Social media marketing nei servizi B2B. Un'indagine esplorativa

The paper aims at reviewing extant literature on social media marketing (SMM) in B2B services, scrutinizing and categorizing potential benefits originating from the adoption of SM by B2B service firms. The study also empirically investigates two B2B service sectors, which show some of the typical characteristics of commodity-based service industries. To these purposes, we performed a systematic literature review to achieve a deeper understanding of the current state of knowledge on SM in B2B services. In addition, an empirical research is conducted on 60 firms (tanker shipping companies; ocean carriers) bringing some descriptive statistics on their SM activity on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This study addresses an interesting gap in SMM literature, as prior studies mostly focused on B2C industries and manufacturing contexts. Empirical evidence suggests to managers that SMM might be an option for keeping the pace of sectorial transformations and creating a competitive advantage even in conservative sectors.