Sustainability Communication on Social Media: a Study on the Most Sustainable Brands in Finland
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SUSTAINABILITY COMMUNICATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA: A STUDY ON THE MOST SUSTAINABLE BRANDS IN FINLAND Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics Master’s thesis 2020 Author: Alexandra Artemova Discipline: Digital Marketing and Corporate Communication Supervisor: Chiara Valentini ABSTRACT Author Alexandra Artemova Title of thesis Sustainability Communication on Social Media: A Study on the Most Sustainable Brands in Finland Discipline Type of work Digital Marketing and Corporate Communication Master’s thesis Time (month/year) Number of pages 05/2020 74 + 9 Abstract Today’s consumers are becoming increasingly conscious about sustainability issues. For this reason, it is essentially important for companies to not only address these issues, but also transparently and authentically communicate about them. Social media created var- ious possibilities for companies to communicate about their sustainability initiatives in an engaging way in order to establish a positive brand image and reputation, as well as meaningful organization-stakeholder relationships. The need for additional research on the topic of sustainability communication on social media led to development of the key objective of this thesis, which is to gain understand- ing of the role of social media in sustainability communication through the prism of the most sustainable Finnish brands. The research goal was achieved through studying the prior literature on the topic, as well as conducting both qualitative and quantitative con- tent analyses. As a result of this study, it was possible to understand the main focus of social media communication of the sustainable Finnish brands, to analyse how sustainability-related messages are communication on social media of these brands, as well as to test whether sustainability communication on these brands’ social media affect stakeholder engage- ment. Also, as a result of achieving the key objective, practical recommendations for com- municating sustainability initiatives were developed and proposed for the companies. Thus, the crucial importance of sustainability communication has been emphasized in both previous literature on the topic, as well as the empirical findings of this study. In addition to confirming the overall value of sustainability communication on the corporate social media channels, it has also been identified that companies acknowledge all three essentially important elements of sustainability and actively utilise different opportunities provided by social media for communicating sustainability in an interesting and engaging way. However, some differences related to the influence of sustainability-related content on stakeholder engagement were identified in this study as well. Keywords sustainability, sustainability communication, social media communication, sustainable brands, Finnish brands Location Jyväskylä University Library 3 CONTENTS ABSTRACT 3 FIGURES 4 TABLES 4 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 5 1.1 Research background ............................................................................... 5 1.2 Research objective and research questions ........................................... 7 1.3 Research structure .................................................................................... 8 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ..................................................................... 9 2.1 Sustainability ............................................................................................. 9 2.1.1 Terminology ................................................................................. 11 2.1.2 The three pillars of sustainability .............................................. 13 2.2 Social media communication ................................................................ 15 2.2.1 Social media channels ................................................................. 18 2.2.2 Content typology ......................................................................... 20 2.2.3 Content formats ........................................................................... 24 2.2.4 Stakeholder engagement ............................................................ 25 2.3 Sustainability communication on social media .................................. 27 2.3.1 Sustainability topics .................................................................... 30 2.3.2 Sustainability communication formats ...................................... 32 2.4 Summary of theoretical findings .......................................................... 33 3 METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................. 37 3.1 Research design ....................................................................................... 37 3.2 Case selection .......................................................................................... 38 3.3 Data collection ......................................................................................... 40 3.4 Data analysis ............................................................................................ 41 4 RESULTS ............................................................................................................. 43 4.1 General findings ...................................................................................... 43 4.2 Overall social media communication of the brands .......................... 44 4.3 Sustainability communication of the brands ...................................... 47 4.4 Social media sustainability communication and engagement rates 51 4.5 Discussion of the results ........................................................................ 53 5 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................. 57 5.1 Theoretical contributions ....................................................................... 57 5.2 Managerial implications ........................................................................ 59 5.3 Research evaluation ................................................................................ 61 5.4 Research limitations ............................................................................... 62 5.5 Future research suggestions .................................................................. 63 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 65 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................... 75 4 FIGURES FIGURE 1 Relationship between SD and CSR (Tureac et al., 2010) ....................... 9 FIGURE 2 Representation of sustainability (Purvis et al., 2018) ........................... 13 FIGURE 3 The division of faith-holders, hateholders and consequences to organizational legitimacy (Luoma-aho, 2015) ......................................................... 17 FIGURE 4 Social media functionality (Kietzmann et al., 2011) ............................. 19 FIGURE 5 Prior literature on content typology analysis (Chemela, 2019) .......... 22 FIGURE 6 A tentative measurement model of social media engagement (Jiang et al., 2016) ......................................................................................................................... 26 FIGURE 7 DJSI EURO STOXX Index: corporate sustainability assessment criteria Dimension (Hartman et al., 2007) .............................................................................. 31 FIGURE 8 The focus of social media communication of the brands (channels & topics) ............................................................................................................................ 46 FIGURE 9 The focus of social media communication of the brands (time periods & topics) ........................................................................................................................ 47 FIGURE 10 Sustainability communication on the brands’ social media (channels & topics) ........................................................................................................................ 49 FIGURE 11 Sustainability communication on the brands’ social media (formats & topics) ........................................................................................................................ 51 FIGURE 12 Likes: sustainability and non-sustainability posts ............................. 52 TABLES TABLE 1 Sustainability definitions ........................................................................... 11 TABLE 2 Intercoder reliability tests .......................................................................... 41 TABLE 3 The correlation between the brands’ sustainability rankings and social media content during the following months: 01.19, 04.19, 07.19, 10.19 ............... 43 TABLE 4 The focus of social media communication of the brands (channels & topics) ............................................................................................................................ 45 TABLE 5 The focus of social media communication of the brands (time periods & topics) ........................................................................................................................ 46 TABLE 6 Sustainability communication on the brands’ social media (channels & topics) ............................................................................................................................ 48 TABLE