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 â is the business world more homogeneous than the consumer world when it comes to SM?