title: Impacting the B2B-Business Development Process: social media usage within a global software environment
Creators: name: Krings, Werner
Publisher: name: University of Reading
Year: 2018

description: Recent academic and practitioner studies indicate that Social Media in Business
Development is an emerging phenomenon with little direction and scant guidance. While
both concepts have received extensive attention in Business-To-Consumer, there is a paucity
of Business-To-Business studies with joint research being a novelty. This research attempts
to explore and explain how Social Media impacts the Business Development process cycle in
the context of software solutions.
This research develops a conceptual framework of different fields such as Relationship
Marketing and Information System Theory incorporating Social Capital and Usage Criteria as
critical moderators leading to new business. The Business Development process phases
represent constructs conceptualising the behavioural outcome of the business performance.
The cross-sectional research design follows a post-positivist approach with an exploratory
and explanatory phase. The model was adjusted by an open-ended expert, qualitative semistructured interviews with gatekeepers and decision-makers of various industries and
regions. Measurements were developed based on the literature, and a large-scale online
survey was performed to test and validate the conceptual model and instruments. The
research gap (focus on salesforce) suggests determining a dyad of vendor or third party and
buyer executives as a unit of analysis. The sample from LinkedIn/Xing was established at the
research outset in 2016. The mixed methods approach (Thematic Analysis) and quantitative
data analyses (IBM SPSS-Statistics v23, Structural Equation Modelling AMOS v23) allowed for
exploration and analyses in the same study.
The findings contribute to existing academic knowledge by raising awareness about the
Business Development liaison and its process phases in general and the impact of selected
Social Media, in particular, to influence processes with the objective of enhancing the actual
and perceived business performance. Overall, the results uphold the theoretical conjectures
and create an innovative model by integrating Social Media into Business Development
processes and acknowledging the pivotal role Social Capital plays. In conclusion, Social
Media Usage affects Business Performance increasingly by accelerating the Business
Development process cycle as an auxiliary technology which should however not be
overestimated. Managerial contributions include the definition of Social Business Relevance
and Social Business Motivation Indices advancing the ROI debate, the classification of
Business Developers in Social Media Advocates, Mixed Types, and Sceptics, defining and
optimising Business Development processes critical to the global software environment and
deriving managerial guidelines to render Business Development operations more agile
through enhanced cooperation and interaction. The methodological contributions comprise
refined measurement scales and an engaging Social Media approach to collect large
amounts of data within a foreseeable period.