Executive Summary Impacting B2B Business Development with Social Media

Recent academic and practitioner studies indicated that Social Media in B2B-Business Development is an emerging phenomenon with little direction and scant guidance. While Social Media has received extensive attention in Business-To-Consumer, there is a paucity of Business-To-Business studies with joint research being a novelty. This research explored and explained how Social Media impacts the B2B-Business Development process cycle in the software solutions and services environment by testing a conceptual model applying a cross-sectional survey of more than 530 practitioners. This research developed a conceptual framework of different fields such as Relationship Marketing and Information System Theory incorporating Social Capital and Usage Criteria as critical moderators leading to new business. The B2B-Business Development process represents constructs conceptualizing the behavioral outcome of the business performance. The cross-sectional research design included open-ended expert, qualitative semi-structured interviews with gatekeepers and decision-makers complemented by an online survey. The findings supported the research model and produced substantial contributions.