Advantages And Disadvantages Of Social Networking In Context With Woolworths

Project Scope

The report will discuss in detail about the advantages and disadvantages of social networks in context with Woolworths Australia. Woolworths is a well-known retailer that is able t get attention of many shopper and has always known for its high quality. The management of the company in last few years have experienced a lot of negativity on social media (Zhang and Moe, 2017). There is rage among the consumers because of the employment advertising case which can be discussed as an important study for the social media marketing and it will also work as a guide for many other corporates to address the negative feedback or experience expressed on social media.

The objective of the report is to understand various advantages as well as disadvantages of social network with the help of case study on Woolworths.

Woolworths understand the significance of social media like many other big brands. It is important to use social media in order to remain relevant in the lives of the customers. The feedback by the consumer on various social media channels shows that the consumers are facing positive experience offline with the brand (Bryman, 2015).

Instead of the apparent movement in platform, the company constantly provide great kind of photographs as well as videos that can be shared to engage the consumer on FB and Instagram.

Woolworths has also gained a lot of advantages also from social network since it is considered as one of the biggest retailer in Australia. Following are some of the advantages of social network for Woolworths: –

Connectivity with the huge audience:  it is a known fact that there is no easier or the quicker way to make any kind of connection than social media. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest are some of the most popular social networking platforms to connect with the consumer (Leonardi et al., 2013).

Commonality of interest: when people look to be part of social networking community, one can pick as well as select people where likes and dislikes are same and helps in building the network around different commonalities.

Easy information sharing: there are many social networking websites that consist of an instant messaging characteristic which also let people exchange data in the real time with the help of chat. This is an amazing factor for managers who use this method to connect with employees and conduct meeting since it helps them use the huge store of data present on internet (Turban et al., 2017).

Literature Review

Effective advertising: whether one is part of non-profit company that require to get the work out associated with any upcoming product or a business founders marketing or launching a new product, there is no effective way than social media to communicate the message among million of people at all times (Luo and Zhong, 2015).

Rise in level of news cycle speed: there is no doubt that social networking has transformed the way new spread among people. Many companies like Woolworths now depend on social media communities to gather as well as share data. Social media specifically Twitter, is slowly becoming an important source of breaking any kind of news. In the current time, people can understand or know about what really is happening all across the world (Batjargal et al., 2013).

Following are some of the disadvantages of social networking communities for Woolworths: –

The company in last few years has faced many social media scandals like vintage soft drink range which was very similar to Frankie where the company was later forced to remove the product after the advertising standards authority found the advertising message way too similar to the Frankie drink. In another incident, the company was criticised for the launching Halaal hot cross buns during the festival of Easter which lead to controversy (Highfield, 2017). Later the sponsorship of a reality show called MasterChef SA was eliminate the damage as a part of two previous social media disasters that has caused. However, Woolworths did not launch any other series unscathed, instead the pantry of the company for guest food bloggers that caused controversy in the starting. The company reaction to another incident where there was furore in people was advertising for employment. It led to a call to trade union of consumer to completely boycott the company and it has echoed and spread like a wild fire among thousands of comments on FB (Arli and Dietrich, 2017).

It can be concluded from the above discussion that company has to take a lot of care while communicating any kind of message with the public because a matter in company can be small but the same matter with the world at-large is completely different. Any kind of content which can be claimed as offensive is posted online receives a lot of feedback and can be excessive as well as brutal. This is specifically correct with subjects which are highly opinionated like race, colour, politics or religion (Batjargal et al., 2013).

Research Questions/Hypothesis

In other cases, incidences like cyberbullying as well as crimes which is against the any section specifically children must be taken seriously. Usage of social media can expose people to other kind of exploitation or harassment (Batjargal et al., 2013).

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of social media in context with Woolworths Australia?

1. How social network can be used as a positive weapon to turn around any controversy or negative incident into a positive case by effective communication?
2. What are social media marketing principles to deal with the negative impact of social network?

The qualitative research is basically based on exploratory research. In this study, it will be used to get some kind of clarity on many underlying factors, motivations and opinions. It provides as an insight into the issue or assist to grow concepts as well as hypotheses for the potential level of quantitative research. Qualitative research is also utilised to not covers the trends in opinions or thoughts and also dive much deep into the issue (Singh et al., 2017). Qualitative collection of data based methods many change by using all kind of unstructured or semi-structured methods. Some kind of common methods consist of some kind of focus groups, with solo interviews and observations. Here the sample size taken is small and the respondents are selected to fulfil the present quota.

The concept of quantitative research is used to quantify the issue by methods that generate many numerical based data and that can be completely changes into quantifying the issue by ways of generating numerical data. In this study, it will be used to quantify the attitudes, attitude, opinion and other kind of defined elements as well as generalize outcomes from big sample of population. The quantitative research utilises calculated data to form facts and also uncover different patterns in the present research. Quantitative based data collection is very structure in comparison of Qualitative data collection methods (Singh et al., 2017). Following methods will be used to perform this kind of research: –

Online surveys, mobile surveys, interviews face to face and longitudinal studies. It will also cover website based interceptors, systematic observation and online polls.  

The study lacks any kind of generalizability and also finding of any kind of action based research are normally only crucial to the particular classroom being part of any investigation and the students and its own unique kind of features. It may further yield different outcomes in another context (Singh et al., 2017). Any other technology, the researcher will have to make sure that the software functions with the computer systems.

Topic To be covered	Start Date	End Date
Introduction to the topic	5th December	10th December
Literature Review	10th December	20th December
Quantitative And Qualitative Research	20th December	25th December
Discussion and Analysis	25th December	1st January
Final Submission	1st January	5th January

Conclusion

Social media has completely transformed the way businesses communicate with consumers and the people at large. It started as an innovative method to approach the place in market has become an important tool for marketing, customer service as well as public relations. However, as easy as social media seems to help to connect with the people, it comes with some disadvantages also as discussed in the report.  Unlike other kinds of marketing, where the company has some control over the messaging, there is no control which can be practised on social media (Matikiti et al., 2016). This can be great when people admire the company like Woolworths however, it can be disaster otherwise.  Social media communities like Twitter and Facebook permit people at large to share their feedback, which makes for interesting communication however can be very dangerous for the company.

Reference

Arli, D. and Dietrich, T., 2017. Can Social Media Campaigns Backfire? Exploring Consumers’ Attitudes and Word-of-Mouth Toward Four Social Media Campaigns and Its Implications on Consumer-Campaign Identification. Journal of Promotion Management, 23(6), pp.834-850.

Batjargal, B., Hitt, M.A., Tsui, A.S., Arregle, J.L., Webb, J.W. and Miller, T.L., 2013. Institutional polycentrism, entrepreneurs’ social networks, and new venture growth. Academy of Management Journal, 56(4), pp.1024-1049.

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

Highfield, T., 2017. Social media and everyday politics. John Wiley & Sons.

Leonardi, P.M., Huysman, M. and 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), pp.1-19.

Luo, Q. and Zhong, D., 2015. Using social network analysis to explain communication characteristics of travel-related electronic word-of-mouth on social networking sites. Tourism Management, 46, pp.274-282.

Matikiti, R., Kruger, M. and Saayman, M., 2016. The usage of social media as a marketing tool in two Southern African countries. Development Southern Africa, 33(5), pp.740-755.

Singh, A., Shukla, N. and Mishra, N., 2017. Social media data analytics to improve supply chain management in food industries. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review.

Turban, E., Outland, J., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, T.P. and Turban, D.C., 2017. Electronic Commerce 2018: A Managerial and Social Networks Perspective. Springer.