Benefits And Disadvantages Of Social Media Networking In Business Functions

Objectives of the research

Question:

Discuss about the Research Methodology for Communication and Technology Business.

Social media and networking is on one of the major part of the life of the people. And thus businesses are using this network for marketing their products and communicating with the customers. It is the result of technological advancement in the communication and technology business. It has been analysed that social media networking and communication is used by the companies and this provides them with some of the benefits as well as the disadvantages (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).This is the research report that discusses about the research plan that has been used to conduct the research over the topic.

Objectives of the research discusses about the main theme of the research around which the research or the study revolves.as far as this case is considered, it is the research that deals with social media networking and its benefits and disadvantages to the business. The study provides the information about the social media engagement of the organizations along with the benefits and the disadvantages of the use of social media networking in the business functions:

The scope of the research deals with analysing the benefits and disadvantages associated with using social media networking in business functions. This research provides the future researchers about the idea of the functions in which the social media networking is used by the companies (Smith & Zook, 2011). The companies can take better measures to avoid the disadvantages. It also helps in gaining knowledge regarding the business use of social networking so that it can be incorporated in most of the companies that are linked with fast food industry.

As far as the literature review that has been discussed is considered, it has been analysed that the literature provides various aspects of social networking. The literature mainly talks about the company called McDonalds as the case so that the benefits and advantages of the social networking in different functions can easily be understood  (Leonardi, Huysman & Steinfield, 2013). Many researchers have suggested that technology is part of the life of the people as well as of the businesses. The main function that requires technological advancement is communication of businesses with the customers as well as among each other. It has been argued in the literature hat social media is the tool that allow the companies to avail so much of facilities such as interaction with the people, communicating the information, posting the das, sharing knowledge etc. the tool of social networking has changes or altered the whole scene of business communication these days (Rennie & Morrison, 2013). E. It allow the companies to have two way communication such that the companies post their information the online portals and the customers provide their review on that information thus completes the communication between the company and the customers. There are various benefits that the company enjoys because of social networking use in its functions such as more customers attraction, more market presence, better communication etc. the case of McDonalds suggest that it is the company that uses social networking to a great extend its functions. The major use of social networking sites are in communication function of the business. McDonalds is also using the social media tools as the advertising medium and thus gaining many benefits out of it (Gronum, Verreynne & Kastelle, 2012). As far as the other side of use of social media is considered, it has been analysed that there are different disadvantages as well that the companies are experiencing because of the use of social media in their functions. This is because some of the campaigns by McDonalds have failed when the company has failed to target the audience with better strategies of social marketing. It has been analysed that any wrong step on social media by the company can affect the image of the badly. McDonalds has faced such issues but has succeeded in gaining its brand name again. Other disadvantages that have been discussed by different researchers are the resources or the technical skills required by the employees (Gensler, Völckner, Liu-Thompkins & Wiertz, 2013). It is required by the companies to hire the resources having a particular type of skills so that they can handle the activities of social media networking in the functions. There are some issues that have been found on which the research is needed. The literature or the study does not provide the benefits and disadvantages into different industries.

Scope of the research

There are some questions that need to be answered and thus the research needs to be conducted by implementing the following methodology. Some of the research question for this research is:

1. How social media impact on the functioning of the company?

1. What are the advantages of using social media?
2. What are the disadvantages of using social media?

Qualitative research is the research that needs to be conducted in order to gain the knowledge about the views and the opinions regarding the topic. It is the exploratory research that studies about the reasons behind the topic.

Process:

• Determination of research question
• Studying the literature review
• Generating the hypothesis
• Data collection
• Data analysis
• Evaluation
• Results

Reliability and validity: As afar as the qualitative research is concerned, it has been analysed that these researchers are not that reliable because it does not involve and figures of data to justify. It may have greater validity as the perception of the sample is taken in order to conduct the research. Reliability of the research can be enhanced by taking the data from the reliable sources such as from the companies that are using the social media networking as tool.

Sampling and sample size: The sampling method that has been used in this research is stratified sampling in which a company from 4 of the industries are selected and from every company 50 employees are selected to conduct the research. So, the total sampling size is 400.

Data collection: as the data needs to be collected from the employees from different companies so it is not possible to conduct interviews and thus it is required to fill the questionnaires sent through e-mail (Edmonds & Kennedy, 2016).

Data analysis: the data has been analysed by understanding the relationship between the industry and the benefits and disadvantages.

Variable specifications: there are two types of variables in the research, the first is the dependent variable that is advantages and disadvantages of social media and the independent variable in the research is the type of industry, this is because the type of industry affects the benefits that the industry or the company can gain because of social media use.

Quantitative research is the research that deals with figures and data. It is the study that results in quantifying the issues discussed and to generate the numerical data to take ait the result from the study. It does not look for the reasons but quantify the elements such as opinions, attitude, perception etc.

Both the type of researches that is qualitative and quantitative follows the same basic steps in order to conduct the research. It has been analysed that the study involves following steps:

• Determination of the hypothesis
• Designing of the research
• Select the sample
• Data collection
• Analysis of data
• Evaluation of the data
• Conclusion of the research

Literature review

Research instruments include the methods in which the data is being collected by the researchers. The instrument that involves in this research is questionnaire. The questionnaire has some closed and some open questions that determines about the different aspects. The observation method has also been used to observe that data from the reports of the company that provides the idea about the increase in sales because of social media.

Data has been analysed by process of relationship analysis. The analysis of the data is done by making the relationship graph between the benefits of the social media and the impact of the industry on the same. The graph of different industries have been made together so that dependency of industry can be analysed the benefits or the disadvantages achieved in the company.

Sampling and sample size:  as far as the sampling technique is considered, it has been analysed that like the qualitative analysis, stratified sampling is gain used in this research as well (Kirson, et al. 2013). This helps in involving different companies with different industries and also the employees from each of the selected company. There are four industries or the companies that have been selected and 50 employees from every company are selected. The total sample size is 200 employees.

Reliability and validity: the research that has been conducted by quantitative method r more reliable than the qualitative methods. This is because the research of quantitative methods includes figures that are more reliable than the theoretical concepts.

This is the part of the research proposal that includes the limitations of the research (Ngai, Tao & Moon, 2015). It has been analysed from the above research that it does not include all the industries. Thus the result that has been concluded from the study cannot be implied on any of the industry. It has been observed that industry is independent variable that has its impact on the benefits and the disadvantages experienced by the company from social media use thus the results that are being concluded may be industry specific and it cannot be assumed for any of the industry. Another limitation that has been associated with the research is that it is not necessary that every individual or the employees that has been considered in the sample will revert to the questionnaire sent by the e mail. It may also be possible that the employees have not consciously filled the questionnaire. It may be possible that they do not have any idea about the figures that how much their company is benefited of disadvantaged by the social media thus lack of information of the respondents is another limitation.

Activities involves in the research plan:

1. Development of research questions: It is the stage where the research questions are being framed. It has been analysed that the research questions are the major objectives of the research.
2. Designing of the research: It is the stage here all the methods and the techniques that are being used in the research to collect the data and the other things are being decided.
3. Data collection: It is the stage or the phase of the research that deals with actually conducting the research or collecting the data.
4. Data analysis: It is the stage where the data that has been collected is sorted down and analysed to take out the conclusion.
5. Results: It is the stage where the actual conclusion is being framed after analysing the whole data.
6. Limitations: It is the stage where the research limitations are being mentioned so that it becomes easy for the other readers to use and imply the conclusion or the results in further researches.

Activity	Time (in months)
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Development of research questions
Research design
Data collection
Data analysis
Conclusion
Limitation findings

Conclusion:

It has been conclude from the qualitative research that most of the respondents from food industry and hotel industry suggests that social media can be used s the tool for marketing while the IT industry and most of the respondents from financial and IT industry suggests that social media is good for internal communication. It has been analysed from the answers of the employees that food and hospitality industry are among more use of these tools also getting disadvantages. As far as the quantitative report has been considered, it has been analysed that food and hospitality industry is enjoying more befits of social media technology but also experiencing more number of disadvantages and the major disadvantage is the impact on brand image of the company by the negative reviews of the people. The relationship between the industry and the impact of social media is also found to be intense.

Reference List 

Edmonds, W. A., & Kennedy, T. D. (2016). An Applied Guide to Research Designs: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methods. Sage Publications.

Gensler, S., Völckner, F., Liu-Thompkins, Y., & Wiertz, C. (2013). Managing brands in the social media environment. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27(4), 242-256.

Gronum, S., Verreynne, M. L., & Kastelle, T. (2012). The role of networks in small and medium?sized enterprise innovation and firm performance. Journal of Small Business Management, 50(2), 257-282.

Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business horizons, 53(1), 59-68.

Kirson, N. Y., Weiden, P. J., Yermakov, S., Huang, W., Samuelson, T., Offord, S. J., … & Wong, B. J. (2013). Efficacy and effectiveness of depot versus oral antipsychotics in schizophrenia: synthesizing results across different research designs.

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.

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.

Rennie, F., & Morrison, T. (2013). E-learning and social networking handbook: Resources for higher education. Routledge.

Smith, P. R., & Zook, Z. (2011). Marketing communications: integrating offline and online with social media. Kogan Page.