In the previous post, I discussed some results of a survey where we asked about how companies can use social media to achieve competitive advantage.
In that survey, Prof. Quy Huy and I, also asked participants to tell us how the structure of their industries was affected by the introduction of social media tools.
We conceptualized industry structure by using the well known Porter’s 5 Forces framework. Essentially, we asked about the impact that the introduction of social media had on barriers to entry in the respondent’s industry (i.e. did the barriers to entry increase, decrease or remain the same), intensity of competition (i.e. did it increase, decrease, remain the same), power of buyers (i.e. did this power increase, decrease or remain the same), power of suppliers (i.e. did this power increase, decrease or remain the same) and the threats of substitutes (i.e. did these threats increase, decrease or remain the same)...