Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using Social Media For Business Purposes

Benefits of Using Social Media for business

In the present world, social media channels are hugely used to expand business on the global platform. Powered by internet, social media channels, blogs, forums and websites to be circulated, the organizations can now interact with the customers directly (Coffing and Bonfiglio 2017). The consumers can now share their experiences too and provide valuable information as feedback. To look at the opportunities it has created in business, it goes without saying that using social media for business is highly profitable for promoting brands, services and products (Lin, Fan and Chau 2014). Thanks to the freedom and personal autonomy internet offers, the consumers can now directly connect with the companies talking about the experience they had, giving out their opinions about the services or products they have heard about or have just tested. However, to what extent using social media is safe for the businesses is still a matter of question. Extensive use of social media relates to the risks of hacking as well as unethical practices being done on the WebPages or in the social media pages of the companies without their consent (Aral, Dellarocas and Godes 2013).

This research proposal aims to explore both the advantages and disadvantages of social media when used in business purposes. The literature review section will critically evaluate the benefits and demerits of using social media grounding on the research objectives and research questions. Later, a strong methodology has been proposed to reach to the research goals and based on that recommendations have been provided and conclusion is drawn.

The research will be conducted following the research objectives as stated below:

• To Investigate the scope of information sharing in social media marketing
• To explore the benefits of marketing in social media in comparison to conventional marketing
• To look at the opportunities of innovation by using social media channels
• To investigate the chances of  business expansion and promoting the organizations on global platform
• To consider the vulnerability of companies’ information exposed in the social media
• To explore the risks of hacking lack of security in social media pages

Based on these objectives, the research questions have been developed which are as following:

1. What are the scopes of information sharing in social media marketing?
2. What are the benefits of marketing in social media in comparison to conventional marketing?
3. What are the opportunities lay for the organizations to seek for innovation through the use of social media
4. How much vulnerable the companies become when their information is exposed in social media?
5. What are the chances of expanding business and promoting the organizations on global platform?
6. To what extent can the risks of hacking and lack of security trouble the companies using social media?

Several scholars have doubted the appropriateness of using social media extensively as this entails several threats for the businesses (Jussila, Kärkkäinen and Aramo-Immonen 2014). However, looking at the easy accessibility of the social media and the customers’ increasing preferences the entrepreneurs and managers have admitted the contributions of social media. As opined by Chen (2013), the diverse social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Instagram come up with different results for different organizations. The social media platforms facilitates worldwide connectivity, increasing common interest, information sharing and in reducing advertising costs.

The greatest advantage of social media is that it has access to any corner of the globe and that it breaks the geographical barriers in business connecting even the customers of remote places to the desired brand they would prefer. Coffing and Bonfiglio (2017) rightly identifies that the cost of marketing is reduced largely in this way and the enterprises get the access to any a wider market.

Risks and Challenges of Social Media for Business

The present trend in business is to create a platform of common interests on the social media and the companies also observe forums or seminars to discuss the common interests they have and thus, these open social media forums have a great impact on the business strategies of the enterprises. Lin, Fan and Chau (2014), observe that the forum organized by Oil Manufacturing and Processing enterprises has created a very positive impact in this business, as the organizations have pledged to extract the limited resource of oil in a very economical and optimal way.

The information shared through social media is sent fast in seconds and therefore the replies come fast too (Aral, Dellarocas and Godes 2013). This facilitates in prompt decision making and analyzing the data and information.

Since marketing or advertising in social media needs no purchase of physical property like buildings and that transportation, personnel expenses are also saved, social media advertising is becoming more popular day by day.

Scholars like Chen (2013), have argued that the adoption of social media for business purposes is not completely safe as this unrestrained exposure makes a company vulnerable. Jussila, Kärkkäinen and Aramo-Immonen (2014), seems to support this by saying that this is a golden chance for the hackers to obtain information easily by getting access to the sites or the social media pages and the worst happens when the admin rights of the pages are hacked. According to Aral, Dellarocas and Godes (2013), this can be fatal for the brand reputation of the companies as the hackers get the access to post inappropriate contents on the pages.

Apart from this, the extensive adoption of social media can be proved damaging for the reputation of the companies and the weaknesses of the organizations may be exposed by some unsatisfied customers openly on these pages.

The acceptance of social media in business is widespread in all over the literature although there are some angles that have been untouched. The literature omits a significant point about the authentication of the pages. This is to say that at present, the companies that share their business information on social media have several pages. Now, definitely there is one official page and that the other pages are meant to be forged. However, it is difficult for the admirers of the brands and the target customers following those pages to identify the authentic page among so many. Besides, the information posted on those pages is often misleading or copied from the official page that is posted later in these forged pages. Apart from this, the online delivery of the things has more chances of fraud, as often the customers receive wrong or faulty deliveries. In most of these cases, the companies have no fault in this but due to the delivery personnel’s negligence; it is the reputation of the organizations that is at stake.

Authentication and Marketing in Social Media

Moreover, the literature does not highlight the fact that depending entirely on the social media to reach customers may deprive the companies to obtain consumers from the third world countries where a majority of the population is not present in this platform.

In order to conduct the study on the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in business an appropriate and strong methodology is required to support the depth of the topic (Zikmund et al. 2013). Now, numerous research designs are there to be used to reach the objectives stated above. For this research, it is preferable to conduct both primary and secondary research; the primary research will be qualitative in nature by taking interviews of some regular followers of these social media pages and the marketing executives of the companies who operate business on these sites (Smith 2015). Apart from that, the business persons of those companies will also be approached who still do not exist in the social media world (Spradley 2016). On the other hand, the secondary research will include information from the journals, articles written on this concern.

The research on advantages and disadvantages of using social media for business purposes requires access to both primary and secondary data (Hair 2015). The topic being rather subjective, qualitative data will be obtained through some open ended questions since close ended questions and quantitative research will not help (Bryman 2015). Besides, the secondary research is also necessary because the information detailed in the journals and newspapers will help to frame the foundation of the study (Vaismoradi, Turunen and Bondas 2013).

The research designs appropriate to be used in this context are descriptive and semi experimental (Neuendorf 2016). While the descriptive research design will facilitate the researcher to observe the behavior of the interviewees as well as exploring the data found in the secondary sources, the semi-experimental research design will enable the researcher to analyze the field study results (Bryman and Bell 2015).

The primary qualitative data will be analyzed through the coding process of the transcripts (Zikmund et al. 2013). This will help the researchers to turn the interviews into a coded form that can be utilized for the research purpose. Now, the secondary data will be analyzed through the review process where the researcher will be carefully checking the authenticity of the data amassed from the literature (Elo et al. 2014).

The study will be conducted following the schedule given below in the form of Gant Chart.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Therefore, the study is likely to conclude on a strong note to what extent the adoption of social media in business and marketing is safe and advantageous. The review of literature will provide a profound insight into numerous dimensions of using social media in business that the organizations have to consider. In this context, information has to be retrieved from various sources without making any bias as the aspects of social media advertising and conventional marketing both have to be considered. In addition, conclusions should drawn based on not only any particular country’s perspective but on different countries. The interview questions also require to be open ended so that the participants can give their opinion openly. Thus, conducted in an appropriate manner, according to what have been proposed, the research is certain to bring out some concrete conclusions in the chosen matter of concern.

References

Aral, S., Dellarocas, C. and Godes, D., 2013. Introduction to the special issue—social media and business transformation: a framework for research. Information Systems Research, 24(1), pp.3-13.

Bryman, A. and Bell, E., 2015. Business research methods. Oxford University Press, USA.

Bryman, A., 2015. Social research methods. Oxford university press.

Chen, R., 2013. Member use of social networking sites—an empirical examination. Decision Support Systems, 54(3), pp.1219-1227.

Coffing, D. and Bonfiglio, L., 2017. Transaction system for business and social networking. U.S. Patent 9,600,674.

Elo, S., Kääriäinen, M., Kanste, O., Pölkki, T., Utriainen, K. and Kyngäs, H., 2014. Qualitative content analysis: a focus on trustworthiness. Sage Open, 4(1), p.2158244014522633.

Hair, J.F., 2015. Essentials of business research methods. ME Sharpe.

Jussila, J.J., Kärkkäinen, H. and Aramo-Immonen, H., 2014. Social media utilization in business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, pp.606-613.

Lin, H., Fan, W. and Chau, P.Y., 2014. Determinants of users’ continuance of social networking sites: A self-regulation perspective. Information & Management, 51(5), pp.595-603.

Neuendorf, K.A., 2016. The content analysis guidebook. Sage publications.

Smith, J.A. ed., 2015. Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. Sage.

Spradley, J.P., 2016. Participant observation. Waveland Press.

Vaismoradi, M., Turunen, H. and Bondas, T., 2013. Content analysis and thematic analysis: Implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study. Nursing & health sciences, 15(3), pp.398-405.

Zikmund, W.G., Babin, B.J., Carr, J.C. and Griffin, M., 2013. Business research methods. Cengage Learning.

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