From social listening to social intelligence: An empirical study of how networked companies harness the power of social media

Abstract

Social listening is becoming an imperative practice for networked companies as Web 2.0 produce an information deluge that radically transforms how business is conducted. This study aims at exploring the extent to which enterprises (in the Greek market) harness the power of social listening, going beyond the simple gathering of analytics, transforming it to social intelligence that is knowledge and insights that lead to a genuine understanding of what consumers need, love or hate from a brand, product or service. Through a qualitative research, drawing conclusions from 12 in-depth interviews, this study concludes that companies are aware of the social listening and analytics process, however they do not exploit to the maximum the offered advancements mainly due to certain corporate limitations. The study reveals variations and ambivalences on how companies approach the practice of social media listening as a result of their different internal structure and the market sector they belong to.