Contextual Exploration of Processes Leading to Profit Orientation through Social Media Marketing

According to the existing definition of social media, it should be said that the expansion of these media has changed the interaction pattern of companies, brands, and reaching customers and at the same time provided unique opportunities to create brand awareness and ultimately influence people's purchasing decisions. For this reason, sites and social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc. have had a very important place in entrepreneurship, business, and marketing. In this sense, it should be said that marketing is not dependent on being present in the real world, while a large part of this marketing takes place in the heart of the media. The important point is that companies in this field do not limit their goals to geographical frameworks and have an opinion on a wider space that the media have made possible with their trans-spatial features. For this reason, it is important to discover and analyze the ways of managing and implementing marketing through the media by different companies and organizations. In fact, knowing their processes requires a deep investigation. For this reason, an attempt was made in this research to analyze the dynamics and internal processes governing them by focusing on the category of marketing and expanding this concept to the media space besides answering the question of what processes in the profit-oriented environment of media prevail and organize and direct social media marketing.

According to its purpose, this research used qualitative methodology and the strategy of grounded theory with Strauss and Corbin’s systematic approach. Besides, theoretical sampling was used and continued until theoretical saturation so as to obtain the final theory. Theoretical saturation was achieved after in-depth interviews with 15 marketing managers of companies and business owners in social networks. The data collected in this research were analyzed by using the 3 stages of open, central, and selective coding in a timely and coherent process. During this research, it was tried to pay attention to ethical considerations, such as detailed explanation of the research objective, method of publishing the results, participants’ informed consent, respect for privacy, and maintenance of anonymity and confidentiality. Reliability of the research findings was achieved by using strategies, such as long-term participation in the research field, member review, colleague review, and rich description. The research reliability was confirmed by following the principles and points of the interviews, as well as accurate recording of the events and their implementations.

The results of this research were presented in the forms of 11 main categories and 1 core category along with a paradigm model, story line, and theoretical model. The findings indicated that "transnational market development" as the final phenomenon was the center of gravity for marketing activities through social media. This phenomenon included both economic dynamics within the companies and social relations between the companies and customers. The possibility of considering network markets in this article was based on the efforts of the companies to distribute products and not limit their customers to a single geographical location, which required using social media for introducing their products. Building this type of market in the heart of social networks always requires strategies that will bring up results after applying those strategies. Finally, it should be stated that profit-based motives that companies and businesses try to achieve through media marketing cause the dynamics governing the network market. In this sense, it should be said that their actions and reactions are purposefully focused on profit. These goal-oriented rational actions exist in all stages including assessment of social needs, production, advertisement, distribution, competition, branding, and social interactions with customers.