Title: The competitiveness of CSR communication strategy in social media

Authors: Reza Jamali; Asghar Moshabaki; Asadollah Kordnaeij

Addresses: Faculty of Management and Economics, Tarbiat Modares University (TMU), Jalal Ale Ahmad Highway, P.O. Box: 14115-111, Tehran, Iran; Nijmegen School of Management, Thomas van Aquinostraat 5, 6525 GD Nijmegen, The Netherlands ' Faculty of Management and Economics, Tarbiat Modares University (TMU), Jalal Ale Ahmad Highway, P.O. Box: 14115-111, Tehran, Iran ' Faculty of Management and Economics, Tarbiat Modares University (TMU), Jalal Ale Ahmad Highway, P.O. Box: 14115-111, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: This qualitative study utilises documents in the public domain published by 50 companies listed among the Fortune Global 500. The terms and statements that the companies used to describe their social responsibility policies have been analysed, and the types of social media (SM) used have been identified for this study. Moreover, questionnaires were completed by 1,263 people who were consumers of at least one of the 50 companies. The study results indicate that the investigated digital strategies, failed to meet the objectives of the companies. This likely occurred because respondents were exposed to a wide range of messages that were of little interest to most of them. Respondents indicated that they prefer to receive messages through videos, photo sharing, publishing, and blogging, whereas most firms published their messages on corporate websites or social networks. This study is one of the first to propose that using social media without engaging users cannot be considered a success and should be considered an expense with no return.

Keywords: social strategy; communication strategy; digital strategy; corporate social responsibility; CSR policies; social media; user engagement; user involvement; videos; photo sharing; publishing; blogs; corporate websites; social networks.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2016.073382

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2016 Vol.21 No.1, pp.1 - 16

Published online: 01 Dec 2015 *

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