Marketing

Berthon, P. Marketing meets Web 2.0 social media and creative consumers : implications for international marketing strategy. Business horizons Vol. 55 Iss. 3 (2012 May-Jun) pp 261-271

Business Horizons (2012) 55, 261—271

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor

Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy

Pierre R. Berthon a, Leyland F. Pitt b,*, Kirk Plangger b, Daniel Shapiro b

a b

McCallum Graduate School of Business, Bentley University, 175 Forest Street, Waltham, MA 02452, U.S.A. Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University, 500 Granville Street, Vancouver V6C 1W6, Canada

KEYWORDS

International marketing strategy; Social media; Web 2.0; Creative consumers; Technology

Abstract The 21st century has brought both opportunities and challenges in our global, boundaryless world. Importantly, managers face a dynamic and interconnected international environment. As such, 21st century managers need to consider the many opportunities and threats that Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers present and the resulting respective shifts in loci of activity, power, and value. To help managers understand this new dispensation, we propose five axioms: (1) social media are always a function of the technology, culture, and government of a particular country or context; (2) local events rarely remain local; (3) global events are likely to be (re)interpreted locally; (4) creative consumers’ actions and creations are also dependent on technology, culture, and government; and (5) technology is historically dependent. At the heart of these axioms is the managerial recommendation to continually stay up to date on technology, customers, and social media. To implement this managerial recommendation, marketers must truly engage customers, embrace technology, limit the power of bureaucracy, train and invest in their employees, and inform senior management...