Social Media Use and Absorptive Capacity of Greek Food & Beverage Firms

As the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media increasingly change our lives, all the extensive capabilities they offer are exploited by firms, using them to promote and advertise their products, to improve and strengthen their external communication with their customers, as well as the internal communication among firm's employees, and even to improve their absorptive capacity, which is of critical importance for their innovativeness. Several different forms of social media use by firms, starting from simpler and advancing to more sophisticated ones, have been developed and are increasingly used by firms. The objective of this study is to understand the extent and the forms of social media usage by firms of the Greek food and beverage sector, which is one of the most important sectors of the Greek economy; and especially to examine to what extent are used the more sophisticated forms of social media use that can contribute to the improvement of firm's absorptive capacity. Our theoretical foundation and lens is Affordances Theory. Our research methodology is based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques. We conduct semi-structured interviews with seven firms from the Greek food & beverage sector, which include questionnaire filling. From the analysis of the qualitative and quantitative data collected it has been concluded that these firms are unter-utilizing the potential of social media, using mainly the simpler forms of social media use, but not the more sophisticated ones, especially the ones that can improve their absorptive capacity.