Supply Chain Management

Facing uncertain economic times and continuously changing corporate environments, companies strive to stabilize or improve corporate performance measures. The multitude of potential methods and tools supporting this goal complicates decision making processes for professionals. Social media networks (SMNs) have evolved as tool for predominantly private communication. By combining these two developments professionals across industries transferred social media network use to corporate environments. Along with the emergence of social media networks and their growing importance for professional purposes evolved a new field of research investigating the influences of such networks on corporate processes and environments. The objective of this study is to extend this research stream by identifying social media network use among purchasing professionals and its impact on corporate and purchasing performance measures. Primary data were collected through an online-survey and analyzed using partial least squares regression analysis (PLS). The results indicate an existing acceptance of social media networks among purchasing professionals as well as a positive influence of using such networks on performance measures. Pre-defined social media network characteristics could be identified to mediate the relationship between network use an