Actividad de empresas europeas en redes sociales online: descripción y factores condicionantes

Laburpena

Social Networking Sites (SNS) have become a widely used tool in the last few years. One of the reasons for this quick adoption has been the absence of relevant barriers. Besides adoption, when discussing SNS it is possible to study the different activities that companies can perform when using their social profiles. Unlike other technologies, SNS allow for widely diverse uses or applications. In this context, the overall aim of this dissertation is to analyze the different activities conducted in SNS's by the main EU corporations, and to identify drivers that could eventually explain differences in usage patterns. Descriptive goals. This dissertation provides a framework to understand the difference between SNSs and Social Media. It also elaborates a taxonomy of SNSs based on professional and scientific literature. It finally generates a taxonomy of activities that main EU corporations conduct in SNSs. This taxonomy collects a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of activities. Explanatory goals. This work builds a conceptual model of drivers that could eventually explain why different firms perform different activities in SNSs. This model is exploratory, based in literature revision, and will be tested in order to identify key drivers. The investigation involves a sample of fifty EU companies (Eurostoxx50 index). The activity of these companies in Facebook, Twitter y LinkedIn has been researched and codified. Analysis was conducted in two successive phases. Phase one consisted in codifying two data sets: the drivers in the conceptual model for each of the companies, and the activities in the three abovementioned SNSs performed by the companies in the sample. Phase two consisted of a quantitative analysis, with an impact/correlation test (drivers vs. activities).