Differential effects of firm generated content on consumer digital engagement and firm performance: An outside-in perspective

Abstract Social media contains a massive amount of information, which provides researchers and practitioners with an invaluable source of data to conduct research from end-users' perspectives, in order to influence firm strategic choices. Although an extensive amount of research has been developed in B2C and B2B marketing context, few social media studies take a dive into potential linkages between external and internal marketing contexts in an industry specific paradigm. This study aims to bridge B2C and B2B social media marketing, by adopting the outside-in perspective as theoretical lens. Using a large-scale dataset, collected from a micro-blogging site, and consumer-oriented information assembled from multiple sources, we empirically examine the inter-relationship between firm-generated messages, consumer digital engagement, and firm sales performance in the movie industry. Theoretically, this study builds upon the outside-in perspective and extends the current knowledge of the outside-in perspective to the social media context. It also bridges the B2C and B2B marketing literature by demonstrating that the insight garnered from B2C social media interactions should be integrated into the B2B firm interactions, communications, and decision makings. Managerially, this study provides movie practitioners with important implications.