Information Economy in Germany - Social Media Use Varies Significantly

Social media increasingly find their way into everyday life. Not only private users, but also companies discover the potentials of these interactive media. Thus, one out of two companies in the information economy currently uses social media. Media service providers and ICT service providers are particularly frequent users of social media. There is a wide range of possible applications for social media, and for many companies, the placement of their profiles in social media is a primary target. These are the results of a representative survey among approx. 1,000 companies of the information economy conducted by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in June 2012.

Almost 78 per cent of media service providers use social media, making this group the pioneers within the information economy. The ICT service providers are closely on their heels with a utilisation rate of 71 per cent. The utilisation rate, however, in the ICT hardware sector and among knowledge-intensive service providers is comparatively low. Due to the heterogeneity of the knowledge-intensive service providers, there are significant discrepancies concerning the intensity of social media use within this group. While only 42 per cent of the companies of the sub-sector use social media, the utilisation rates of consultancies and companies in the advertising sector, which strongly depend on communicating with their customers, clearly exceed 60 per cent.

The placement of corporate profiles in social networks (31 per cent of the companies) as well as the integration of feedback features for customers on the company’s webpage (24 per cent of the companies) are the most frequently used social media applications. The diffusion of corporate wikis (7.2 per cent), microblogging for example via Twitter (4.3 per cent), as well as corporate blogs (4.2 per cent) including product or brand blogs as well as service and campaign blogs is clearly smaller.

Nearly 16 per cent of the companies within this economic sector which do not yet use social media plan to apply them within the next two years. Against this backdrop, some 80 per cent of ICT service providers are expected to use social media until 2014. This is no big surprise, since more than 41 per cent of all companies within the information economy expect an increasing importance of social media for the success of business in the near future.

63 per cent of the companies in the sector information economy are also using social media to follow posts and discussions on their own company or on the products or services they offer. This enables them to respond immediately to suggestions and critics, which are not submitted to the company itself. The share of companies using social media in this way is again above average among media (83 per cent) and ICT service providers (72 per cent).

For further information please contact

Dr. Jörg Ohnemus, Phone +49 621/1235-354, E-mail ohnemus@zew.de

The Economic Survey Conducted by ZEW

Businesses with a minimum of five employees are contacted in the quarterly survey conducted by ZEW. The companies surveyed belong to the following business sectors: (1) ICT hardware, (2) ICT service providers, (3) media, (4) law and tax consultancy, accounting (5) public relations and business consultancy, (6) architectural and engineering offices, technical, physical and chemical analysis, (7) research and development, (8) advertising industry and market research, (9) other freelance, academic and technical activities. All nine sectors combined make up the economic sector of the information economy. The ICT sector consists of ICT hardware and ICT service providers. The last six sectors make up the knowledge-intensive service providers.

Overview of the ZEW economy survey (German language only)