Advantages of Using Social Media for Marketing

Social media platforms are being used as a marketing tool by a large number of companies. It has contributed to the success and growth of the business. Social media platforms are being used for the purpose of interacting and sharing information with friends and family. The gaining recognition of social media sites may influence company as it provides chances to connect with the customers. It could be used to advertise the product and gather feedback about their product.   

Different advantages are attached to the use of social media and these benefits include lower cost, gaining sales, larger audience, and ease of research (Leung, Bai and Stahura, 2015). 

Apart from advantages, there are certain drawbacks of exercising social media for marketing like harassment, lack of determination technique, and vulnerability to hacking. Numerous company is using social media for marketing as it facilitates an innovative and effective platform for a corporation to sustain in the market and makes a link with their customers (Armstrong, Kotler, Harker and Brennan, 2015). 

This research discusses the role of social media in the marketing strategy of modern companies. It also defines the pros and cons of using social media for marketing. This report also depicts the suggestion to enhance the social media marketing strategy. In the last, it explains the research methodology to complete the research in a systematic manner.

The primary objective is to gather data regarding the role and impact of social media in the marketing strategy of an organization and on the performance of the organization. All these aspects will be discussed in relation to Starbucks Corporation so as to develop knowledge of the role played by social media in the marketing strategy. Another objective is to analyze the pros and cons attached to the use of social media platforms as an advertisement tool.

The focus of this project is on developing an understanding of the role and importance of social media in marketing strategy. This report will focus on the role of social media in relation to the marketing strategy of Starbucks Corporation. Different articles will be assessed which are prepared by different authors. These articles will help in focusing on the influence of social media platforms on the customers.    

According to Leung, Bai, and Erdem (2017), the company uses social media for several business practices like gathering feedback, recruitment, communicating with customers, conducting market research and marketing. The ease of social media facilitates a bigger platform to the corporation. Hence, the company can use social media to get advantages. For instance, social media could be used by the company in the recruitment process and recruit the talented human resource without any additional expenses. 

Disadvantages of Using Social Media for Marketing

In support of this, Kim, Lim, and Brymer (2015) stated that organization like Starbucks has used social media in their marketing strategy to get the advantage over the competitors in the industry. The key benefit of exercising social media sites for marketing is that it enables a company to cover the wider areas and connects the company to customers. For illustration, television and radios have an adequate range as it could be used only for connecting with the local customers. Hence, the company can use social media to broadcast their advertisement on international channel. However, it could sustainably gain the expenses. It is also analyzed that billboard marketing has also limited scope because only local people could see the advertisement of the billboard. Thus, it could be stated that all these issues could not exist in social media marketing as the internet is an international platform (Tuten and Solomon, 2017).    

In the view of Ashley and Tuten (2015), social media marketing is easier and affordable method to advertise the product offered by the company as compared to the traditional technique. The traditional advertisement sources are radio, television, and billboard which need the considerably high cost of investment and only focus on limited customers. In contrast to this, in the social media marketing, the cost is lower and also provides larger customers. Social media channel facilitates the opportunities regarding free of cost marketing to a company that could not be possible with another platform. Use of social media platforms has reduced the cost as well as efforts of the company.

In contrast to this, Scott (2015) opined that the interested customer who prefers the brand could follow the company to the social media account. As a result, it gains the following of company on social media channels. The company can directly advertise to their customers without compensating money to social media sites for demonstrating the advertisement. For instance, Starbucks post on its social media channel that they are offering new drinks for free. It could be beneficial to the company as the company can reach the customers in a better manner.

Felix, Rauschnabel, and Hinsch (2017) stated that one of the key disadvantages of using social media marketing is the vulnerability to cyber-attack. For using the social media sites, the company has required uploading their information to online users and link to the online channel as there are chances of gaining cyber-attack. The rate of cybercrime is gaining with the popularity of social media sites because hackers are targeting social media accounts for accessing the confidential information of the company for gaining an advantage.

Role of Social Media in the Marketing Strategy of Starbucks Corporation

In support to this, Tiago and Veríssimo (2014) evaluated that the companies which are implemented social media marketing approach should invest in online security software as cybercrimes are gaining rapidly and company can lose all of its followers in the case of hacked social account. The company should not treat as social media sites as another traditional source of marketing. Since people can give their negative feedback on this channel and could ruin the reputation of the company.  

In the existing phenomenon, workforces are not required to utilize traditional marketing practices. Hence, they should implement social media marketing strategy in business. This research is beneficial to analyze the pros and cons of using social media marketing practices. This research is also significant to understand the strategies to improve the social media practices (Zhu and Chen, 2015).

In this literature review chapter, an investigator will emphasize on the pros and cons of using social media in business. This literature review facilitates the opportunity to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of using social media practices in business. This research will focus on the strategy to enhance the social media practices in the business organization. A research will take small sample size because few people are interested to participate in the survey through a questionnaire. 

Primary question

• What is meaning and concept of social media marketing strategy?

Secondary question

• What are the pros and cons of using social media marketing strategy in business?
• What are the strategies to enhance the social media marketing in business?

The research design is essential to obtain the appropriate instruction with respect to gathering the opinion and analyze the findings regarding research issue. There are some kinds of research design that could be implemented by a researcher to complete the research (Rodriguez, Peterson, and Ajjan (2015). It is described as following:

Chart 1: Qualitative research process

 

(Sources: Agnihotri, Dingus, Hu and Krush, 2016).

Qualitative research process contains four phases of the research. In the initial phase, an investigator will discover the research and makes planning. In the second phase, an investigator will screen the criteria and recruitment. In the next phase, an investigator will discuss the guide and homework. After that, an investigator will consider focus group strategy and make a final report to complete the research in a targeted time period (Adamopoulos and Todri, 2015). 

A researcher will implement the inductive approach because research issue is based on subjective nature. This approach will enable a researcher to build theoretical aspects associated with research aspects. Thus, this approach would be significant to enhance the reliability and validity of research outcome (Ju, Jeong, and Chyi, 2014).   

Research Methodology

Sampling is a process of choosing the participants from larger population size. Non-probability sampling method will be applied by an investigator for conducting the investigation as this research issue relies on qualitative nature. However, long time period and high expenses will be required for using non-probability sampling tool due to the open-ended questionnaire in an interview (Schulze, Schöler and Skiera, 2015). For obtaining the interview, 5 marketing manager will be selected from Starbuck Corporation, which uses social media practices in the business.  

Primary data technique will be implemented by a researcher to complete the research in a specified time period. This data would be gathered by using the survey through questionnaire and interview. Hence, it could be appropriate for obtaining the depths information from the targeted sample size. This technique is also essential to get first hand and new data related to research issue (Risius and Beck, 2015).  

There are two kinds of a variable which could be executed by a researcher such as an independent and dependent variable. Independent variable is social media marketing strategy and the dependent variable is the business performance of Starbuck Corporation.  

Chart 2: Quantitative research process

 

(Sources: Ngai, Tao and Moon, 2015).

As per the above chart, it could be depicted that a researcher will identify the research problem and purpose at the initial level. After that, it will develop the hypothesis regarding research issue and makes the literature review as per the research objective. Under this research, research has been designed to choose the sample and apply research instrument. After this process, legal ethical consideration will be included in the research design. Later, data will be collected and analyzed by using different sources. After that, the budget would be estimated by a discussion of research (Minazzi, 2015).    

A researcher will implement secondary research to perform the research. This research would be obtained from certain sources such as government publication, offline and online websites, academic journal and annual report. This technique is executed by a researcher to support the primary data. Thus, this instrument would be effective to find reliable outcome (Ju, Jeong, and Chyi, 2014).

Chart 3: Quantitative data analysis process

 

(Sources: Schulze, Schöler and Skiera, 2015).

As per the above chart, it could be stated that a researcher will prepare the information on primary phase. Later, a researcher will gain their intellectual capacity with respect to mean, recording and frequencies of information. After that, data would be assessed by implementing Ms-excel software to demonstrate the data through different tables, charts, and graphs. Subsequent gathered data would be interpreted in a meaningful manner. Consequently, quantitative data analysis could be advantageous to complete the research objectives in a specified time structure (Risius, and Beck, 2015).  

Conclusion

For this research, probability sampling technique would be selected as it provides equal chances to their selected candidate to share their ideas regarding the role of social media marketing strategy in business. Consequently, it could be effective to decline the partiality from survey through a questionnaire. For conducting the survey questionnaire, a researcher will choose 55 employees who are involved in social media practices in business. It is beneficial for a researcher to gather the trustworthy and feasible outcome with minimum time as close-ended questionnaire would be implemented for this research (Ngai, Tao, and Moon, 2015).    

Validity defines the extent by which feasibility of research could be determined by quantitative information. For instance, a researcher will apply the survey through a questionnaire to assess the pros and cons of using social media in business. Furthermore, reliability approach could be applied to assess the trustworthiness of research outcome. The qualitative information is determined by literature review to improve the reliability and validity of research outcome in a systematic manner (Minazzi, 2015).

There is different research limitation which might be faced by a researcher during the research. These limitations could be inadequate time, cost and resources. Another limitation is an insufficient sample size to obtain the information through a survey. Further, an investigator would be accountable for maintaining the confidentiality of participants. As a result, these limitations could impact on the research outcome (Rodriguez, Peterson and Ajjan, 2015).  

 

(See: Exhibit 1)

Conclusion 

As per the above discussion, it can be concluded that social media is used as marketing practices to persuade a large number of customers. It could be summarised that there are different benefits of social media practices such as less time and cost. Further, it could be evaluated that company has some drawbacks of using social media marketing like cybercrime threat. It could be also concluded that company should use effective strategy to improve the social media practices such as invest in online security software.

 It could be also concluded that both quantitative and qualitative research design would be implemented by a researcher to generate the quality information regarding research concern. A researcher will need 10 weeks for completing the investigation in a methodological way.    

References

Adamopoulos, P., & Todri, V. (2015, August). The effectiveness of marketing strategies in social media: Evidence from promotional events. In Proceedings of the 21st ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (pp. 1641-1650). UK: ACM.

Agnihotri, R., Dingus, R., Hu, M. Y., & Krush, M. T. (2016). Social media: Influencing customer satisfaction in B2B sales. Industrial Marketing Management, 53, 172-180.

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2015). Marketing: an introduction. UK: Pearson Education.

Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), 15-27.

Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P. A., & Hinsch, C. (2017). Elements of strategic social media marketing: A holistic framework. Journal of Business Research, 70, 118-126.

Ju, A., Jeong, S. H., & Chyi, H. I. (2014). Will social media save newspapers? Examining the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter as news platforms. Journalism Practice, 8(1), 1-17.

Kim, W. G., Lim, H., & Brymer, R. A. (2015). The effectiveness of managing social media on hotel performance. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 44, 165-171.

Leung, X. Y., Bai, B., & Erdem, M. (2017). Hotel social media marketing: a study on message strategy and its effectiveness. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 8(2), 239-255.

Leung, X. Y., Bai, B., & Stahura, K. A. (2015). The marketing effectiveness of social media in the hotel industry: A comparison of Facebook and Twitter. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 39(2), 147-169.

Minazzi, R. (2015). Social media marketing in tourism and hospitality. Heidelberg: Springer.

Ngai, E. W., Tao, S. S., & Moon, K. K. (2015). Social media research: Theories, constructs, and conceptual frameworks. International Journal of Information Management, 35(1), 33-44.

Risius, M., & Beck, R. (2015). The effectiveness of corporate social media activities in increasing relational outcomes. Information & Management, 52(7), 824-839.

Rodriguez, M., Peterson, R. M., & Ajjan, H. (2015). CRM/social media technology: impact on customer orientation process and organizational sales performance. In Ideas in Marketing: Finding the New and Polishing the Old (pp. 636-638). USA: Springer, Cham.

Schulze, C., Schöler, L., & Skiera, B. (2015). Customizing social media marketing. MIT Sloan Management Review, 56(2), 8.

Scott, D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. USA: John Wiley & Sons.

Tiago, M. T. P. M. B., & Veríssimo, J. M. C. (2014). Digital marketing and social media: Why Bother?. Business Horizons, 57(6), 703-708.

Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2017). Social media marketing. USA: Sage.

Zhu, Y. Q., & Chen, H. G. (2015). Social media and human need satisfaction: Implications for social media marketing. Business Horizons, 58(3), 335-345