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An executive summary for managers and executive readers can be found at the end of this article.
1. Introduction
The social media revolution has altered the communication landscape and has significantly impacted marketing communication. The growing importance of applications like Facebook, Youtube and others in consumers' lives has an increasing influence on their communication habits. With consumers spending more and more time in the social media realm, an increasing share of communication occurs within these new social network environments. In respect to marketing communication, this means that brand related interactions and exposure to marketing campaigns increasingly take place within social media (SM). The emerging communication setup has thereby transformed consumers from being passive participants in marketing to being active creators and influencers ([40] Kozinets et al. , 2008, [46] Merz et al. , 2009) and has shifted some power over brands directly to the consumer ([13] Constantinides and Fountain, 2008). [6] Bernoff and Li (2008) refer to this increasing influence of the user as "the growing groundswell of customer power" and "cultural shift in a customer-centric direction". Traditional one-way communication in marketing has been transformed into a multi-dimensional two-way peer-to-peer communication reality ([7] Berthon et al. , 2008).
This new marketing communication reality presents new challenges and opportunities for companies as purchase decisions are increasingly influenced by social media interactions. People rely more than ever on their social networks when making those decisions ([24] Hinz et al. , 2011). Since an increasing part of this network is situated within the social media space and a large part of the communication within the network is happening in this space, SM platforms exhibit an important role in consumer decision-making. Facebook and Co. become new key players for branding activities.
Nevertheless, outcomes of social media activities are still disputed among practitioners and managers ([25] Hoffman and Fodor, 2010). The effects of social media campaigns on consumers' perception of products and brands as well as the impact on purchase decisions have yet to be better understood ([16] Edelman, 2010; [5] Barwise and Meehan, 2010). The potential drawbacks of SM activities like the spread of negative word of mouth and information overload causing disturbance and annoyance ([45] McCoy et al. , 2007), and the difficulties in measuring an added-value...