Project Objective
The purpose of the study intends to analyze role of social media in business. Over the last few years, social media has attained desirable position in the person’s life and has become the discussion across various sections of businesses. Innovations in technology has led to huge range of changes in the economies and also lowered the complications in business operations. Increase in utilization of advanced technology has brought about numerous reforms in the business organizations. Different social media platforms in several companies has been playing major role in the development of business and better financial performance.
There have been shift in strategy of conducting business within the business environment across the globe owing to rise in social media. Proper utilization of social media has facilitated the organizations to develop new marketing techniques that meets to particular consumer choices and predict demand of specific commodities (Aral, Dellarocas & Godes, 2013). This also helped the business enterprises to increase its consumer base and significantly enhanced management practices as well as motivates innovations and knowledge sharing. Social media permits an enterprise to closely communicate with the target audience while enhancing the business to rise its brand visibility.
Project Objective
The objective of the research study is to determine the role of social media in business and success of business with help of the social media tools. In order to address and accomplish research aims, the following objectives have been recognized-
- To examine the influence of social media on business performance
- To evaluate the influence of social media in business with special focus on business to business (B2B) relationships (Jussila, Kärkkäinen & Aramo-Immonen, 2014)
- To examine effective social media utilization for business development
- To investigate how business benefits from use of social media
Project Scope
The focus on the research study is how social media influences the enterprise business development and performance. This study also provides huge scope to the academic as well as research communities on how the social media has put better utilization in business growth and performance. It helps the business owners to attain knowledge regarding creation ad well as development of the social media sites. The study will aid the marketing team of the enterprise to examine major marketing techniques to be used on social media channels. This paper has given huge scope to the business owners to know how social media might be used as vital tool for reaching out to their customers. Overall, it gives empirical data on how the business organizations can employ present social media as well as maximize opportunities.
Literature Review
This section of research explores the affect of social media on the business performance. It also focuses on how integration of social media aids in business development and growth. This segment also reviews on how the organizations benefit from use of social media.
Literature Review
Social Media for business
Several articles have pointed out that social media is a contributing factor to the business success. The present research reveals the present as well as future influence of social media at the workplace. Trainor et al. (2014) opines that, social media is of huge significance to the business since it helps in productive work. The organizations across varied industries are exploring social media for tapping opportunities in the market research. Recent evidences reflect that the companies are focusing on building their brand, product development and promotion.
collaboration with the stakeholders, effective customer service and recruitment of skilled candidates. Habibi, Laroche and Richard (2014) mentions that the companies are using social media to recruit large number of skilled candidates, for networking in business or to perform market analysis. Ahearne, Lam and Kraus (2014) found out that, the enterprises operating in various areas mainly target various approaches in marketing their products through social media. In addition to this, social media is an effectual way in presenting new commodities and services to their customers.
Effect of social media on business development
Treem and Leonardi (2013) found out that the enterprises have been spending huge amount of resources, time and money to garner positive impact of social media to increase their opportunities. Sustainable social media growth has been possible owing to wide spread awareness as availability of internet and also reach the popularity among the customers. Several enterprises have identified significance of social media in the business development and have began exploring qualities of web.
Now-a- days, social media has become the place of promotion for goods and services and also attract the target customers. The rising social media popularity has increased the visibility of businesses and perceived value in the brand development. Besides this, social media has led the platform to demonstrate the corporate governance of the enterprise, which in turn adds value in its reputation.
Influence of social media on business performance
Leeflang et al. (2014) states that, social media offers challenges as well as opportunities to the business organizations. It also provides certain level of uncertainty among stakeholders in respect of effort, time and budget allocation. The social media practitioners takes decision without even comprehending affect of social media on enterprise performance. As per Treem and Leonardi (2013), huge influence of social media on business performance is seen in different domains namely, finance, corporate social performance, marketing and so on. The effect of social media is generally rampant in business performance when it comes to customer preferences, social capital, social marketing.
Social Media for business
Now- a- days, the organizations have started building as well as maintaining social media pages as they realized significance of applications, increase consumers interest within businesses and build relation with online communities. Moreover, social media tools has facilitated employees in cultivating social ties as well as understand their businesses and profession. The organizations are also considering the customer reviews or feedbacks in order to develop unique model or make changes in their products that can assists them to make future choices and offer particular options.
The companies also benefits from understanding the negative effect of products on customers. Its engagement in the online chatter aids to reduce negative customers perspectives. Thus, rise in social media has motivated the businesses to perform better and be successful in the market place (Melanthiou, Pavlou & Constantinou, 2015).
Benefits of social media for the businesses
Some of the main advantages of social media for businesses are described below-
- Improved consumer insights- Businesses attain proper understanding of the customers insight since they becomes aware that enterprise is listening to them. Even social media permits the business managers to understand the opinions of potential customers and also network with them.
- Better customer service- Chua and Banerjee (2013) opines that social media permits businesses for responding to customer grievances and concerns. Customers need to be ensured that if they face some problems, they will receive proper assistance.
- Cost efficient- When the businesses has been running on the fixed marketing budget, social media is the cost- efficient way for promoting as well as market the business. Few social media like twitter, facebook permits any business to share the content for less costs. Thus, social media is considered as the low-cost advertising platform (Okazaki & Taylor, 2013).
- Establishment of brand awareness-With the advent of social media, businesses enhance their brand awareness among the customers since they can create brand awareness by building enterprise image (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014).
- Increasing business sales-Through rise in social media, it increases traffic within the business enterprises. As a result, this converts potential customers to the actual customers. Thus in turn enhances overall sales in business.
- Connectivity-Social media helps the businesses to connect with their customers in terms of varying preferences, resources as well as adapt with changing interest of customers. Moreover, the organizations might be able to meet dynamic interests as well as innovate on marketing campaign.
Gap in literature review
Several studies are conducted for understanding significance of the businesses to be connected to social media. But this study has not highlighted on the disadvantages of using social media in businesses. This research study has not provided an overview on how the social media has affected the performance of employees. Therefore, this study has intended to analyze positive influence of social media on growth as well as performance of business.
Research Questions and Hypothesis
The primary question of this research study is-
- What is the role of social media in businesses?
The secondary questions of the study aligning with the research topic are-
- How the social media influences development and performance of business?
- Do social media improve B2B relationship within the competitive business environment?
Hypothesis
Hypothesis 1
H0-Social media do not influence business growth and its performance
H1-Social media influence business growth and its performance.
Hypothesis 2
H0-There is no correlation between utilization of the social media and rise in business sales
H1-There is correlation between utilization of the social media and rise in business sales
Research Design and Methodology
Descriptive research design has been integrated for conducting this research study as it helps to depict the participants in accurate way. The deductive approach has been applied in this study in order to inspect influence of social media in business. This approach has been used in this study for exploring various theories and testing validity in specific situations. Moreover, positivism philosophy has been integrated in this study as it includes existing theory that aids to develop and test hypothesis. Both primary and secondary method have been conducted regarding how the organizations use social media for different business functions in marketing its commodities (Lewis, 2015).
Effect of social media on business development
The secondary study has been conducted by taking information from the websites, journal articles and newspapers. In fact, the primary study has been done on 10 companies from different industries using structured questionnaires for finding out whether these companies used social media to promote their commodities and recruit employees (Broughton et al., 2013). The primary study has been done for acquiring information about the benefits and challenges of social media that the marketers face during the business operation. Even both qualitative and quantitative data analysis method has been used in this study for attaining accurate data and draw proper conclusions of this research.
Quantitative analysis-The quantitative data has been collected through survey questionnaire processes. This procedure has been used in this study for acquiring accurate data from huge sample size. Simple random sampling has been used in this study since it estimates fair procedure of choosing sample from large population of employees in these companies. Sample size of about 50 employees of several companies in Australia has been selected for the online survey questionnaire procedure. A structured questionnaire has been framed for avoiding any kind of difficulties during the process. Self-completed questionnaires has been delivered to the respondents during the survey questionnaire process.
Qualitative data analysis- This data analysis method has been integrated in this study for attaining insights about the present research problem. The method that is adopted for collecting qualitative data is interview procedure. The interview process has been conducted on 10 managers from different companies in Australia.
Research limitations
There have been certain limitations while conducting this research study. It has been difficult to gather information from the employees and managers of the companies as some of them chose to give biased answers. Some of them also chose to avoid giving information relating to this research topic. Even in few websites, no updated version of data relating to this research study has been available. However, it has been difficult to collect secondary data from reliable websites.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that social media has huge impact on the business organizations. Even though social media creates challenges to the businesses, it help the organizations to develop and improve its performance. The businesses benefit from promoting its products to the customers, attaining their feedback and improving the products and services accordingly. Effective advertising of goods with the help of various social sites facilitate to increase visibility of goods as well as attract more customers. This aid business to expand across the globe by maximizing the profitability level and incurring less cost of advertising.
References
Ahearne, M., Lam, S. K., & Kraus, F. (2014). Performance impact of middle managers’ adaptive strategy implementation: The role of social capital. Strategic Management Journal, 35(1), 68-87.
Aral, S., Dellarocas, C., & Godes, D. (2013). Introduction to the special issue—social media and business transformation: a framework for research. Information Systems Research, 24(1), 3-13.
Broughton, A., Foley, B., Ledermaier, S., & Cox, A. (2013). The use of social media in the recruitment process. Institute for Employment Studies, Brighton.
Chua, A. Y., & Banerjee, S. (2013). Customer knowledge management via social media: the case of Starbucks. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(2), 237-249.
Habibi, M. R., Laroche, M., & Richard, M. O. (2014). The roles of brand community and community engagement in building brand trust on social media. Computers in Human Behavior, 37, 152-161.
Jussila, J. J., Kärkkäinen, H., & Aramo-Immonen, H. (2014). Social media utilization in business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, 606-613.
Leeflang, P. S., Verhoef, P. C., Dahlström, P., & Freundt, T. (2014). Challenges and solutions for marketing in a digital era. European management journal, 32(1), 1-12.
Leonardi, P. M., Huysman, M., & Steinfield, C. (2013). Enterprise social media: Definition, history, and prospects for the study of social technologies in organizations. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(1), 1-19.
Lewis, S. (2015). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Health promotion practice, 16(4), 473-475.
Melanthiou, Y., Pavlou, F., & Constantinou, E. (2015). The use of social network sites as an e-recruitment tool. Journal of Transnational Management, 20(1), 31-49.
Okazaki, S., & Taylor, C. R. (2013). Social media and international advertising: theoretical challenges and future directions. International marketing review, 30(1), 56-71.
Trainor, K. J., Andzulis, J. M., Rapp, A., & Agnihotri, R. (2014). Social media technology usage and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social CRM. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), 1201-1208.
Treem, J. W., & Leonardi, P. M. (2013). Social media use in organizations: Exploring the affordances of visibility, editability, persistence, and association. Annals of the International Communication Association, 36(1), 143-189.
Tsimonis, G., & Dimitriadis, S. (2014). Brand strategies in social media. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 32(3), 328-344.
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