Paper info

Analysing case study data in the IMP tradition: using ethnographic content analysis for social media data analysis

Conor Drummond, Helen McGrath and Thomas O’Toole

The paper was published at the 35th IMP-conference in Paris, France in 2019.

Social media (SM) platforms are increasingly being employed by business-to-business (B2B) marketing practitioners. Although in its infancy, this is reflected by the recent surge in B2B social media research publications. Given the newness of this research space, the purpose of this paper is to review the wide-ranging methodological approaches currently adopted by publications in SM B2B research to date, highlighting the most commonly used approaches and their potential advantages and limitations. The authors propose the use of an emerging form of data analysis, ethnographic content analysis (ECA), an approach that adds the necessary reflexivity and flexibility required to study SM B2B phenomena. The authors demonstrate its applicability when coupled with an IMP perspective, highlighting their similarities and the appropriateness of the two in situ for the progression of the industrial marketing field.