Social Media

Social Media are generating enormous social and economic impact. A plethora of different Social Media platforms and technologies for social networking (e.g., Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn), for knowledge and multimedia sharing (e.g., Flickr, Wikipedia, YouTube) or for awareness creation (e.g., Foursquare, Twitter) are changing not only our personal but also organizational behavior. By revolutionizing communication, collaboration, and consumption patterns, Social Media bears numerous challenges but also unimagined possibilities in the context of CRM.

The availability of a profound amount of data on social structures and interactions allows revealing precious knowledge that was previously unknown. For example, organizations are faced with unique opportunities (e.g., via listening tools) to enrich their understanding about the influence and the diffusion of Word of Mouth in Social Media and the resulting impact on their customer relationships and sales. In this context, the research group value-based CRM intends to contribute to this field amongst others by…

• … analyzing customer reactions on companies' engagement in Social Media in order to leverage opportunities and mitigate risks,

• … developing methods to identify key users in order to efficiently and effectively interact with customers via Social Media and boost business value, as well as

• … investigating the effects of Social Media engagement and Word of Mouth on sales. 

Selected Publications (see all FIM publications):

Probst, F.; Grosswiele, L.; Pfleger, R. (2013) Who will lead and who will follow: Identifying Influential Users in Online Social Networks - A Critical Review and Future Research Directions. Appears in: Business & Information Systems Engineering, 5, 3.

Heidemann, J.; Klier, M.; Probst, F. (2012) Online Social Networks: A Survey of a Global Phenomenon. In: Computer Networks, 56, 18, pp. 3866-3878.

Huber, J.; Landherr, A.; Reisser, C.; Probst, F. (2012) Stimulating User Activity on Company Fan Pages in Online Social Networks. In: Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Information Systems, ECIS, Barcelona, Spain, June 2012, paper 188.

Heidemann, J.; Klier, M.; Landherr, A.; Probst, F.; Calmbach, F. (2011) Special Interest Networks: Eine Fallstudie am Beispiel von Netzathleten.de. In: HMD - Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik, 48, 282, pp. 103-112.

Heidemann, J.; Klier, M.; Landherr, A.; Probst, F. (2011) Soziale Netzwerke im Web – Chancen und Risiken im Customer Relationship Management von Unternehmen. In: Wirtschaftsinformatik & Management, 3, pp. 40-45.

Landherr, A.; Friedl, B.; Heidemann, J. (2010) A Critical Review of Centrality Measures in Social Networks. In: Business & Information Systems Engineering, 2, 6, pp. 371-385.

Heidemann, J.; Klier, M.; Probst, F. (2010) Identifying Key Users in Online Social Networks: A PageRank Based Approach. In: Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS, Saint Louis, Missouri, December 2010, paper 79.