Impact Of Social Media And Data Analytics On Business Growth

The Role of Social Media and Data Analytics

Social media is a need of the hour for the companies to advertise and publicise their product. As per the trend and the research study conducted by Nora Ganim Barnes and Shannen Pavao at The Center for Marketing Research, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, it has been seen that the Fortune 500 companies have been increasingly using social media networks like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube (Belton, 2017). The change in trend and increasing focus on online media and its output has been extensively discussed in the report ahead. Furthermore, companies have been spending a lot of money in Business Intelligence offlate and have been tracking the business KPIs using a number of dashboards. This not only gives the bird’s eye view but also shows the picture and progress of business on a real time basis. All these scenarios have been discussed using one of the company named “JB Hi Fi” (Alexander, 2016). It is one of renowned Australia companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and deals in products like consumer goods including video games, electronic home appliances, Blu-rays, CDs, DVDs, mobile phones, electronics/hardware and a number of other services. It has its head office in Melbourne.

Social media especially the advertisement through Facebook, YouTube page, Twitter and Instagram. Has become immensely important and critical to the business development these days. Businesses are become heavily reliant on the social media forces to advertise their product and remain competitive in the market (Choy, 2018). It is due to the reason of affinity of the public and the customer community at large towards social media. As per one of the studies, an individual spends an average 116 minutes in a day, which is almost 2 hours. Out of this, the proportion of time spent by youth is even more which turns out to be the major section of the customer side.

There are several issues in businesses which is being resolved by the social media as an intermediary between the business and the customer side like brand awareness. Today, most of the start-ups use this strategy to move information faster. They humanize the mind as the public visits the social media platform day in and day out. They are also being used as the growth drivers as they increase the traffic on the website, generate leads and helps the customer to have all the information at one place (Dichev, 2017). It can be accessed anywhere and at any time and the customer need not go to the physical store to try a product and hence it offers a lot of flexibility along with variety (Boccia & Leonardi, 2016).

Customers nowadays are seen to be switching companies because of the poor experience. They want an engaging and an individualized experience to continue with a brand and thus countries must take advantage and of the same (Visinescu, Jones, & Sidorova, 2017). Data and analytics have become tremendously important form organizational point of view considering following advantages:

1. Through data, customers expect companies to know their requirements and act proactively in this regard.
2. It also helps in identifying the strategies of the competitors and take the actions accordingly so that growth and sustainability can be ensured.
3. It helps the company in giving the relevant product to the customer and information flow on a real time basis(Trieu, 2017).
4. It helps in the optimization and improving the operational efficiency as designing and controlling any given process can be better when the data is there to evidentiate this.
5. Efficient data and analytics in the company will also ensure in mitigating the risks and fraud, if any(Meroño-Cerdán, Lopez-Nicolas, & Molina-Castillo, 2017).
6. In financial terms, it can help in a variety of ways like cost savings in few areas, reduction in the processing time of some data based on analysis, development of the new product, understanding the market conditions (both internal and external) and controlling the reputation of the company online.

Beyond all these benefits, the data has more relevance when it comes to corporates as the numbers are more revealing and interpretative rather than words (Kuhn & Morris, 2016). If the company possess a right of data and that too in its favour, it will surely help the company attracting the customers.

Case Study: JB Hi Fi

JB Hi Fi is one of the Australian company, which has grown a lot in the retail sector using the data and the social media to its benefit. The below graph mentions some of the critical growth factors of the company and its trend over the last 4 half years from 1^st January 2016 to 31^st December 2017 (Kuhn & Morris, 2016).

From the annual report of the company, it can be seen that the company has been progressing over a last couple of years in terms of both revenue as well as the profits. The company also opened a number of stores (7 in total – 6 in Australia and 1 in New Zealand) and is expected to open 5 new stores in the coming period (Linden & Freeman, 2017). The company has also improved on the operational efficiency front and the same can be vindicated from the section of business strategies and prospects in the annual report. It mentions business risks like competition from new and existing players, loss of reputation due to security breach in IT systems, breach of other legal and regulatory requirements, online competition taking sales away to the other players, etc.

The company has also included a section on the synergies created in business during the last financial year due to the efficiencies created and earning increase (Goldmann, 2016). Overall, considering the type of industry and the nature of the products being sold by the customer, the company has benefitted a lot from the social media and data analytics, which is evident from the above developments (Dumay & Baard, 2017).

Conclusion

From the above discussion on the social media and data and its impact on the business, we can see that both of these factors have become inevitable to the sustenance of the business in the modern time. They have not only helped in increasing in customer base of the business and the revenue and profitability but also the operational and system efficiency. JB Hi-Fi considering the type of business has benefitted from the given model and the same can be seen from its progressive growth and business models.

References

Alexander, F. (2016). The Changing Face of Accountability. The Journal of Higher Education, 71(4), 411-431.

Belton, P. (2017). Competitive Strategy: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. London: Macat International ltd. Retrieved from https://www.routledge.com/Competitive-Strategy-Creating-and-Sustaining-Superior-Performance/Belton/p/book/9781912128808

Boccia, F., & Leonardi, R. (2016). The Challenge of the Digital Economy: Markets, Taxation and Appropriate Economic Models. Springer.

Choy, Y. K. (2018). Cost-benefit Analysis, Values, Wellbeing and Ethics: An Indigenous Worldview Analysis. Ecological Economics, 145. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.08.005

Dichev, I. (2017). On the conceptual foundations of financial reporting. Accounting and Business Research, 47(6), 617-632. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/00014788.2017.1299620

Dumay, J., & Baard, V. (2017). An introduction to interventionist research in accounting. The Routledge Companion to Qualitative Accounting Research Methods, 265. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=PzQlDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA265&dq=Dumay,+J.,+%26+Baard,+V.+(2017).+An+introduction+to+interventionist+research+in+accounting.+The+Routledge+Companion+to+Qualitative+Accounting+Research+Methods,+265.&ots=ta1isTHB

Goldmann, K. (2016). Financial Liquidity and Profitability Management in Practice of Polish Business. Financial Environment and Business Development, 4, 103-112. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39919-5_9

Kuhn, J., & Morris, B. (2016). IT internal control weaknesses and the market value of firms. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 30(6).

Linden, B., & Freeman, R. (2017). Profit and Other Values: Thick Evaluation in Decision Making. Business Ethics Quarterly, 27(3), 353-379. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2017.1

Meroño-Cerdán, A., Lopez-Nicolas, C., & Molina-Castillo, F. (2017). Risk aversion, innovation and performance in family firms. Economics of Innovation and new technology, 1-15.

Trieu, V. (2017). Getting value from Business Intelligence systems: A review and research agenda. Decision Support Systems, 93, 111-124.

Visinescu, L., Jones, M., & Sidorova, A. (2017). Improving Decision Quality: The Role of Business Intelligence. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 57(1), 58-66.

Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:

Turnitin Report

Formatting

Title Page

Citation

Outline

Place an Order