بخش پنهان بازاریابی رسانه های اجتماعی: دیدگاه یک کاربر Shadow Side of Social Media Marketing: A User’s Perspective

Introduction Digital transformation initiatives are forcing organizations to envisage new ways of marketing their products and services (Trapp, 2016). The relatively new phenomenon of social media marketing, accelerated by Web 2.0 broadcasting, promises to have great potential for reaching out to a wider set of social media audiences and establishing engagement within a very short span of time using limited resources (Chen, De, & Hu, 2015). It is expected that the number of social media users will grow to 2.95 billion by 2020 (Statista, 2017). A recent survey indicates that the top two reasons for the use of social media marketing communication are (1) to increase exposure to the organization’s business so as to increase traffic, and (2) to generate leads for sales of products and services. Though many small and large firms are making considerable investments in social media initiatives with a view to enhancing their profits, there are many unresolved uncertainties related to the envisaged returns (Dickinson-Delaporte & Kerr, 2014). Notwithstanding the fact that academic research has examined social media marketing and its implications from diverse perspectives such as service science, information systems, psychology, and law, it is still a nascent research domain with several unanswered questions (see Alves, Fernandes, & Raposo, 2016; Kao, Yang, Wu, & Cheng, 2016; Mackey & Liang, 2013; Thies, Wessel, & Benlian, 2016; Tushnet, 2010; Xie & Young-Jin, 2015). The current study aims to extend the extant understanding on the subject by addressing a few significant gaps. The social media environment is characterized by the participation, openness, conversation, community, and connectedness of its users, resulting in a number of advantages. Consequently, most academic research and popular press on the subject focuses on the affordances or the bright side of social media marketing. But as with any other technology mediated phenomenon, social media marketing has many intended and unintended constraints that constitute the dark side and have larger ramifications for different stakeholder groups (Majchrzak, Markus, & Wareham, 2016).