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Value impact of social media: a perspective from the independent brewery sector GODSON, Mark St John Available from the Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/25371/ A Sheffield Hallam University thesis This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Please visit http://shura.shu.ac.uk/25371/ and http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html for further details about copyright and re-use permissions. Value impact of social media: A perspective from the independent brewery sector Mark St John Godson A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Doctor of Business Administration December 2018 ii Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 1 1.1: Introduction - What is this Study About? 1 1.2: Why is this of Interest from a Research Perspective? 3 1.2.1: Background to the independent brewery sector 3 1.2.2: Topicality of social media 4 1.2.3: Personal interests of the researcher 5 1.3: Research Aims, Objectives and Questions 6 1.4: Conducting the Research 8 1.5: Expected Contribution to Knowledge and Practice 8 1.6: Supporting Literature 14 1.7: Structure of Thesis 16 Chapter 2: Literature Review 19 2.1: Introduction 19 2.1.1: Literature review method 20 2.1.2: Literature review structure 21 2.2: Relationship Marketing Context 23 2.2.1: Can relationship theory apply to beer? 24 2.3: Service Dominant Logic and Beer 25 2.4: Co-creation of Value Around Beer 29 2.5: Implications for this Study from SDL and Co-creation Literature 32 2.6: Social Media 34 iii 2.6.1: Defining social media 34 2.6.2: Categories of social media 36 2.6.3: Social media users 39 2.6.4: Why do people engage with social media? 41 2.6.5: How do people engage with social media? 44 2.7: Social Media and Marketing 45 2.7.1: Social media marketing (SMM) 46 2.7.2: Socialisation theory and brand communities 49 2.7.3: Social media marketing in business 51 2.8: Implications for this Study from Social Media and Social Media 52 Marketing Literature 2.9: Chapter Summary 54 Chapter 3: Research Methodology 59 3.1: Introduction 59 3.2: Research Philosophy 60 3.3: Research Approach 64 3.4: Research Methodology 68 3.5: Research Methods 70 3.6: Analysis of Data 74 3.7: Ensuring Rigour 76 3.8: Chapter Summary 79 Chapter 4: Data Collection and Analysis 81 4.1: Introduction 81 iv 4.2: The Research Process 81 4.2.1: Secondary research findings on the independent brewery sector 82 4.2.2: Towards a non-probability sample 85 4.2.3: Conducting the interviews 86 4.2.4: Ethical considerations 90 4.3: Formulating the Interview Questions 91 4.3.1: The nature of the questions 92 4.3.2: A convergent interview approach 93 4.4: Conducting the Analysis 95 4.4.1: Coding the data 96 4.4.2: Reaching the themes 98 4.5: Chapter Summary 103 Chapter 5: Key Theme 1 - Sector Related Drivers 105 5.1: Introduction 105 5.2: Splintered Distribution Routes in the Independent Brewery Sector 107 5.2.1: The nature of B2B relationships in the independent brewery 108 sector 5.2.2: Co-creation - killing two birds with one stone 109 5.2.3: 'Piggybacking' on distributors' social media 111 5.2.4: Replacement of traditional B2B marketing communications tools 112 5.2.5: An inexact science… 113 5.2.6: Summary of this section 114 5.3: Camaraderie in the Independent Brewery Sector 115 5.3.1: Collaboration 116 v 5.3.2: Brewer networks 119 5.3.3: Summary of this section 120 5.4: Third Parties 121 5.4.1: The third dimension 121 5.4.2: Third party site users 123 5.4.3: Summary of this section 124 5.5: Product 125 5.5.1: Market characteristics 126 5.5.2: "There is nothing more social than beer…" 128 5.5.3: Summary of this section 129 5.6: Overall Findings from this Chapter 130 Chapter 6: Key Theme 2 - Lifestyle 137 6.1: Introduction 137 6.2: Age Related Factors 140 6.2.1: Choice 141 6.2.2: Individual lifestyle approach to business 144 6.2.3: Summary of this section 147 6.3: Changing Lifestyles 148 6.3.1: Pervasiveness of social media 148 6.3.2: Melting pot 152 6.3.3: Summary of this section 155 6.4: Home / Work Life Cross-Over 156 6.4.1: Summary of this section 162 vi 6.5: Diversity of Users and Followers in a Commercial Sense 163 6.5.1: Three levels of social media user 164 6.5.2: Summary of this section 169 6.6: Overall Findings from this Chapter 170 Chapter 7: Key Theme 3 - Relationships 175 7.1: Introduction 175 7.2: Community 177 7.2.1: The beer geek community 179 7.2.2: Locally based considerations 183 7.2.3: Summary of this section 187 7.3: Brewery Identity 188 7.3.1: Branding 189 7.3.2: Brewing things our way 192 7.3.3: Summary of this section 194 7.4: Communication and Content 195 7.4.1: Chatty and informal content 196 7.4.2: The nature of interaction 200 7.4.3: Networks and word of mouth 205 7.4.4: Summary of this section 208 7.5: Overall Findings from this Chapter 209 Chapter 8: Key Theme 4 - Control 213 8.1: Introduction 213 vii 8.2: Ownership and Control 215 8.2.1: New horizons 217 8.2.2: Protective ownership 223 8.2.3: Summary of this section 227 8.3: Management and Planning 228 8.3.1: Measurement metrics in social media 230 8.3.2: Outcomes and results 234 8.3.3: Barriers to social media engagement 237 8.3.4: Summary of this section 240 8.4: Impossibility of Consistency 242 8.4.1: Summary of this section 245 8.5: Overall Findings from this chapter 245 Chapter 9: Conclusions and Contribution to Knowledge and Practice 249 9.1: Introduction 249 9.2: Theoretical Contribution 250 9.2.1: Nature of contribution 252 9.2.2: How the research develops contemporary literature 253 9.3: Practical Contribution 254 9.3.1: First finding - being part of an inclusive community 255 9.3.2: Second finding - personal social capital overrides traditional user 256 classifications 9.3.3: Third finding - individual personality gives independent breweries 257 an edge 9.3.4: Fourth finding - tension between organic social media and 258 mechanistic business objectives 9.3.5: Fifth finding - social media does not replace traditional marketing 259 viii communication 9.3.6: Direct contribution to practice 260 9.4: Achieving the Research Aims 261 9.4.1: Addressing the research questions 262 9.4.2: Meeting the research objectives 264 9.4.3: Achieving the research aim 268 9.4.4: Contemporary dimensions to this research 269 9.5: Limitations of the Research and Potential for Further Study 271 9.5.1: Limitations of the research and their implications 271 9.5.2: Opportunities for further research 273 List of References 275 ix List of Figures Figure 1.1: Current dimensions of theoretical contribution 11 Figure 1.2: Dimensions in contribution in industrial marketing 12 Figure 1.3: Supporting literature and location of this study 15 Figure 2.1: Integration of different literatures to support this thesis 23 Figure 2.2: Stages of the customer experience; activities, value sources and outcomes 27 Figure 2.3: Dimensions of customer co-created value around brands 31 Figure 2.4: Social media matrix 38 Figure 2.5: Psychological needs met by social media 42 Figure 2.6: A conceptual social media user engagement model 54 Figure 2.7: Integration of different literatures to support this thesis 55 Figure 3.1: A summary of the research approaches taken in this thesis 80 Figure 4.1: The author's manual approach to data coding 96 Figure 4.2: Arriving at four broad themes 104 Figure 5.1: Structure of the analysis chapters 105 Figure 5.2: Code path to 'Sector' theme 107 Figure 5.3: Application of sector based issues to the user engagement model 134 Figure 5.4: Impact of sector on the research themes 135 Figure 6.1: Code path to 'Lifestyle' theme 139 Figure 6.2: Organic and mechanistic sales approaches in social media 169 Figure 6.3: Application of lifestyle issues to the user engagement model 173 x Figure 7.1: Code path to 'Relationship' theme 176 Figure 7.2: Application of relationship issues to the user engagement model 211 Figure 8.1: Code path to 'Control' theme 215 Figure 8.2: Application of control issues to the user engagement model 248 Figure 9.1: Research themes developed from the user engagement model 251 xi List of Tables Table 3.1: Application of Tracy's (2010) “Eight 'Big Tent' Criteria” to this study 77 Table 4.1: Percentage of independent breweries using social media platforms 83 Table 4.2: The interview respondents 87 Table 4.3: An example of the convergent interview themes arising from this study 94 Appendices Appendix 1: List of independent breweries operating in the UK in 2016 Appendix 2: Business consultancies' social media categorisations Appendix 3: Bloggers' social media categorisations Appendix 4: Example of an interview guide used Appendix 5: Example of one of the interview transcripts (redacted) Appendix 6: Research Ethics Checklist (SHUREC 1) xii Abstract The aim of this research is to develop a better understanding of how social media is shaping relationships between businesses and customers, and determining the value (if any) of its use in the UK independent brewery sector.