Retailer Differentiation in Social Media: An Investigation of Firm-Generated Content on Twitter
研究传统竞争对手的零售商在Twitter上的内容策略是否差异化，发现内容差异大的企业能获得更高用户参与度和更快粉丝增长，原因在于它们更好地利用了Twitter的高级功能。
Social media platforms have been used by firms for a variety of purposes: building firms’ brand image, increasing customer engagement, and providing customer service, among others. However, there is little research on content strategies adopted by traditional rival firms competing on online social media platforms. This article seeks to fill this gap by examining whether retailers traditionally identified as close competitors mirror this rivalry in their social media content strategies on Twitter (now known as X). To this end, this study introduces a new metric for assessing competition on online social media, based on content similarity. The authors find that retailers competing closely in traditional contexts show greater divergence in their content strategies on social media, and firms whose social media content strategies are less similar to content strategies of their close traditional rivals benefit from higher engagement and acquire new followers faster. In examining the mechanism of the effect, the authors find that these divergent firms’ improved performance is attributable to their superior ability to leverage the higher-level affordances of Twitter as compared with their rivals. The results of this study offer valuable insights for firms seeking to distinguish their social media content from that of their competitors.