Title: Social media, s-commerce and social capital: a netnography of football fans and organisations

Authors: Alex Fenton; Chris Procter; Rachel McLean; Anabel Quan-Haase

Addresses: Salford Business School, Lady Hale Building, University Rd., Salford M5-4WT, UK ' Salford Business School, Lady Hale Building, University Rd., Salford M5-4WT, UK ' Liverpool John Moores University, Rodney House, Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3-5UX, UK ' Western University, 1151 Richmond St., London, ON N6A-3K7, Canada

Abstract: Social media channels allow brands to establish meaningful social relations with customers. This paper evaluates the role of social capital in building these online relationships for the benefit of commercial value and s-commerce for brands. Extensive empirical data was collected over a two-year netnography study using the social media channels of a football club in the UK as a vehicle for the study. A blended methods netnography (Fenton and Procter, 2019) was employed that included online participant observation, social network analysis, and semi-structured interviews with football fans and social media managers. The majority of brand social media followers are often found to be lurkers. These are weakly connected, social media followers - listening but not interacting. Finding ways to strengthen social capital with social media followers have significant brand and commercial implications. Positive interactions are critical to building social capital to strengthen and sustain the brand. Social capital can be successfully built and nurtured through engaging content and positive interactions through social media channels.

Keywords: netnography; social capital; social media; s-commerce; lurkers; social network analysis; cyberbalkanisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTTC.2023.129705

International Journal of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation, 2023 Vol.20 No.1, pp.63 - 86

Received: 05 Sep 2020
Accepted: 05 Sep 2021
Published online: 21 Mar 2023 *