Abstract
An original approach uses the three variables of timeliness, confidentiality, and utility of business-to-business (B2B) media products to study the impacts of social media. Interviews with B2B media practitioners in the UK reveal that social media have partially and weakly influenced the timeliness and confidentiality variables but have no effect on the basic utility of B2B media. Social media formats are therefore not so much in competition with B2B media, more a useful tool. B2B media practitioners attempt to control and adjust these variables to make their products more attractive. A social media optimisation publishing cycle was identified as a response to the impacts of social media in particular. But other adjustments mostly responded to competition forces greater than social media. This is one of the first studies of B2B media to examine their full product ranges. It proposes future directions of research in this under-examined media sector.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 31-48 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 16 Nov 2016 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture is a peer-reviewed OPEN ACCESS
open access journal published by University of Westminster Press
Keywords
- business-to-business (B2B) media
- impacts of social media
- media product strategy
- trade press and journalism
- social media competition and disruption