dc.description.abstract | The research focused on explaining creative entrepreneurs’ usage of
social media (SM) to express and communicate their creative aesthetics to
customers from a socio-technical perspective. The explanation focused on
understanding how creative entrepreneurs achieve mature usage of SM.
Maturity implying SM usage such that creative processes are well integrated
with internal business operations and marketing communications to create
economic value. There are no extant explanatory frameworks that account for
creative entrepreneurs’ use of SM to express and communicate their creative
aesthetics to customers.
A qualitative research methodology using in-depth interviews with
creative entrepreneurs in the fashion, jewellery, and art industries, amongst
others was used to collect data. The in-depth interviews were semi-structured
and were designed to collect data consistent with the research objectives.
Focus was placed on how social media enables opportunity seeking and how
creative entrepreneurs exploit it using social media. The collected data was
analysed to establish patterns that reveal how social media is used to create
value.
Findings reveal several patterns of maturing use of SM. Creative
entreprenuers learn about SM strategy, tools, and techniques to incorporate
into their core creativity processes to communicate and interact with
customers. The socio-technical empirical SM maturity framework is proposed
which is composed of five empirically evidenced constructs reflecting these
patterns: SM discovery and strategy, SM tools, SM content, SM maturity, and
Outcome. It provides insight into the aesthetic and creativity acts through SM
technology of creative entrepreneurs. It reveals that creative entrepreneurs
combine their aesthetic creativity, real-time marketing, and opportunity
seeking on SM platforms to create economic value. They do this using the
unique real-time communication and interactivity features of SM that enables
real-time digital marketing of their created products. The SM maturity
framework contributes an empirically validated explanation of strategic use of
ABSTRACT
iv
SM by creative entrepreneurs for effective aesthetic value communication and
interaction with customers to create value. Maturity is integration of SM into
their creative processes to express and communicate aesthetic value and value
creation. The practical impact is that creative entrepreneurs can use the
framework for their own SM practices to express and communicate aesthetic
value and value creation. | en_US |