Social media communication and culture: Cultural influence on user-corporation interaction
MSc Communication Science: Corporate Communications Master Thesis
Jasmin Eigemann 11104341 03.02.2017 Supervisor: Iina Hellsten Graduate School of Communication
Abstract
Social networking sites offer a great opportunity for corporations to interact with users and build long-lasting relationships with these potential customers. Due to globalization, corporations address users from all over the world with differing cultural identities. This study sought out to examine the influence of differing cultural identities on online communication behavior between corporations and users. A sample of N = 355 Facebook posts was constructed based on three corporations across the three countries Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom that varied in their cultural identity. The sample consisted of posts from the fourth annual quarter, October to December, of the year 2016. Following the corporation’s post (dialogic strategies) and user replies (dialogic outcomes) were analyzed. Findings revealed that culture influences the users’ negative online communication behavior towards corporations, but also how direct interaction between users, as well as corporations and users is supported.
Social media interaction and culture: Cultural influence in user-corporation communication Introduction
Social media is an important communication tool for corporations to engage with users, as they are potential consumers. Part of its popularity is due to its democratization of
communication – the unique possibility to interact with any public or private entity on the same level. Every individual user can interact with corporations, a reason why social media is
especially popular with young people. This is a huge advantage compared to traditional media. Via social media, users can both endorse, as well as degrade corporations and their products, which entails the danger of viral critique also called “shit storming” of corporations’ (Ott & Theunissen, 2015). To prevent negative reactions towards their corporation, social media managers therefore have to adapt to user needs.
As many corporations operate globally, an important question is whether to use standardized or localized communication strategies. On the one hand with standardization the same strategies are applied all over the world and can be successful because they maintain their exotic cultural origin. But it also holds the potential of conflict with the different cultures as it does not fit with local perceptions. On the other hand local communication strategies are derived from culturally specific criteria and are largely different for each culture (Van Raaij, 1997). Therefore it is important to identify and address potential differing needs and ways of
communication across countries to be successful (Men & Tsai, 2012). Hereby corporation make use of so called glocalisation strategies. Glocalisation is a combination of the words globalisation and localisation and describes how global product and communication strategies are tailored to fit local consumer demand (Porto & Belmonte, 2014). However, how culture impacts
longstanding debate whether corporations should standardize or localize their online appearances in targeting culturally different markets. What supports the idea to localize and target depending on the cultural background is recent research about social media use and communication
behaviours worldwide. Ray (2014) identified out that online behaviour differs between
individuals from country to country, which can be explained based on cultural background and the nature of social media as a relationship building and knowledge sharing tool. Therefore, as social media is a unique way for corporations to interact with users and build relationships, they have to be able to understand their users’ needs (Javalgi et al., 2005). To broaden the knowledge about culturally influenced behaviour in social media communication, this study wanted to find out “How does culture show in and influence user-corporation interaction on social media?”. However, the focus of the study includes apart from corporation-to-user communication also user responses. User responses imply the relevance of the corporations’ content (Chi, 2011) and are an essential part how culture influences communication (Ray, 2014). With this study I hope to broaden knowledge on how corporations do and should interact with their stakeholders and vice-versa, given the global reach of social media. Comparing differing cultures, Javalgi et al. (2005) pointed out that even though the European continent is united by history there is no “typical” European – people are divided by culture. As Europe is an important key market for many corporations this study emphasised on countries with differing cultures and add new knowledge about social media interaction on corporations’ sites in Europe.
Theoretical Framework and Hypotheses
This study addresses the use of social media in international corporations. Following, the prioritized research fields for this study – social media, user-corporation interaction and culture will be discussed before explaining the hypotheses and the conceptual model.
Social Media and Social Networks
Social media (SM) are online platforms that allow interaction between users (Bonsón et al., 2012). Peters et al. (2013) define SM as a two-piece construct from the two research areas communication science and sociology. It is delivering information (communication) and entails social structures made up of social actors like individuals and corporations (sociology). This way the communication system allows social actors to communicate and as a consequence provides a medium through which individuals, independent from geographic or societal boundaries interact with another. Every user can generate, create, organize and share content (Okazaki & Taylor, 2013). SM entail different groups of online media based on their use including social networking sites, wikis, blogs, podcasts, vidcasts (or vlogs), mashups, folksonomies and online virtual worlds (Henderson & Bowley, 2010). This research focuses on social networking sites (SNS), to be precise the US-American SNS Facebook.
SNS are a special form of SM and enable users to visibly create their own online profiles and build virtual networks with other individuals. According to Shao (2009), users deal with SNS in three ways: consuming, participating and producing contents online. The majority, about half of all SNS users solely consume the posted content. Fewer users participate and for example engage in user-to-user or user-to-corporation interactions and comment on, like or share content. A much smaller number of users, about ten percent, actually create content including text, images, audio and video (Yoo & Gretzel, 2016). In this study I focus on the first two concepts as users content creation is not part of user-corporation interaction that are triggered by
corporations posts on SNS.
So why do the majority of users consume content (Shao, 2009)? The answer can be found in Uses and Gratification (U&G) research on traditional and new media (e.g. Rui & Stefanone,
2016; Gao & Feng, 2016). Studies have revealed two typical motives for media consumption: information seeking and entertainment. Information seeking is driven by people’s desire to increase awareness and knowledge of one’s self, others, and the world. SNS show them how their peers react to a subject. They also place far more trust in their fellow consumers than in advertisers and marketers when seeking information about a product (Shao, 2009). In general, users prefer user-generated content and perceive it as more trustworthy. User-generated content is even more successful than any corporation’s marketing content and influences an individual’s purchase intention (Men & Tsai, 2012). Entertainment, both on- and offline, on the other hand satisfies the need to escape life, regulate mood states and seek emotional release (see Bryant & Davies, 2006 in Shao, 2009). Online entertainment is perfectly suited for the modern consumer with “limited” time, who increasingly breaks time into small periods and customizes
entertainment accordingly (Wolf, 1999). Entertainment is consumed similar to cookies or chips – in conveniently packaged sizes “made to be munched easily with increased frequency and
maximum speed” (Miller, 2007 in Shao, 2009, p. 11). In case of Facebook, users can watch videos and pictures with differing content from comedy to news or read posted content and adapt them to their needs. But what brings users, in addition to consuming to interact with other users or corporations? User-to-corporation interaction occurs when people rate the content e.g. posts, share it with their network or post comments. User-to-user interaction occurs when people interact with each other through private and group chatting, posts or comments. This study includes both user-to-corporation and user-to-user interaction occurring on corporation sites, as private or group chatting cannot be accessed. Interactions are considered as an indirect way to fulfil social interaction needs, helps them to enlarge content choices through asking or contribute to virtual communities (Chan, 2006 in Shao, 2009). This can be explained by the reinforcement
model, which predicts that people repeat actions that lead to positive reinforcements (Joyce & Kraut, 2006 in Shao, 2009). Receiving a response to an initial post, regardless of its emotional tone, accordingly increases the likelihood that the poster would post again. Also responding to content enlarges content choices and allows more efficient consumption. (Shao, 2009).
Approximately between 66%-96% consumer goods corporations have adopted several social media, including SNS, to connect with consumers using corporation-to-user
communication (Burson-Marsteller, 2010 in Hyllegard et al., 2011). They experience SNS as important PR and marketing tools, as it is an inexpensive and easy way to communicate online with the public. It also enables to build and take care of a network of relationships (Ott & Theunissen, 2015) and transform loyal customers into passionate advocates for the brand (Hyllegard et al., 2011). What differentiates SNS from other marketing tools is the possibility that not only user-to-corporation communication about a product or the corporation takes place, but also user-to-user communication sharing word-of-mouth (WOM) (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). This enables SNS to have the “viral” power to spread information between its millions of users instantly – an enormous potential for product advertisement as users prefer user-approved content. Of course these features also bring the danger that dissatisfied stakeholders spread negative WOM about a company all over the network via millions of other users (Gillin, 2007). Empowered by these possibilities, many users turn away from traditional towards social media (Vollmer, & Precourt, 2008 in Mangold & Faulds, 2009). As a result, corporations try to increase their online influence as much as possible but the dynamic concepts of these networks are
beyond any corporation’s total control (Peters, Chen, Kaplan, Ognibeni & Pauwels, 2013). In a study by DiStaso et al. (2011), corporate PR practitioners defined the manner the society
media. This, however, influences the use of SM by corporations. The practitioners’ greatest fear is to miss out on stakeholder interaction on SM. They worry more about the medium than the message (Kent, 2013).
The by far most popular SNS is Facebook with about 1.18 billion active users every day worldwide, based on data from September 2016. 84.9% of them are users from outside the US and Canada, from where the network started out and spread over the world
(http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/). Users spend a lot of time on Facebook, on average 21 minutes per day. All these facts combined make Facebook extremely valuable for corporations (Orosz, Tóth-Király and Böthe, 2016). Additionally it provides interesting features for
corporations e.g. “like” and “follow” options to create a virtual link between the corporation’s brand profile page and the consumers’ user profiles. This link enables corporations to target their followers who demonstrated interest to trigger further involvement with the corporation’s
product or brand (Hyllegard et al., 2011).
Being able to reach an enormous amount of consumers cheap and instantly is a huge advantage compared to traditional media. Three types of SNS interactions were measured in this study: (1) posts by the corporation referred to as corporation-to-user communication, and both (2) user-to-corporation interaction and (3) user-to-user interaction that response to the
corporation’s post.
Interaction on corporations’ SNS page
SNS provide egalitarian platforms for both corporations and users. Corporations mainly share their content to interest users as future consumers, while users have the possibility to consume, comment, and share content. The strongest driving forces to consume are information seeking and entertainment. Interaction is triggered to fulfil social interaction needs and enlarge
content choices through asking or contributing to virtual communities (Shao, 2009). All these interactions are made possible by the internet as a dialogic space with the possibility for instant information exchange. Without its dialogic loop, the internet would be a monologic one-way communication medium like newspaper, radio and television (Kent & Taylor, 1998). These media are sender-centered and do not give receivers, in this case the public any possibility to interact with the sender and comment on the sent messages (Gruning, 2001).
Accordingly, SNS give voice to all, which is important, overlooking corporations and the public are interdependent, interacting units, whose actions affect one another (Gruning, Gruning & Ehling, 1992). Dialogue is the exchange of ideas and opinions (Kent & Taylor, 1998) and evidence for a good relationship between a corporation and its stakeholders (Kent & Taylor, 2002). Bonsón and Flores (2012) highlight corporate dialogue as putting aside the current model of unidirectional corporation-to-user communication and facilitating multidirectional flows between the stakeholders of any public or private entity. When applied, dialogue helps a corporation manage their relationship with the public by providing the opportunity to ask questions, express viewpoints and to let the public better understand internal and external processes of the corporation (Bruning et al., 2008). Unfortunately despite the potential for dialogic communication, many corporations hesitate using dialogue on SNS (Seltzer, 2010). The risk of negative input from the public is deemed too high. The ongoing interaction can be rather defined as two-way conversation (McAllister, 2009). Even though users have the possibility to react to the sender’s, in this case the corporation’s, message they rarely use communication dialogically. Still, when corporations made use of dialogue, social media practitioners noticed better feedback and an improved corporation from users (Briones et al., 2011). As Bortree and Seltzer (2009) state “there are gaps between organizational relationship-building goals,
implementation of online strategy, and actual dialogic engagement” (p. 317). Therefore this study first focused on dialogic strategies as part of the corporations post. Following the dialogic outcomes in form of user-to-corporation, user-to-user or further corporation-to-user interaction were measured, e.g. to what degree corporations are utilizing dialogic strategies that indicate implementation and ongoing dialogue between corporations and users.
Cultural attributes and social media
“Networks and culture are mutually constitutive and so deserve deeper analytic consideration in light of one another” (Pachucki & Breiger, 2010, p. 209). Culture is the
collective programming of the mind that separates members from different human groups from another – each group has its own values (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2005). Accordingly, values can be perceived important to one group but unimportant to another (Javalgi et al., 2005). These specific traits only slightly alter in an alternative environment – when an individual moves from one cultural environment to another (Hofstede & Bond, 1988). Culture deeply affects adoption of product and services and other forms of market behaviour and should not be ignored by
corporations’ communication practitioners (Javalgi et al., 2008). Concerning online media, users consciously choose between various communication-channels to satisfy their perceived needs and desires (Baxter et al., 2008). These perceived needs can be different across cultures (e.g. Ginossar, 2008; from Men & Tsai, 2012). Goodrich and de Mooij (2014) identified differing online participation worldwide. Highlighted examples are usage frequency, number and type of contacts, interactivity, and content. Men and Tsai (2012) specified differing behaviour in online communication like emotional behaviour and needs, as well as information seeking.
Hofstede’s cultural dimensions
Various methods of analyzing culture were tested over the years. The systematic approach from the Dutch researcher Geert Hofstede is still the most acknowledged (Cheung & Chan, 2010). He defined six cultural dimensions and determined scores of each dimension, normalized to values of 0 to 100 for 53 countries. Hofstede explained that these cultural differences
developed over a long period and are not likely to change quickly from the nations’ traditional cultures. Each of the dimensions remained stable since their first definition in the 1980s, as research has shown (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2001). The dimensions are the following:
Individualism, Power Distance Index, Uncertainty Avoidance Index, Masculinity, and Long-Term Orientation (Hofstede, 1984, Hofstede & Hofstede, 2001).
Dimension Short Hofstede’s specification
Individualism IDV Individual’s relationship to itself and the collective society it lives in
Power Distance Index PDI Human inequality in a society
Uncertainty Avoidance Index UAI Level of tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity and unstructured situations within
Masculinity MAS Relationship and distance between genders Long-Term Orientation LTO A society’s need for long-term planning
Table 1. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (modified from Hofstede & Hofstede, 2001)
These dimensions, as described in Table 1, were critiqued over the years, quintessentially stating a culture’s typical characteristics cannot be applied to every individual of a nation
common culture of a nation. Nonetheless, Hofstede’s dimensions provide knowledge about important parts of the overall culture and proofed as a reliable comparing tool for similarities and differences across countries (Soares et al., 2006). Dawar and Parker (1994) underlined the
importance of the dimensions by pointing out that nations can be used as a proxy for culture, as citizens usually share culture in form of language, history, traditions and so on. Hofstede himself described the country scores on the dimensions as relative since culture can be only used
meaningfully by comparison (Hofstede & Hofstede, 2001).
Each dimension has differing implications for media usage. Especially IDV and PDI were highlighted by Goodrich and de Mooij (2014) as a strong explaining function when studying social media across cultures. The researched influence of these two dimensions will be further explained.
Individualism
About 70 percent of all countries worldwide are collectivistic cultures with low IDV levels. Only northern European and Anglo-Saxon countries were classified as high IDV countries (Goodrich & de Mooij, 2014). High IDV or individualistic individuals are strongly “I”-conscious and pleasure, stimulation, variety, and adventure play important roles. Their communication is of low-context and very explicit. Low IDV or collectivistic individuals on the other hand are “We”-conscious and the social system to which they belong plays an important role. Their
communication is high-context and they will only indirectly state their opinion (Goodrich & De Mooij, 2011).
Cultures that are high in IDV search for information online to maximise their personal utility. This is less important in collectivistic cultures. They prefer sharing information with others. But friends and family are more important in high IDV cultures, as maintaining
relationships takes a lot of effort, as they are not as tightly connected to their society as low IDV cultures. Therefore they value their close relationships more because they are more special to them and took more effort to establish (Eurobarometer, 2007). Individuals from low IDV cultures meet new people from the same society they belong to more often than high IDV individuals, so more interpersonal communication is taking place. Word of Mouth (WOM) communication is important in decision making like buying intentions (Schultz &Block, 2009). Members of Low IDV value harmony and avoid complaining directly. Therefore when unhappy with a corporation or their product, low IDV individuals make use of negative WOM to complain about a
corporation in their network instead of filing a complaint directly towards the corporation (Chung-Tung Lowe et al., 1998). Tradition is valued by low IDV cultures, therefore also corporations include it in their communication strategies.
In high IDV they may rather focus on new and unique items, as well as on the individual (Marcus & Gould, 2000). Also seem customers from high IDV cultures to have higher service expectation. They expect more empathy and assurance from the service providers to meet their needs and have less tolerance towards poor service than low IDV cultures (Donthu & Yoo, 1998).
Power Distance Index
PDI, as proposed by Hofstede (2001), shows different norms within groups and between groups in a society. It affects the way that a corporation strategically defines its key publics (Taylor & Kent, 1999). Therefore, culture is aligned with different levels of hierarchy, authority, and power inequality between corporations and their publics (Beteille, 1977). In a high PDI culture, corporations tend to consider themselves as powerful and their publics as less powerful. Both groups accept hierarchy as natural. Individuals rely on recommendations of their peers.
They are active opinion-seekers and less active information-seekers when these are provided by impersonal sources (Pornpitakpan, 2004).
In low PDI countries, on the other hand, both corporations and the public emphasize their independence (Hofstede, 2001). Most low PDI countries are in north-west Europe and North America. They depend less on other people and base their decision-making on facts and data, which are consciously gathered (De Mooij & Hofstede, 2011). They are very likely to use the internet to get information about products or get in touch with corporations (Mediascope Europe, 2008). Meaning when having the possibility, low PDI consumers engage in manager-consumer communication, whereas high PDI consumers prefer consumer to consumer communication (Cho & Cheon, 2005).
Both IDV and PDI are correlated in the way that all cultures with high IDV levels show a low PDI (Goodrich & De Mooij, 2011). The dimensions can also be paired to explain tendencies in a nation’s (online) behaviour (Rawwas, 2001). For example IDV and PDI indicate an
individuals’ information-seeking behaviour. Social media are seen as a path to resources in western high IDV countries, as they provide access to people with information (Bouse et al., 2006). For individuals from low IDV and high PDI countries social media is on the other hand a medium to reinforce sharing of feelings and ideas with their network. They share ideas and opinions more often than high IDV and low PDI cultures. By this means, every dimensions can be a facilitator or barrier to corporations’ social media communication (Ray, 2014).
Hypotheses Development
Based on dialogue theory for social media and the above discussed cultural implications, I hypothesize for corporations dialogic strategies to engage with users:
H1.b: Corporations in higher PDI cultures will enhance user-to-user interaction. Corporations in lower PDI cultures will enhance direct user-to-corporation, as well as corporation-to-user interaction.
As reaction to corporations post, the dialogic outcomes namely to-corporation, user-to-user, or corporation-to-user interaction were hypothesized consequentially:
H2: In higher IDV cultures, more users critique a corporation on social media.
H3: In higher PDI cultures, more user-to-user communication takes place. In lower PDI cultures more user-to-corporation interaction takes place.
H4: In high IDV and low PDI cultures more users acquire information through social media contact with corporations. In low IDV and high PDI cultures more users acquire information through contact with other users.
Conceptual Model
To render the studied construct and highlight the hypotheses, the following conceptual model was developed.
The black arrows mark the ongoing interactions between a corporation and social media users on a corporations’ social media page as a response to the corporation’s post. As
corporations want to reach users with their posts or answer questions and users react to the corporation’s post there is an ongoing two-way communication, illustrated with two arrows going in both directions. The interaction between users is marked with two more arrows. The influence of the corporation on the user-to-user interaction was marked with another arrow. Finally, the hypothesized influence of culture on the interactions was marked with orange arrows.
Methodology
The purpose of this study was to examine and identify cultural influences in the
interaction between users and corporations on social media. Culture acts hereby as a moderator that influences interaction. To find an answer to this problem a content analysis of social media posts was applied. It was conducted in the social network Facebook and compared three
companies and their social media activities (campaigns) across three countries. Sample
The sample includes corporations’ Facebook posts and user replies from the Facebook pages of three corporations in three countries. Facebook was chosen as medium, as it is the globally most successful social network in terms of user numbers with over 1.7 billion users (Men & Tsai, 2012). Following, three European countries with differing cultural dimensions in IDV and PDI were chosen to answer the research question: Germany, Spain and the UK (Hofstede, 1984). As shown in Figure 2, both UK and Germany are highly individualistic, but Spain is close to being a collectivistic culture. Spain shows also a higher Power Distance than the other two countries. Additionally, this choice of countries had a practical reason, as I am able to
code all three languages.
Figure 2. IDV – Individualism, PDI – Power Distance Index
As the purpose of this study was to research how these two cultural dimensions show in and influence user-corporation interaction on social media. Therefore corporations had to be chosen for the study. The criteria for choosing the corporations were manifold. All three corporations had to be active globally, so different cultural influenced communication could occur across countries. To be comparable they all had to produce a product that is also marketed over Facebook. Concerning their Facebook profile they needed several million followers, an active Facebook profile containing vivid interaction across all three countries and regular posting, plus they needed to feature similar and comparable campaigns across the three chosen countries, so a cross-cultural comparison could be made. The three corporations L’Oréal, McDonalds and Volkswagen (VW) met all the criteria. As it can be seen in Table 2, all three
67 35 51 57 89 35 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 IDV PDI
Cultural Dimensions
corporations have over 20 million followers worldwide, with a tendency to grow and post every week.
Network development in two months
01.10.2016 31.12.2016
L’Oréal 24.9 25
McDonalds 67.2 68.3
Volkswagen 27.7 28.6
Table 2. Corporations’ Facebook page development in million likes
L’Oréal Paris is a brand of the French consumer goods company L’Oréal, the biggest cosmetic company in the world. Its products are primarily aimed at women. On their Facebook page they regularly post about their products like “Sexy Lip Balm”, “Gold Sensation Lipsticks”, or “Elvital Hairproducts”, and how to apply them. Also the German car company Volkswagen shows in all three countries a vivid Facebook page with many product postings and product related campaigns, e.g. the introduction of new cars like the “VW Up” or a new “VW Caddy”. The corporation especially focuses on its classic car products like the “VW Beatle”, the “VW Golf” or the “VW Transporter” that are part of the brand identity. Similarly, the US-American fast food company McDonalds posts a mix of new or seasonal products like “Gourmet Burger”, and classic products like “Big Mac”, “Cheeseburger”, and “Happy Meal” on their Facebook page. Hereby taste, design but also improved quality are highlighted.
Procedure
Content analysis was employed, as this study wants to compare existing Facebook interactions across countries in order to test the research question and hypotheses. Three discrete cultural environments (Germany, Spain and UK) and three corporations (L’Oréal, McDonalds and Volkswagen) form the context of the study based on dialogue theory and Hofstede's cultural
dimensions that specify cultural differences (Hofstede, 2001). Hence, Facebook posts from the named corporations were collected across the three countries from the fourth annual quarter, 1. October to 31. December, of the year 2016. The data was manually collected and a purposive sample of all relevant posts of the months October to December 2016 was created. Only posts that featured a product of the corporation were sampled, as the product is central to the
corporation. Posts about seasonal campaigns, charities or direct information about the
corporation, etc. were therefore excluded from the sample to provide comparability between the countries and corporations. Table 3 shows a composition of the sample regarding corporations and countries.
Germany Spain UK total
L’Oréal Paris 42 31 43 116
McDonalds 30 45 47 122
Volkswagen 44 42 31 117
N = 116 N = 118 N = 121 N = 355
Table 3. Composition of the sample
Measures
The effect of the two cultural dimensions was assessed on a series of relevant interaction items based on social media theory, dialogue communication literature and cultural dimension studies (Shao, 2009; Bortree and Seltzer, 2009; Hofstede & Hofstede, 2001). A 49-item codebook was created.
The codebook consists of three parts, general information, dialogic strategies, and dialogic outcomes. In the first part of the codebook general information such as corporation, country and the cultural dimension scores had to be chosen according to the post. Whereas the second part, dialogic strategies, entailed items about the corporations’ post and the third part,
dialogic outcomes, entailed items about responses to the corporations’ post. The operationalized interaction items included in the second and the third part were based on dialogic theory by Kent and Taylor (2001) and were further developed and applied to SNS by Bortree and Seltzer (2009).
Dialogic strategies
The in the second part measured constructs of the dialogic strategies entail Information and Involvement content of a corporation’s post.
Information. Entails ten items that were coded binary as present (Yes) and not present
(No), such as “Photo posted”, “Announcements”, or “Smiley” (Bortree and Seltzer, 2009). Additional, it entailed the two variables entertainment-focused and information-focused (Kent & Taylor, 2001; Bortree & Seltzer, 2009).
Entertainment-focused. Included the two items “Entertainment-focused” and “Product-related entertainment” that were coded on a four-point-Likert scale created by me from absent (0) to strongly present (3).
Information-focused. Includes five items like “Product-related information”, “Promotion specific” or “corporation specific” that were coded on a four-point-Likert scale created by me from absent (0) to strongly present (3). Based on these five items, the variable “information-focused” was computed.
Involvement. Entails eleven items that were coded binary as present (Yes) and not present
(No). Additional, it entailed the four items “Statement inviting user to return”, “Statement inviting user to like or share”, Statement inviting users to discuss with another”, “Posting new issue for discussion” that were coded on a four-point-Likert scale created by me from absent (0) to strongly present (3) (Kent & Taylor, 2001; Bortree & Seltzer, 2009).
Dialogic outcomes
The third part dialogic outcomes is subdivided in three constructs of dialogic outcomes,
user-to-corporation, user-to-user and corporation-to-user interaction.
User-to-corporation interaction. Starting, the “total number of likes”, “total number of
shares”, “total number of user comments” and “number of views if video” were measured. Following seven items measured the numbers of user questions towards the corporation, plus the posts tone if positive, negative, and neutral were measured using a five-point Likert scale (0, less than 5, less than 10, less than 25 and more than 25) created by me. This scale was created as it was not possible to count every single interaction, for example in cases with over 2,000 responses, as it took too much time to count every single interaction.
User-to-user interaction. This construct entailed 13 items like “user questions to others”
and “user responses to others”, that are computed to “Information acquirement through other users”, and positive, negative and neutral tone all measured using the five-point Likert scale created by me (0, less than 5, less than 10, less than 25 and more than 25).
Corporation-to-user interaction. This construct entailed the two items “Corporation
answers user questions” measured binary as present (Yes) and not present (No), so the corporations direct responses towards user questions, plus “Corporation responses to users”, which entailed all corporation-to-user answers. Both were measured using the five-point Likert scale created by me.
This way, two parts of each post, the corporation’s post itself and the interaction that followed were measured. To code a sampled post, the first two parts were normally coded. For the third part, due to high number of responses, the item for user-to-user and corporation-to-user interactions were changed. Hereby not every single interaction was measured, but a scale was
applied to provide quick coding. Following, the first 100 and the final 50 responses were looked at, as facebook lists the responses due to importance, to get an overview over the responses. Analysis
The analysis was carried out in two steps. In the first step, the sample of 355 collected posts was coded with the 49-item questionnaire. Coding was conducted by me. To measure reliability of the items, I recoded ten percent of the sampled posts (N = 36). The measured inter-coder reliability was .88 using Krippendorff’s alpha formula, which indicated a good level of reliability of coding.
In the following second step, the generated dataset was analysed using several tests to specify the relationship between culture and interaction on corporations’ Facebook pages. To answer Hypotheses 1a and Hypotheses 2, an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted for each hypothesis to compare across countries. For Hypothesis 1 b, a Contingency Table was established that compared user-to-user interaction, user-to-corporation, and corporation-to-user variables across differing PDI scores of the three countries. Concerning Hypothesis 3, a
MANOVA was conducted and for Hypothesis 4, a Two-Way MANOVA was conducted. Results
Following the findings of the analysis are presented, starting with a description of the Facebook interactions shown in Table 4. Hereby can be seen that on a total of N = 355 posts users
frequently responded to the corporation’s posts. They responded on average with 31 comments, 7,722 likes and 435 shares which depicts active interaction. Also the interaction between users and corporation-to-user was active as between ten and 25 user-to-user responses were found on average and between five and ten corporation-to-user responses in the comment section.
Germany Spain UK result corporations post 166 118 121 N = 355 User-to-corporation response Comments 33.1% 33.4% 33.4% M = 31.29 Likes 32.7% 33.2% 34.1% M = 7,722.12 Shares 34.5% 36.7% 28.8% M = 434.6 User-to-user response 32.7% 33.2% 34.1% M = 2.56* corporation-to-user response 32.7% 33.2% 34.1% M = 1.66*
*on a scale from 0 to 4 (0 = 0, 1 = less than 5, 2 = less than 10, 3 = less than 25, 4 = more than 25)
Table 4. Average Facebook interaction
When taking a look at Table 5, slight differences in interaction per corporation became clear. Hereby McDonalds has all over more response than the other two corporations, which differ only slightly. Furthermore, looking at Table 11 in Appendix A it became apparent that the big difference between McDonalds and the other two corporations was due to a difference in interaction in the UK.
L’Oréal Paris McDonalds Volkswagen result
Posts (total) 116 122 117 N = 355 User-to-corporation response Comments 148 910 172 410 Likes 1,619 18,505 2,530 7,551.3 Shares 173 348 423 314.67 User-to-user response 1.4* 3.5* 2.8* 2.23* corporation-to-user response 1.3* 2.4* 1.5* 1.73*
*on a scale from 0 to 4 (0 = 0, 1 = less than 5, 2 = less than 10, 3 = less than 25, 4 = more than 25)
Table 5. Average Facebook interaction per corporation (Mean)
The hypotheses 1a and 1b explored the influence of the cultural dimensions IDV and PDI on corporations’ post content. To answer the first hypothesis 1a, a One-Way ANOVA was run using the item “information-focused” as dependent variable and the cultural dimension score for
“IDV” for Germany, Spain, and the UK as independent variable. As the groups of the three countries are nearly of the same size (Germany: N = 116, Spain: N = 118, UK: N = 121) one may assume equal variances in the population on the basis of the Levene’s F-test. Posts from
Germany, the medium IDV culture with a score of 67, are the least information-focused
(M = .52, SD = .45), but only slightly less than posts from Spain (M = .53, SD = .38), the low
IDV culture with a score of 51. Posts from UK, the high IDV culture with a score of 89,
(M = .64, SD = .44) are the most information-focused. The One-Way ANOVA showed a not
significant relationship between groups F (2, 352) = 2.66, p = .071, η2 = .02. A LSD post-hoc test indicated that the only significant difference found was that between Germany and UK
(Mdifference = .11, p = .041), so the middle and highest IDV cultures. It should be noted that the assumption of equal variances in the population was not violated, Levene's F (2, 352) = 2.87, p = .058. The hypothesis was rejected.
Hypothesis 1b was answered creating two Contingency Tables that compared user-to-user interaction in Table 5 and corporation-to-user variables in Table 6 with differing levels of PDI scores of the three countries (Germany = 35, Spain = 57, UK = 35).
Germany (35) Spain (57) UK (35) total Statement inviting users
to discuss with another 31.9 % 37 37.3 % 44 14.9 % 18 27.9 % 99 Take action: As group 5
4.3 %
10 8.5 % 11 9.1 % 26 7.3 %
Join now: As groups 1
0.9 % 1 0.8 % 0 2 .6 % N = 116 N = 118 N = 121 N = 355
The proportion of corporation’s that used “Statement inviting users to discuss with another” as part of their post was highest with the high PDI culture Spain (.37). The difference in proportion is significant χ² (2, N = 355) = 16.3, p < 0.001 with a weak association V = .21, p < 0.001.
Germany (35) Spain (57) UK (35) total
Links to corporation’s homepage 27 23.3% 54 45.8% 23 19% 104 29.3% Use of hashtags 63 54.3% 66 55.9% 56.2% 68 55.5% 197
Join now option 9
7.8% 7 5.9% 4 3.3% 20 5.6% Opportunity to vote on product 5.2% 6 4.2% 5 2 .8% 1 12 3.4%
Opportunity for user-response 43 37.1% 47 39.8% 19 15.7% 109 30.7%
Campaign to take action 57 49.1% 75
63.6%
67 55.4%
199 56.1% Statement inviting user to
return 13 11.2% 13.6% 16 10.7% 13 42 11.8%
Statement inviting user to like or share 19 16.4% 9 7.6% 9 7.4% 37 10.4%
Posting new issue for
discussion 39 33.6% 43.2% 51 28.9% 35 35.2% 125
N = 116 N = 118 N = 121 N = 355
Table 7. PDI and “Corporation-to-user interaction”
As can be seen in Table 6, significant data was found for two cases even though none supports the stated hypothesis. “Links to corporation’s homepage” χ² (2, N = 355) = 23.66, p < 0.001 with a weak association V = .26, p < 0.001 and “Opportunity for user-response”
χ² (2, N = 355) = 19.63, p < 0.001 with a weak association V = .24, p < 0.001, though for both cases the high PDI country Spain used both strategies more often than as predicted the low PDI countries Germany and the UK. Therefore hypothesis 1b was rejected.
Hypothesis 2 explored the influence of IDV on critical user-to-corporation replies. It was answered by a One-Way ANOVA using the item “critique corporation” as dependent and the cultural dimension score for “IDV” for Germany, Spain, and the UK as independent variable. The ANOVA showed a significant result F (2, 352) = 11.13, p < .001, η2 = .06, but the Levene’s test of equal variance was significant F (2, 352) = 40.19, p < .001, therefore the assumption of equal variances in the population was violated. A Welch test of equality was applied, that showed a significant result F (2, 225.77) = 11.63, p < .001. Following the Games-Howell post hoc test was applied and a significant relationship was found between Spain and Germany
(Mdifference = -.46, p = .006), as well as between Spain and the UK (Mdifference = -.79, p < .001). The hypothesis was therefore supported.
Hypothesis 3 explored if PDI influences user-to-user and user-to-corporation interaction. A MANOVA was carried out, with the two dependent variables “User responses to others” for user-to-user interaction and “User questions to the corporation” for user-to-corporation
interaction, plus the cultural dimension score for “PDI” for Germany, Spain, and the UK as independent variable. The user-to-user interaction was in all three countries quite similar, though Germany has the highest (M = 2.87, SD = 1.44), then Spain (M = 2.53, SD = 1.52) and UK
(M = 2.31, SD = 1.65) the lowest interaction. The user-to-corporation interaction differed
between the UK and the other two countries, as UK had the lowest value (M = .59, SD = .69), then Spain (M = 1.03, SD = .9) and Germany the highest (M = 1.16, SD = .95). There are both small statistically significant effects between the cultural dimension and user-to-user interaction
F (2, 352) = 3.91, p = .021, η2 = .022, as well as the cultural dimension and the
user-to-corporation interaction F (2, 352) = 14.79, p < .001, η2 = .078. The assumption of equal variances in the population was not violated and the hypothesis was rejected.
Finally, Hypothesis 4 explored the influence of both dimensions on the user-to-user and user-to-corporation interaction. Hereby a Two-Way MANOVA was conducted. The dependent variables were “User questions to the corporation”, “User questions to other users” and both cultural dimensions “IDV” and “PDI” as independent variables. Checking the frequencies, Spain as low IDV and high PDI culture showed the highest average of “User questions to other users”
(M = .53, SD = .68), the opposing high IDV and low PDI cultures Germany (M = .41, SD = .53)
and UK (M = .31, SD = .65) show lower values, as predicted. “User questions to the corporation” do not show supporting values. Here Germany has the highest (M = 1.16, SD = .95), then Spain
(M = 1.03, SD = .9) and UK (M = .59, SD = .69), though high IDV low PDI country, has the
lowest interaction. It should be noted that the assumption of equal variances in the population was violated, as the conducted Box’s M test showed F (6, 3064182.33) = 4.09, p < .001. The hypothesis was rejected.
Discussion
To meet the need for a better understanding of how culture influences online interaction of and between corporations and users, to be precise how it affects their relationship-building, this study compared interactions occurring on corporations’ Facebook pages across three European countries. The internet is a source enabling corporations to reach people worldwide, e.g. via social media like Facebook. As explained previously, the internet is a dialogical medium so users can communicate to corporations and interaction takes place. These interactions can be influenced or even take place solely because of cultural influences. So, corporations could either
apply the same strategies to interact with users worldwide or adjust them depending on the cultural background.
Overall, the findings of this study backed the general notion that culture, in this case based on Hofstede’s two dimensions IDV and PDI, influences online communication behavior and interaction on social media.
The most important finding of the current study generated insight about the influence of IDV on negative user-to-corporation behavior. Higher IDV cultures, represented by Germany and the UK, rather critique corporations directly or indirectly in user-to-user interaction on the corporation’s page, than low IDV cultures like Spain. The sales process – in which corporations SNS communication as marketing strategy is included – in individualistic cultures is more straightforward than in collectivistic cultures. Individuals in high IDV cultures want to get to the point fast (de Mooij & Hofstede, 2011). Moreover they tend to be more disappointed in a
corporation when they do not get the expected quality in product and service, which explains the high level of critique voiced on the corporations’ Facebook pages (Goodrich & de Mooij, 2014). As structures in collectivistic cultures are based on harmony and not losing face, direct critique is extremely uncommon and only partly found in SNS interaction. Any disappointment about a corporation is not explained on the corporations’ side but probably in private messages to other users (de Mooij & Hofstede, 2011).
Further findings highlight differing interaction of low IDV, as well as high PDI cultures, in this case Spain. Even though I anticipated that these types of cultures prefer user-to-user interaction due to strong hierarchy, my findings about the communication behavior in Spain generally showed a high level of both user-corporation and user-to-user interaction. Such behavior can be explained considering the collectivistic nature of the culture. Collectivistic
cultures hold a higher “We”-consciousness than individualistic cultures. Their system is based upon preserving harmony and building trust in relationships – especially important in a sales context (de Mooij & Hofstede, 2011). As relationship maintenance is a main motive of using SNS (Briones, Kuch, Liu & Jin, 2011), corporations use this to build up trust for a successful customer-corporation relationship. To be able to lessen potential hierarchical constraints between users and corporations, the corporation may interact on a more friend based level with users employing a cordial language (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Hence, it is easier for them to enable positive user-to-corporation behavior. Following these assumptions, corporations in collectivistic cultures may be more dialogue oriented in their SNS interactions. For future studies it would be especially interesting to broaden the knowledge about potential stronger dialogue qualities in low IDV and high PDI cultures. Additionally, to support my findings about the influence of culture on negative comments towards the corporation, further studies should be applied including other countries with differing levels of IDV, such as Portugal or even outside Europe such as Japan or South Korea.
Limitations
Several limitations could have affected the study results. To begin with, culture affects each individual in a different manner. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions are experienced stronger especially by older individuals, males, and working individuals (Taras et al, 2010). As Facebook statistics show, the main group of users are 25 to 34 years old and make up nearly a third of the total amount of Facebook users with 29.7%. The 16 to 24 year olds follow as second biggest group with 25% (newsroom.fb.com/company-info/). According to that, the majority of Facebook users are below 35 and therefore probably experience a lower influence of culture in their
A second culture related reason is that personality strongly influences an individual’s behavior. Personality is a set of unique and nearly permanent characteristics particular to a person. Even though two individuals come from the same cultural background, they can show differing (online) behavior due to their personality (Roozmand et al, 2011). Moreover Hofstede’s other four cultural dimensions, which were excluded in this research could have an influence on Facebook interactions and explain the not supported hypotheses.
Beyond culture dependent limitations, the applied methods could be improved, e.g. reliability by collecting larger samples or including more countries with differing culture scores. This was unfortunately not possible due to limited capacities.
Conclusion
To sum it all up, this study discovered cultural influences on negative online interaction behavior, as well as user-to-user and user-to-corporation interaction behavior. It should be noted that the findings complement research with relevant information about online communication behavior across countries, especially the interaction between users and corporations, as well as user-to-user. In addition to these theoretical contributions, the findings of this study have implications for corporate communication managers in international operating corporations. Firstly, corporations can adjust their strategies and approaches to manage negative user comments according to the need for generalized and regulated content. Secondly, it also helps users to be more aware about their online behavior and understand the manner corporations try to pursue them.
This study extends the investigation of culture’s influence on online social network interaction between users and corporations by examining the application of dialogic principles and cultural dimensions via the Facebook communication of corporations.
References
Arora, P. (2012). Typology of Web 2.0 spheres: Understanding the cultural dimensions of social media spaces. Current Sociology, 60(5), 599-618.
Bonsón, E., & Flores, F. (2011). Social media and corporate dialogue: the response of global financial institutions. Online Information Review, 35(1), 34-49.
Bonsón, E., Torres, L., Royo, S., & Flores, F. (2012). Local e-government 2.0: Social media and corporate transparency in municipalities. Government information quarterly, 29(2), 123-132.
Bortree, D. S., & Seltzer, T. (2009). Dialogic strategies and outcomes: An analysis of environmental advocacy groups’ Facebook profiles. Public Relations Review, 35(3), 317-319.
Botan, C. (1997). Ethics in strategic communication campaigns: The case for a new approach to public relations. Journal of Business Communication, 34(2), 188-202.
Bouse, G., Nesbit, B., Rooney, P., & Tempel, E. R. (2006). Presidential satisfaction with development programs in research and doctoral universities: A comparison of results from surveys in 1990 and 2000. International Journal of Educational Advancement, 6(3), 182-199.
Briones, R. L., Kuch, B., Liu, B. F., & Jin, Y. (2011). Keeping up with the digital age: How the American Red Cross uses social media to build relationships. Public relations review,
37(1), 37-43.
Bryant, J., & Davies, J. (2006). Selective exposure processes. Psychology of
entertainment, 19-33.
Marsteller, B. (2010). Burson-Marsteller Fortune Global 100 Social Media Study. Chan, A. (2006). Social interaction design case study: MySpace. Retrieved Sept, 26, 2009.
Cheung, C. K., & Chan, R. K. H. (2010). Social capital as exchange: Its contribution to morale. Social indicators research, 96(2), 205-227.
Chi, H. H. (2011). Interactive digital advertising vs. virtual brand community:
Exploratory study of user motivation and social media marketing responses in Taiwan. Journal
of Interactive Advertising, 12(1), 44-61.
Cho, C. H., & Cheon, H. J. (2005). Cross-cultural comparisons of interactivity on
corporate web sites: the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea. Journal of
advertising, 34(2), 99-115.
Chun-Tung Lowe, A., & Corkindale, D. R. (1998). Differences in “cultural values” and their effects on responses to marketing stimuli: A cross-cultural study between Australians and Chinese from the People’s Republic of China. European Journal of Marketing, 32(9/10), 843-867.
Company Info Facebook, Stats. Retrieved from https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/ (accessed 22.12.2016).
De Mooij, M., & Hofstede, G. (2011). Cross-cultural consumer behavior: A review of research findings. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 23(3-4), 181-192.
DiStaso, M. W., McCorkindale, T., & Wright, D. K. (2011). How public relations executives perceive and measure the impact of social media in their organizations. Public
Relations Review, 37(3), 325-328.
Donthu, N., & Yoo, B. (1998). Cultural influences on service quality expectations.
Journal of service research, 1(2), 178-186.
Gao, Q., & Feng, C. (2016). Branding with social media: User gratifications, usage patterns, and brand message content strategies. Computers in Human Behavior, 63, 868-890.
Ghosh, A. K., Javalgi, R., & Whipple, T. W. (2008). Service strategies for higher educational institutions based on student segmentation. Journal of Marketing for Higher
Education, 17(2), 238-255.
Gillin, P., & Moore, G. A. (2009). The new influencers: A marketer's guide to the new
social media. Linden Publishing.
Goodrich, K., & de Mooij, M. (2011). New technology mirrors old habits: online buying mirrors cross-national variance of conventional buying. Journal of International Consumer
Marketing, 23(3-4), 246-259.
Goodrich, K., & de Mooij, M. (2014). How ‘social’ are social media? A cross-cultural comparison of online and offline purchase decision influences. Journal of Marketing
Communications, 20(1-2), 103-116.
Grunig, L. A., Grunig, J. E., & Ehling, W. P. (1992). What is an effective organization?
Excellence in public relations and communication management, 65-90.
Grunig, J. E. (2001). Two-way symmetrical public relations: Past, present, and future.
Handbook of public relations, 11, 30.
Henderson, A., & Bowley, R. (2010). Authentic dialogue? The role of “friendship” in a social media recruitment campaign. Journal of Communication Management, 14(3), 237-257.
Hofstede, G. (1984). Cultural dimensions in management and planning. Asia Pacific
journal of management, 1(2), 81-99.
Hofstede, G., & Bond, M. H. (1988). The Confucius connection: From cultural roots to economic growth. Organizational dynamics, 16(4), 5-21.
Hofstede, G. J. (2001). Adoption of communication technologies and national culture.
Systèmes d’information et management, 6(3), 55-74.
Hofstede, G., & Hofstede, G. J. (2005). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. New York: McGill-Hill.
Hyllegard, K. H., Ogle, J. P., Yan, R. N., & Reitz, A. R. (2011). An exploratory study of college students’ fanning behaviour on facebook. College Student Journal, 45(3), 601.
Javalgi, R. G., Khare, V. P., Gross, A. C., & Scherer, R. F. (2005). An application of the consumer ethnocentrism model to French consumers. International Business Review, 14(3), 325-344.
Joyce, E., & Kraut, R. E. (2006). Predicting continued participation in newsgroups.
Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 11(3), 723-747.
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business horizons, 53(1), 59-68.
Kent, M. L., & Taylor, M. (1998). Building dialogic relationships through the World Wide Web. Public relations review, 24(3), 321-334.
Kent, M. L., & Taylor, M. (2002). Toward a dialogic theory of public relations. Public
relations review, 28(1), 21-37.
Korhan, O., & Ersoy, M. (2016). Usability and functionality factors of the social network site application users from the perspective of uses and gratification theory. Quality & Quantity, 1-18.
Mangold, W. G., & Faulds, D. J. (2009). Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix. Business horizons, 52(4), 357-365.
Marcus, A., & Gould, E. W. (2000). Crosscurrents: cultural dimensions and global Web user-interface design. interactions, 7(4), 32-46.
Max-Neef, M., Elizalde, A., & Hopenhayn, M. (1992). Development and human needs. Real-life
economics: Understanding wealth creation, 197-213.
McAllister-Spooner, S. M. (2009). Fulfilling the dialogic promise: A ten-year reflective survey on dialogic Internet principles. Public Relations Review, 35(3), 320-322.
Men, L. R., & Tsai, W. H. S. (2012). How companies cultivate relationships with publics on social network sites: Evidence from China and the United States. Public Relations Review,
38(5), 723-730.
Miller, N. (2007). Manifesto for a new age. Wired Magazine, March.
Neff, J. (2011). Why social networks are cool on sharing; With focus on ad revenue, not exchanging prime data, social-media players hold upper hand over market researchers.
Advertising Age, 82(18), 0007.
Okazaki, S., & Taylor, C. R. (2013). Social media and international advertising: theoretical challenges and future directions. International marketing review, 30(1), 56-71.
Orosz, G., Tóth-Király, I., & Bőthe, B. (2016). Four facets of Facebook intensity – The development of the Multidimensional Facebook Intensity Scale. Personality and Individual
Differences, 100, 95-104.
Ott, L., & Theunissen, P. (2015). Reputations at risk: Engagement during social media crises. Public Relations Review, 41(1), 97-102.
Pachucki, M. A., & Breiger, R. L. (2010). Cultural holes: Beyond relationality in social networks and culture. Annual review of sociology, 36, 205-224.
Peters, K., Chen, Y., Kaplan, A. M., Ognibeni, B., & Pauwels, K. (2013). Social media metrics – A framework and guidelines for managing social media. Journal of interactive
marketing, 27(4), 281-298.
Pornpitakpan, C. (2004). The persuasiveness of source credibility: A critical review of five decades' evidence. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34(2), 243-281.
Porto, M. D., & Belmonte, I. A. (2014). From local to global: Visual strategies of glocalisation in digital storytelling. Language & Communication, 39, 14-23.
Shao, G. (2009). Understanding the appeal of user-generated media: a uses and gratification perspective. Internet Research, 19(1), 7-25.
Ray, D. (2014). Overcoming cross-cultural barriers to knowledge management using social media. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 27(1), 45-55.
Rawwas, M. Y. (2001). Culture, personality and morality: A typology of international consumers' ethical beliefs. International Marketing Review, 18(2), 188-211.
Roozmand, O., Ghasem-Aghaee, N., Hofstede, G. J., Nematbakhsh, M. A., Baraani, A., & Verwaart, T. (2011). Agent-based modeling of consumer decision making process based on power distance and personality. Knowledge-Based Systems, 24(7), 1075-1095.
Rui, J. R., & Stefanone, M. A. (2016). The desire for fame: An extension of uses and gratifications theory. Communication Studies, 67(4), 399-418.
Rybalko, S., & Seltzer, T. (2010). Dialogic communication in 140 characters or less: How Fortune 500 companies engage stakeholders using Twitter. Public Relations Review, 36(4), 336-341.
Soares, A. M., Farhangmehr, M., & Shoham, A. (2007). Hofstede's dimensions of culture in international marketing studies. Journal of business research, 60(3), 277-284.
Taylor, M., Kent, M. L., & White, W. J. (2001). How activist organizations are using the Internet to build relationships. Public Relations Review, 27(3), 263-284.
Van Raaij, W. F. (1997). Globalisation of marketing communication? Journal of
Economic Psychology, 18(2), 259-270.
Vollmer, C., & Precourt, G. (2008). Always on: Advertising, marketing, and media in an era of consumer control. McGraw Hill Professional.
Wolf, M. J. (1999). The entertainment economy. The mega-media forces that are re-shaping our lives. New York: Pen-guin Putnam.
Yang, A., & Kent, M. (2014). Social media and organizational visibility: A sample of Fortune 500 corporations. Public Relations Review, 40(3), 562-564.
Yoo, K. H., & Gretzel, U. (2016). Use and Creation of Social Media by. Social media in
Appendix Appendix A
L’Oréal Paris McDonalds Volkswagen result
Germany 42 30 44 116
Spain 31 45 42 118
UK 43 47 31 121
Table 8. Posts per corporation and country
L’Oréal Paris McDonalds Volkswagen result User-to-corporation response Comments 180 498 186 288 Likes 1,610 1,164 1,891 1,555 Shares 16 155 240 243 User-to-user response 1.6* 3.7* 3.5* 2.9* corporation-to-user response 1.3* 2.8* 2.4* 2.2*
*on a scale from 0 to 4 (0 = 0, 1 = less than 5, 2 = less than 10, 3 = less than 25, 4 = more than 25)
Table 9. Average Facebook interaction per corporation for Germany (M)
L’Oréal Paris McDonalds Volkswagen result User-to-corporation response Comments 126 326 141 198 Likes 3,680 4,669 4,029 4,126 Shares 499 343 689 510 User-to-user response 2.2* 3.3* 2* 2.5* corporation-to-user response 2.1* 2.6* 0.9* 1.9*
*on a scale from 0 to 4 (0 = 0, 1 = less than 5, 2 = less than 10, 3 = less than 25, 4 = more than 25)
*on a scale from 0 to 4 (0 = 0, 1 = less than 5, 2 = less than 10, 3 = less than 25, 4 = more than 25)
Table 11. Average Facebook interaction per corporation for the United Kingdom (M)
L’Oréal Paris McDonalds Volkswagen result User-to-corporation response Comments 133 1,731 193 686 Likes 142 42,821 1,406 14,790 Shares 92 476 323 297 User-to-user response 0.5* 3.5* 3* 2.3* corporation-to-user response 0.4* 1.8* 1.1* 1.1*
Appendix B
Codebook
The following codebook relates to the research study “How does culture show and influence social media interaction between corporations and users?”. The codebook helps to code the collected sample consisting of facebook posts from three corporations, each again from the three countries Germany, Spain and UK. It is divided in the three parts general information, dialogue strategies and dialogue outcomes.
Introduction Selecting which articles must be coded
The sampled facebook posts from the same corporation are comparable in content amongst countries. All sampled posts must be coded.
Post characteristics
At first, general information like date must be coded. The second part is about the
corporation’s post. Hereby both frequency and content are coded with items relevant to dialogue theory and cultural dimensions studies. In the third part, user-to-corporation, user-to-user and corporation-to-user response are coded.
Coding 1. General Information
In the first part of the codebook some general information like corporation and country are coded. Please fill out accordingly to the selected post.
1 Corporation
1 L’Oréal Paris 2 McDonalds
3 Volkswagen 2 Country
1 Germany 2 Spain 3 UK
3 Cultural dimension score IDV 1 67 (Germany)
2 51 (Spain) 3 89 (UK)
4 Cultural dimension score PDI 1 35 (Germany)
2 57 (Spain) 3 35 (UK) 2. Dialogic strategies
The second part concerns with the original post of the corporation. Please fill in accordingly.
5 Date of post
The corporation´s dialogic strategies on SNS in their posts. Items of different online interaction studies were modified to fit SNS interaction (Bortree &Seltzer, 2009; Men. & Tsai, 2012; Waters, Burnett, Lamm & Lucas, 2009; Kim, Chun, Kwak, & Nam, 2014, Taylor et al., 2001). Mark as Yes, present (1) or No, not present (0) or Not available (NA).
6 Information
2 Announcements 3 Campaign summaries 4 Event 5 Photo posted 6 Video files 7 Audio files
8 Information of how to become affiliate 9 Smiley
Mark from 0 to 3 as absent, slightly, medium or strongly present. 10 Entertainment-focused 10.1 Product-related entertainment 11 Information-focused 11.1.1 Product specific 11.1.2 Product-related educational 11.2 Promotion specific 11.3 Corporation specific 11.4 Non-brand related
Mark as Yes, present (1) or No, not present (0) or Not available (NA). 7 Involvement
1 Links to corporation’s homepage 2 Use of applications
3 Join now option
3.2 As groups 4 Corporation contacts
5 Survey to voice opinion on product 6 Opportunity to vote on product 7 Opportunity for user-response 8 Live chat
9 Campaign to “take action” (participate in event, online competition…) 9.1 As individual
9.2 As group
Mark from 0 to 3 as absent, slightly, medium or strongly present. 10 Statement inviting user to return
11 Statement inviting user to like or share
12 Statement inviting users to discuss with another 13 Posting new issue for discussion
3. Dialogic outcomes
The third part concerns with the reaction and interaction that follows the
corporation’s dialogic strategies. Please fill in accordingly or mark as Yes, present (1) or No, not present (0) or Not available (NA).
8 User-to-corporation interaction
User-to-corporation interaction shows the users reaction to the corporations post, e.g. likes, shares and posts. Please fill in accordingly or mark as Yes, present (1) or No, not present (0) or Not available (NA).
2 Total number of shares 3 Total number of user replies
` 4 Total number of views (video files)
Please mark accordingly as 0, less than 5, less than 10, less than 25, or more than 25. 5 Number of user questions to the corporation
6 Positive contributions
6.1 Positive response to corporation’s post
6.2 Comment positively on other subjects than post 7 Negative contributions
7.1 Negative response to corporation’s post
7.2 Comment negatively on other subjects than post 8 Neutral contributions
8.1 Neutral response to corporation’s post 8.2 Neutral comment on other subjects than post 9 User-to-user interaction
User-to-user interactions are discussions between users that are usually visible through sub-posts under another user comment. Please mark accordingly as 0 (none), less than 5, less than 10, less than 25, or more than 25.
1 User responses to others 2 User questions to others 3 User answers to others 4 User tagging other users
5.1 Positive towards corporation 5.2 Positive towards other users 5.3 Other
6 Number of negative user-to-user interactions 6.1 Critique corporation
6.2 Critique other users 6.3 Other
7 Number of neutral user-to-user interactions
Fill in number of how many times user answer another on average. E.g.: Three
user-to-user interactions take place. In the first they interact 7 times, in the second 1 time and the third 3 times. The average interaction would be the sum divided by three, (7+1+3)/3 = 3.66 = 4. Fill in
according to the example.
8 Number of user-to-user posts per interaction on average 10 Corporation-to-user response
Corporation-to-user response are amongst other the corporations’ answers to questions asked by the users or replies to a user comment. Mark as Yes, present (1) or No, not present (0) or Not available (NA) for 10.1 and accordingly as 0 (none), less than 5, less than 10, less than 25, more than 25 for 10.2
1 Corporation’s answers users
