Harnessing web 2.0 for business-to-business marketing - Literature review and an empirical perspective from Finland

Abstract The purpose of this report is to round up current literature and other published sources on harnessing web 2.0 for business-to-business marketing and add an empirical perspective on the subject from Finland. Web 2.0 means technologies that enable users to easily communicate, and organize, create and share content. By web 2.0 tools, we mean blogs and podcasts, social networks, communities, content aggregators and virtual worlds. Based on the literature review we present pros and cons of every tool for marketing purposes. Among the examined Finnish industrial firms the utilization of web 2.0 is still low, but blogs, wikis and video sharing raised some interest. Overall, web 2.0 provides firms with benefits still largely unexplored, and we believe that the importance of internet marketing will continue to grow