Exploration of the social selling of family-owned B2B enterprises and perceptual barriers

In the digital age, social media provides new channels to reach customers, social selling is subverting the traditional sales model of corporate, and the practice and research of B2B social selling is still in its infancy. Based on the business experiment of social selling of family owned B2B enterprises, this paper adopts the qualitative comparative research method to verify the effectiveness of the “expert shaping + trust building” social selling model, and analyzes the perceptual barriers and their impact. The research founds: (1) The B2B “expert shaping + trust building” social selling model is self-consistent and can be interpreted by the logical paradigm of “expert shaping = expert positioning + social media + content creation” and “trust building = media collaboration + social integration + data intelligence”. (2) Perceptual barriers affect social selling of family owned B2B enterprises through perceived usefulness and ease of use, causing a gap between cognition and action. Based on the logical paradigm of social selling, this paper integrates user engagement theory, the prestage of customer insight and product iteration, optimizes the B2B social selling model, and enriches B2B social selling literature for family businesses. This paper provides practical methodology for family businesse to adopt social selling, ssuggesting that family owned B2B enterprises need to achieve consensus among key family members and company executives, and enhance their strategic cognition, business insight, team execution and organizational learning capabilities to promote social selling.