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Firm-level
Firm-level perspectives on social perspectives
media engagement: an on social
media
exploratory study
William Hallock, Anne L. Roggeveen and Victoria Crittenden 217
Department of Marketing, Babson College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA
Received 27 January 2017
Revised 9 August 2017
28 October 2017
Accepted 13 February 2017
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to develop a richer, more complete understanding of how firms define and
consider customer engagement on social networks. The research builds from the theoretical backdrop of
customer engagement. The research then uses a qualitative interview approach to understand the firm
perspective.
Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative data were collected using in-depth interviews with
employees at a variety of companies including Facebook, Google, another leading social networking site, a
higher education institution and a start-up company.
Findings – Companies view engagement with social media as measureable metrics of consumer
interactions with the platform. These metrics could include growth and interaction on the platform, number of
users, subscribers to the site or page views. Propositions are developed around how customer engagement is
defined, the breadth and depth of social media and when social media is used as a push or a pull strategy.
Research limitations/implications – Findings from this research are limited by the sample size and
convenience of sampling. However, results from this grounded theory approach enabled propositions that can
focus on larger datasets and testing.
Practical implications – Engagement indicates meaningful information that can propel a company’s
position forward. To companies, this meaningful information is in terms of metrics that can be used as
information and evidence for future decision-making.
Social implications – This research suggests that firms need to better define what engagement means
and to assess the best platforms for creating an ecosystem of engagement with customers.
Originality/value – Many researchers are exploring engagement within the context of social media
networks. This research, however, is one of the first to explore this from a firm level perspective.
Keywords Engagement, Metrics, Social networks, Firm perspective
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Social networks, which allow multiple users to publish and share experiences with others
both personally and professionally, are the driving force of the digital media revolution
(Oviedo-García et al., 2014). Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are
now embedded in the contemporary culture as a component of daily life and have
revolutionized how consumers and businesses interact and disseminate information
(Hollensen et al., 2017; Leonardi, 2017). Consumers often look to social media outlets to gain
information about a particular brand or product (de Vries et al., 2012; Lamberton and
Stephen, 2016). In fact, in 2015, 58 per cent of adults surveyed in the USA indicated that they
Qualitative Market Research: An
International Journal
This work is based on the Honors Thesis of the first author, which was completed under the
Vol. 22 No. 2, 2019
pp. 217-226
supervision of the second author. The authors appreciate the funding provided by the Paul F. Green © Emerald Publishing Limited
1352-2752
Telecommunications Research Grant. DOI 10.1108/QMR-01-2017-0025
QMR follow brands through social media (LaMontagne, 2015). The individuals who follow the
22,2 same brand or product comprise a brand community.
As a result of increased use of mobile and social location-based services, companies’
social networks are growing at an increasingly rapid pace and are paving new paths for
businesses to interact with customers (Chaffey, 2016; Lamberton and Stephen, 2016; Kumar
et al., 2017). Increasingly, what is communicated on company social media networks
218 influences purchase decisions (Agnihotri et al., 2016; Erkan and Evans, 2016; Schivinski and
Dabrowski, 2016). Companies are cognizant of this and create social media accounts for
brands, build fan pages and develop online advertisements through social media platforms.
However, Hanna et al. (2011) note that while companies recognize the need to be active in
social media, they do not know how to do so effectively. Social media has changed the nature
of interactions between customers and companies, engendering radically new ways of
interacting and, essentially, revolutionizing marketing (Hudson et al., 2016; Zhang et al.,
2017).
Much of what is communicated on social media is peer-to-peer communications (Fuchs,
2017). The growth of active social accounts for peer-to-peer communications is an indicator
that firms and individuals expect both professional and personal benefits from social media
engagements (Lacoste, 2016). According to Nord et al. (2014), social networking can translate
into unparalleled profits for businesses. Firms can use social media in a variety of ways –
from building direct relationships with customers (e.g. distributing content, collecting
feedback), to increasing traffic to the company website, to identifying new business
opportunities (Michaelidou et al., 2011; Wamba and Carter, 2016) and to influencing
customer satisfaction (Agnihotri et al., 2016). However, the main business objective of social
media for marketers is customer engagement (Oviedo-García et al., 2014). While engagement
is a two-sided process involving both customers and companies, much of the research within
the world of social media focuses upon social media site usage by individuals (Chang et al.,
2017), leaving much work to be done to understand the business side of customer
engagement (Accenture, 2015).
In an effort to gain a better understanding of customer engagement on social media from
the firm-level perspective, the current research was guided by two broad research questions,
as follows:

RQ1. How do firms view and use social media for engagement?
RQ2. What engagement metrics are used?
To address these research questions, we provide a theoretical backdrop about engagement
and then turn to a qualitative study undertaken with nine marketing managers to develop a
richer understanding of how companies are defining and evaluating engagement on social
media. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings and the development of
propositions regarding engagement, the breadth and depth of social media and when social
media should be used as a push or pull strategy.

2. Theoretical background
There are three major marketing-related social media objectives, namely, word-of-mouth,
awareness and engagement (Hoffman and Fodor, 2010). To achieve these objectives,
companies can undertake different types of social media strategies (Agnihotri et al., 2016;
Ems and Gonzales, 2015; Khan, 2017; Wilson et al., 2011). Some companies focus their social
media communication on specific areas, while other companies experiment with content by
trying new things, and still, others focus on large scale initiatives. Finally, some will post the
unexpected to their social media platforms to transform expectations. Each of the strategies Firm-level
involves varying degrees of risk and a range of possibilities, and each of these strategies perspectives
may result in different types and levels of social media user engagement. Engagement is
paramount, however, in today’s world (Oviedo-García et al., 2014) to remain relevant to
on social
consumers and achieve business’ social objectives. media
Customer engagement is:
[. . .] a state in which individuals move past a level of awareness with your company or brand – an 219
awareness that your organization simply exists – to the stage where they interact with the
company or brand, online or offline (Rohm and Weiss, 2014, p. 12).
Social media serves as a conduit to connect the company with current and potential
customers and engage with them about products and services (Hollensen et al., 2017).
According to Roggeveen and Grewal (2016), engagement with social media is defined as the
cumulative interaction of a consumer’s interactions with a product, brand or firm. Yet,
companies tend to treat various platforms on social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) as
standalone elements rather than an integrated system of engagement (Hanna et al., 2011).
Van Doorn et al. (2010) distinguish between two types of engagement: interest-based and
relationship-based engagement. Interest-based engagement is the interaction a user has with
a given brand on a social network-based off a short-term relationship with the brand. For
example, interest-based engagement would be when a consumer “likes” a brand post for the
first time. However, activities such as liking posts on Facebook often fall short of engaging
customers over a long period of time (Fuel Cycle, 2016). Relationship-based engagement
takes a longer-term perspective toward customer engagement with a brand. It recognizes
“engagement [. . .as. . .] a stronger state of connectedness between the customer and the
media than liking alone” (Van Doorn et al., 2010). It involves:
[. . .] customer engagement behaviors [. . .that. . .] go beyond transactions, and may be specifically
defined as a customer’s behavioral manifestations that have a brand or firm focus, beyond
purchase, resulting from motivational drivers (Van Doorn et al., 2010).
These behaviors can be either positive or negative, but ultimately are the result of emotions
and attitudes toward the brand. Further, interest-based and relationship-based engagement
could be connected. Interest-based engagement could eventually lead to more connectedness
to the brand, and thus, to more relationship-based engagement.
Recent research has focused on a conceptual understanding of social media
engagement and factors, which will influence the level of interest-based or relationship-
based engagement (Roggeveen and Grewal, 2016). These factors include: connectedness,
network effects, information, dynamic communication and timeliness (which
encompasses convenience). While these factors can be applied to how customers engage
with brands, they can also be applied to how social media users engage within social
network sites themselves.
While there is a considerable discussion in the academic literature about customer
engagement, little is known about how firms actually think about and measure engagement
in social media. Further, while companies now realize the importance of social media
marketing to communication, there is difficulty in defining metrics to measure the success of
social media campaigns and the return on investment (Agostino and Sidorova, 2016; Schultz
and Peltier, 2013). The current research focuses on the engagement objective within social
media and explores how engagement is defined and enacted at the firm-level. The
exploration follows an inductive approach, in which the research is guided by general
research questions about engagement.
QMR 3. Methodology
22,2 Research on engagement has tended to focus on the benefits of creating intimacy with
customers. Rather than lead companies down a pre-determined path, the intent in the
current research project was to follow a grounded theory approach, in which engagement
was explored within a firm’s own term of reference so as to include potential firm-level uses
beyond the customer (Nord et al., 2014; Sayre, 2001). The goal in following this inductive
220 approach was to gain a broader understanding of engagement, if one existed, by collecting
relevant information from a set of firms engaged in a variety of social media uses.

3.1 Sample
The sampling procedure followed a purposeful sampling process, in which interviewees
were chosen for their relevance and expertise in marketing and social media (Carson et al.,
2001). The interviewees were selected based on a judgment sample, with access and
availability being the two key drivers of sample selection. So as to capture opinions from a
variety of sources, five companies were approached about participating in the in-depth
interviews. The companies represented three major social networking sites for personal,
professional and mixed users (Lacoste, 2016), a for-profit company and a not-for-profit
organization. These companies were based in San Francisco, New York City and Boston.
Thus, the types of companies depicted a range of company types and geographic locations.
Within that company context, the goal was to interview experts across a variety of job
positions. The nine participants who agreed to be included in the data collection typified
positions in marketing strategy, digital marketing, human resource analytics, data collection
and reporting, online and corporate strategy and digital marketing metrics. As participants
from three of the five companies wished to remain anonymous, none of the companies or
interviewees are identified here. The interviews were conducted in Spring 2013.

3.2 In-depth interviews

As interview data are a major source of information in grounded theory research (Carson
et al., 2001), interviews were conducted with the nine individuals who had agreed to
participate in the research project. Typical of in-depth, one-on-one interviews, each of the
interviews lasted approximately 45 min and followed a focused interviewing strategy of
open-ended and non-directive questions (Mariampolski, 2001). The in-depth interviews were
conducted at the individual company properties and the interviewees did not receive any
compensation for participating in the research project.
With the primary focus that of gaining a richer understanding from the interviewees
regarding how their companies defined and measured engagement, the interviews were
prompted by the following question categories:
 organization’s social media engagement strategy and the KPIs (e.g., metrics for
success, ROI, etc.);
 organization’s view on the definition of engagement and metrics to evaluate
engagement;
 organization’s market research capabilities;
 organization’s services in helping other companies communicate with their target
markets;
 changing image of social networks; and
 next trends in the online world.
An interview protocol based on these six categories was prepared in advance to guide the Firm-level
individual discussions. However, the semi-structured approach of the one-one-one interview perspectives
created the opportunity for the interviewee to identify issues and questions outside of the on social
prepared questions so that key concerns, issues or trends were not unintentionally left
uncovered (Fontana and Frey, 1994).
media

4. Results 221
Capturing findings from qualitative research is an engaging endeavor. Kvale (1996) offers
an interesting analogy with regards to obtaining outcomes following an interpretivist
orientation. In this analogy, using a traveler and a miner, the interpretivist – the traveler –
seeks to acquire information that will lead to a greater understanding of a wide range of
views. The miner is looking for specific answers by holding cleanly to a question and
answer protocol. The semi-structured, one-on-one interviews using the categories of interest
enabled the experts, who were being interviewed to focus on the general topic of social
media while also enabling the exploration with a range of issues. Thus, the interviewer was
a traveler rather a miner. The primary focus of the interviews was to get the interviewees
talking about how their respective companies define and measure engagement on social
media sites.

4.1 Social media platform company – personal users

Being a social media giant in the industry, this interviewee, an analyst, commented on how
critical it is for the company to understand what engagement really means. To beta test
products and understand how consumers may enjoy and use them, and thus engage with
the platform, this particular company turns to its own employees. The company’s employees
use the platform to collaborate and communicate internally. By observing and discussing
the new products with employees, the company feels it is better able to develop relevant
products for its external customers.
In terms of engaging with external customers, the company uses two primary measures,
namely, user growth and interaction on the platform. User growth is based on the number of
active monthly users (users who have signed into the site at least once within the past 28
days). The company also keeps track of the time spent on each site visit to measure
interaction. The first measure taps into the breadth of engagement, while the second
measure taps into the depth of engagement. In general, however, the informant
acknowledged that although the company keeps track of user demographic data and usage,
it struggles to identify which methods are the best to capture and analyze user engagement
within the site.

4.2 Social media platform company – professional users

According to one interviewee at this company, “WOM through social media is facilitated
quickly and will continue to grow.” As engagement through social network sites is rapidly
increasing, this informant said that measurements of engagement are all the more important
for all businesses and social networks. This company uses five key performance indicators,
with three of those key performance indicators related to user engagement. These three
engagement performance indicators were: monthly active users (how often users log in),
subscribers to the site (both paid and unpaid) and page views. For this company, these
measures reflect both breadth and depth of user engagement.
QMR 4.3 Social media platform company – mixed personal/professional users
22,2 Three employees in two different cities were available to be interviewed for the research
project. The discussions focused, mainly, on data collection and reporting, online and
corporate strategy and digital marketing metrics. This company also turns to its employees
to better understand engagement with products and services and does this through the use
of surveys and feedback forms. Beyond this, according to one informant, the company
222 recognizes that: “The power of the Internet lies in measurability. Success is dependent on
this measurability, action-ability, and accountability.” Similarly, yet independently, another
interviewee noted: “In the digital space, everything is measureable. Determining what is
relevant, however, is the challenge.” Thus, while there is the ability to measure user
engagement online, deciphering what information is relevant to collect and how to go about
collecting information presents a challenge.

4.4 For-profit company

As this start-up has a high degree of involvement with social media and is present on many
platforms, the interviewee noted that the company recognizes that it “must measure
engagement in the right capacity.” The informant said that engagement had to be measured
by platform. For example, on one platform, the firm uses the number of likes and shares of a
post as the starting point for engagement. While the interviewee noted that the collection of
the data was relatively easy on most social networks, the company was really not sure what
to do with the data once it was collected.

4.5 Nonprofit organization

The interviews with the marketing staff in this organization revealed the importance of
using digital marketing as a way to communicate across a broad target market. Each of the
interviewees provided specific insight into the difficulty of measuring engagement. One of
the interviewees said: “Measurement is thought about regularly, but we are unsure of how to
actually measure social media effectiveness.” While measurement was not defined clearly,
the relevance and importance of prioritizing community building, not promotion, was
identified as the most important objective of social media. As noted by one respondent:
“Social media is a sentiment tool that requires understanding of users in order to engage
them.”

5. Discussion of findings
While the comments noted in the previous session are merely excerpts from the detailed
interviews, they are indicative of the wide perspective of what engagement means to
businesses and how that engagement is evaluated. There were several consistencies across
the interview data that lead to some general, preliminary findings about engagement.

5.1 Engagement defined

The exploratory, in-depth interviews portrayed the ambiguity surrounding engagement in
social media and the inconsistency with regard to measurement. On a fundamental level,
engagement is what occurs as a user builds relationships with other users and brands. It is
more than merely liking, commenting or posting within a social network. Instead, it reveals
a longer-term relationship among users or between users and a brand. The intimacy of
engagement, a user has with another user or a brand can differ drastically depending on the
platform. For example, Facebook could be a highly intimate social network for a user
because content is shared with close friends and family. However, the same user might use
Twitter as a public profile to communicate less personal information. Therefore, the context Firm-level
in which the social network is intended will play a strong role in how a user engages with perspectives
other users and brands.
For companies, engagement indicates meaningful information that can propel the
on social
business forward. What is meaningful information is determined by the metrics that can be media
used as information and evidence for future decision-making. Thus, engagement is network-
dependent and is largely defined by the data made available by the platform.
While ambiguous in terms of a concrete, firm-level definition of engagement, the
223
following three constructs that comprise engagement from the company perspective are
derived: intimacy, platforms and metrics. Each of these constructs come together to suggest
the following propositions:

P1. Companies that want to cement ongoing and intimate relationships between the
company and the customer will focus on social media platforms (e.g., LinkedIn and
Facebook) that allow participants to have constructive interactions with the
company and that provide the company with a wide variety of engagement metrics
(e.g., likes and comments).
P2. Companies will use social media blast platforms (e.g., Twitter and Snapchat) when
introducing a new idea, product or brand and will attempt to build following (e.g.,
number of followers) regardless of profile of typical platform user and/or potential
for an intimate relationship.
P3. There are some social media platforms that are not suitable for company – customer
engagement, due to an inability to gain intimacy with the customer, yet, companies
have not sought to identify these platforms.
P4. Companies have not identified, internally, the social media platforms that provide
the best intimate engagement opportunities for the company and its brand.

5.2 User engagement – breadth and depth

Consistent across all respondents was the need to be able to determine the number of users
on a social platform (breadth) and the regularity of their interactions on the platform (depth).
While the for-profit and nonprofit organizations had to rely on the measurement tools
provided by the network sites, the social media companies were able to modify
measurement tools to fit the needs of the company. To understand the need and
effectiveness of various measurement tools, social media companies used their own
employees as information providers, via beta-testing and surveys, to explore the potential
effectiveness of company tools. However, this internal testing likely led to lack of
consistency with regard to measurement.
It was clear in the interviews that the breadth and depth of user engagement was a
somewhat elusive phenomenon at the firm level and prone to lack of sufficient
interpretation. This finding centers around the two constructs of platforms and metrics,
with the following propositions:

P5. Companies are using the number of users on a platform as a metric to substitute for
engagement with the company.
P6. Companies do not have rigorous, standardized systems to assess the regularity of
engagement between the company and its customer in social media activities.
QMR 5.3 Social media – push or pull?
22,2 In general, across all the interviews, social media was viewed as a pull channel rather
than a push channel, for growing the business. It was used to build community and
engage community members rather than merely advising users of promotions. The
general steps, which were noted consistently for implementing a social media strategy
included listening online, creating posts to engage and then measuring (in some way)
224 the “success” of those postings. To be successful with this required a specific
understanding of the target market, developed via that listening and then the crafting
of tailored and targeted messages to those groups. The result was niche segments, or
basically, the drawing into the company (pull) of users (customers), who had very
specific interests. However, the company informants did not refer to the push–pull
nomenclature that is so common in marketing strategy usage. There appeared to be
considerable equivocation when it came to the strategy behind social media efforts.
This leads to the following propositions:

P7. Companies that are successful (per metrics) in creating intimacy with customers
have a pre-defined push or pull social media strategy across all platforms in use.
P8. Companies with a pre-defined push or pull social media strategy use a clear and
systematic system of assessment across all platforms.
P9. Companies without a pre-defined push or pull social media strategy use a
conglomeration of metrics to assess usefulness with little consistency across platforms.

6. Conclusion
Through interviews with people working in the field of marketing and social media, qualitative
findings indicate that companies view social media engagement as measureable metrics of
consumer interactions with the platform. These metrics could include number of users,
subscribers to the site and page views. Measurements such as these seem fairly consistent
across the companies with regard to points of contact with users, yet, it is unclear how these
metrics holistically represent engagement. In today’s marketplace, engagement indicates
meaningful interactions that companies can use to propel their positions forward. Company
metrics, thus, would then be used as information and evidence for future decision-making.
Unlike in the academic literature, where there is a more developed conceptualization of
customer engagement, including connectedness, network effects, information, dynamic
communication and timeliness (Roggeveen and Grewal, 2016), companies do not appear to be
thinking in these nuanced directions of variables that comprise engagement. Employees of
companies recognize that their perspective and measurement on engagement with social media
is not as developed as they would like. In fact, across the interviews, there was a recurring
notion of an inability to effectively measure customer engagement with social media.
Not surprisingly, it was clear across all the interviews that social media activity is
perceived as critical for companies to thrive in today’s marketplace. However, it also
became apparent that companies are unsure how to use social media for competitive
advantage. Likewise, it was not clear that companies, even platform companies
themselves, have a clear linkage between the relationship engagement they are seeking
and the metrics to assess digital strategy success. Thus, there is much work to be done at
the firm-level to better understand the company’s role in using social media, successfully,
as a tool for building relationships between the company and its customers.
With the speed at which social media has grown in recent years, there is a value in
continuing the research through additional studies, broadening the analysis to include
additional social networks, such as Instagram and Snapchat, as well as supporting these Firm-level
qualitative findings through further research. Qualitative research could include focus groups perspectives
regarding how engagement is similar/different for different users and on different platforms.
Quantitative research could examine whether there is a common definition of engagement,
on social
whether some social networks are better suited for engagement for various motivations and media
whether consumers and businesses view engagement on social media differently.
225
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Corresponding author
Victoria Crittenden can be contacted at: [email protected]

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