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Introduction
Social media (SM) has a ubiquitous presence in marketing in general (Valos et al., 2014), particularly in a business-to-consumer (B2C) context. Although business-to-business (B2B) SM research is still in its infancy (Bocconcelli et al., 2017; Quinton and Wilson, 2016; Swani et al., 2014), we know that industrial marketing practice is profiting from SM use by marketers (Salo, 2017). Yet, we know surprisingly little about SM from a relationship and network marketing perspective (Bocconcelli et al., 2017; Singaraju et al., 2016) or within an entrepreneurial B2B context (Drummond et al., 2018; Sigfusson and Chetty, 2013).
The potential benefit of SM marketing for the entrepreneurial firm lies in its ability to generate value in relationships and networks. For the entrepreneurial venture, its low resource commitment, ease of implementation and simplicity to use (Chahine and Malhotra, 2018; Georgescu and Popescul, 2015) compared to traditional marketing communications has particular appeal. SM allows participants to connect, share information and begin dialogue with one another (Leek et al., 2016), mobilise resources (Drummond et al., 2018), aid the sales process (Agnihotri et al., 2016) and intensify relationships with existing industrial partners (Jussila et al., 2012). Additional applicable advantages include; its marketing campaign efficiency and effectiveness (Iankova et al., 2018), immediate responses (Jussila et al., 2012), a place to connect with virtually no barriers to entry (Toppi et al., 2012), helping to create awareness, build brand image and share knowledge in existing B2B connections (Andzulis et al., 2013).
While the benefits of SM marketing are attractive, rapid digitalisation can bring accelerated complexity for managers, firms and markets, which require new thinking about marketing capabilities (Day, 2011). Responding to marketing capability gaps, this research focuses on SM marketing capability, defined as the ability of the entrepreneurial firm to connect, engage, co-ordinate and collaborate in interaction with business exchange partners. In interaction is significant and central to the industrial network (Håkansson and Snehota, 2006; Håkansson et al., 2009) and relational exchange perspectives (Dyer and Singh, 1998; Lorenzoni and Lipparini, 1999), the theoretical lens adopted for this study. As such, the capability is positioned as being developed and fine-tuned in interaction with business customers, suppliers, distributors and competitors. In line...