Social Marketing: Why Social Networks are More Persuasive than Traditional Word of Mouth

This research proposal aims to identify the reasons behind intense persuasion of social marketing than the traditional word of mouth practices. The research would be conducted in the Australian market. The objectives of the research are to determine the percentage of people using social media tools in Australia, examine the reasons of using social media tools for making the purchase decisions by customers, and identify the factors that affect the companies to make use of social media as marketing tool and not traditional practices.

Social marketing: why social
networks are considered more
persuasive than the traditional
word of mouth.

Table of Contents
Statement of the problem:..........................................................................................................................2
Aims and objectives:....................................................................................................................................2
Methodology:..............................................................................................................................................3
References:..................................................................................................................................................4

Statement of the problem:
Change in the marketing process and the methods have been observed these days (De Vries,
Gensler & Leeflang, 2012).Word of mouth used to be most popular methods in earlier days for
the purpose of marketing (Hollensen & Raman, 2014). It has been realised that marketing is the
method that deals with providing information to the customers regarding the products and the
services that are being offered by the companies (Lobstein, et al. 2017). It has been analysed that
60% of the total customers in Australia looks for blogs and read the reviews of the products
before making the purchase decision (Hur, Kim, Karatepe & Lee, 2017). This suggests that the
existence of traditional marketing such as word of mouth is vanishing day by day (Cavinder, et
al. 2017). It is required to look for the reasons why people and the companies are tilting their
interest towards social media marketing (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016). It has been observed
since years that the companies have changed their way and the medium to inform and persuade
people (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). Even the customers are research about the products online and
comparing the same before purchasing it (Tiago & Veríssimo, 2014). Thus, it is the time to
identify those reasons that are pushing the customers towards online mediums for getting the
information about the brand (Chaffey, 2016). This is the dilemma that whether the companies are
forcing people to source the products online as they are making use of the same for marketing
purpose or the high number of customers using social media pushes the companies to make it a
marketing tool (Chang, Yu & Lu, 2015).
Aims and objectives:
The research proposal aims to identify the reasons behind intense persuasion of social marketing
than the traditional word of mouth practices. The research would be conducted in the Australian
market. Various objectives of the research are:
1. Determine the percentage of people using social media tools in Australia.
2. Examine the reasons of using social media tools for making the purchase decisions by
customers.
3. Identify the factors that affect the companies to make use of social media as marketing
tool and not traditional practices.

Methodology:
Type of research methodology:
There are different types of research methodology that has been used to conduct the research. In
this case, the mixed methodology has been used to support the investigation required in the
research. Mixed methodology includes qualitative as well as quantitative data to be analysed.
Type of data collection method:
Qualitative data:
The method that has been used for collecting qualitative data is:
Literature review: it is the methods that allow the researcher to read many of the already
conducted research of the similar or the related topics. It helps in analysing the results of the
prior researches conducted in this area and also helps in developing a greater understating of the
topic it is the secondary data source as the data that is extracted are from the already researched
literatures and journals.
Interviews: to support the data from the literature and the journals, interviews of some of the
random customers at some of the retail stores at Australia have been conducted to analyse the
impact of social marketing of their purchase decision and why they found it persuasive in nature.
This is the primary source of data collection as the data collected from the interviews is primary
in nature.
Quantitative data:
Questionnaire online survey:
Questionnaires have been sent to the marketing managers of some of the retail companies in
order to identify the reasons why the companies are using social marketing as the tool for
marketing and not the traditional practices such as word of mouth. This is the primary source of
data as the data that has been collected from this tool is new and updated.
Sources of data:

It has been analysed that primary and secondary data are used by the researchers. Primary data
will be collected by interviews and online questionnaire and secondary data will be collected by
literature review. Interviews of random customers at any of the retail store can be conducted. The
questionnaire should be circulated to the internet users or the online customers after analysing
their data and on the basis of their online shopping frequency.
Data analysis tools
Several data analysis tools have also been used to analyse and present the data that has been
collected in the sorted form so as to find the results.
 Content analysis: the first analysis tool that has been used in this case is content analysis.
This tool is used in analysing the data collected by literature review and interviews. The
whole content is analysed and presented in the sorted form that can be understood by the
people.
 Diagrammatic representation: this is the tool that will be used for analysing the data that
has been collected by the method of questionnaire survey. The data is being represented
in the form of pie chart or graph with the help of MS excel.
 Correlation and regression: it is the tool that can be used to find out the relation between
the two variables. In this research the first variable is the social media marketing tools
and another dependent variable is the persuasion level of the customers. Correlation will
help in analysing the relation between these two variables.
References:
Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory
study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology &
Marketing, 32(1), 15-27.
Cavinder, C. A., Sear, A., Valdez, R., & White, L. (2017). Utilization of Social Media as a
Marketing Tool for Equine Businesses: An Exploratory Study. NACTA Journal, 61(2),
137-140.

Chaffey, D. (2016). Global social media research summary 2016. Smart Insights: Social Media
Marketing.
Chang, Y. T., Yu, H., & Lu, H. P. (2015). Persuasive messages, popularity cohesion, and
message diffusion in social media marketing. Journal of Business Research, 68(4), 777-
782.
De Vries, L., Gensler, S., & Leeflang, P. S. (2012). Popularity of brand posts on brand fan pages:
An investigation of the effects of social media marketing. Journal of interactive
marketing, 26(2), 83-91.
Hollensen, S., & Raman, A. (2014). Social Media Marketing. Marketing Canada-Journal.
Hur, K., Kim, T. T., Karatepe, O. M., & Lee, G. (2017). An exploration of the factors
influencing social media continuance usage and information sharing intentions among
Korean travellers. Tourism Management, 63, 170-178.
Lamberton, C., & Stephen, A. T. (2016). A thematic exploration of digital, social media, and
mobile marketing: Research evolution from 2000 to 2015 and an agenda for future
inquiry. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), 146-172.
Lobstein, T., Landon, J., Thornton, N., & Jernigan, D. (2017). The commercial use of digital
media to market alcohol products: a narrative review. Addiction, 112(S1), 21-27.
Tiago, M. T. P. M. B., & Veríssimo, J. M. C. (2014). Digital marketing and social media: Why
bother?. Business Horizons, 57(6), 703-708.