Impact of social media on consumer buying behaviour: case study on Tesco

This research proposal analyses the impact of social media on buying pattern of consumers, with a case study on Tesco. It aims to understand the actual role of social media regarding consumer buying behaviour based on Tesco, analyse different aspects of customer behaviour for purchasing products depending on Tesco, identify various challenges that Tesco experienced due to inappropriate social media in the context of marketing strategies, and provide recommendations to Tesco for implementing various strategies for using social media in an effective way.

Running head: IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOUR:
CASE STUDY ON TESCO
Impact of social media on consumer buying behaviour: case study on Tesco
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note

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IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOUR: CASE STUDY
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction:...........................................................................................................................2
1.1 Background of the research:.............................................................................................2
1.2 Academic rationale:.........................................................................................................2
1.3 Research aims and objectives:.........................................................................................3
1.4 Research questions:..........................................................................................................4
1.5 Research hypothesis:........................................................................................................4
2. Literature Review:..................................................................................................................5
3. Research Methodology:.........................................................................................................8
3.1 Research Philosophy:.......................................................................................................8
3.2 Research Approach:.........................................................................................................8
3.3 Research Design:..............................................................................................................9
3.4 Data Collection Process:..................................................................................................9
3.5 Sampling Method:..........................................................................................................10
3.6 Sample Size:...................................................................................................................10
3.7 Limitation of the study:..................................................................................................10
3.8 Ethical Issues:.................................................................................................................11
References:...............................................................................................................................12

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1. Introduction:
The modern world of internet technology has developed significantly and this in turn
has changed the dimension of consumers’ activities in the context of product purchased. For
this, social media plays significant role, as it has changed the communication process
between marketers and consumers (Sasmita and Mohd Suki 2015). Thus, the chief motive of
this research proposal is to analyse the impact of social media on buying pattern of
consumers. The entire research work will be based on a large supermarket, conducting
business in retail sector.
1.1 Background of the research:
Technological revolution has changed the traditional approaches of marketing for last
few years. This leads markets to experience new era of marketing and in this context, social
media takes a vital role. The revolutionary relation of marketers with distribution channels,
retailers and consumers has become an important issue (He and Qu 2018). Increasing online
portals, in this context, has played significant role to reach new customers. Based on some
market researches, it is observed that social media becomes an important part of people’s life
through making them dependent. The entire world spends enough time in social sites like
twitter, Facebook, and blogs (Colicev et al. 2018). The number of people using social
network also increases over the year. Thus, it becomes easy for any firm to enter into
people’s life through various sites of social media.
1.2 Academic rationale:
Social media helps consumers to become the centre of any business activity.
Consequently, this online process gives marketers some new tools to interact with consumers
for integrating them with the brands through a new way. In addition to this, consumes can
influence other customers for purchasing goods and services through giving reviews. To
understand the impact of social media on consumer behaviour for purchasing any product,

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various researchers have conducted various research works (Simon and Tossan 2018).
However, insufficient number of research works has been done. Most of the research works
have considered the customers’ accessibility for purchasing any product through any online
portal. Hence, this research paper intends to analyse the impact of social media and its power
to influence purchasing activities of customers. In this context, it can be said that social
media can help any large retail organisation like Tesco to implement this technique
effectively. Moreover, this can help the specified company to analyse the buying pattern of
customers along with their structure of demand for different products and services (Swani et
al. 2017). Thus, Tesco can consider social network as an important factor for developing the
business and increasing total market share. Therefore, the research paper has focused chiefly
on Tesco to understand the effect of social media in the context of consumer buying
behaviour.
Therefore, the present work can help researchers to identify some prime factors along
with reasons that can influence Tesco regarding social media marketing. This can help the
company to understand about their consumer behaviour in modern market. This research can
further help the researcher to obtain some solutions regarding this issue. Thus, this specified
research paper has some intension to provide knowledge regarding the effect of social media
on customer buying behaviour.
1.3 Research aims and objectives:
Research aims:
The chief aim of this paper is to observe the impact of social media on consumer
behaviour for buying products in retail sector. For conducting the analysis, this paper selects
Tesco, a large supermarket of the U.K. Moreover, the researcher can further focus on various
aspects of customer attitude based on Tesco. The study further focuses on the impacts of
inappropriate social media on the company.

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Research objectives:
 To understand about the actual role of social media regarding consumer buying
behaviour based on Tesco
 To analyse different aspects of customer behaviour for purchasing products depending
on Tesco
 To identify various challenges that Tesco experienced due to inappropriate social
media in the context of marketing strategies
 To provide recommendations to Tesco for implementing various strategies for using
social media in an effective way
1.4 Research questions:
The primary question of this research paper is:
1. How does social media influence buying pattern of customers of Tesco?
To support this question, the research paper forms other secondary auxiliary questions
that are stated as follow:
2. How does social media relate with customer behaviour?
3. What are the limitations that Tesco can experience from social media marketing?
4. What are some recommendations that Tesco can obtain at the time of using social
media tools?
1.5 Research hypothesis:
The research paper takes two hypothesis, which are, null hypothesis (H0) and
alternative hypothesis (H1).
H0: Social media does not significantly influence buying pattern customers of Tesco
H1: Social media significantly influences customers buying pattern of Tesco
2. Literature Review:
2.1 Concept of social media:

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Social media is based on modern technology that can be operated though computer
and smart phone. Through this media, people can share ideas along with information among
various communities. This internet-based communication technology can help people to
share photos and videos. However, social media does not possess any particular definition, as
this online communication process has developed and integrated slowly (Trainor, Andzulis,
Rapp and Agnihotri 2014). Social media considers interconnection of different aspects like
communication through media, content and social interaction. Thus, this modern
communication process focuses on different dimensions related to flow of information among
different communities. Therefore, it becomes easier to spread useful and essential
information among large number of people at a time (Ngai, Tao and Moon 2015). Moreover,
social media also helps business organisations significantly. This helps business organisations
to extend communication with their large number of customers. Moreover, online social
media can help firms to conduct market research. Hence, this can help companies to promote
their products to large number of customers. Some important methods of social media are
Facebook and twitter. These online platforms help people to communicate with rest of the
worlds (Leung, Bai and Stahura 2015). Thus, the chief difference between traditional method
and modern method is distinct types of interactions. Social media can be divided into social
interaction, content and communication media.
2.2 Development of marketing of Social media:
According to researchers, social media has earned popularity at an international level.
Since the starting period, Facebook has earned huge popularity and consequently the number
of users has reached to billion. Individuals start to use social media as platform of interactions
for both social and professional purposes. In this context, it can be observed that social media
has changed the process of information sharing through an easy way. As a result, social
media has started some unique practices based on its huge popularity. These practices help

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markets to revolutionise marketing practices, like promotion and advertisement. Hence,
according to Hollebeek, Glynn and Brodie (2014), social media has provided a platform
through which it can manage consumer behaviour. With the help of social media, both
businesspersons and consumers get advantages and this further develops their relation
through spending low cost. In addition to this, the other function of this online platform is
that social media has involved various activities through which it can affect and influence
consumers’ perception (Hudson, Roth, Madden and Hudson 2015). This further can influence
attitude and behaviour of consumers. In online platform, individuals like to contribute, create
and join communities and this process further helps people to connect with like-minded
people. Thus, social media gives huge opportunity to industry leaders for practising business
activities to earn benefits with lower costs.
2.3 Consumers buying behaviour:
To conduct any kind of business, it is essential for organisers to understand about the
buying behaviour of consumers. It is observed that customers’ perception depends chiefly on
their understanding about the retail organisation. In this context, social media plays vital role
as their online promotion method helps customers to obtain full information. Customers
prefer to purchase attractive products mostly (Godey et al. 2016). Thus, companies adopt
online promotional technique in an attractive way for increasing their customer base. Online
advertisement posted in social media helps companies to capture attention of large number of
customers within a short time period. Traditional method of trading helps consumers to buy
products from any physical retail shop. However, in modern era, process of purchasing a
product has changed over time due to modern technologies of communication (Felix,
Rauschnabel and Hinsch 2017). Thus, with the help of internet, customers have significant
power to purchase products from different portal through comparing product prices and
reviews. Consumers have started to spend more hours on internet surfing and maximum time

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they spend in social media. Therefore, these online platforms play significant role to
influence perception and decision of a single customer. According to researchers, online
shopping has become the powerful and effective tool with the help of which companies can
spread the trend.
2.4 Relation between social media and consumer:
Therefore, it is essential to discuss about the relation between social media and
consumer briefly. Social media gives voice to consumers for stating something about any
good and services as well as about any company. Moreover, social media can influence
decision-making process of customers. Based on the analysis of Fox, Bacile, Nakhata and
Weible (2018), it can be said that social media involves customers for making increasing
channel of customers. In this context, researchers describe about theory of information
processing depending on consumer choice. According to this theory, advertisements compete
with each other for influencing customers. However, other researchers have said that
marketers can intend to communicate with their target customers but it can be impossible for
customers to remember about everything. Through using social media, customers can give,
receive and exchange information with companies (Villarroel Ordenes et al. 2017). Thus, this
online communication site helps both customers and companies to communicate with each
other from both sides. This communication process, therefore, influences companies to obtain
its target customers and consequently changes the process of message communication and
purchase action. According to some researchers, this communication process can experience
some limitations due to message rejection, misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Thus,
some researchers have pointed out fears of companies and brands coming from marketing
strategy of social media (Brynielsson et al. 2018). This fear is to sacrificing the information
content and control of frequency. Thus, through social media, marketers can discuss and
realise about the company transparency (Wang and Kim 2017). Therefore, social media is a

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platform of customers through which they can provide share their experience, information as
well as ideas related to product, brands or service. These experiences of customers can
provide both positive and negative feedbacks. Therefore, people can share their common
experience with each other through a social media. The chief focus of these customers is not
to promote the product but to give feedback and other suggestions.
3. Research Methodology:
3.1 Research Philosophy:
The research philosophy helps the study to understand the way through which
researcher can collect the data. The study depends on interpretivism research philosophy.
Therefore, research philosophy considers source, nature as well as knowledge development.
3.2 Research Approach:
Research approach implies plan and procedure, which considers various steps with
broad assumptions. These assumptions consider data collection method, analysis and
interpretation. This paper considers deductive approach to develop hypothesis. Furthermore,
this approach can help researcher to design research strategy for testing hypothesis. With the
help of this approach, the study can understand about the impact of social media on Tesco.
Figure 1: Deductive Approach
Source: (Gottfredson and Aguinis 2017)

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3.3 Research Design:
The research work has considered descriptive form of research. Through this process
the researcher can describe some features of the entire population for the study.
3.4 Data Collection Process:
The process of data collection indicates the process of collecting information from
various relevant sources. The chief focus of this process is to obtain research answers related
to research problems, hypothesis testing and evaluation of outcomes. The entire process can
be divided into two parts, which are, primary process and secondary process of data
collection. In this study, the researcher has considered the method of primary data collection.
Moreover, primary data are of two types that are qualitative data and quantitative data
(Dillaway, Lysack and Luborsky 2017). This study considers qualitative primary data.
Qualitative methods do not consider numbers or any kind of mathematical calculation. The
entire research process chiefly focuses on words, feelings, sounds and other non-quantified
replies. The study has selected this type of data because it provides in depth understanding
about the entire concept. Some common processes of collecting qualitative data are
interviews, observation, case studies and role-playing and so on. For this study, the paper
intends to conduct interviews with managers of Tesco.
3.5 Sampling Method:
To conduct the entire research work, collecting data has considered an important
factor. However, it becomes difficult to collect information from large number of population.
For this, sampling method is considered as an important tool. This method states that a study
can select some specific members within a large population for collecting information. In
general, samples are collected in a random way for avoiding biasness (Symon, Cassell and
Johnson 2018). This biased outcome cannot represent entire outcome properly. This study has
selected Tesco for analysing the impact of social media on consumer behaviour for

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purchasing product in retail sector. Tesco is a large super market and consequently conducts
large scale of business in U.K market. Therefore, it can be beneficial for the researcher to
obtain sufficient information that can further help to obtain the desired outcome.
3.6 Sample Size:
The study has selected primary qualitative data for analysing the impact of social
media on social media. To obtain real field information through an authentic way, the paper
has intended to conduct information with two managers of Tesco. Therefore, the actual
sample size of this study is two. For collecting relevant information, the research will set
some questions that can help the concerned person to obtain relevant outcomes.
3.7 Limitation of the study:
The study has selected only one large supermarket to understand the entire scenario.
To understand the impact of consumer behaviour for purchasing product, it is not possible for
the researcher to understand all business sectors of a country at a time. Moreover, the paper
has intended to take interview based on which the entire analysis of the study will be done.
Based on two interviews, the study may receive limited information for conducting the entire
analysis. Moreover, time duration can be another essential issue to discuss in this context.
Due to limited time, the study may not focus on all essential sections related to consumer
behaviour and role of social media.
3.8 Ethical Issues:
At the time of conducting analysis, the paper considers some ethical issues. For
collecting information, the paper cannot force any managers to provide all answers of
interview questions. The interviewees can get freedom for giving answers. Moreover, the
research will hide all personal information of two managers of Tesco. No personal issues will
be discussed at the time of interview. The research paper will consider all answers given by

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managers and based on these the paper will discuss the entire scenario. The paper considers
standard journals for understanding the related to concepts of consumer behaviour for
purchasing products. Other ethical issues will be taken under consideration to maintain
standard of the research study.

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