The corporate communication strategies that brands use on facebook: A study on automotive brands in Turkey

This study aims to determine the corporate communication strategies of the six automotive brands operating in Turkey; namely Fiat, Ford, Hyundai, Mercedes, Renault and Toyota that they use on their Facebook corporate pages and also to detect the motivations of followers to follow these corporate pages on Facebook. This research uses mixed method research technique that combines quantitative and qualitative methods. In particular, it uses the sequential mixed model from the mixed method research techniques. The population of the research consists of the automotive brands in the top 500 businesses that rank according to the output growth in 2015 list of Istanbul Chamber of Industry. The sample of the research contains the six automotive brands that rank among the 500 businesses in the list. The quantitative part of the research investigates the total 782 Facebook content that these six businesses shared via using the "content analysis form". While the sample was determined in the qualitative part of the research, the brands in the automotive sector were detected with the criterion sampling which is one of the purposeful samplings; afterwards six of them were determined randomly among these businesses. The shares shared by these six automotive brands on Facebook between 8 August 2016 and 8 February 2016 were investigated and for each brands six photographs were selected, in total 36 photographs were determined. These photographs were evaluated by using the "evaluation form". In the quantitative part of the analysis frequencies and percentages were given by using crosstabs and chi-square analysis was actualized. In the qualitative part of the analysis, the method of thematic and semiotic analysis were used. While analysing the data, SPSS 24.0 and NVIVO 11 software packages were used. At the end of the research, it is found that these brands make the most frequent Facebook sharing in the middle of the week, and the least frequent Facebook sharing during the weekends. Moreover, automotive brands make the highest number of sharing in the afternoons. In addition, the brands make shares that emphasize respectively the corporate ability strategy, the corporate social responsibility strategy and the hybrid strategy the most. In the corporate ability strategy, the brands make the highest number of shares regarding to the businesses' expertise and ability concerning their products and services. Furthermore, in the corporate social responsibility strategy, the brands make the most frequent shares regarding to special and official day celebration. According to the interactivity type, the brands make one-way shares (42%) more than two-way shares (30%) on their Facebook corporate pages. Multi-way communication takes place only (28%) on the Facebook pages of the automotive brands. Therefore, partial interaction occurs on the Facebook pages of the automotive brands. The fact that automotive brands prefer product promotion focused one way communication on their Facebook corporate pages demonstrates that these brands cannot use social media with its full potential. It is seen that automative brands in Turkey cannot use Facebook effectively and this result carries similiarity with the other research results found in the U.S.A. Key words: Facebook, corporate communication, communication strategy, automotive brands