Talk less and listen more? The effectiveness of social media talking and listening tactics on export performance
研究调查了新兴市场中小企业使用社交媒体说与听策略对客户绩效的影响，发现结合说与听的策略比单独使用更有效，并揭示了不同策略的作用机制。
This research investigates the effect of social media talking and listening tactics on customer performance through firms’ networking capabilities and promotion adaptation strategies among entrepreneurial, emerging market, small and medium-sized enterprises (ESMEs). From a survey of 169 ESME managers, the study tests whether firms should use social media to listen and adapt to the foreign market or disseminate and network in the foreign market. The study's ultimate aim is to guide managers on how best to leverage social media in their international export campaigns. The results were analyzed using a series of nested structural equation models. We found that using social media tactics combining both talking and listening leads to significantly higher levels of customer performance than using talking or listening strategies singly. Moreover, we found that each tactic's mechanisms operating these effects differed. By showing, first, the mechanisms through which social media tactics affect customer performance and, second, the superiority of an ambidextrous social media strategy, the study provides ESME entrepreneurs with an understanding of how best to leverage social media to facilitate international exporting.