to identity advancements and changing trends.

The paper proposes, therefore, that the focus for eParticipation instruments be redirected to social media due to their comparative advantages as regards their great visibility, their notable level of penetration into current social groups and their potential of targeting specific audiences and becoming an integral part of these audiences' everyday life.

The paper believes this approach can contribute to improving eParticipation ventures in terms of their actual appeal to young citizens and contribution to the construction and diffusion of a European identity.

This chapter presents results of a qualitative study among European champions in social media management. It aims to describe a strategic process and its implications for social media strategic management.

The chapter is based on four in-depth case studies involving both primary and secondary data analysis and interviews.

Social media management is governed by similar principles as corporate communication management. However, there is an important role of personal preferences of senior executives for an effectiveness of the strategic process.

The model allows describing the social media management in the multinational companies. Organizational learning process drawn in this chapter can be directly applied in the multinational companies from various industries.

Social media create an environment in which established actors need to learn how to communicate socially. Sophistication of the tools requires sophistication of the strategies and processes.

This chapter analyzes companies from various industries which are considered successful in social media strategic management. It creates a model which is applicable in various industries. It provides also insights into social media strategies from the research among social media global leaders.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how social media can provide important platforms to facilitate organisational learning and innovation in new product development (NPD) process.

Using a multiple case-study approach, this study assesses qualitative data collected via 56 interviews from 13 world-leading Chinese companies in the high-technology industry.

The study identified three distinct types of organisational learning mechanisms for firms to extract potential innovation inherent in social media. It further determined various organisational enablers that facilitate the connections between these mechanisms and NPD performance.

This research contributes to the emerging literature on digital product development and organisational learning. The cases were conducted in the Chinese context, hence, the results may not be fully generalisable to other organisations, industries and countries without appropriate re-contextualisation.

The empirical evidence showcases the various mechanisms adopted by managers in different NPD phases. It identifies several technological and organisational adaptations that managers can apply to smartly scale their social presence and facilitate NPD.

Despite the exponential growth of social media use in identifying and interacting with external stakeholders, managerial practice and academic research have paid little attention to how social media can be leveraged for NPD. The value of this research comes from applying a qualitative method to gain in-depth insights into the mechanisms for leveraging social media to facilitate innovation in NPD.

The purpose of this paper is to deliver a summary of the influential work regarding value co-creation in the context of social media. Although, research on the role of social media in co-creation and new product development is growing field; the extant literature is still in developing stage, which needs systematization and categorization to comprehend its current stage and previous research.

For this purpose, existing literature on social media and co-creation was studied. Initially, a citation analysis was conducted of influential papers correlated with the topic to identify three streams of research. Later, thematic analysis was carried out to explore specific themes within these categories.

Through citation analysis three research streams namely customer’s co-creation on new product development, firm specific capabilities for knowledge sharing, absorption and processing and new opportunities were identified. Later, total four categories were identified through thematic analysis which contains different sub-themes such as test of theories, proposed theoretical frameworks, lead users characteristics, customer’s motivation and experience regarding co-creation, online communities of customers and open innovation.

This study also categorizes and systemizes the extant literature exploring role of social media in value co-creation. Such systematic review of the extant literature will help the academicians to understand the previous stream of work and pursue a particular line of enquiry in furthering the understanding of interaction between social media and co-innovation.

This work is particularly useful for practitioners as more firms are moving the business online. These firms are actively using social media and user-generated content to gain insight into customer’s preferences. By increasing the participation of customers and lead users through online communities, firms can also increase customer’s commitment.

The paper adds to the extant literature by identifying research streams and themes in the extant literature on the role of social media in value co-creation. Later, these themes are abductively linked to develop a theoretical framework.

This research aims to investigate the impact of the use of social media on the organizational form and function in selected local governments of Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

This research used quantitative and qualitative methods. The researchers not only conducted comparative– explanatory studies among the three ASEAN cities but also used multiple-informant and secondary data analyses. All variables are operationalized into indicators and transformed into a questionnaire in three languages: English, Indonesian and Thai. Primary data for the research were collected using a cross-sectional survey conducted in Bandung City, Indonesia; Iligan City, the Philippines; and Pukhet City, Thailand.

This research found that social media use has not yet affected the internal organizational processes in the three cities. Also, social media use is not appropriated as a space for citizen–government interaction. It is used for only information dissemination to the public; social media seems to have been used for only collecting information from citizens but not for involving them in the decision-making process.

This research covers only three cities in the ASEAN countries, and the findings cannot be generalized to others. Moreover, this research looks at the supply-side dimension or government organization side only. However, the findings confirm that findings of previous research studies that social media use in the local government is only for information dissemination.

Legal bases for social media use could be an urgent matter to address to advance more fundamental changes in government processes.

There is no prior comparative study on the use of social media by local governments in the ASEAN countries. Social media owing to its sense of personalization or sense of community improves communication between citizens and government better than e-government sites; however, as articulated by Mirchandani et al. (2008), social media may hinder rather than facilitate the delivery of services (Mirchandani et al., 2008). This is due to the absence of a legal basis of its use, as well as agreements on the manner of its use, which prevents full integration of social media into the governance process, particularly in the cases of the cities of Iligan, the Philippines, and Phuket, Thailand.