Presenting a systemic model for the effectiveness of marketing communication activities in social networks: with a political economy approach

Considering the emerging potential of social media marketing for companies worldwide and the common gaps in social media research, attention to social networks in the consumer and corporate domains is an important goal. Political economy also studies social relations, especially power relations, which include mutual relations between production, distribution and consumption of resources such as communication resources. Considering the relationship between these two concepts, in the current research, the effective factors on the effectiveness of marketing activities in social networks have been investigated with an emphasis on the political economy approach. The purpose of this research is an applied research that is conducted in the retail industry (chain stores). Also, in terms of the type of research, it is a qualitative-quantitative research that is carried out in two phases. The statistical population of the current research includes Refah, Janbo, Haft, Ofok Korosh, Shahrvand chain stores that do marketing activities on the Instagram social network and have two separate statistical samples. In the qualitative stage, after coding and extracting the main and secondary themes, the desired model was checked and confirmed using structural equations. In the quantitative part, in response to the first question, the highest impact is related to the audience attraction structure, and it is concluded that due to the interactive nature of social networks, it is necessary to know the opportunities and challenges of using these networks in business and marketing matters, including interaction and communication with customers. In response to the second question, the highest impact related to the structure of cost reduction, followed by brand preference and brand awareness, and it is noted that companies that are not active in the field of social networks or have little activity in the world of competition in terms of price and also the correct and sufficient use of social networking pages as a sustainable competitive advantage will suffer from defects and in response to the third question that the highest effects are related to survey structures and influential people, it is suggested that companies use the contents of survey tools on their social pages more.