A lure or a turn-off: social media reactions to business model innovation announcements

Abstract

How do people react to business model innovation (BMI) announcements on social media? Is the analysis of social media reactions to BMI announcements a fruitful method for assessing the potential and pitfalls of BMIs? This research provides a novel perspective by answering these questions using a multi-case study approach. Our results show that social media reactions to BMI announcements can provide first indications of the success or failure of a BMI as well as initial information on how to further adjust the BMI. However, our results also indicate that classical means of assessing the success of innovations (i.e., through assessing the valence of user reactions) are not effective in the context of BMIs.