THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR MARKETING PURPOSES BY CZECH COMPANIES DOING BUSINESS IN THE ENVIRONMENT OF SERVICES ON THE INTERNET: A NATIONAL SURVEY

Social media are important tools for marketing activities in the environment of services on the internet. In the introductory section of this contribution, we aggregate and compare the outcomes of previous surveys focused on the use of social media by Czech companies. The following part presents original research on a sample of 4,584 Czech companies which do business in the environment of services on the internet. The survey particularly deals with the use of social media linked to a company's website with the purpose of enabling integrated marketing communication and creating synergy of interactions in this environment. The results presented here are interesting for companies when selecting an initial mix of social media, as they can choose communication tools relevant to their business and keep track of the use of these tools by their competitors. A general conclusion of this survey is that Czech companies doing business via internet use social media to a relatively small extent (compared to the USA, for instance) and therefore the effective use of social media for marketing purposes may still be considered a competitive advantage. Moreover 62 % of these companies don't use any social media (apart from a website with e-mail or contact form) for communication via internet.