The research proposal illustrates about the effectiveness of using social media as an important tool by the cricket teams and clubs to engage with the customers and increase the fan base. It is true to the fact that with the implementation of newer technologies and internet facilities, the social media platforms have served as effective tools to raise awareness among the people and make them watch the sports more frequently (Goh, Heng and Lin 2013). The social media platform has developed good relationships with the customers as well as enhanced the brand image and identity for increasing the fan base and makes the people connect with their favorite cricket teams and the players.
The aim of the research is to evaluate the effectiveness of social media usage for the cricket clubs or teams to enhance the level of engagement with the fan base.
What is the impact of social media on the way cricket teams and clubs engage with their fan base?
How could the various approaches improve the engagement level between the cricket stars and the fans?
What are the most suitable methods used by the cricket clubs or teams to interact with their fans through social media usage?
What are the various measures recommended for the cricket teams and clubs to improve the social media interaction efficiency and increase the fan base?
The research significance will shed light on the importance of this research, which is to find out how the social media platforms can help the cricket clubs and teams to connect with their fan base. This will help in remaining connected to make them aware of the brand products and services offered alongside the management of cricket matches all over. The popular sports brands like Adidas, Nike and Rebook have involved with the social media to increase their fan base and at the same time, make the sports brands popular among the fan base (Stavros et al. 2014). This can not only make them connect with their favorite sports persons, but will also improve the brand name and image. This will make the cricket sports popular among the people while the cricket teams and clubs can interact with the fans more often.
The literature review will assist in obtaining relevant information obtained from the secondary sources of data and conduct the research appropriately. The secondary sources of data include journals, articles and internet websites that consist of important information related to the branding and engagement with clients through the use of social media (Abeza, O’Reilly and Reid 2013).
With the advancement in technology and communication, the social media usage has gained pace and is considered as one of the major convenient tools used to enhance the brand awareness and establish good relationships between the business and its clients. The e of connected devices and using social media platforms have changed the entire way of managing business and improved the customers’ experiences largely. The clients are finding it much more convenient to connect with the brands and look the posts made by the brand on the social networking websites and even search through the marketing emails (Fan and Gordon 2014). The e-commerce purchases made by the customers are much more convenient and the customers’ services are provided through presentation of solutions to the queries asked by clients regarding the products purchased on the particular social networking website. The traditional methods used previously included televisions, radios and newspapers, which were considered as costlier when compared to the new and advanced social media platforms used to remain connected with the clients (Filo, Lock and Karg 2015).
The social media usage has enhanced the business performance through improvement of brand image through promotion of two way communication. It has facilitated the communication between the business and its clients and created a sense of trust and loyalty among the customers too. For every business including the sports brands, the customers are considered as the most important stakeholders and thus future spending on the social media usage can be vital for managing the human resources and paid marketing activities efficiently (McCarthyet al. 2014). The social media platforms are facilitated by forming a social media team, which can align with the marketing teams for improving the marketing campaigns efficiency and ensure that the right messages and information from the brand are delivered to the clients. The management of close relationships with the customers, considered as the topmost priority of every business, has been associated with the way social media usage has formulated the marketing activities and improved the customers’ services too. This has helped in delivering the best quality customers’ experiences across every channel including the online websites, email, social, sales and services (Eagleman 2013).
Few of the most popular social networking websites including Facebook and Twitter have improved the ability of the organizations to create content and deliver those through posts on the website, so that it can be clearly visible to the customers. For example, the sports persons and athletes often made live video and demonstrated their love for the sports along with the brands that they were associated with. This has not only made more people remain connected with their favorite athletes, but also has established positive relationships with the brands, which influenced their buying behaviors and improved the sales revenue for the business too (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis 2014). The sports team managed closed interactions with the fans with the management of their website, which enhanced the brand visibility and awareness among customers, thereby resulted in making them get constant updates and news about the team. The broadcast rights are managed through integration of the social media into the live broadcast sports and this has allowed the viewers to remain more connected with the sports. They can send tweets and posts on social media walls that can be showed during the broadcast and the cricket experts can provide relevant answers accordingly too. The conversations around the broadcast can trigger the people’s interests and motivate them to become more engaged.
Nowadays, more and more people are getting habituated with the use of social media and remain online most of the times. It has become easier and more convenient for the sports brands and sports persons to communicate with larger group of audiences by coming live or online in social networking websites (Ashley and Tuten 2015). Though, they do not communicate with every people, still they come online and spread their messages and information regarding their love for sports, which has influenced many people towards the sports and the brands associated with it as well. The sports teams have identified the audience and targeted them on social media, which has helped in understanding the fan base and with the use of social media platforms; it has become easier to create an active community following. There have been more followers of the website and it has created more scopes for the teams to grow their brand, furthermore creates a sense of enthusiasm and interest among the existing fans and kept them informed about the events as well (Hopkins 2013). The content and information associated with the sports are being dispersed via live videos, tweets and posts, which sometimes though can affect the integrity of the brand. The teams must balance the content and keep close interactions with the fans, which has facilitated the promotion of brand and improved the ways of drawing more fans to follow the game and become consistent buyers of the brand items too (Campbell, Lambright and Wells 2014).
The research methodology is considered as one of the most important chapters of the research proposal that will provide the researcher an overview of the research approaches, methods, philosophies and strategies followed to conduct the research appropriately. The research methods will assist the research to understand the ways of selecting the right sample size and collect data to analyze and derive a good conclusion in the end (Shen and Bissell 2013).
The philosophy of research will guide the researcher in obtaining relevant skills, knowledge and expertise regarding the research subject and focus on the purpose of conducting the research rather than finding out the ‘what’ and ‘why. The philosophical approach will also help in reflecting the methods adopted and strategies that will be implemented for developing a scientific knowledge on the use of social media by sports team for engaging with their fan base (Neuman 2013). The research approach will be considered as deductive, considered the fact that the existing theories and concepts will be considered as certain times to derive new theories and focus on deriving a good conclusion that will be able to meet the objectives of the research.
Among the exploratory, explanatory and descriptive research designs, the descriptive research design will be the most suitable for conducting the research appropriately. While the exploratory research design considers the hypothetical and theoretical ideas to ensure that the research can be conducted properly in the future, the descriptive research design will focus on generating new ideas and explore the areas to gain in-depth information required to create scopes for successful research conduction (Smith 2015). The descriptive research design will be quite effective to choose for meeting the requirements needed to assess the information and data, furthermore will ensure that the online survey process and analysis of quantitative data are successful done while conducting the research.
A sample size of 60 will be considered from where the data and information will be collected to conduct the research properly. The collection of data includes both qualitative and quantitative data. While the quantitative data collection is the major focus, where a homogenous group of respondents will be selected from a heterogeneous large group of people, the qualitative data has little role during the research conduction (Sekaran and Bougie 2016). These kinds of data will constitute the primary data while the secondary data will be collected from secondary sources including the journals, articles, newspapers, websites, etc.
As the research suits the determining of connection created between the cricket and its engagement with the fans through use of social media, it is important to expand the scope of research by shedding limelight on other sports too. People have interest in different sports nowadays like cricket, soccer, basketball, tennis, etc. and so the social media usage by every sports will enhance the chances for the fans to engage with their favorite sports stars. This will also increase the popularity of the sports and ensure that the fan base increase consistently with the brand partners and sponsors getting immense exposure for managing business alternatively (Fowler Jr 2013).
The cost and time can be major constraints while conducting the research though it is true that the budget is properly allocated for ensuring that all the resources are available. At certain times, the respondents were not found at the same place and time, which hindered obtaining relevant data and information and limited the research study too. As the respondents here are the fans of sports, so a smaller sample may not be suitable, which is considered as another limitation of the research (Lindlof and Taylor 2017).
References
Abeza, G., O’Reilly, N. and Reid, I., 2013. Relationship marketing and social media in sport. International Journal of Sport Communication, 6(2), pp.120-142.
Ashley, C. and Tuten, T., 2015. Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), pp.15-27.
Campbell, D.A., Lambright, K.T. and Wells, C.J., 2014. Looking for friends, fans, and followers? Social media use in public and nonprofit human services. Public Administration Review, 74(5), pp.655-663.
Eagleman, A.N., 2013. Acceptance, motivations, and usage of social media as a marketing communications tool amongst employees of sport national governing bodies. Sport Management Review, 16(4), pp.488-497.
Fan, W. and Gordon, M.D., 2014. The power of social media analytics. Communications of the ACM, 57(6), pp.74-81.
Filo, K., Lock, D. and Karg, A., 2015. Sport and social media research: A review. Sport management review, 18(2), pp.166-181.
Fowler Jr, F.J., 2013. Survey research methods. Sage publications.
Goh, K.Y., Heng, C.S. and Lin, Z., 2013. Social media brand community and consumer behavior: Quantifying the relative impact of user-and marketer-generated content. Information Systems Research, 24(1), pp.88-107.
Hopkins, J.L., 2013. Engaging Australian Rules Football fans with social media: A case study. International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, 13(1-2), pp.104-121.
Lindlof, T.R. and Taylor, B.C., 2017. Qualitative communication research methods. Sage publications.
McCarthy, J., Rowley, J., Jane Ashworth, C. and Pioch, E., 2014. Managing brand presence through social media: the case of UK football clubs. Internet Research, 24(2), pp.181-204.
Neuman, W.L., 2013. Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Pearson education.
Sekaran, U. and Bougie, R., 2016. Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Shen, B. and Bissell, K., 2013. Social media, social me: A content analysis of beauty companies’ use of Facebook in marketing and branding. Journal of Promotion Management, 19(5), pp.629-651.
Smith, J.A. ed., 2015. Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. Sage.
Stavros, C., Meng, M.D., Westberg, K. and Farrelly, F., 2014. Understanding fan motivation for interacting on social media. Sport management review, 17(4), pp.455-469.
Tsimonis, G. and Dimitriadis, S., 2014. Brand strategies in social media. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 32(3), pp.328-344.
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