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

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.