A Managerial View of Social Media Usage in Banking: Comparative Study for Armenian and Romanian Banking Systems

The Internet and World Wide Web have changed the interaction among people and businesses by giving birth to another type of communication; e-communication that enables business to cooperate and interact with their customers in the atmosphere where place and time are no obstacles anymore. And social media plays an important role in this e-communication with its diverse channels by becoming the best way for both businesses and customers, to do what they have always done: communicate, build relationships, and exchange information. It has drastically changed the environment we live in, the way we think, react, ask and share opinions, look information and make choice. Social Media has influenced more or less all business areas and banking industry no exception in this. The interest point of this article is social media in banking area: benefits, advantages and challenges. Social media is almost an endless source and e-banking management needs to identify ways to make profitable use of social media. This comparative research is focused on social media usage in Romanian and Armenian banks and the managerial view on its advantages, barriers and challenges. Based on theoretical researches we set hypotheses and test them by doing survey among Romanian and Armenian banking managers.