Selling Vs. Helping : Exploring The Ideal Digital Content Steering Strategy For Optimal Online Customer Engagement In Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS)
type: CreativeWork
description: Customer interaction in the B2B Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) sector saw a drastic paradigm shift to digital platforms from a predominantly physical ecosystem in the last decade. Digital transformation of the overall business sphere and growth of social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook and LinkedIn impacted the KIBS sector significantly. However, despite its criticality, theoretical and empirical explorations synthesising KIBS and digital content strategy has been significantly scarce and fragmented. Replication of B2C and retail based strategies have been evident in the sector, but the rapid growth of KIBS in the global economy and its growing digital audiences have created a significant need for KIBS specific digital content engagement strategies at present. This study therefore was conducted to explore the ideal content steering strategy for the KIBS sector through a comprehensive theoretical review and empirical investigation. It sought out to address the key research questions of (1) What factors facilitate digital content engagement? and (2) What factors facilitate digital content diffusion in the KIBS sector? and essentially what content appeals more out of ‘selling’ (utilitarian) or ‘helping’ (assertive) based digital content on SNS. A comprehensive literature review was undertaken for this purpose based on which a conceptual visualisation of engagement and diffusion factors were addressed. Secondly a two-pronged in-depth empirical investigation of digital content of three New Zealand based small and medium tier KIBS entities was undertaken in the forms of a qualitative content analysis and a field experiment in order to gather empirical evidence to address the research questions. Primarily Facebook and LinkedIn were used as the platforms in the analysis owing to the presence of all three participants on these SNS. The study established a new stream of research for academia synthesising KIBS and digital content marketing and visually co…
abstract: Customer interaction in the B2B Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) sector saw a drastic paradigm shift to digital platforms from a predominantly physical ecosystem in the last decade. Digital transformation of the overall business sphere and growth of social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook and LinkedIn impacted the KIBS sector significantly. However, despite its criticality, theoretical and empirical explorations synthesising KIBS and digital content strategy has been significantly scarce and fragmented. Replication of B2C and retail based strategies have been evident in the sector, but the rapid growth of KIBS in the global economy and its growing digital audiences have created a significant need for KIBS specific digital content engagement strategies at present. This study therefore was conducted to explore the ideal content steering strategy for the KIBS sector through a comprehensive theoretical review and empirical investigation. It sought out to address the key research questions of (1) What factors facilitate digital content engagement? and (2) What factors facilitate digital content diffusion in the KIBS sector? and essentially what content appeals more out of ‘selling’ (utilitarian) or ‘helping’ (assertive) based digital content on SNS. A comprehensive literature review was undertaken for this purpose based on which a conceptual visualisation of engagement and diffusion factors were addressed. Secondly a two-pronged in-depth empirical investigation of digital content of three New Zealand based small and medium tier KIBS entities was undertaken in the forms of a qualitative content analysis and a field experiment in order to gather empirical evidence to address the research questions. Primarily Facebook and LinkedIn were used as the platforms in the analysis owing to the presence of all three participants on these SNS. The study established a new stream of research for academia synthesising KIBS and digital content marketing and visually co…
author: De Silva, Marie
keywords: B2B, Knowledge Intensive Business Services, KIBS, Digital Marketing, Digital Content, Social Media Marketing, B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Social Networking Sites, Content Engagement
date published: 2020
date modified: 2026-07-27T18:46:20Z
provider: AUT University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: AUT University