SOSYAL MEDYA KULLANIMININ FİRMA PERFORMANSINA ETKİSİ: TÜRK BANKACILIK SEKTÖRÜ ÜZERİNE BİR UYGULAMA

Social media is starting with Usenet in 1979 by Jim Ellis and Tom Truscott, and with the establishment of the Open Diary website in 1989 by Bruce and Susan Abelson. Social media can be defined as the way people communicate by using on-line channels. According to the economic dimension of social media, it is claimed that social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter show new social relations among people, and companies perform the function of creating important consumer pool. Social media strengthens its presence as an intermediary to enable customers to meet the services and sustainable users of the companies such as banks. This situation causes banks to be included in the most used and followed social media sites to reach large audiences. In this perspective, the main purpose of the research is to determine the possible effect of using social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter) ont the banks operating in the Turkish banking sector. In order to accomplish this aim, 35 banks operating in Turkey between the years 2013 to 2016 (3 Public Sector Deposit Bank, 9 private-owned deposit banks, 14 foreign-owned banks, 6 Private Banks, 3 Foreign Banks) are analyzed by employing Pooled OLS model and Panel Data technique. The variables covered in the research are: Dependent Variables are Return on Assets and Return on Equity; Independent Variables are Interest Rate Revenues/Tot. Assets, Liquid Assets/ Short Term Debt, Financial Accounts/Tot. Assets, Liquid Assets /Tot. Assets, Capital Adequacy Ratio, Equities/(Deposits + Outside Deposits), Facebook and Twitter Usege (as dumy variables); Control Variables are Gross Domestic Product and Inflation rate. It is found that although the results of the Pooled OLS and Random Effect models applied within the scope of the research are parallel to each other, it is seen that the effect of media usage on the financial performance is lost statistically significance accoding to the Random Effect model. When the findings are ultimately evaluated, it can be advocatred that the negative effect of Facebook usage is evident, while the positive effect of interaction through the Twitter platform is highlighted.