Designing the Social Media Branding Model of Iranian food Manufacturing Companies Using Grounded Theory

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD Candidate, Department of Business Management, Shahrood Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrood, Iran.

2 Associate Prof., Department of Accounting, Faculty of Administrative Sciences, Imam Reza International University, Mashhad, Iran.

3 Assistant Prof., Department of Business Management, Shahrood Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrood, Iran.

Abstract

Objective
Today, social media marketing as one of the marketing channels has grown a lot and offers unique potential to create a strong brand. Social media marketing can be used as part of a broader marketing strategy, an established channel for marketing and communications, or as a series of small promotional events focused solely on enhancing a brand's digital presence. In the social media environment, brand experiences are mainly created through the Internet, which enables multisensory communication between consumers and brands. In particular, brands are using rich social media in their business, which is important to promote interactions and ultimately, the brand experience. Branding is a communication model and communication itself is always two-way, which means that brand identity and brand image and mentality are all of great importance. Therefore, the purpose of the current research is to design a social media branding model for food manufacturing companies in Iran.
Research Methodology
This research is a type of qualitative research that was conducted using the approach based on the Grounded Theory. In Glaser's emergent approach, interview and textual data are coded. Data coding has two stages and three steps: basic or true coding (open and selective coding) and theoretical coding. After the interview, the open coding process begins. The output of the open coding stage is basic codes. Open coding is done by coding line by line, phrase by phrase or paragraph by paragraph of the data.The statistical population included academic experts and industrial experts. University experts, including members of the academic staff with a doctorate in business and marketing management, and industrial experts, including vice presidents and managers of marketing and sales of manufacturing companies with at least 10 years of work experience, were selected using a targeted sampling approach, with a total of 15 people as participants. Participants were selected for the research. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews. In order to obtain the reliability and validity of the data, the method of reviewing and checking the opinions of the participants was used. In this research, the coding method was used to analyze the data in the qualitative part.
Findings
The result of this research was to present a social media branding model for Iranian manufacturing companies with 9 main categories (criteria), and 26 indicators. Information technology criterion, brand criterion, marketing criterion, communication criterion, advertising criterion, product criterion, customer criterion, sales criterion and internal organizational criterion are nine criteria identified for the branding model based on social media of food manufacturing companies. One of the ways to measure the validity of foundation data research is to review the two criteria of appropriateness and applicability of the results and also to comment on the empirical roots of the research. To evaluate the validity of the model, at the time of data collection and in each order of coding, theory matching was done and in each order, with access to more subjective words, the emerging indicators were matched with the data. Finally, with the research model out, the model was provided to 5 interviewees (one-third of the total number of interviewees) and they were surveyed regarding the matching of the model with their conversations. Also, the interviewees were surveyed about the appropriateness and applicability of the model, and the following changes were made:

Appropriateness: Negotiations and consensus were conducted with all five interviewees regarding the extent of matching the model with the real environment of the industry, and in the end, the names of a number of indicators were changed.
Applicability: By successively comparing the data with the backgrounds and theoretical bases of the research and surveying the interviewees in the framework of the questions in each order of the interviews, the angle of applicability was also met.

Discussion & Conclusion
In today's highly competitive markets, company managers are looking for new ways to inform people about their products and improve their brand. On the other hand, a large number of marketing managers insist on ways to reduce costs and save their marketing costs with the aim of increasing competitiveness and competitive advantage. The phenomenon of the revolution of communications and the Internet has created fundamental changes in the nature and structure of power in various societies. Today, marketers have a broad view of social media and use it as a new tool to maintain beneficial communication with customers. The marketing process based on social media increases interaction, communication and sense of attachment between customers and companies. One of these new methods of branding based on social media is modeled in this research.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

 
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Media Management Review
Volume 3, Issue 1
2024
Pages 85-110

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