Business and consumer communication via online social networks: a preliminary investigation.

Many businesses are moving to online communities as a means of communicating directly with their chosen market. This paper examines the nature of business and consumer communication via Australia’s largest online social networking site, Facebook. Business and consumer communication over a five month period was evaluated for one organisation with an active, and regularly updated Facebook page. It was found that consumers are more likely to respond to communication rather than initiate communication with the organisation. Results also indicated that more frequent communication on behalf of the consumer was not related to intention to interact with the ‘bricks and mortar’ organisation. Future research aims to investigate additional organisations across a range of product categories.