Masters Dissertation Proposal: Social Media Marketing at Starbucks

This dissertation proposal explores the importance of social media for businesses, using Starbucks as a case study. It aims to investigate how Starbucks leverages social media platforms to connect with customers, enhance brand loyalty, and drive business growth. The proposal outlines the research questions, including how Starbucks uses social media for advertising, customer interaction, and customer service. It also details the methods for data collection, such as online and offline surveys to gather customer feedback on their experiences with Starbucks' social media presence. The study focuses on the area of marketing and aims to provide insights that can help Starbucks further develop its products and services based on customer expectations and feedback. The proposal also includes a preliminary reference list.

DISSERTATION PROPOSAL FORM
Business School
BUSINESS MASTERS DISSERTATION PROPOSAL
The procedure for submission of this proposal is given in the Dissertation
Guidelines
Please Type in the appropriate spaces. Boxes will expand as you type.
Name Student Number
Course
Provisional Title of Your Dissertation.
Importance Of Businesses To Stay Active On Social Media - A Case Of Starbucks
Describe the topic(s) or issue(s) you wish to investigate for your Dissertation.
These must relate to the subjects that comprise your programme of study, and
must clearly indicate what your aims /objectives / research questions will be.
Social media has nearly become the very important part of every business. It is simply
not enough for the marketers of various businesses to be just present in the social media,
there are a whole lot of efforts that must be put into this specific genre to bring about
success within a business (Tuten and Solomon, 2017). The digital age in which we now
live in, effectively almost everything comes online. When it comes to Starbucks then they
are present in a wide range of social networking sites and have a huge pool of fan
following. With the enhanced use of the internet, the customers are really much
empowered. In this wake, social media acts as the very principal basis that connects the
businesses to the relevant and optimized desires of the consumers (Stelzner, 2014). When
it comes to a good brand, then that not only uses social media for the purposes of
advertising and showcasing the latest products from their house rather they believe in
interacting with the consumers and provide for some best in the class customer service.
Since the beginning of this digital age, Starbucks have marked their online presence and
with that they extend their very sense of community via the various media channels. They
have generated an entire platform where the basic focus remains on the digital
productivity and social media strategy enabling them have a huge range of customers and
followers (Fanand Gordon, 2014). Realizing the fact that it is the customers who can
provide for the most effective feedback regarding their expectations from Starbucks, the
launched a site, My Starbucks Idea so as to gather the suggestions, ideas, feedbacks of
the customers and have an open platform for various discussions regarding the further

development of the chain. With that they are able to give the customers individual
attention that makes them return back to the same place to avail the services (Chaffey,
2016). The real and major power of social media lies here in allowing the company in
developing their products and services by focusing on the expectations and the feedback
of the consumers.
What facts or information will you need to gather? How will you access these?
In this regard, the data may be collected from both the online and offline customers of
Starbucks regarding the expectations of the services from the organization and can also
survey for the feedback from the present customers so as to bring about the requisite
changes or improvise the services that are being offered to the customers (Palinkas, et al.
2015). Along with that the online surveys can be conducted in this regards where people
find it more relevant to disclose their personal experiences that they have gathered from
the particular chain. Also the survey regarding the fact that to what extent the presence of
Starbucks have enriched their experiences if at all may be included in this e.ntire process
(Morgul, et al. 2014).
To which subject area(s) is this proposal - in your view -most strongly related?
The area that will be much focused on by this proposal is the area of marketing (Baker,
2016). With the specific opinion of the existing and the new customers of Starbucks we
can enhance the quality of the products and services that are offered to the customers so
as bring about development is the businesses performed by Starbucks.
Name any tutor(s) you think might be appropriate to supervise your
dissertation.
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Reference List
Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. Sage.
Stelzner, M., 2014. 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Social media
examiner, pp.1-52.
Fan, W. and Gordon, M.D., 2014. The power of social media
analytics. Communications of the ACM, 57(6), pp.74-81.
Chaffey, D., 2016. Global social media research summary 2016. Smart Insights:
Social Media Marketing.
Palinkas, L.A., Horwitz, S.M., Green, C.A., Wisdom, J.P., Duan, N. and Hoagwood,
K., 2015. Purposeful sampling for qualitative data collection and analysis in mixed
method implementation research. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and
Mental Health Services Research, 42(5), pp.533-544.
Morgul, E., Yang, H., Kurkcu, A., Ozbay, K., Bartin, B., Kamga, C. and Salloum, R.,
2014. Virtual sensors: Web-based real-time data collection methodology for
transportation operation performance analysis. Transportation Research Record:
Journal of the Transportation Research Board, (2442), pp.106-116.
Baker, M.J., 2016. What is marketing?. In The Marketing Book(pp. 25-42).
Routledge.
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