You Talk, We Listen, Everyone Benefits: A qualitative study of value creation through digital corporate listening for different company sizes on the German market

Abstract

The following paper contributes to the current challenge of communicators to clarify the value creation potential of digital Corporate Listening (DCL), which is crucial for companies to prepare relevant content for customers and strengthen trust in brands. As a theoretical basis, DCL is classified into the value creation process of the company on three levels: The measures at the operational level, the communicative value creation through Secondary Alignment and the corporate value creation through Primary Alignment. The aim of the study is to find out to what extent B2C companies of different sizes operating on the German market create value from the Customer Voice through DCL. The interviews with communication professionals re-sponsible for DCL confirm corporate and communicative value creation across all company sizes. The integration of the Customer Voice into the communication strategy is considered important, but the specific implementation and the contribution to communicative value creation vary depending on the company and context. Most companies still face challenges in the widespread implementation of Secondary Alignment. In particular, the lack of resources and personnel as well as time constraints limit the influence of the Customer Voice on communication activities. Differences in the activities, processes and structures of DCL can be identified regardless of company size and range from systematization facilitated by software to manual frequency analyses. The differences in processes can be assumed to lie with the level of digital skills of those responsible. Communicators are recommended to invest in their skills training in the areas of strategic thinking and digital competencies.