Evaluating The Influence Of Social Networks (Social Media) On Business

EVALUATION OF INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON BUSINESS
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Abstract
The purpose of the research to evaluate the impact of social media on businesses and its operations. The study places more focus on how U.S companies are benefiting from the utilization of social networks in sales and marketing.
On methodology, the research adopts the use of a mixed approach where qualitative and quantitative research approaches since data have been collected through both secondary and primary data sources. The data collected via the secondary process are analyzed through observations whereas the data analyzed through primary sources have been analyzed through the use of descriptive statistics. The research relied on journals and other electronic materials to collect secondary data and surveyed 20 U.S companies from the different industrial sector.
The results of the study assert that social media usage plays a vital in boosting business sales and marketing strategies as well as improving their growth and performance. The findings also revealed that firms reap the great benefits of social media when it is employed alongside traditional forms of media such newspapers, television and radio (Trainor, et al., 2014). In addition, the study showed that there is a strong correlation between social media usage and the company’s performance and growth since improved marketing strategies translate to huge sales. It is also noted that social media users not only used in marketing but also employed in human resource management, driving cultural change and in problem-solving.
Research Background
A business can buy attention through advertising, solicit for attention through Public Relation (PR), bug people one at a time to get attention through sales and marketing strategies and earn attention by creating something interesting and publish it online to promote products and sales (Castronovo & Huang, 2012). The new rules of sales and marketing, and PR has changed tremendously after the revolution in media was witnessed when the corporate field was introduced to social media in the early 2000s. In the late 1990s, businesses were availed with to television, newspaper, and radio as the only sources of media (Castronovo & Huang, 2012). Social networking also is known as social media is an advanced form of media that offers tools used for not communication but for social interaction as well with the aid of highly scalable communication techniques. Social media is constantly growing and evolving while providing new tools, applications, and platforms that facilitate easy and faster ways of interaction and sharing information. Today, there has been creasing population of consumer who relies on online background check such as review before making purchasing a product or service. This increasing trend obliges a business to invest more in the use of social media platform to promote their product and services as well as interacting with the targeted audience either directly or through popular influencers on the social media (Durga, 2015). Therefore, the purpose of the study was to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate the influence of social media tools on business.
Motivation and Rationale for the Study
Businesses are faced with the increasing market competition and intensive dynamism of the business environment. For this reasons, businesses are necessitated to quality adjust and adapt the contemporary ways to boost their competitive edge against their close rivals. Some organizations still consider the use of social media as a secondary approach in their marketing strategy and instead stick to the conventional methods of product promotion. Such companies have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts that are neglected are not structured well, and rarely updated to past new information and attract new sets of customers and distributors (Zeng, 2017). Therefore, this business is missing out on the benefits brought by social media usage. These benefits include, improved customer insights, improve customer service, minimizes the sales and marketing cost, improve connectivity with both suppliers’ and customers’ interests, establishing brand awareness and improving sales. Researchers have proved that social media offers a unique mode of marketing strategy that any type of company needs to have today. The networking aspect of social media not only helps in product promotions but also enhances CRM practices and improve export and import marketeering performances for multinational companies (J. H. Kietzmann, et al., 2011).
Research Aims and Objectives
The primary aim of the study is to understand and evaluate the positive impact of social networking on the general operation of businesses. The conventional business can incorporate the use of social media alongside their traditional forms of media to reach out to more audience the management, and thus develop a bigger market for themselves.
The objective of the study is:
1 To evaluate the benefits of social media and how business can employ social media as a significant platform to reach out to their customers
2 To examine how firms can tap the power of social media in business while considering their shortcomings
3 To determine how companies employ the use of social media in their business processes and its effects on customers’ relationship.
The scope of the Study
The study primarily focuses on the positive impacts of social media usage in the U.S companies from various sectors. In particular, the study will investigate the relationship between social media usage and general performance of the business. Also, studies consider only companies based in the U.S but might have outlets across the world. The research is scheduled to be completed within a period of two weeks only.
The Significance of the Study
Social networking through the internet connection and turns it into a global village by making the communication very fast and simple. The same is applicable in businesses, and it helps to connect all the relevant stakeholders including customers, investors, suppliers as well as other parties connected in with the business. The significance of the research is that it breaks down and helps to understand the benefits of using social media as a medium that connects business with the world. Social media has proven to be a valuable tool that smart companies can utilize to boost their profitability and competitive edge over others.
Structure of the Research
The first chapter focuses about the review of the topic where studies that similar or related to the topic are explored to substantiate the objective of the research as well as highlighting the research gaps and the prompted research questions. The succeeding chapters present the part of the research methodology covering the key constituents such as research design, data sampling, research methodology, explanation and resign and sources of the research data. The next chapter covers the aspect of data analysis, followed by finding and discussion
Literature Review
With the increasing types of social media emerging in the corporate field that is characterized by incessant dynamism that makes the market highly competitive, volatile and complex. For these reasons, many businesses are intensely involved in the implementation of social media to keep up with the market pace as well as maintaining the company’s status. The constantly growing popularity of social media usage in business in the recent days has urged companies to put more effort into understanding the effective and saleable way of utilizing social media (Erdogmus, 2012). Companies in different types of industries such as banking and financial services, life sciences, travel, and tourism airline, automobile, hospitality, retail and consumer products, automobiles and fashion among others are exploiting the use of social media to boost their marketing capacity (Erdogmus, 2012). Also, these companies use social media platforms for product promotions, building brands, customer service, stakeholders and employee engagement, and recruitment processes. Adoption of social has also been on a rise as they are associated with low cost and therefore cutting down the marketing budgets.
Diverse of authors have covered similar and related studies on how social networking has influenced genera business operations. Therefore, the review focuses on how different authors have explained the utilization and application of social media in accordance with the purpose of the research. To begin with, Maecker, (2016), defines social networking as an interconnectivity of structured designed organizations or individuals that are operated through the creation of social groups where registered members can transmit and share information. The author asserts that the existence of social networking is attributed to the massive development in information and technologies that allows users to connect to the internet by personal computers and mobile handsets. In addition, Furthermore, (Durga, 2015), defines social media as to a platform that allows sharing of information in mediums such as texts, videos, audio and audiovisuals via a community-based website such as Facebook. LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
In regard to social media usage, Zeng (2017), stated that social media serve as the hub for huge numbers of customers. In other words, the author says that social media serves as a database that provides customers’ valuable information for marketing purposes. Hsu acknowledges Kaplan and Haenlein, who came up with the concept of social media utilization stating that the usage of the platforms is created by web-based technology and principles basis to help users generate contents and disseminate it with other users. Zeng’s studies primarily focus on investigating the utilization of social media and its impacts on an organizational performance. Therefore, Zeng’s study is relatable and supports the current research as it sites three distinctive usages of social media, namely for information accessibility. Customer’s relation, and for marketing purpose.
Ferrer, et al., (2013), explains the concept of social media marketing by stating that it is a procedure whereby business engages customers to endorse their products, services, brands, and websites as well via online social channels. The authors list different forms of social media platforms such as voting sites, blogs, microblogs, and media sharing sites forums, social networking sites and evaluation sites that allows business can adapt to expand the market coverage. In addition, the author states that social media facilitates marketing as a business can learn customers information that defines their taste and preferences on products, services, and even brands. This is achieved through the use of reviewing, voting and forums platforms where customers are prompted to air their views and preferences towards a particular product or service. Also, social media gives the marketing crew a platform to interact directly with the targeted customers through chatrooms and forums. The marketer takes advantage of the firms to inform, persuade, convince, and guide customers about the company’s products and services, and by so doing, the company’s develops, maintains and controls its brand. The author points out that consumers are growing intelligent and knowledgeable t day-by-day making them more difficult to convince, and companies have to overreach them by being readily available. The only practical solution for companies to be reachable and readily available every time by putting much effort in ...