Key success and competitive factors of digital communication strategies analyzed through the lens of strategic choice and determinism

Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Business economics - Review of Business Studies, grade: 1,00, University of Linz (Institut für Strategisches Management), language: English, abstract: Why do corporations communicate the way they do? Since the rise of the internet and social media, digital corporate communication has become one of the key competitive differentiators of corporations worldwide. This Master¿s Thesis introduces a new dimension for analyzing corporate communication strategies by assuming the existence of fundamental differences between organizations with high strategic choice and deterministic companies. To test this assumption, two practically oriented models for analyzing digital corporate communication were introduced based on existing literature: Firstly, a strategic corporate communication framework containing 3 main and 8 sub typologies and, secondly, a continuum model of strategic choice and determinism covering a multitude of micro and macro factors. In this thesis¿ empirical part, a content analysis was performed on digital communication channels of 25 of the top 500 Austrian corporations. Consequently, a correlation analysis of the results generated 10 hypotheses in support of this Master¿s Thesis assumption: In conclusion, companies with high levels of strategic choice prefer image-based, informational and multi-stakeholder targeted communication strategies compared to deterministic companies, which are more likely to employ customer-focused, expertise-based and persuasive communication strategies.