Using Social Media in Retail Businesses in Greece : An Empirical Investigation

Abstract: Nowadays, companies all over the world use Social Media tools in order to advertise and promote their products, services and themselves. They are using them mostly for marketing purposes. This research explores whether the usage of Social Media in Greek retail businesses is a resource development or risk of increased competition or both or none of them. In addition, it explores the usage of Social Media in Greek retail businesses currently and the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in using Social Media in Greek retail businesses, as well as the future use of Social Media. It also investigates the failure of companies to use the integrated capabilities of multiple Social Media in order to conduct several business functions in the Greek retail sector. Moreover, this study addresses the way that case company manages the information given by customers through Social Media. Extensive literature search revealed that almost no research has been conducted earlier on the aforementioned issues in the context of Greek retail businesses. Furthermore, this research has been undertaken because Social Media is a contemporary topic, which always develops rapidly and affects the sales of products, services and the attraction of customers by a company. This study has been conducted by reviewing the current literature on the topics, observing customers on Facebook and Instagram pages of the case company, interviewing experts from the case company and analysing the empirical data. The findings contribute to the identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Social Media in Greek retail businesses. In addition, it highlights the usefulness of Social Media for management tasks by company managers and information and knowledge management for companies. The findings of the study can be useful to retail companies in Greek and other countries about how they can significantly benefit from the usage of Social Media in a variety of ways by avoiding the risks.