Non-strategic, non-institutionalized actors as catalyst to marketers' strategy change: the case of travel blogs

Official URL: http://euram2012.mindworks.ee/public/papers/paper/797

In a Social Media driven world, the role and importance of external agents of change situated beyond organization management teams and consultants have the potential to radically alter management innovation. In contrast to most strategic management and marketing literature frameworks, in this study, we focus on the role of non-strategic, non-institutionalized actors -bloggers- as catalysts to market strategy change and managerial innovation. Results show, for the travel industry, that altruistic information from bloggers has a significant effect. Additionally, we further incorporate first-hand informational experiences that challenge managers’ and marketers’ imprecision and ambiguity; the importance of having an array of underrated information themes preventing the camouflage of omitted information under discussion and challenging marketers’ information all significantly strengthen the previous effect. These results suggest that a stronger pull effect is appearing driven by non-strategic external agents, social media and non-official information that challenges the received wisdom regarding the source of management innovation.