Research Proposal: Social Media's Impact on Business Performance

This research proposal investigates the advantages and disadvantages of social media usage in business. It explores the impact of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter on modern business operations, emphasizing the shift towards directing customers to social media pages. The proposal outlines the project's objectives, scope, and methodology, including qualitative and quantitative research approaches. It delves into the importance of social media for marketing, customer engagement, and maintaining a competitive edge. The research will use a descriptive design, employing purposeful sampling to gather data from medium-scale industries. The study aims to answer key questions about the benefits and drawbacks of social media, its role in business, and the skills required for effective social media marketing. The proposal also addresses research limitations and includes a detailed time schedule.

Running head: BUSINESS RESEARCH
Research Proposal on Advantages and Disadvantages of using Social Media in Business
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................5
Project Objective.............................................................................................................................5
Project Scope...................................................................................................................................5
Literature Review............................................................................................................................6
Social Media................................................................................................................................6
Importance of Social Media in Business.....................................................................................6
Advantages of Social Media in Business.....................................................................................7
Disadvantages of Social Media in Business................................................................................8
Research Questions/Hypothesis.......................................................................................................8
Primary Questions.......................................................................................................................9
Secondary Questions...................................................................................................................9
Research Design and Methodology.................................................................................................9
Research Philosophy and Justification......................................................................................10
Research Approach and Justification.........................................................................................10
Qualitative Research......................................................................................................................10
Research Design........................................................................................................................10
Reliability and Validity..............................................................................................................11
Sampling....................................................................................................................................11

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Sample Size...............................................................................................................................12
Data Collection Method.............................................................................................................12
Variables Specification..............................................................................................................12
Quantitative Research....................................................................................................................12
Research Design........................................................................................................................12
Research Instrument..................................................................................................................13
Quantitative Data Analysis Process...........................................................................................13
Sampling and Sample Size........................................................................................................13
Interviewing and Questionnaire Design....................................................................................13
Reliability and Validity of Data.................................................................................................13
Justification for the Selection of Qualitative data......................................................................14
Justification for Selecting Qualitative research Procedure........................................................14
Research Limitations.....................................................................................................................14
Time Schedule...............................................................................................................................14
Table 1- Time Schedule Table of the Research.........................................................................16
Figure 1: Gantt chart..................................................................................................................16
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................17
Reference List................................................................................................................................18
Appendix........................................................................................................................................20
Appendix 1.................................................................................................................................20

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Appendix 2.................................................................................................................................21

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Introduction
The growth of social media in the world has been a revolution in all aspects and in all
sectors of life. The business organizations have not been an exception and they have established
themselves in the social world to stay connected with the users. Social media platforms like Face
book and Twitter are the most common applications that are used by the business organizations
(Paniagua & Sapena, 2014). The mentioned applications have been a real force for the
transformation of the operations of the modern business organizations. The business
organizations nowadays are more interested in directing their customers to their social media
pages rather than their websites. The research will deal with the various elements, concepts and
theories about the use of social media in conducting business. The proposal has provided all the
details about the objectives, scope, methods to be used and the time limit of completing the full
research. This will be important for the proper formulation of the main research.
Project Objective
The main objective of the following research will be to evaluate the different advantages
as well as the disadvantages of using social media by the business organizations. The research
will highlight on the different concepts and different theories of social media along with the
different issues that cripples the business of the management as a result about the usage of social
media in business (Patten, 2016). The report will also focus on the different social media
platforms that the business organization uses to be at the very best of business organizations.
Project Scope
The choice of the research topic is one of the best in nature as because it will deal with
one of the most recent trend of business. Furthermore the topic has great credentials because of

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its complex nature. The usage of social media in the business has been not researched in vast
means within the recent times. The challenges and the advantages along with the impacts of the
use of social media in business has been an important factor for the growth of the business in the
modern marketing world (Patten, 2016). The use of the qualitative and quantitative research
methods will be an additional chance for the research to increase its scope further.
Literature Review
Social Media
The popularity of social media has enabled a vast range of global population totally
familiar with it. As mentioned earlier the business organizations are making them accustomed to
the use of social media with every passing day. The implementation of different social media
tools in the business allows the organizations to have a proper amount of savings, improving
customer satisfaction process, targeting the customers in a better and efficient way and also help
in the creation of online review for the consumer satisfaction. The revolution in the world of
social media hassled to the immense improvement in social media (Aral Dellarocas & Godes,
2013).
Importance of Social Media in Business
The huge improvement in the social media and the involvement of a huge group of
population in the social media is a welcome change for the business organizations as they have
accepted the new trend and established themselves in different applications of social media. The
dynamic efficiency and the speed of access and communication of the social media applications
has been one of the most important reasons behind the involvement of the business organizations
with the social media (Aral Dellarocas & Godes, 2013). The business organizations have the

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tendency to move forward and establish the different types of social networking in the business.
The organizations however do not do this to just follow the different modern trends of the
business but also to make sure that they stay connected with the potential customers as well as
the existing customers by establishing a proper communication channel through the internet.
According to, Ngai Tao and Moon (2015) the use of social media by the business organizations
in an organized and efficient manner helps the company to maintain a competitive advantage in
the market. The advanced range of communication is also necessary for the business to establish
the proper set of objectives for the business organizations and make use of the communication to
get an understanding of the choices of the customers. The understanding of the choices of the
customers is utmost necessary for4 the business organization to provide the exact goods and
services for the customers.
Advantages of Social Media in Business
There are lots of different benefits of using social media in business. The most important
two departments of an organization namely the marketing and the sales department thrive on the
advanced communication methods of social media. The traditional sources and channels of
advertising has been a thing of past and the business organizations are more indulged in
advertising their contents in social media rather than advertising them in other media sources.
According to the management of a major portion of companies social media marketing will be
growing at a much faster rate and will also attain sustainability in the near future (Jussila
Kärkkäinen & Aramo-Immonen, 2014). The advantages of social media advertising leis in the
low advertisement cost and provides the benefit of interacting with different potential customers
as well as the existing customers. Secondly the inbound marketing helps the business
organizations to generate the targeted traffic to the applications of the business enterprises. The

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presence of a large number of customers along with a ever increasing base of customers is
another main advantage of social media. Social marketing and the search engine optimization has
also enabled a certain level of communication in between them (Kane, 2015). This helps the
search media optimization to provide much higher chances to the organization. The better the
communication the better will be the customer satisfaction. The better customer satisfaction
leads to the increase in the profitability and the business of the organization (Paniagua & Sapena,
2014).
Disadvantages of Social Media in Business
The disadvantages of social media for business organizations are another side of the same
coin for the business organizations. The presence of the business organizations in the social
media can similarly be disadvantageous to the business in a number of different ways.
According to, Paniagua and Sapena (2014) the social media profile has to be maintained
continuously and it needs the regular updates and new contents to stay alert with the new
developments all the time. The initial investment of establishing in the social media applications
is huge which may restrict the small and medium sized business organizations to use such
applications (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Apart from the different other disadvantages there are
chances of negative publicity and trolls in the social media applications which is harmful for the
particular organization. The organization will also need expert IT engineers and other qualified
experts to maintain the applications on a regular basis.
Research Questions/Hypothesis
The Hypothesis will be developed while carrying out the research. The Hypothesis are as
follows;

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H0- The business organizations do not implement the advantages on the use of social media in
business
H1- The business organizations implement the advantages on the use of social media in business
Primary Questions
The primary questions of the following research will concentrate more on the aims and
objectives of the research. It will be addressing the different elements of the mentioned topic on
the advantages and disadvantages of social media in business. The primary question in the
research will be;
1. Is social media useful or a pain for the management of the organizations?
Secondary Questions
The secondary questions on the other hand will be arising in the research to discuss any
additional sources of information that are related to the following topic. Some of them are as
follows;
1. What are the social media platforms used by the business and which social media
platform is used in common?
2. What can be the measurement tools for measuring the actual use of social media in
business?
3. What are the key skills that make social media the latest marketing trend?
Research Design and Methodology
The nature of study is one of the most important elements to the developmental process
of the research methodology and also decides on the strategy of the particular research. The

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research will be using both qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate the different aims and
objectives of the following project (Boyack Smith & Klavans, 2018). The proposal here has
described both the research methods and explained the elements of each of them. However the
research will be using only one method to complete the main analysis and the use of that
particular method has been justified here.
Research Philosophy and Justification
Research Philosophy helps in the development of a detailed and compact analysis of the
different kinds of models, frameworks and theories that are related to the topic of the study. For
the particular research, the formulator of the research will choose positivism research
philosophy. The positivism research philosophy interpretation is generally derived from different
kinds of sensory experiences.
Research Approach and Justification
Research Approach is one of the key elements that provide the ways to move forward
with the research. The following research will be taking the help of the Deductive Research
Design to move forward with the research. The deductive Research Approach will be chosen for
this particular research as it is based on earlier studies and researches that helps in the
understanding of the topic in a better way.
Qualitative Research
Research Design
The descriptive design which is also known as the analytical design will be used to
complete this particular research (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). The research will use the
particular design because of the ability of the descriptive design to provide a detailed, compact

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and thorough analysis of the different types of concepts and theories of the social media
advantages and disadvantages of the business organizations. Therefore the following research
design is best suited to carry out the research in a detailed form.
Reliability and Validity
The validity of the research depends solely on the validity and genuinity of the contents
of the research. The reliability factor of a research is established on the perfect establishment of
the contents of the business within the organization (Neuman, 2016). The information regarding
the cultural concepts must be collected from different genuine sources to establish the value of
the research.
Sampling
The sample for this particular research will be collected by means of the purposeful
sampling procedure. In the following procedure the sampling method will be based on some
criterion that will be based on the different questions generated in the research. The sampling
will be done by the researcher on medium scale industries. The reason for selection of the
medium scale industries is the easy availability of data from the managers and the supervisors
who manage the organization and also the easy access to the organization. The researcher will
find it easier to get the required permission to carry out the survey in such industries as obtaining
the requisite permission and conducting surveys and other kinds of necessary tasks to complete
the research will involve a lot of time and a large number of different permissions. Thus the
choice of the medium scale industries is quite feasible in the following case.

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Sample Size
The sample size of the following research will be determined before the start of the
project and the participants will be mostly the managers, supervisors and different officers in the
management of the organization contacted through social media. The sampling will end at the
time of the saturation point. The number of research participants has been fixed at 10 for this
particular research. As mentioned earlier the sample population will consist of Senior Managers
and Marketing managers of the medium scale industries who are directly involved in social
media marketing.
Data Collection Method
The data for this particular research will be collected by means of conducting different
types of interviews and concentrating on the focus groups (Marczyk, DeMatteo & Festinger,
2017). The interviews will be a great source of information to identify and evaluate the views
and experience of the different participants of the research. The focus groups will be used to
group dynamics to gather qualitative data regarding the use and the necessities and cons of using
social media for promoting and expanding business.
Variables Specification
The variables in the research are generally of two types namely dependent and
independent. Both will be used to determine the research and ensure the undertaking of a quality
analysis.