The use of information technology is needed in every industry irrespective of the size of the industry and the type of business. The medium and strategies of advertisement and marketing has changes rapidly over the years. This is because the social media marketing has a number of advantages the most significant one is that this platform has a broad reach and therefore used in online advertising (Berthon et al., 2012). Furthermore, social media allows the business to target a specific group of people in a particular location (Jussila, Kärkkäinen and Aramo-Immonen 2014). The different social media platforms that are majorly used by the business organizations include Twitter, Instagram, Linkedln, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest and so on. There are millions of active users in Twitter and Facebook which can help the business owners to get in touch with the customers directly. Furthermore, by making use of social media, even the customers can remain in direct connection with the business organization regarding their queries and issues. This will further increase the customers’ satisfaction which will be beneficial to the business. However, there are certain disadvantages of using social media in business which includes need of additional resources in management of the online presence of the business. This research s is undertaken in order evaluate the pros and cons of implementation of social networking in a business. In this research paper, the use of social networks in business expansion of Telstra is researched in order to evaluate the business benefits of use of social media network.
The increase in users of social media has provided an excellent opportunity to the business owners to advertise their business and their products in social media. The objectives of this research are as follows-
The main aim of the research study is to discuss the advantages and the disadvantages of using social network in business.
The power of social media network has gradually become a strongest power all over the business world. This is because social media is one of the fastest and a reliable source of marketing and advertisements. The project will evaluate how different social media network can bring business advantages to the business organizations (Kim and Ko 2012). However, there are certain negative aspects of social media use in business which will be evaluated in this research paper (Stelzner 2014). The identification of challenges, gaps and business opportunities in association of social media and its use will help in providing recommendations for making an optimum social media network use for business benefits (Andzulis, Panagopoulos and Rapp 2012). For that, proper identification and elimination of the issues and disadvantages should be evaluated on basis of the social media use in business. This research has been undertaken in order to analyse the different ways of utilization of social media network in business so that its advantages and the disadvantages in business can be evaluated.
For this, the previous published literatures in this field will be studied and reviewed along with a quantitative data analysis of the data collected from the primary sources will be performed to understand impact of social media network in business and the associated gaps and challenges (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis 2014). This research will also examine the possible effects that are the positive and negative impact of utilizing social media network on the growth and performance of Telstra.
The social media use is increasingly implemented in the different business organizations as a tool for direct communication with the customers (Castronovo and Huang 2012). This tool is used as an advertising and marketing platform to increase the customers’ reach. With the increase in customers’ satisfaction, it is possible to generate more sales thus increasing the business profit. With the increase in use and adoption of technology in different business organization, innovation in business processes is required. Use of social media is an innovative means of promoting a particular business globally. Online advertisement is done by developing a webpage or website for the business (Jussila, Kärkkäinen and Aramo-Immonen 2014). The use of social media networks helps in monitoring the customer reach in a particular website. Along with this, the paid and promoted advertisements reach a greater number of digital users thus creating an appropriate online presence for the business. The use of social media enables the business owners or the managers in making direct communication with the customers which is much faster than the traditional means of advertisements such as advertisements in newspapers, radio or television (Tiago and Veríssimo 2014). This literature review has been undertaken in order to analyse the social media use business, gaps and opportunities.
Majority of the business organizations across the globe irrespective of the size and type of business are making good use of social network in increasing their brand awareness and brand exposure (Gensler et al. 2013). This is one of the main advantages of using social media in business. Social media helps in undertaking a cost effective digital marketing that have the power to increase the business visibility by providing a business a global reach (Laroche, Habibi and Richard 2013). With the enhancement of the online reputation, the brand value of the business increases. The use of social media network helps in easier management of the customers’ queries and questions (Trainor et al., 2014). The online reviews provided by the customers, further helps the new customers in getting an appropriate understanding of the product (Okazaki and Taylor 2013). However, this has certain negative aspects as well. The increase in the negative reviews can result in huge amount of customer loss.
Another advantage of social media use in business is that it helps in targeting the desired customers. With the access to the information about the location, interest and online behaviour of the customers, it becomes easier to target a specific group of customers (Sashi 2012). However, one of the main needs of increasing the customers’ reach is to increase the traffic of the business website (Baruah 2012). This can be done by optimisation of search engine. The social media use in business is therefore a cost alternative to the traditional advertising processes.
However, there are certain disadvantages of using social media network in business. The positive reviews associated with the organization can increase the customers’ engagement with the organization and likewise the negative reviews can tarnish the reputation of the organization earning a huge amount of business loss (Picazo-Vela, Gutiérrez-Martínez and Luna-Reyes 2012). Therefore, a continuous monitoring of the social media webpage is necessary and it needs a large investment of time. The negative feedbacks can devastate the reputation of a company in minutes that took years to build.
Along with the numerous advantages of social media use in business, there are a number of issues and problems associated with it. Maintenance of a good online reputation often becomes a challenge since any negative comment or review can severely affect the reputation of the organization. Furthermore, there are risks of data breach or data leakage from the online platform that can result in huge business loss. There is a tendency of certain business organization to advertise their business based on false claims. This might adversely affect the business of the organization and loss of customers.
Although a number of researches have been done in this field in order to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of social media use in business, it is necessary to evaluate whether the use of social media can be optimized for greater business benefits. For that, the disadvantages and the issues associated with the use of social media in business are needed to be evaluated. This research study aims at analysing the different ways of using social media network for business benefit. It is assumed that the social media use can be optimized for larger business benefit. For this, the business advantages that Telstra achieved with the help of using social media network are evaluated by performing a secondary data analysis. Furthermore, a primary research is to be undertaken in order to analyse the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in business.
The research hypothesis identified for this research project is as follows-
H1: The proper social media use can provide a greater business advantage to different business organization
H0: The social media use network can negatively affect the business growth
Primary Question
The primary question associated with this research study is as follows-
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media network in business?
Secondary Questions
In order to find the answers to the primary question, certain secondary research questions are identified, which are as follows-
The research is broadly classified in two sections. At first the researcher will evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using social media network in business. This will be done by collecting primary data from the business owners who make social media use in advertising and promoting their business. Consecutively, the effect on the growth and performance of Telstra will be evaluated to understand whether the use of social media network proves to be a boon for a business or a bane.
A deductive research approach is chosen for performing this research study as it helps in better investigation of the identified research problem. The deductive research approach helps in dissecting the past hypotheses and the research models associated with it (Leedy and Ormrod 2013). Thus research approach furthermore encourages a researcher in performing the research study in a legitimate way. Since a quantitative data analysis will be performed along with a qualitative analysis of the data, the deductive approach will be the best research approach to be chosen. The research philosophy chosen for this research is positivism philosophy. This philosophy is chosen as it will encourage the researcher to manage a propelled thinking that is associated with the identified research problem.
Choice of a proper research design is essential to properly gather the information associated with the research in a lucid way. The choice of a proper research design ensures that issues associated with the research are distinguished appropriately and additional investigation is done on the gathered information. There are mainly three research designs or research outline, which are informative, exploratory and descriptive research design. For this research study, the descriptive research design is chosen. A descriptive research design ensures proper portrayal of the research problem through point by point data analysis of the collected data. Therefore, it provides additional information to the researcher regarding the collected data.
Research methodology is mainly defined as a collection of tools, processes and techniques that is used for gathering the data and information that is needed to complete the research work (Chandra and Sharma 2013). Research methodology not only considers the tools and technologies necessary for conducting a research study, but also considers the theories, concepts and the methods undertaken by a researcher in order to analyse the collected data and get answers to the identified research problems.
Quantitative Research
For this research, both primary and secondary research techniques are considered. Both primary and secondary data will be collected in order to perform qualitative and quantitative analysis on the collected data and information. The collection of primary data incorporates the collection of information from sources that have a firsthand experience on the events that are under research. Primary data is therefore gathered with the approaches that include direct interview, use of questionnaire to conduct the surveys and observation (Alvesson and Sandberg 2013). In this case, interviewing the business owners who are making use of the social media context in advertising their business can provide a firsthand knowledge about the advantages and disadvantages of social media use in context of business. These interviews can be conducted by telephonic conversation or meeting the respondent in person. Survey is however, one of the widely used techniques of collecting the primary information. These surveys are performed online to gather details from a large number of respondents. In this case, the researcher will be doing an online survey to understand the advantages and disadvantages of using social media context in business. Observation is another widely used method of data collection and this method can be utilized to observe the online behaviour of Telstra to understand the effect of use of social media context in business of Telstra.
The online behaviour of Telstra is observed in order to collect data about the social media use in business context. Furthermore, an online survey will be conducted and sample size of the survey would be 50. The collected data from the survey will be analysed in order to understand whether it is advantage for a business to use social media context or disadvantage. A probability sampling technique is used in this research
Qualitative Research
Secondary research methodology defines the collection of information from the sources such as books, scholarly articles, previously published research papers and annual reports of the companies. This research methodology is advantageous for different researchers as it helps them in collection of huge amount of information. Secondary data collection will be done in order to understand the disadvantages and advantages of use of social media context in business. The primary data will be collected in this field as well. However, in order to analyse the effect of use of social media in growth and performance of Telstra, the annual reports of the company can be researched for data collection
The qualitative research will be done by performing an extensive research on the previously published literatures, research papers and books (Neuman 2013). The data collection method includes research of the previously published literatures and annual report of Telstra.
However, there are certain limitations associated with this research, which are as follows-
Conclusion
Use of technology is inevitable in business. With the increase in use of social media, many business organizations are targeting this digital media to advertise their products and reach a wider audience. The research project is expected to identify the advantages and disadvantages of social media use in business by performing qualitative and quantitative research. Collection of both primary and secondary data is needed in order to get answers to the identified research questions.
References
Alvesson, M. and Sandberg, J. 2013. Constructing Research Questions. London: SAGE Publications.
Andzulis, J.M., Panagopoulos, N.G. and Rapp, A., 2012. A review of social media and implications for the sales process. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 32(3), pp.305-316.
Baruah, T.D., 2012. Effectiveness of Social Media as a tool of communication and its potential for technology enabled connections: A micro-level study. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 2(5), pp.1-10.
Berthon, P.R., Pitt, L.F., Plangger, K. and Shapiro, D., 2012. Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy. Business horizons, 55(3), pp.261-271.
Castronovo, C. and Huang, L., 2012. Social media in an alternative marketing communication model. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 6(1), p.117.
Chandra, S. and Sharma, M. 2013. Research methodology. Oxford: Alpha Science International Ltd.
Gensler, S., Völckner, F., Liu-Thompkins, Y. and Wiertz, C., 2013. Managing brands in the social media environment. Journal of interactive marketing, 27(4), pp.242-256.
Jussila, J.J., Kärkkäinen, H. and Aramo-Immonen, H., 2014. Social media utilization in business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, pp.606-613.
Jussila, J.J., Kärkkäinen, H. and Aramo-Immonen, H., 2014. Social media utilization in business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, pp.606-613.
Kim, A.J. and Ko, E., 2012. Do social media marketing activities enhance customer equity? An empirical study of luxury fashion brand. Journal of Business Research, 65(10), pp.1480-1486.
Laroche, M., Habibi, M.R. and Richard, M.O., 2013. To be or not to be in social media: How brand loyalty is affected by social media?. International Journal of Information Management, 33(1), pp.76-82.
Leedy, P. and Ormrod, J. 2013. Practical research. Boston: Pearson.
Neuman, W.L., 2013. Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Pearson education.
Okazaki, S. and Taylor, C.R., 2013. Social media and international advertising: theoretical challenges and future directions. International marketing review, 30(1), pp.56-71.
Picazo-Vela, S., Gutiérrez-Martínez, I. and Luna-Reyes, L.F., 2012. Understanding risks, benefits, and strategic alternatives of social media applications in the public sector. Government information quarterly, 29(4), pp.504-511.
Sashi, C.M., 2012. Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social media. Management decision, 50(2), pp.253-272.
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Tiago, M.T.P.M.B. and Veríssimo, J.M.C., 2014. Digital marketing and social media: Why bother?. Business Horizons, 57(6), pp.703-708.
Trainor, K.J., Andzulis, J.M., Rapp, A. and Agnihotri, R., 2014. Social media technology usage and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social CRM. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), pp.1201-1208.
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