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Impact of Social Media on E-commerce Retail Business

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Added on  2021-06-17

Impact of Social Media on E-commerce Retail Business

   Added on 2021-06-17

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Study of impact of Social Media on E-commerce Retail Business in the UK and Study of Challenges in ecommerce in UK SMEsResearch question and MethodologyIntroductionThe aim of this research is to explore how social media affects ecommerce strategies and whatare the challenges that UK SMEs face when adopting ecommerce as their business model. Forthis study, a mixed research would be conducted on the organization involving secondary dataanalysis and primary survey.Research Questions Aim of this research is to explore how social media is used by online retail companies and theimpacts their social media strategies make on the ecommerce business. To achieve this aim,following research questions would be answered:· What are the ecommerce strategies used by online retailers?· How does social media impact ecommerce organizations?· How will social media affect the ecommerce strategies of the UK online retailer?· How can ecommerce retailers use of social media as an opportunity to grow?Research MethodologyEnvironmental factors and changes in the business environment can affect the working in theorganization. Adapting to the environment would need large scale changes in the processes. Withadvent of social media and increasing usage of it by the consumers of retail today, businessenvironment is changing. Just as the commerce website provides an opportunity to the people to make purchases and feel ashopping experience without having a need to be physically present at the store, social mediaplatforms give them the option to connect with others and share information without the need tobe physically meeting with the person. Thus, social media can be used for buildings brands,achieving word of mouth popularity, engaging customers, and increasing sales. Ecommerce have transformed into a customer centric and social centred business from theproduct centred business with the adoption of social media. It has benefited both the consumersand the brands. With social media, consumers can have access to a large pool of knowledge and
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Study of impact of Social Media on E-commerce Retail Business in the UK and Study of Challenges in ecommerce in UK SMEsthus, understand products better so that they can take better decisions on their purchases.Ecommerce firms on the other side, ecommerce organizations can gain insights into theconsumer behaviour and understand their expectations and preferences. This can helporganizations develop business strategies that are effective. Social media can also be used as anew delivery platform for ecommerce organization. Platforms like Facebook allow creation ofpages as well as integration of a store on the Facebook page. Online consumers can be engagedthrough creation of a group where consumers can freely discuss their fashion concerns andinterests. This would also give companies insight into the consumer perceptions (Manneh, 2017).Research DesignA research methodology is like a systematic plan for conducting any research. It provides a wayto researcher that can be used for collecting data, analysing it, and delivering insights from thisanalysis which can assist important decisions related to subject being studied. Basic researchtypes can be descriptive or analytical, applied or fundamental, quantitative or qualitative, andconceptual or empirical. Descriptive research aims to identify facts and usually involves surveys.It describes the events around the subject. In analytical research on the other side, informationand facts that are available are used to make a critical evaluation of the subject through sometests that can compare or correlated between variables studied.Applied research deals with discoveries of solutions to specific problems that may be faced by anorganization or a group of people. A research involving identification of trends that can be socialor economic in a specific organization or city can be an example of an action research.Fundamental research concerns more with the generalizations of explanations and formation oftheories by analysing the basic knowledge that is gathered.Quantitative methods are used to test theories using statistical methods and the facts areexpressed numerically in a quantitative data. Qualitative research on the other side deals withunderstanding of a phenomena. Exploring reasons why people behave in a certain way by usinginterviews or secondary data collection can be an example of a qualitative research. The currentresearch aims to explore how the increasing use of social media is affecting ecommerceorganizations. It would involve exploration of the motives people have behind using social mediaand ecommerce, the behaviour they display on the two platforms, the strategies that companies
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Study of impact of Social Media on E-commerce Retail Business in the UK and Study of Challenges in ecommerce in UK SMEsmake to utilize social media in their business, and the impacts these strategies make on theecommerce consumers.For investigating these reasons and patterns, the research would need both the insights thatinclude exploration of current theories related to ecommerce and social media to understand theemerging patterns of consumer behaviour through a quantitative research and the exploration ofthe strategies used by ecommerce companies by involving them in a qualitative inquiry such asinterview. Thus, the current research would make use of a mixed methodology in which bothqualitative and quantitative research methods would be used.The research can take either the conceptual approach to understand an idea, develop newconcepts or interpret the old ones or an empirical approach by observing the data and testing itempirically to deliver insights. As the current research needs both, an understanding of impactsof social media on ecommerce conceptually, and testing of the theories that can explain theconsumer behaviour, the research would make use of both approaches.Data CollectionThe data would be collected from the secondary sources like books, journals, websites, researchreports, and authentic websites on the impacts of the social media on the ecommerce retailers. Aprimary data would also be collected from the consumers and from the ecommerce retailers tounderstand how consumers perceive and prefer social media and ecommerce integration and howretail organizations are impacted and how they build strategies to make use of social media intheir business. For the primary data collection, the interviews would be conducted with theecommerce organization representatives involving digital marketing manager, webmaster, andtop level managers. The survey would be conducted on the consumers and thus, they would beapproached online through a survey link that would be presented to them for online filling of theresponses (Kothari, 2004).Data AnalysisThe secondary data obtained along with the data obtained from the primary interview conductedon the ecommerce company representatives would be used for performing a thematic analysisthat would deliver the important data patterns and themes for further investigation. These themeswould then be used to formulate a survey questionnaire for consumers which would be used for
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Study of impact of Social Media on E-commerce Retail Business in the UK and Study of Challenges in ecommerce in UK SMEstesting the results of the qualitative analysis. Statistical testing procedures would used forgathering the empirical evidences in this way.ConclusionsThe research needs to understand the impact of social media environment on ecommerceretailers in the UK as well as study the behavior of ecommerce consumers. The study wouldutilize a mixed research methodology in which the secondary data would first be used along withthe primary interview responses for a thematic analysis for understanding the impact andidentifying patterns. These patterns would then be tested using a survey method and statisticallytesting of the data aim at understanding consumers.
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