Strategic renewal through social media marketing : An exploratory study of challenges and opportunities of companies in Swedish rural areas

Abstract: Background Social media have changed the way of communication and interaction between the organizations and the costumers. The huge merge of social media has led the companies to change their current marketing strategies into the use of social media marketing during the last years. An increasing number of companies adopt this kind of performance and there is a need to study this phenomenon more in depth and explore it through the perspective of strategic renewal. Purpose The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and explore to the phenomenon of strategic renewal through social media marketing. The authors will explore into the challenges and opportunities of strategic renewal through social media marketing in companies located in Swedish rural areas. Method Social media marketing is considered a new phenomenon. The studies held, do not examine social media marketing through a strategic renewal perspective and how rural area companies located in rural areas in Sweden face the challenges and opportunities occurred. Therefore, an abductive approach and case study method were chosen for this research. 7 companies were chosen as the interviewed companies. Within this research primary data were collected through semi- structured interviews with the investigated companies. Conclusion The authors have found that, the interviewed companies pursue strategic renewal through social media marketing, but they do not consider this strategy as the main one but as a complementary one. As a result, certain challenges are emerged, and the investigated companies should face and integrate them to the opportunities generated from this kind of strategic renewal. This will lead to a better performance of the companies since pursuing strategic renewal through social media marketing can help in every factor of the company making them competitive and able to stand out.