Social media offers novel ways for businesses to interact with customers in the innovation process. While businesses perceive opportunities in social media, there is a gap between perception and actual use, especially in B2B contexts. Social media shows the most potential for one-way communication from businesses to customers. Communities and collaborative interactions are seen as less potential, but are core to social media. B2B contexts differ significantly from B2C in innovation, interaction, and customer knowledge creation. More B2B research is needed to understand social media opportunities.

1. 1
Social media’s possibilities in business-
to-business customer interaction in
innovation process
XXII ISPIM Conference, June 2011, Hamburg, Germany
Jari Jussila, Tampere University of Technology
Hannu Kärkkäinen, Tampere University of Technology
Maija Leino, Tampere University of Technology

2. 2
Definition of social media and web 2.0
• Web 2.0 means technologies that enable users to communicate, create content and
share it with each other via communities, social networks and virtual worlds, making
it easier than before.
• They also make it easier to have real life experiences in virtual worlds and to
organize content on the internet with content aggregators. (Lehtimäki et al., 2009)
• Such tools and technologies emphasize the power of users to select, filter, publish
and edit information (Tredinnick, 2006), as well as to participate in the creation of
content in social media.
• According to Constantinides and Fountain (2008), "Web 2.0 is a collection of open-
source, interactive and user-controlled online applications expanding the
experiences, knowledge and market power of the users as participants in business
and social processes. Web 2.0 applications support the creation of informal users’
networks facilitating the flow of ideas and knowledge by allowing the efficient
generation, dissemination, sharing and editing / refining of informational content."

3. 3
Focus on B2B
• Key factors affecting B2B interaction
• fewer customers and more in depth customer relationships in B2B’s
• quite interconnected buyers in B2B’s
• longer-term customer relationships in B2B’s
• gatekeeper persons between customers and B2B’s
• The above topics mean, first of all, that since the above issues
have to be taken into consideration, customer interactions often
take very different shapes in B2B’s than in B2C’s.
• Second, these topics create both opportunities and challenges for
B2B customer interaction.
• Third, social media has been already experienced to offer quite
new possibilities in avoiding some of the created challenges (e.g.
overcoming gatekeeper persons in B2B’s) and strengthening the
existing and creating even quite novel interaction forms
concerning the opportunities (e.g. Gillin & Schwartzman, 2011;
Bernoff and Li, 2008).

4. 4
Social media use with customers vs
perceived generic opportunities
Perceived generic opportunities
Social media can be used to increase
customer orientation
Social media can offer significant
opportunities in involving customers in
innovation
rather little or very little
moderately
rather much or very much
Social media can offer significant
opportunities in involving customers in
service development
Social media use
Social media use in collaboration with
customers
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

5. Potential of social media in different 5
types of customer interaction in B2B
and B2C companies
60,0 %
50,0 %
B2C AVG 44.2 %
40,0 %
B2B
B2C
30,0 %
B2B AVG 23.9%
20,0 %
10,0 %
0,0 %
One-way: One-way: Two-way: the Community Tools: offering
passing product collecting company's and interaction: the customers a user
or service customer it's customers company's and toolkit for
marketing information to mutual the customer tailoring the
related support product interaction communities product to their
information to development mutual needs
customers interaction

6. 6
Social Media Potential in Innovation
Process Phases
Potential of social media in different innovation
process phases in B2B companies
The front-end phase
rather much or
very much
somewhat
The product development phase
rather little or
very little
Launch/commercialization phase
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

7. 7
Customer interaction forms
• No direct interaction
• B2B customer information and knowledge can be shared and created internally, e.g. by wiki-based
tools and communities,
• and various analysis tools can be utilized for creating customer information and knowledge from e.g.
social media supported communities even without direct interaction with customers, such as data
mining and social network analyses
• One-way interaction (we define this as mainly one-way interaction, even though occasional
feedback might be received)
• One-way; company to customers (Passing product or service marketing related information to
customers)
• One-way; customers to company (Collecting customer information to support product development)
• Two-way interaction (interaction is essentially company’s and customers’ mutual interaction
with no or only little interaction between customers)
• Community-interaction (we define this as company using or participating in mutual
interaction in various types of customer communities, where important feature is mutual
interaction between customers)
• User toolkit - supported interaction (user toolkits are an essential part of co-creation and
allow new ways for customers as well as the company or companies to interact with each
other)

8. Customer Ideation phase (idea generation) Concept and Development phase Product Testing and Support phase
interaction forms
8
No direct Detecting weak signals from Second Life data and from Using Twitter in marketing research – to read what Using social networking profiles and their links to other groups to scope
observing changes in search behavior (Cachia et al., customers have to say (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011) out customers interests (Gillin & Schwartzman, 2011), use of web
interaction
2007), Social bookmarking tools in finding and collecting analytics to see what keywords users are searching and using that
weak signals of possible future needs (Näkki & keyword information to create an editorial calendar (Thomas & Barlow,
Antikainen, 2008) 2011)
One-way Sharing and discussing about industry trends with Keeping customers informed of upcoming product features Automating sales proposals to customers using mashups(Ogrinz, 2009),
customers (e.g. IBM PartnerWorld Community) and products (e.g. NI Labs) reverse product placement by creating a fictional brand in fictional
interaction:
environment and then releasing it into the real world (Wasserman,
(company to 2007), using LinkedIn to get past the traditional gatekeeper departments,
customers) who often try to restrict access to decision makers (Gillin &
Schwartzman, 2011), customizable widgets that deliver content to
customers (Thomas & Barlow, 2011), sales promotions in Twitter
(Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011)
One-way Users/customers can vote for conference themes to be Blogs can provide customer need information for product Using mashups to push customer enhancement requests from customer
discussed of in Second Life (Barker, 2008), users tags and development (Singh et al., 2008) service to product managers (Ogrinz, 2009), using blogs to get feedback
interaction::
tag clouds can be used in discovering weak signals and and to understand customers’ perceptions of new product features
(customers to trends (Cachia et al., 2007), customers can express their (Singh et al., 2008)
company) ideas in online suggestion boxes setup by companies
(Prandelli et al. 2006)
Two-way Using professional customers as “credible private focus Designing of real world items in collaborative spaces, e.g. Answering product questions, troubleshooting technology challenges
groups” in LinkedIn (Gillin & Schwartzman, 2011) Second Life (Ondrejka, 2005) and solving customer service issues in Twitter (Thomas & Barlow,
interaction (The
2011), hearing what customers have to say and fixing customer
company's and it's problems (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011)
customers mutual
interaction
Community- Using wikis to share ideas (inside and outside of Online test laboratory can be used to gather and to discuss Exposing customer complaints to public and empowering users to
organization) , also enabling asynchronous distributed about feedback about prototypes (Näkki & Antikainen, submit and vote on ideas and product improvements (Warr, 2008), blogs
interaction (The
brainstorming (Standing & Kiniti, 2011), idea 2008), Wikis can focus on certain products (such as NI in confronting negative feedback (Singh et al., 2008), IBM’s YouTube
company's and the competitions using open innovation intermediaries LabVIEW, Red Hat JBoss) or industry (e.g. KATU – channel where partners and customers were invited to upload videos
customer (InnoCentive, NineSigma, Yet2.com) to screen for ideas Kaupan tutkimus), blog based tool where users may explaining how IBM solutions had helped their businesses(Marketo,
communities and solutions from communities (Piller and Walcher, suggest needs and development ideas for new products and 2010 ), Marketo Inc. marks tweets about their product as ”favourites”,
2006 ; Antikainen 2011) services, also the rating and commenting of ideas by other providing links to these on their website, allowing prospects to see what
mutual interaction)
users (Näkki & Antikainen, 2008) other customers are saying about their product and enabling “social
validation” (Marketo, 2010)
User toolkit – Users toolkits enable users to design products and User toolkits for innovation, e.g. software design tools for MyDeco uses configurator and design tools, combined with social media
services to fit their own needs (von Hippel and Katz, customers to perform design (of company products) and communities that are used by consumers in household room design
supported
2002), MyDeco is a third-party enabled community, that themselves (von Hippel, 2001 ), user design through web and decoration. This provides customer understanding for architects,
interaction provides community-integrated home design interfaces that enable customers to select interactively the designers and manufacturers. (mydeco.com)
configurators and design tools for consumers, that bridge features they prefer in their ideal product (Dahan & Hauser,
consumers, designers and architects, furniture and home 2002 )
decoration companies, enabling them e.g. to discover
market trends and weak signals.
Jari Jussila 9.11.2012

9. 9
Some key findings
• On the basis of the results, social media truly seems to offer very
novel and innovative ways to deepen and widen the B2B- related
customer interaction, for the sharing of customer- related
information, as well as for the resultingly created new customer
information and knowledge.
• In many ways that B2B’s utilize social media are different and
quite unique compared to the traditionally in B2C’s used
approaches (e.g. dedicated Linked-in groups). We found also an
interesting example of commercial third-party -enabled MyDeco
community for house decoration, integrating the use of
configurator and design toolkits with community and social
media, which could be used as a model for also B2B purposes
and for new ways of B2B customer interaction.

10. 10
Conclusions
• Based on our results, currently there seems to be a significant gap
between the perceived social media potential and actual use in B2B's
• Quite interestingly, concerning the experienced potential of social media
in different types of customer interaction in studied B2B’s, the
experienced highest potential was in the one-way customer interaction
(both company to customer and customer to company). Less potential
was seen in the more social and collaborative types of interaction forms,
which are considered as characteristically the “core“ of social media
• We have demonstrated in our study that B2B environment does differ
significantly from B2C environment in several ways, especially when the
contexts of innovation management, customer interaction and creation of
customer knowledge and understanding are in the focal interest.
• Especially more B2B- oriented empirical and theoretical research should
be carried out to gain more insights in the more extensive usability of
social media in various B2B industries and contexts