Abstract:

It is argued that Social Media (SM) based research gets closer to real people and that conversations are more honest/transparent than those generated via the old regime of surveys/ focus groups - it's also a damn sight cheaper! But recent research we conducted suggests that people posture as much on SM as they do in a traditional research interview, and confirms that small numbers of SM users generate most of the noise and that relying on robots to collect SM data can lead to superficial/misleading interpretations. So can we even apply SM-based research methods to B2B issues? And how does local business culture affect the way people engage with SM is the business world more homogeneous than the consumer world when it comes to SM?