The impact of social capital on enterprise marketing is twofold and has both positive and negative effects. The positive impact of social capital on enterprise marketing is manifested in five areas, namely, reducing agency costs, improving the efficiency of marketing organizations, promoting the construction of an open marketing organization governance model, providing more business opportunities and increasing customer satisfaction; and the negative impact of social capital on business marketing is manifested in distortions of competition and rigidity in marketing。
Overview of the literature
The social capital study began with the development and refinement of concepts and analytical methods for social capital by scholars such as pierre boudieu, jean-claude passerlen, glenn lowrey and others, james coleman, ronald burt, bert putnam and pots. Since the 1990s, social capital has emerged as an important starting point for topical concepts and analyses of concern in many disciplines. The study of social capital in the 1980s and 1990s was best carried out in two areas: the new sociology of economic development, which studied the ethics of entrepreneurship from a micro-level perspective, and the study of the comparative system of state and social relations from a macro-level perspective. Current research on social capital focuses on social theory, economic development, enterprise development and entrepreneurship, social behaviour and problems, school education, community life, work and organization, democracy and governance, and universal cases of collective action. Since the theory of social capital entered the field of management in the second half of the 1990s, management studies using the theory's perspectives and research methods have yielded fruitful results. Foreign scholars are applying the concept of social capital to work performance, resource conversion, organizational innovation, inter-organizational cooperation, etc。
In the definition of social capital, different scholars define it differently from their fields of study to their subjects. According to budieu, “[social capital is] the sum of real or virtual resources. For individuals and groups, it is a natural accumulation because the lasting network to be owned is more or less institutionalized as mutual acquiescence and teamability.” according to putnam, social capital “means the characteristics of social organization, such as trust, norms and networks, which can improve the efficiency of society by promoting coordinated action”. According to pots, “social capital refers to the ability of individuals in networks or broader social structures to mobilize scarce resources”. In coleman's view, social capital is “not a homogeneity, but a multitude of different types, with two things in common: they cover certain aspects of the social fabric and favour certain actions of individuals in the same structure. Like other forms of capital, social capital is productive, making it possible to achieve certain objectives. Without it, these objectives will not be achieved”。
Social capital in the area of marketing should be a resource that helps enterprises to obtain cheaper supplies of goods, develop better products, provide faster distribution channels, and gain early access to competitive intelligence, which is carried by social relations networks in a variety of forms, such as trust, institutions, customs, traditional culture, etc. The current domestic literature does not provide an in-depth study of the impact of social capital on the marketing of enterprises, and this paper examines the positive and negative effects of social capital on the marketing of enterprises。
Ii. The positive role of social capital in marketing
L. Reducing agency costs
Many marketing organizations are not integrated. At that point, the marketing organization would have to make a profit on behalf of the products of other enterprises. Inevitably, the agent, as a limited and rational economic person, would have moral hazard and a reverse choice. The client therefore needs to reduce the costs of representation by establishing a series of norms and systems. As an important component of corporate social capital, these norms and systems (including contracts, regulatory regimes, legal systems, etc.) provide a stable institutional basis for improving the management of marketing organizations. Businesses need to rely on the authority of managers to promote the implementation of norms and systems, and they need to strengthen their indoctrination through networks of intra-firm relationships. Because of the unverifiable and undetectable character of the agent's actions, the social capital generated within the enterprise in this relatively closed network, based on the spirit of cooperation, such as trust, reputation, etc., contributes to the self-enhancement of the agent's personality and morality, prompts them to abandon their self-interest and to act consciously on the will of their clients, which will help to establish a dual mechanism of restraint that combines the supervisory and self-regulating mechanisms of the enterprise, thereby effectively reducing the cost of representation。
2. Improving the efficiency of marketing organizations
Corporate social capital contributes to making corporate governance more effective. From an intra-firm perspective, the social capital of an enterprise enables its employees to gain mutual trust from shared norms and values, enhances communication and communication, thereby enhancing the spirit of cooperation and innovation among employees, and also contributes to the promotion of coordination between the various sectors and sectors of the enterprise and individuals in order to effectively address collective action issues, ensure optimal levels of enterprise-wide decision-making and problem-solving capacity, promote efficiency in governance and create more economic value. Access to resources is considered to be the most important function of social capital. Budieu believes that, through social capital, enterprises can obtain the required resources from outside. If a marketing organization has a well-established network of socially beneficial relationships, it will be able to increase the availability of scarce economic resources, such as information, technology, finance and other resources, from other enterprises, scientific research institutions, universities, financial institutions, and relevant government departments, in support of the enterprise's objectives, thereby contributing effectively to the efficiency of marketing organizations。
3. Promotion of open marketing organization governance under network economic conditions
Under the conditions of the network economy, firms become a node in the network economy, and the impetus for cooperation at the network nodes is an essential organizing principle in the network economy, which will facilitate a shift in corporate governance from a single enterprise model to an open one. In the process of building an open business governance model, enterprises, in cooperation with other nodes in the network economy, generate a large amount of corporate social capital, including network agreements, common ethics and trust. The resulting corporate social capital, in turn, is a key factor in the development of an open corporate governance model that provides a smoother, easier and cheaper information platform for business-to-network exchanges and communication with other nodes in the network economy, helps to address the underlying information asymmetries in corporate governance, the high cost of governance and, more broadly, access to scarce resources for enterprises, thus ensuring their cross-border development。
