How do organizations leverage social media to enhance marketing performance? Unveiling the power of social CRM capability and guanxi

Drawing on information technology-enabled organizational capabilities theory, we argue that how and when social media use affects marketing performance depending on the mediating role of social customer relationship management (CRM) capability and the moderating role of guanxi. Using a sample of 194 Chinese agricultural firms, we employed a combination of complementary techniques: advanced analysis for composites–structural equation modeling (ADANCO-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). In ADANCO-SEM analysis, we empirically verify the full mediating role of social CRM capability in the association between social media use and marketing performance and identify the condition for this indirect effect (i.e., when the guanxi levels are high). Moreover, guanxi plays a dual moderating role—it exerts a substitution effect when social media is used to build social CRM capability, and it exerts a complementary effect when social CRM capability is leveraged to improve marketing performance. FsQCA analysis further reveals the different configurations of social media use, guanxi, and social CRM capability that can lead to high marketing performance in different firm sizes. The findings complement those from ADANCO-SEM analysis vis-à-vis the conditions for the formation of marketing performance. This study contributes to the emerging literature on the business value of social media by theoretically exploring and empirically validating the mechanisms and boundary conditions by which social media affects marketing performance.