Enhancing Brand Equity for B2B SME through Social Media : An exploratory descriptive research

Abstract: Through our smartphones, the access to information is higher than ever before. Social media has revolutionized the communication landscape in how we share information and communicate to each other. Social media has significantly impacted marketing communication, therefore organizations in B2B are exploring and trying to identify ways in how to make a profitable use of social media. Despite this interest, there seems to be insufficient understanding of how to properly manage social media in the B2B context. Furthermore, branding and brand equity through social media communication creates opportunities such as deeper customer relationship, collaboration and reduce the information necessary for a purchase decision. Currently there is a gap in the theoretical understanding of how brand equity can be enhanced through social media. The purpose of this research is to explore and describe how brand equity can be enhanced through social media marketing within B2B for SME. This research aims to understand how small and medium-sized enterprises can utilize social media in the best way possible. The research adopted a qualitative exploratory descriptive approach. The collection of data was conducted through six semi-structured interview. The sample selection for the qualitative interviews were conducted on project managers and purchase managers. The result of this research gave new insights to the customer-based brand equity model in the B2B context and how customer-based brand equity can be applied in social media marketing. This resulted in a brand equity model for B2B social media marketing, where the steps have a dependency to each other. Thus, enhancing brand equity in social media demands an identification of the social media benefits, establishing a marketing plan, how to reach your target audience, utilize experience of others, communicating about technical innovation and change through the supply chain.