Co-creating value in social media. Universities' utilization of Facebook.
Peltomäki, Johanna (2016)
Kuvaus
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Tiivistelmä
Despite the increased interest toward co-creation of value, the understanding of essential factors that affect co-creation of value in social media is fairly limited. This thesis focuses on 10 Finnish universities’ master’s degree programs, and their current stage and execution of co-creation of value on Facebook, which is one of the most used social media sites today. Moreover, this thesis focuses on essential areas that affect universities co-creation of value in social media. Based on the literature review there are four important building blocks to be successful in value co-creation and they are: 1) dialogue, 2) access, 3) risk-benefits, and 4) transparency. Moreover, earlier literature highlights the importance of unique and quality interactions in value co-creation.
The empirical results are collected through primary data of semi-structured interviews from students and universities’ Facebook pages’ administrators, and through secondary data that was collected online from Facebook and universities’ websites. Literature re-view and collected data in this thesis aims to show the current stage of co-creation of value in social media in university context, and show what needs to be taken into ac-count to enhance co-creation of value in social media. Empirical results indicate that all four building blocks play essential roles in value co-creation, and that there is a need to understand and utilize these building blocks to be able to create unique and quality interactions in social media. Based on the interviews and gathered data online, the four main findings are the following: 1) dialogues with and among the users of Facebook barely exists, 2) access to master’s degree programs’ Facebook pages is low, mainly be-cause of their the limited existence, 3) transparency of information in master’s degree programs’ Facebook pages is low, and lastly 4) because of the issues with dialogue, access and transparency building blocks, administrators and students seem to have more risks than benefits regarding the co-creation of value process.
The empirical results are collected through primary data of semi-structured interviews from students and universities’ Facebook pages’ administrators, and through secondary data that was collected online from Facebook and universities’ websites. Literature re-view and collected data in this thesis aims to show the current stage of co-creation of value in social media in university context, and show what needs to be taken into ac-count to enhance co-creation of value in social media. Empirical results indicate that all four building blocks play essential roles in value co-creation, and that there is a need to understand and utilize these building blocks to be able to create unique and quality interactions in social media. Based on the interviews and gathered data online, the four main findings are the following: 1) dialogues with and among the users of Facebook barely exists, 2) access to master’s degree programs’ Facebook pages is low, mainly be-cause of their the limited existence, 3) transparency of information in master’s degree programs’ Facebook pages is low, and lastly 4) because of the issues with dialogue, access and transparency building blocks, administrators and students seem to have more risks than benefits regarding the co-creation of value process.