Mobilising competitive intelligence as a social media tool for strategic marketing communication of restaurants in Durban.

Abstract

The study focuses on mobilising competitive intelligence as a social media tool for strategic marketing communication for restaurants in Durban. It demonstrates how social media has become important in implementing strategic marketing communication in recent times by mobilising competitive intelligence in mining the data generated on restaurant social media platforms. In putting the study in context, the study used the social exchange theory and the technological determinism theory as the theoretical framework to explain the phenomenon. The study also used secondary data methodology through a systematic review approach. The article consulted electronic resources such as articles on the internet, EBSCOHOST, JSTOR, and Google Scholar. The articles consulted ranged from 1976 to 2022 and were searched from a global perspective, especially the Western countries of the global north, and finally narrowed down to South Africa. Websites, like JSTOR and Google Scholar produced 90% of the search results, though Google Scholar was most dominant. The study concluded that the strategic marketing communication team must ensure that the restaurants are on social media platforms where they can mine customers data using the competitive intelligence tool and plan their marketing communication approach based on that data.