Exploring the development of social media communication strategies in the U.S. pet industry

The meteoric rise and increasing importance of social media over the last decade begs the question whether this platform represents an incremental technological change within a firm's macroenvironment, where social media is considered as a new media platform extending the application of new technologies and offering organisations additional media opportunities to promote their offerings in a traditional way, like advertising on computers instead of television. Alternatively does the new social media environment represent a radical disruptive shift from existing media platforms therefore providing new opportunities and threats not accounted for in classical strategic marketing and strategic communication theories? The purpose of this paper is to review the current strategy theories relating to planning and understanding of traditional media communication and evaluate whether they are still appropriate and applicable in understanding and planning social media communication strategies. Newer interactional and relational strategy theories derived from network theory and Service Dominant Logic will be proposed and qualitatively studied to explore whether they offer superior alternatives to understanding Social Media Strategising within the context of the U.S. Pet care industry.