Dutch Media Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Social Media Branding & Interactions

Currently, social media is playing a vital role in lifestyle entrepreneurs’ startups. As a city that’s growing in popularity, Rotterdam is a place of entrepreneurial opportunities for innovations. To examine the influence social media has on the emerging Rotterdam brands, this research studies how Dutch lifestyle entrepreneurs use social media to develop brands and interactions. There are various literature on entrepreneurial brands and social media marketing. However, since entrepreneurial business is less rational and coherent than corporations due to different circumstances and entrepreneurial states, conducting this research on Dutch lifestyle entrepreneurs connects existing theories and concepts to the cultural and economic makeup of Dutch startups. Fifteen in-depth interviews were conducted among Dutch lifestyle entrepreneurs operating in the art, fashion, food and technology sectors. This research gathered insights from these respective entrepreneurs who were at varying stages of entrepreneurial business. The findings provide insights on the entrepreneurial opportunities exploited by different innovations in terms of resource acquisition and management. The entrepreneurs were found to not only exploit personal resources but also to utilize social media functionalities to expand their entrepreneurial network to facilitate incremental innovations to their product, service and brand positioning. Furthermore, the research particularly discusses three aggregate practices of Dutch lifestyle entrepreneurs, which involve choice of social media, collaborative social media strategy and social media strategy. This research finds that social media has been able to influence the different aspects of brand’s exposure, word of mouth, customer relationship and value co-creation. Social media have influenced entrepreneurs to become more aware of the importance of visual aesthetic for social media in entrepreneurship. Social media became a platform where Dutch lifestyle entrepreneurs used to develop mutual benefits for themselves, consumers and stakeholders. Specific to Dutch lifestyle entrepreneurs, their practices brought to attention the existing community of stakeholders collaborating to improve the image and identity of their locations. Entrepreneurs collaborated — facilitating each others business process and formulating their physical location as a branded product. Ultimately, the research provided insights to how Dutch lifestyle entrepreneurs uncover different ways to connect themselves with their consumers and stakeholders using social media.