تحقیقات رسانه های اجتماعی در زمینه بازارهای نوظهور: تحلیل ادبیات موجود از منظر سیستم های اطلاعاتی Social media research in the context of emerging markets: An analysis of extant literature from information systems perspective

1. Introduction Social media has become an indispensable part of our day today life. Social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and Twitter are merely regarded as a platform for sharing daily updates and pictures by the majority of the population (Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2012). However, these platforms have proved to be low-cost information exchange mediums for the variety of stakeholders, be they consumers, organisations, or government to improve and circulate an central idea (Dwivedi et al., 2016). Social media is defined as the group of internet-based applications built on foundations laid by Web 2.0 (current stage of the interactive internet from 2004 to today), which allows seamless creation and exchange of user-generated content (UGC) that is various forms of publicly available content created by end-users (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Social media plays a pivotal role in deciding consumer preferences through novel peer-to-peer targeted marketing techniques and demand prediction (Aral et al., 2013; Plume et al., 2016). Such online platforms and applications can also be utilised to facilitate buying and selling of products (Abed et al., 2015, 2016). It has huge scope to accelerate innovation and new product development within organisations by acting as a catalyst for knowledge exchange (Aral et al., 2013; Rathore, Ilavarasan and Dwivedi, 2016). Social media application in organisations takes various forms, namely, corporate blogs, employee blogs, crowdsourcing and enterprise social media (Dwivedi et al., 2015, 2016). The majority of these applications help organisations in information sharing, learning and enhancing employees’ job performance (Aral et al., 2013). They also facilitate the creation, integration, seeking, transfer, management and contribution of knowledge in organisations (Aral et al., 2013). The greatest advantage of social media applications for firms is that it not only enables them to communicate with their customers but also allows them to communicate with each other (Ismagilova et al., 2017; Mangold and Faulds, 2009). Communication between customers and firms can help to build brand loyalty better than traditional methods (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Societal applications of social media include but not limited to digital democracy, e-politics, open government, community empowerment and civic engagement (Dwivedi et al., 2016, 2017; Kapoor and Dwivedi, 2015). The unprecedented growth of social media has far-reaching impacts and has inspired research across multiple disciplines from economics to sociology, marketing, computer science and strategy (Aral et al., 2013). The cross-disciplinary nature of research activity in the social media suggests a central role for information systems (IS) scholars in this domain (Aral et al., 2013). Social media has become an indispensable part of our day today life with 2.3 billion users worldwide representing almost one in three of the total world population of 7.39 billion in 2016.