Impact of Social Media and Data on Business: A Case Study of JB Hi Fi

This report discusses the impact of social media and data on business using JB Hi Fi as a case study. It highlights the importance of social media in advertising and the use of data in identifying trends and formulating strategies.

ACC508 - Informatics and Financial Applications – Assignment 1
By student name
Professor
University
Date: 09 August 2018.
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ACC508 - Informatics and Financial Applications – Assignment 1
Executive Summary
A report has been prepared to one of the retail companies in Australia. The company’s annual
report for the year 2017 has been taken as a base for the discussion. The impact of the social
media has been discussed in the report using examples and media like Facebook, twitter and
online advertisements. It has become a very extensive source of advertisement and publicity
strategy offlate. The report also highlights the use of data in the industry as well as company.
Data is of immense importance these days as it is this data, which gives the management of the
company a trend to work with and thereby formulating the future course of strategies. Data is
also being helpful in identifying the trends over the years, which has been shown using a graph
and it also helpful in knowing about the industry update. Data is business can also be helpful in
knowing the risks and opportunities for the business and then the management of the company
can use the same to formulate the strategies so that the opportunities can be utilised and risks can
be negated. All these points have been discussed using relevant extracts from the annual report of
the given company “JB Hi Fi”
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ACC508 - Informatics and Financial Applications – Assignment 1
Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4
Social Media and business...........................................................................................................................5
Data and business........................................................................................................................................6
Company Analysis........................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................9
References.................................................................................................................................................10
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ACC508 - Informatics and Financial Applications – Assignment 1
Introduction
Social media is a need of the hour for the companies to advertise and publicise their product. As
per the trend and the research study conducted by Nora Ganim Barnes and Shannen Pavao at The
Center for Marketing Research, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, it has been seen that
the Fortune 500 companies have been increasingly using social media networks like Instagram,
Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube (Belton, 2017). The change in trend and increasing focus on
online media and its output has been extensively discussed in the report ahead. Furthermore,
companies have been spending a lot of money in Business Intelligence offlate and have been
tracking the business KPIs using a number of dashboards. This not only gives the bird’s eye view
but also shows the picture and progress of business on a real time basis. All these scenarios have
been discussed using one of the company named “JB Hi Fi” (Alexander, 2016). It is one of
renowned Australia companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and deals in products
like consumer goods including video games, electronic home appliances, Blu-rays, CDs, DVDs,
mobile phones, electronics/hardware and a number of other services. It has its head office in
Melbourne.
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ACC508 - Informatics and Financial Applications – Assignment 1
Social Media and business
Social media especially the advertisement through Facebook, YouTube page, Twitter and
Instagram. Has become immensely important and critical to the business development these
days. Businesses are become heavily reliant on the social media forces to advertise their product
and remain competitive in the market (Choy, 2018). It is due to the reason of affinity of the
public and the customer community at large towards social media. As per one of the studies, an
individual spends an average 116 minutes in a day, which is almost 2 hours. Out of this, the
proportion of time spent by youth is even more which turns out to be the major section of the
customer side.
There are several issues in businesses which is being resolved by the social media as an
intermediary between the business and the customer side like brand awareness. Today, most of
the start-ups use this strategy to move information faster. They humanize the mind as the public
visits the social media platform day in and day out. They are also being used as the growth
drivers as they increase the traffic on the website, generate leads and helps the customer to have
all the information at one place (Dichev, 2017). It can be accessed anywhere and at any time and
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ACC508 - Informatics and Financial Applications – Assignment 1
the customer need not go to the physical store to try a product and hence it offers a lot of
flexibility along with variety (Boccia & Leonardi, 2016).
Data and business
Customers nowadays are seen to be switching companies because of the poor experience. They
want an engaging and an individualized experience to continue with a brand and thus countries
must take advantage and of the same (Visinescu, Jones, & Sidorova, 2017). Data and analytics
have become tremendously important form organizational point of view considering following
advantages:
1. Through data, customers expect companies to know their requirements and act
proactively in this regard.
2. It also helps in identifying the strategies of the competitors and take the actions
accordingly so that growth and sustainability can be ensured.
3. It helps the company in giving the relevant product to the customer and information flow
on a real time basis (Trieu, 2017).
4. It helps in the optimization and improving the operational efficiency as designing and
controlling any given process can be better when the data is there to evidentiate this.
5. Efficient data and analytics in the company will also ensure in mitigating the risks and
fraud, if any (Meroño-Cerdán, Lopez-Nicolas, & Molina-Castillo, 2017).
6. In financial terms, it can help in a variety of ways like cost savings in few areas,
reduction in the processing time of some data based on analysis, development of the new
product, understanding the market conditions (both internal and external) and controlling
the reputation of the company online.
Beyond all these benefits, the data has more relevance when it comes to corporates as the
numbers are more revealing and interpretative rather than words (Kuhn & Morris, 2016). If the
company possess a right of data and that too in its favour, it will surely help the company
attracting the customers.
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ACC508 - Informatics and Financial Applications – Assignment 1
JB Hi Fi is one of the Australian company, which has grown a lot in the retail sector using the
data and the social media to its benefit. The below graph mentions some of the critical growth
factors of the company and its trend over the last 4 half years from 1st January 2016 to 31st
December 2017 (Kuhn & Morris, 2016).
JB Hi Fi Limited
(Amt. in $ Mn)
Particulars 31-Dec-17 30-Jun-17
31-Dec-
16 30-Jun-16
Total Revenue 3689.8 3011.8 2616.2 1837.65
Gross Profit 793.9 659.4 571.1 405.84
Operating Income 217.7 95.1 164.1 81.43
Net Profit 151.7 62 110.4 56.99
Total Revenue
Gross Profit
Operating Income
Net Profit
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
Financial Analysis of JB Hi-Fi using profitability parameters
30-Jun-16 31-Dec-16 30-Jun-17 31-Dec-17
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ACC508 - Informatics and Financial Applications – Assignment 1
Company Analysis
From the annual report of the company, it can be seen that the company has been progressing
over a last couple of years in terms of both revenue as well as the profits. The company also
opened a number of stores (7 in total – 6 in Australia and 1 in New Zealand) and is expected to
open 5 new stores in the coming period (Linden & Freeman, 2017). The company has also
improved on the operational efficiency front and the same can be vindicated from the section of
business strategies and prospects in the annual report. It mentions business risks like competition
from new and existing players, loss of reputation due to security breach in IT systems, breach of
other legal and regulatory requirements, online competition taking sales away to the other
players, etc.
The company has also included a section on the synergies created in business during the last
financial year due to the efficiencies created and earning increase (Goldmann, 2016). Overall,
considering the type of industry and the nature of the products being sold by the customer, the
company has benefitted a lot from the social media and data analytics, which is evident from the
above developments (Dumay & Baard, 2017).
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ACC508 - Informatics and Financial Applications – Assignment 1
Conclusion
From the above discussion on the social media and data and its impact on the business, we can
see that both of these factors have become inevitable to the sustenance of the business in the
modern time. They have not only helped in increasing in customer base of the business and the
revenue and profitability but also the operational and system efficiency. JB Hi-Fi considering the
type of business has benefitted from the given model and the same can be seen from its
progressive growth and business models.
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References
Alexander, F. (2016). The Changing Face of Accountability. The Journal of Higher Education, 71(4), 411-
431.
Belton, P. (2017). Competitive Strategy: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. London: Macat
International ltd. Retrieved from https://www.routledge.com/Competitive-Strategy-Creating-
and-Sustaining-Superior-Performance/Belton/p/book/9781912128808
Boccia, F., & Leonardi, R. (2016). The Challenge of the Digital Economy: Markets, Taxation and
Appropriate Economic Models. Springer.
Choy, Y. K. (2018). Cost-benefit Analysis, Values, Wellbeing and Ethics: An Indigenous Worldview
Analysis. Ecological Economics, 145. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.08.005
Dichev, I. (2017). On the conceptual foundations of financial reporting. Accounting and Business
Research, 47(6), 617-632. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/00014788.2017.1299620
Dumay, J., & Baard, V. (2017). An introduction to interventionist research in accounting. The Routledge
Companion to Qualitative Accounting Research Methods, 265. Retrieved from
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Goldmann, K. (2016). Financial Liquidity and Profitability Management in Practice of Polish Business.
Financial Environment and Business Development, 4, 103-112. Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39919-5_9
Kuhn, J., & Morris, B. (2016). IT internal control weaknesses and the market value of firms. Journal of
Enterprise Information Management, 30(6).
Linden, B., & Freeman, R. (2017). Profit and Other Values: Thick Evaluation in Decision Making. Business
Ethics Quarterly, 27(3), 353-379. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2017.1
Meroño-Cerdán, A., Lopez-Nicolas, C., & Molina-Castillo, F. (2017). Risk aversion, innovation and
performance in family firms. Economics of Innovation and new technology, 1-15.
Trieu, V. (2017). Getting value from Business Intelligence systems: A review and research agenda.
Decision Support Systems, 93, 111-124.
Visinescu, L., Jones, M., & Sidorova, A. (2017). Improving Decision Quality: The Role of Business
Intelligence. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 57(1), 58-66.
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