Fachartikel
Targeting Key Influentials for Direct Marketing Activities in Soc...

Targeting Key Influentials for Direct Marketing Activities in Social Networks: Methodical Progress and an Application

Social networks and virtual communities provide credible information about customers’ opinions and facilitate innovative customer dialogues. We build upon Kosinets’ netnography to extract consumer insights from such services. To cope with the overwhelming amount of data recorded by these services, we combine netnography with innovative social network analysis (SNA). We propose a new criterion to assess the number of influentials which should be involved in communication measures or monitored to assess consumers’ perceptions. Various previous attempts to utilize particular facets of networks or communities for direct marketing have lacked a suitable management framework to guide practitioners. Addressing this gap, we introduce a management cycle of gathering insights and implementing activities.