Assignment on E- Procurement and Supply Chain

Running head: E- PROCUREMENT AND SUPPLY CHAIN
E- Procurement and Supply Chain
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
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E- PROCUREMENT AND SUPPLY CHAIN
Answer to question 1
Social media is considered as the most important tool in the in the marketing arena. Social
media marketing is a type of marketing done through internet by using the social networking
websites as the marketing tools. The aim is to provide such substances which will share the
social network for the exposure of the company’s brand and reach out to a wider audience. The
marketers build up clear strategy which takes into consideration the attainable goals, the target
groups and knowledge about the competitors. Social media helps in the identification if the target
customers understand their needs and desires, link the company website to their profile, provide
valuable content and create an integrated social media strategy (Tuten & Solomon, 2014). The
contemporary social media campaigns are a coordinated marketing effort of the business owners
to associate with the business objective by using the popular social media platforms. The
campaigns differ from the efforts taken by the social media daily because of the target,
measurability and an increased focus. To get success in the social media campaign, the
businessmen need to select the most effective platforms and determine the short and long term
goals with respect to the specific social media channels. This helps in promoting customer
involvement and it is ensured that the content is enough to create a voice and value for the
product or brand. The businessmen should keep it in mind that the more they will reach out to
the customers; it will be a success of their social media marketing. The various social media
platforms include- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+.
The internet users have paid attention about the methods that are used b the marketers who
offer custom ads. The companies gather a lot of information about the people in different parts of
the world (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). This information is used for placing the ads which can tend to
be interference in someone’s privacy. The controversy mostly centers on the data collected

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using third- party cookies which helps in the accumulation of a complete record of the user’s
browsing history. It can be clearly considered as an invasion in privacy because the information
includes personal data such as name, address and phone numbers of the users. The inclusion of
third- party cookies draw a considerable amount of negative attention though all of them are not
harmful. It is sometimes argued by the marketers that the people should not have any problem in
compromising with their privacy for the sake of advertising. They state that with a bit of
violation in their privacy they are only paying the price for the services offered. They also
mention that if the personal data is not collected then the ads will not be as personalized as they
want and worthwhile which will result in the loss of revenue and they will have to pay more for
the content (Chaffey, 2016).
Advertising of small business through social media websites pose a threat on the private life
of the customers. For instance, if the marketer uses his client’s words along with a picture on the
Facebook page for the promotion of the business, it can be a violation of privacy. This is because
the company is not authorized to use the client’s picture without his consent. By doing so, the
client has every right to file a case against the company as it is a burning issue of the world. The
invasion of privacy can include a number of things such as intrusion upon seclusion, public
disclosure of private facts, third party disclosure, misusing someone’s name, picture or likings or
giving false impression about someone. The people who are engaged in violating the privacy of
internet users do so for the promotion or development of their new products. They match up to
the choice of the users by keeping a close look on their social media behavior (Hult & Sjölund,
2017).
The common ways in which the marketers invade social media privacy are-

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E- PROCUREMENT AND SUPPLY CHAIN
Data scraping: this process keeps a track on the online activities of the users to gather personal
data and use those and other conversations from the social network, job websites and other
online forums. At some point, the marketers argue that the users willingly share their personal
details online; no one has asked them to share their information. The information that is collected
use the personal details to make advertisements specific for the products. In the year 2011, a
media research company named Nielsen Co., was caught for misusing the data collected from the
online forums of PatientsLikeMe where people share their personal and emotional problems.
This is a terrific example of the violation of web privacy (Chang, Yu & Lu, 2015).
Facebook apps leaking personal data- Facebook is such a social networking platform that
uses most of the personal details starting from pictures to phone numbers. Many users have
complained a million times that their personal information have been leaked by Facebook.
Facebook takes consent from the user at the time of installation of the app by clicking “Allow”
and then the marketers get hold of that personal information to use them in the product
promotion (Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014). The marketers do not announce that they are using the
data and the users do not have any clue of it and that is how their online privacy is at stake. The
apps of Facebook such as Family tree and Farmville are accused of stealing personal
information.
Online social tracking- most of the internet users are unaware of the fact that by using the
‘like’ or ‘tweet’ button, the marketers can easily use the social media websites for the purpose of
tracking (Leung, Bai & Stahura, 2015). They mainly work with cookies which make tracking
easy in different websites. In this way, the interests and online shopping behavior can be easily
scanned by the marketers by invading the online privacy law. There are other tracking tools