Browsing by Author "Faritova, Elvira"
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- How is digital media being used by consulting companiesPublication . Faritova, Elvira; Silva, Susana Cristina Lima Costa; Andrade, António Manuel Valente deThe purpose of the research is to examine the digital media use of a sample, and see what media are the most popular, as well as to find out is there a difference between the approach of global companies operating in Portugal and local firms. A further research objective is to find a benchmark for an effective digital communication strategy. As two types of consulting companies that are present in the Portuguese B2B market were studied, it is possible to say that they would have the same business model, but the way they represent themselves in digital media would be affected by the company size. It was tested if company size correlates with the creation of a localized social media page in Portuguese; the content type in social media pages has effect on the audience engagement; the origin/size of the consulting company has correlation with its’ PR activity on external websites; and if the size of the consulting company correlates with utilization of the intranet. To make an exploratory study analysis of digital media adoption, list of 36 consulting companies was retrieved from the internet, but as it was identified that all of the companies are international, it was decided to make a second list of 22 local companies. Primary data collection proved to be inapplicable as consulting is a very closed business working with confidential information. None of the companies from the sample agreed to an interview, therefore secondary data was used during this study. The research estimated that the manner of utilization of digital media by the studied companies would differ based on two factors: company size and the origin of the company. It was found that global companies use a larger number of digital channels, whereas local companies have a lower level of audience engagement. The size of the company plays a decisive role in whether the company utilizes intranet, and if it has a localized page on social media. In addition, it was estimated that the consulting companies are not really taking advantage of Web 2.0 tools. No evidence was found that consulting companies, regardless their size and origin, are using social media to understand customer needs. Despite a Web 2.0 approach allowing the audience to post content on company pages, in fact, the only way that companies have content published on their own media by other name – is by the name of their experts and in the form of blogs. As the study was limited to consulting companies that either are situated in Portugal or started their business in this country, this can be considered a limitation, and the only way to study further how company size is correlated with the use of digital media, is to increase the sample without limiting the study to the companies belonging to the consulting business. For further research the following areas could be interesting to see: how employees’ personal profiles are used in the social media strategy of the consulting company; compare the content and engagement only of those companies that have local accounts; find a correlation between the nature of service and the channels/topics that companies find more relevant to them; and make a comparison of the localized and global content of global companies.