The contribution of dialogic communication to social customer relations management: A research on corporate brands

Since it was realized that there were many opportunities provided by social media to institutions, many organizations and institutions operating in various markets started to get active in these media. In that context, today it can be argued that especially commercial institutions and organizations are effectively managing their integrated marketing communication activities through social media. At this point, another subject that demands attention is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) activities that these institutions carry out over social media. This process, called the Social Customer Relationship Management (Social CRM), essentially involves a new understanding of CRM. Studies about the social media activities of these organizations demonstrate that 'Dialogic Communication Principles' that Kent and Taylor proposed in order to explain the relationship development capacities of websites, are starting to be applied to social media, and institutional social media accounts are being analyzed within the context of this theory. In this study, the official social media accounts of food brands based on İzmir was first analyzed in the context of Kent and Taylor's Dialogic Communication Principles through qualitative and quantitative content analyses, with the goal of interpreting the contribution of dialogic communication to customer relationship based content that brands shared on social media. Secondly, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the managers of social media accounts of the same brands, and data from these interviews were analyzed with the help of descriptive analysis method, attempting to learn about the expectations of the participants about Social CRM activities and the future of this new approach. Within the context of the conducted studies, it was observed that many brands included in this study followed the dialogic communication principles in their official social media accounts and they attempted to create dialogue and obtain feedback by frequently asking questions to their followers. Derived conclusions from the interviews show that all participants described their purpose for their social media presence as performing public relations and customer relationship activities. At the end of the dissertation, data from the conducted studies were compared with findings in the existing literature on this subject and conclusions that were drawn from these studies were discussed and interpreted.