Using Product Variables of Business-to-Business (B2B) Media to Assess the Impacts of Social Media

Abstract

An original approach uses the three variables of timeliness, confidentiality, and utility of business-to-business (B2B) media products to study the impacts of social media. Interviews with B2B media practitioners in the UK reveal that social media have partially and weakly influenced the timeliness and confidentiality variables but have no effect on the basic utility of B2B media. Social media formats are therefore not so much in competition with B2B media, more a useful tool. B2B media practitioners attempt to control and adjust these variables to make their products more attractive. A social media optimisation publishing cycle was identified as a response to the impacts of social media in particular. But other adjustments mostly responded to competition forces greater than social media. This is one of the first studies of B2B media to examine their full product ranges. It proposes future directions of research in this under-examined media sector.