International Social Media Functions: Implications

Thuy Nim

Impact of Culture on Consumers’ Use of Social Media Functions: Implications for International Social Media Marketing Strategy

I feel that I earn so much valuable knowledge from Dr. Jae Min Jung’s class. I am a business student whose concentration in marketing. During my undergraduate study, I found that what I had learned about marketing was just essential and general knowledge. Therefore, I decided to continue with the master degree to deep dive into this field. It is great that I am now in Dr. Jae Min Jung’s International Marketing Management class, from which I wished to expand my knowledge. At the beginning of the course, I got introduced to what and why Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions play a prominent role in

In my opinion, in other marketing classes, I have taught that using social media is the most excellent way for the business to promote their products or services to a massive volume of customers. However, I have not acquired any detailed information about social media like which addressed in this article. For example, seven building blocks of social media of Kietzmann will help businesses to gain more understanding of social media in order to have the right selections of social media together with upswing the attraction of customers; and social media consumption behaviors are different in each culture. Therefore, from a personal perspective, I believe Kietzmann’s seven building blocks of social media and whereby Hofstede’s cultural framework impact the social media functions make this article appear over and above the existing marketing theory and application. Moreover, this article is very well written and easy to understand. The authors provide the readers with the definition of each cultural dimension of Hofstede’s framework. Then, they show the readers how each aspect could influence in each functional building block of social media of Kietzmann. Their contributions are

Uniquely, it delivers with the knowledge that I am expecting or looking to learn. As like what I have mentioned above, I usually applied what I discovered from studying in America in my family business. For example, I acquire that using Facebook, a social media form, would help the companies successfully reach customers. However, when I apply this to my family business in Vietnam, it does not generate high outcomes. The reason is due to Vietnamese prefer to use Zalo, which is a free messenger app for smartphones. From the interface to words, its functions are closer to everyday life and associated with the culture of the Vietnamese language. Because of that, Zalo is more popular among Vietnamese community. This point was very well addressed in the article and very accurately.

3. Does the article read well? This article reads well. It informs the readers with the necessary knowledge to establish as well as apply appropriate social media platform in each country to get the most efficient results.

4. What might be limitation of the research? What would you recommend the authors to do in order to improve the value of the article? I do not think there are any limitations in this article. After I read this article, I learn so much valuable information, which I have been questioning myself for a long time. Now, I can be able to answer those questions and understand which causes audiences to have particular behaviors toward social