Social Platforms Impact on Sales Behaviour: A Research Project (Part 1)

This research project investigates the influence of social media platforms on sales behaviour. It explores how social media impacts consumer buying decisions and examines the relationship between social media usage and sales performance. The study utilizes both qualitative and quantitative research methods, including a questionnaire survey and a comprehensive literature review. The research aims to identify the level of sales increase attributed to social media platforms in recent years, determine the specific features of social media that affect sales, and compare the influence of social media with traditional websites on sales growth. The findings of this research will provide valuable insights for organizations seeking to leverage social media effectively to enhance their sales strategies.

Research Project RQF (Part 1)
Social platforms impact on sales behaviour
Florentin Dumitrascu
Student ID: 14728
Unit code: R/508/0522
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Table of Contents
Research Project RQF (Part 1)..................................................................................................1
Social platforms impact on sales behaviour............................................................................1
Florentin Dumitrascu.................................................................................................................1
Student ID: 14728......................................................................................................................1
Unit code: R/508/0522.............................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION/ BACKGROUND OF THE RESEARCH.......................................................................3
AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY..........................................................................................3
RESEARCH QUESTION..................................................................................................................4
RATIONALE OF THE RESEARCH....................................................................................................4
LITERATURE REVIEW........................................................................................................................5
METHODOLOGY...............................................................................................................................9
MAIN RESEARCH TECHNIQUES....................................................................................................9
TIMELINE OF RESEARCH ACTIVITIES..............................................................................................11
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................16
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INTRODUCTION/ BACKGROUND OF THE RESEARCH
A large number of people are the users of different social media sites. This makes it easy for the
company to interact with the prospects and sell their products as well as services. It is seen that
the buying behaviour of consumers has changed to the emerging e-word-of-mouth publicity
and reviews by the users. Consumers refer to social media sites before making a purchase of
products and services (Goh, et al. 2013). Complete information regarding the products and also
services are presented by most of the companies on their official websites. The engagement of
the consumers is affected by the reviews and feedbacks given by the existing customers for the
products and services of the company.
This, in turn, impacts the sales of the company. The strategies of the business are aligned with
the social media plan in order to effectively perform marketing activities and build company
brand and value proposition. It can be said that there is a correspondence between the usage
of social media and sales and revenue of the organization (Kumar, et al. 2016). Most of the
organizations use social media in order to take advantage of social data along with shared
knowledge and insights. This research aims to identify the influences of the social media on the
sales behaviour of the organisation.
AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The research study aims at identifying the influences of social media on the sales behaviour of
the company. It helps in ascertaining the impact of social media on the buying decision of
consumers. The objectives of this research study are:
1) To identify the level of sales upsurge using social media platforms in the last 5 years
2) To ascertain the features or characteristics of social media platforms affecting the sales
of the organization.
3) To evaluate the compare the influence of social media and classical websites in
increasing sales of the company.
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RESEARCH QUESTION
What is the level of significance of including social media plan in sales strategy of the
organization?
What is the level of relationship between increased sales performance and social media usage?
RATIONALE OF THE RESEARCH
The increasing use of social media while planning to buy any products or services is one of the
significant reasons for carrying out the research. A large number of customers visit social media
applications to read the reviews and feedbacks of the existing customers regarding the
products and services offered by the company. People tend to engage with the peers to gather
the information about the quality and features of product and also services offered by the
company (Amblee and Bui, 2011). These contents generated on the social media applications in
the form of feedback and reviews affect the buying decision of the consumer thereby
influencing the sales and revenue generation of the company. The organizations have made
their presence on the social media in addition to their official websites to interact with the
prospects and inform them regarding their products and services to enhance sales and revenue
for the company.
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LITERATURE REVIEW
The organizations rely on social media as a network of marketing communication because of its
unprecedented reach to consumers. This study is carried out to analyse the impact of content
generated by the organization in social media on three consumer metrics that are cross-buying,
spending along with customer profitability. It also examines the synergistic impact of firm-
generated content together with e-mail communication and television advertising (Kumar, et al.
2016). It was revealed through results that there is the significant and positive effect of firm-
generated content on the behaviours of consumers after accounting the effects of e-mail
marketing and television advertising. It also reflected that the impact of content generated by
firm on social media is higher on the customers who are more-experienced, tech-savvy as well
as prone to social media.
It is essential to conduct empirical research to assess the economic value of using social media
by consumers as well as marketers. Goh, et al (2013) quality the influence of community
contents from user and marketers on the apparel purchasing expenditures of consumers. It was
found through a study that consumer engagement in brand communities of social media results
in a positive increase in purchase expenditure. It also examined the impact of content
generated by user and marketer-generated content influence the purchasing decision of the
consumers.
According to Amblee and Bui (2011), due to social commerce, B2C sites along with the
intermediaries are facilitating the shopping experiences along with offering innovative
technologies to effectively interact with the compatible community members and friends.
Social shopping experiences are easily used to share the buying experiences and aggregating
the evaluations through reviews, ratings and recommendation systems. This empirical study
suggests that e-word-of-mouth should be used to interpret the reputation of the brand as well
as products and also complementary goods. Social shopping technologies are to be adopted by
e-tailers and shoppers as primary sources of social buying experiences.
Agnihotri, et al (2012) stated that the increasing pace of the social media usage has highly
impacted the organisations. There is uncertainty among the firms and its salespeople about the
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compatibility between the tools of social media and their overall sales strategy. A theoretical
framework is carried out to explain the mechanism of using social media by salespeople in
creating value along with the proposed strategic approach to using social media for achieving
competitive goals. It also describes the assistance of social media tools for salespeople in
performing their service behaviour that leads to value creation.
Rodriguez, et al (2012) stated that social media technology has been adopted and implemented
in the marketing strategy of the organization by some of the anticipated sale forces. The
principles behind social media are to share the content and build a network of contacts.
Utilising social media for example Twitter as well as LinkedIn to reach out to B2B clients is a new
phenomenon with the unknown performance outcome of the organization. About 1,699 B2B
salespeople were included to collect data across 25 different industries. The finding reveals that
there are positive relations of social media with the sales procedures thereby creating
opportunities as well as relationship management, also relationship sales performance.
New opportunities are provided through social media to consumers in order to engage in
interaction within social communities on the internet. Social media like online communities are
used by consumers to generate the content as well as effectively interact with other users. A
multidisciplinary model has been devised to identify the benefits gained by the business
through social media (Hajli, 2014). the role of social media is demonstrated in developing e-
commerce into social commerce. The data gathered from the survey reveal that social media
facilities social interaction among the consumers which indicates to an increase in trust along
with buying intentions of consumers. It also reflects that there is the significant and direct
impact of trust on the buying intentions.
Chen, et al (2011) described that the personal evaluation of the purchased products can be
effectively publicised through the unparalleled platform that is social media for consumers
along with facilitating word-of-mouth communication. This study demonstrated that there is
the difference in the relationship between variables of marketing like prices and quality of
product and online-posting behaviour of consumers due to the difference in early and mature
phases of internet usage. The difference in the two distinct stages of internet usage can be
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determined the distinct groups of consumer who possess different motivations regarding the
online review posting.
According to Hajli and Sims (2015), the end-users are empowered by the transformation of
power from seller to buyers because of the development of social media. Digital content has
economic values that are generated by individuals. Content can be generated and shared by
the consumers using social media with the peers in their networks. This study investigates the
role of using social media to facilitate online communications among the consumers through
social commerce concepts that lead to online social support.
Agnihotri, et al (2016) stated that there is a change in the interaction between the buyers and
sellers due to social media. This increase in involvement using social media may positive result
in the sales organisation if the social media is utilised by salespeople to facilitate their
behaviour. It was found that the utilisation of social media by salesperson has impacted the
information communication behaviour thereby enhancing the responsiveness of the
salesperson and customer satisfaction. It also suggests that the role of social media is important
in communicating the information to customers and it also encourages the managers to
evaluate the goals with regards to usage of social media by their sales force.
Nimble 4.0 include major enhancements were announced by Nimble which is a social sales and
marketing CRM. It enables this updated platform to efficiently blend of social, sales as well as
marketing into simple smarter CRM having the capabilities to automatically develop, the
segment as well as engage the prospects plus customers (BusinessWire, 2016). The users of
Nimble can effectively manage the relationships anytime and anywhere by efficiently and
gracefully working between their browsers, desktop and mobile devices. The lack of use of CRM
by salespeople results in the failure of CRM.
Some of the features included in New Nimble 4.0 include the embedding of sales and marketing
with Google applications and Office 365. It also provides the instant background details of
people as well as company records from databases for various social networks and 3rd–party
businesses (BusinessWire, 2016).
According to Minksy and Quesenberry (2016), it was found in the recent survey that it takes
more than 18 calls to connect with a prospect with call back rates being limited to 1 per cent.
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The purchasing process of about 84 per cent B2B buyers are according to the referrals and the
buying decisions of above 90 per cent B2B buyers is influenced by the peer recommendations.
It is essential for the organization to change their mind-sets about prioritising the sales agenda
instead of solving the problems of customers. It might result in the loss of 1 million B2B sales
people’s jobs by 2020 due to self-service e-commerce.
The strategy to overcome this issue is to add social media to the toolbox of sales professional.
Social media platforms can be used by the salespeople for sharing the educational content as
well as answering questions. It is observed that about 3 out of 4 B2B buyers engage with the
peers on the social media regarding their buying decisions. This makes it essential for the
salespeople to engage with the customer using social media (Minksy and Quesenberry, 2016).
The study indicates that the sales professionals with social media skills are six times more likely
to perform better as compared to those with basic or no social media skills.
According to Dewan and Ramaprasad (2014), the growing importance of social media led to
conduct this study and find the relationship between new media, old media as well as sales
with reference to the music industry. This study includes the interplay between radio play, blog
buzz and music sales at both levels of analysis that is song and album level. It was found that
the future sales are positively and consistently related to the radio play at both the levels while
there is no relation of blog buzz to album sales and blog buzz also negatively relates to song
sales. There is a stronger negative relationship between song buzz and sales in niche music as
compared to mainstream music.
Marshall, et al (2012) stated that there are numerous articles that have pursued on the impact
of technology on the different facets of the sales domain. Different pieces of literature noticed
the initiation of social media as well as other technologies associated to social media. This
article represents the ascertainment of social media as one of the leading new selling tools that
refer to the changing facets of technology within an environment of sales. A focused group, a
qualitative approach is used to investigate the extent of using existing technology by sales
managers as well as salespeople. 6 major themes such as connectivity, generational, selling
tools, relationships, and global as well as sales/marketing interface were revealed by analysing
the data collected in the UK and US. The evidence provided in the results include the
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developments in the buyer-seller relationships along with some estimated concerns for sales
organization performance.
METHODOLOGY
The research methodology comprises of the research design, data collection method, reliability
and validity and analysis of the data and ethical consideration of the research study.
MAIN RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
Research design techniques include qualitative and quantitative. The quantitative research
design is used to collect the information as well as data from the data related to statistics and
figures. This method is used to analyse or assess the numerical data and information to identify
the pattern or information (Agnihotri, et al 2012). The qualitative research method is
exploratory in nature that provides the complete and detailed description of the topic of the
research.
A qualitative research is used to quantify and evaluate the traits such as thoughts, insights,
behaviours and preferences of the people. This research design is used to analyse the trends
towards particular element that is social media usage. It helps in ascertaining the opinions and
views of the social media users that impact the sales behaviour of the company (Rodriguez, et
al. 2012). The buying decisions of the consumers are highly influenced by the content
generated on the social media platforms in the form of reviews and feedbacks from existing
consumers.
Qualitative data is collected to ascertain the usage and effects of social media and engagement
of the customers with peers on social media platforms. This study includes both primary plus
secondary data (Hajli, 2014). Primary data is used to collect the behaviours and preferences of
the consumers regarding the usage of social media platform that alters the customers buying
decision ultimately reflecting on the sales performance of the organization.
A systematic questionnaire is to be designed by including 10 close-ended questions to be
distributed to the candidates. The questionnaire survey conducted will be distributed among
the students of the university. Complete questionnaire filled by 100 candidates will be included
in this research for analysis and interpretation. Participants for the survey will be selected
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randomly as this is the efficient and commonly used method for data collection. This provides
equal chances of selection to the questionnaire completed by the participants ensuring
unbiased estimates. This is productive as well as cost-effective method providing fewer chances
of errors.
Secondary data is collected by reviewing and revising the different sources of material such as
articles, journals, studies, reports and online materials (Andzulis, et al. 2012). About 50 different
secondary sources were reviewed using key-word based search. 11 secondary materials were
included in this research based on the suitability of the research. These secondary materials are
included using meta-analysis as well as reading their abstracts.
The questions included in the questionnaire survey should comply with the aim and objectives
of the research. The reliability of the research study depends on the secondary data or
information collected from the various sources in the literature review and also from the
concepts derived from other online sources (Andzulis, et al. 2012). The validity of this research
paper is limited as there is continuous innovation in digital technology and also the behaviour
and preference of the participants is volatile in nature.
It is essential to analyse the data collected through a questionnaire survey in order to extract
useful information to reach a strong conclusion and decision-making (Andzulis, et al. 2012). The
process of analysis is referred to as the steps taken to transform all the collected data into
usable information which is aligned with the aim and objectives of the research. This result in a
clear conclusion and interpretation of data obtained.
The questionnaire survey is used to obtain the data in order to analyse the behavioural patterns
of the consumers and also to identify the most common behaviour or actions that impact the
sales of the company (Andzulis, et al. 2012). The future direction of the research is determined
and concluded. MS-Excel and Charts are used in this research to get the truthful results as well
as precise analysis of the result. The behaviours and views of the consumer are represented in
tabular form in MS-excel. The rate of a number of replies of the participants is indicated
through a graphical presentation using charts for a particular question.
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TIMELINE OF RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
The timeline, the Gantt chart represents the stipulated time period required to complete the
activities of the research study. The starting date of the research study of the research study is
9th May 2018 and the study completion date is 30th July 2018.
Timeline
Activities Start date End date Time duration
Identifying and selecting the topic for the
research
9th May 2018 22nd May 2018 2 weeks
Developing the aims and objectives of
the research
23rd May 2018 29th May 2018 1 week
Collection of secondary data through
literature review
30th May 2018 12th June 2018 2 weeks
Formulation of research design 13th June 2018 19th June 2018 1 week
Selecting and employing appropriate
research techniques
20th June 2018 26th June 2018 1 week
Primary data collection 27th June 2018 3rd July 2018 1 week
Analysis and interpretation of collected
primary data
3rd July 2018 16th July 2018 2 weeks
Conclusion and summary of the research 17th July 2018 23rd July 2018 1 week
Preparation and finalisation of the
research report
24th July 2018 30th July 2018 1 week
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Gantt chart
Activities 1st
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Identifying
and selecting
the topic for
the research
Developing
the aims and
objectives of
the research
Collection of
secondary
data through
literature
review
Formulation
of research
design
Selecting and
employing
appropriate
research
techniques
Primary data
collection
Analysis and
interpretatio
n of collected
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primary data
Conclusion
and summary
of the
research
Preparation
and
finalisation of
the research
report
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Milestones
Activities 1st
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Identifying
and selecting
the topic for
the research
M1
Developing
the aims and
objectives of
the research
M2
Collection of
secondary
data through
literature
review
M3
Formulation
of research
design
M4
Selecting and
employing
appropriate
research
techniques
M5
Primary data
collection
M6
Analysis and
interpretatio
n of collected
M7
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primary data
Conclusion
and summary
of the
research
M8
Preparation
and
finalisation of
the research
report
M9
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REFERENCES
1. Agnihotri, R., Dingus, R., Hu, M.Y. and Krush, M.T., 2016. Social media: Influencing
customer satisfaction in B2B sales. Industrial Marketing Management, 53, pp.172-180.
2. Agnihotri, R., Kothandaraman, P., Kashyap, R. and Singh, R., 2012. Bringing “social” into
sales: The impact of salespeople’s social media use on service behaviors and value
creation. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 32(3), pp.333-348.
3. Amblee, N. and Bui, T., 2011. Harnessing the influence of social proof in online
shopping: The effect of electronic word of mouth on sales of digital microproducts.
International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 16(2), pp.91-114.
4. Andzulis, J.M., Panagopoulos, N.G. and Rapp, A., 2012. A review of social media and
implications for the sales process. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management,
32(3), pp.305-316.
5. BusinessWire, 2016. Nimble Unveils Evolution of CRM — Delivering Nimble 4.0 The
Simply Smarter Social Sales & Marketing Platform [online available at
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160921005466/en/Nimble-Unveils-
Evolution-CRM-%E2%80%94-Delivering-Nimble] [Last accessed on 23-07-2018]
6. Chen, Y., Fay, S. and Wang, Q., 2011. The role of marketing in social media: How online
consumer reviews evolve. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 25(2), pp.85-94.
7. Dewan, S. and Ramaprasad, J., 2014. Social media, traditional media, and music sales.
Mis Quarterly, 38(1).
8. Goh, K.Y., Heng, C.S. and Lin, Z., 2013. Social media brand community and consumer
behavior: Quantifying the relative impact of user-and marketer-generated content.
Information Systems Research, 24(1), pp.88-107.
9. Hajli, M.N., 2014. A study of the impact of social media on consumers. International
Journal of Market Research, 56(3), pp.387-404.
10. Hajli, N. and Sims, J., 2015. Social commerce: The transfer of power from sellers to
buyers. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 94, pp.350-358.
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11. Kumar, A., Bezawada, R., Rishika, R., Janakiraman, R. and Kannan, P.K., 2016. From social
to sale: The effects of firm-generated content in social media on customer behavior.
Journal of Marketing, 80(1), pp.7-25.
12. Marshall, G.W., Moncrief, W.C., Rudd, J.M. and Lee, N., 2012. Revolution in sales: The
impact of social media and related technology on the selling environment. Journal of
Personal Selling & Sales Management, 32(3), pp.349-363.
13. Minsky, L and Quesenberry, K. A., 2016. How B2B Sales Can Benefit from Social Selling
[Online available at https://hbr.org/2016/11/84-of-b2b-sales-start-with-a-referral-not-a-
salesperson] [Last accessed on 23-07-2018]
14. Rodriguez, M., Peterson, R.M. and Krishnan, V., 2012. Social media’s influence on
business-to-business sales performance. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales
Management, 32(3), pp.365-378.
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