Research Project: Social Media's Effect on Barclays Customer Retention

This research project examines the impact of social media on customer attraction and retention within Barclays. The report begins with an overview of social media's role in modern business, followed by an analysis of Barclays' corporate strategies and governance. It outlines the research aim, objectives, and questions, focusing on the relationship between social media and customer engagement. A literature review explores the concept of social media, indicators of customer attraction and retention, the role of customer retention in competition, and the specific relationship between social media and Barclays. The methodology section details both primary and secondary research approaches. A critical review synthesizes the findings, followed by recommendations and an action plan for Barclays to optimize its social media strategy. The conclusion summarizes the key insights and findings of the study, emphasizing the importance of social media for attracting and retaining customers in the financial sector. The report also includes references and appendices.

RESEARCH
PROJECT
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Table of Contents
TOPIC..............................................................................................................................................3
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................3
Overview of the study:...........................................................................................................3
Background:...........................................................................................................................3
Research Aim:........................................................................................................................4
Research Objectives: .............................................................................................................4
Research Questions:...............................................................................................................5
Rationale of the Study and Review of the Problem:..............................................................5
Structure of the Report...........................................................................................................6
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................7
Concept of Social Media........................................................................................................7
Indicators of customer attraction and retention......................................................................8
Role of customer retention in improvisation of competition................................................10
Relationship between social media and customer attraction and retention in Barclays.......10
METHODOLOGY........................................................................................................................11
Primary Research..................................................................................................................12
Secondary Research..............................................................................................................12
CRITICAL REVIEW.....................................................................................................................13
RECOMMENDATION AND ACTION PLAN............................................................................23
Action Plan...........................................................................................................................25
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................26
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................28
APPENDICES...............................................................................................................................30
Appendix-1...........................................................................................................................30
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TOPIC
“The impact of social media on attracting and retaining customers in Barclays.”
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Overview of the study:
Social Media refers to the technology which is computer-based that provides individuals
with platforms where they could share their ideas and information. It also provides customers
with certain virtual communities and networks that help them to exchange information
effectively. It is a globally used technological platform which is applicable to individuals, teams
as well as organisations. The main agenda of social media is to facilitate electronic
communication through internet and effective exchange of information that helps individuals and
organisations to create value. With enhancements in technology, the use of social media could be
done using computers, laptops, tablets as well as cellphones. Individuals as well as organisations
use social media on a daily basis where they exchange information and communicate with one
another effectively.
Barclays Plc, in conducting its operations, effectively applies corporate strategies and
effective governance. Corporate Strategy refer to those actions and directions that companies
take to achieve their short as well as long-term goals in an appropriate and effective manner
(Grant, 2016). Corporate Governance, on the other end, refers to all those processes, mechanisms
as well as relations that are required to control as well as direct an organisation (Marquis and
Lee, 2013). The institution is using various strategies to effectively attract and retain customers.
Social Media is one of those techniques that company is using to fulfil its objectives. The aim of
the study is to determine the impact of Social Media in attraction and retention of customers in
Barclays.
Background:
Barclays Plc is a multinational financial services organisation and investment bank which
have its headquarters in London, United Kingdom. The company is considered to be one of the
biggest financial companies in the UK and has a huge workforce and effective corporate
structure. Established in 1690, the firm has strong roots in the past with multiple achievements
and various agricultural, industrial and technological revolutions. Apart from its operation of
investment banking, the company also provides services like corporate banking, personal
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banking, investment as well as health management to its customers in the UK. The corporate
governance rule of New York Stock Exchange allows Barclays to follow the governance
structure of the UK rather than the US. Barclays effectively follow the code set by the UK
government and focuses on setting standards for good practices where leadership, accountability,
effectiveness and relation with shareholders is concerned. The corporate strategy of the
organisation is to deliver favourable returns and reach their customers worldwide (Fernando,
2012). Moreover, the organisation is adopting digitalisation in its practices and operations to
effectively manage their organisation and to attract and retain their customers. The company is
applying various digital strategies to attract and retain their customers with social media being
one of them. The agenda of the firm in applying this method is to effectively expand their
workforce and provide their services to maximum number of customers possible.
Social Media has various modes and forms which allow individuals to carry out their
technologically enabled activities like blogging, social and business networks and so forth
(Fuchs, C., 2017). Companies of almost all sectors use social media as an effective method to
strengthen their customer base. Social media could help Barclays in acquiring effective
feedbacks from customers regarding their strategies and it could also help them develop plan of
action according to the preferences of their customers. Moreover, this method could be effective
in case the company wants to effectively introduce any new strategies that provide immense
benefits to people. In addition to this, social media could be an effective way in which
institutions could track strategies of their competitive organisations which could help the firm
stay a step ahead.
Research Aim:
To determine the role of social media and its impact on consumer attraction and retention
in Barclays.
Research Objectives:
 To determine the concept of Social Media
 To identify the indicators of customer attraction and retention
 To determine how customer retention improves competition?
 To determine the relationship between social media and customer attraction and retention
in Barclays
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Research Questions:
 What is the concept of social media?
 What are the indicators of customer attraction and retention
 How customer retention improves competition for organisations?
 What is the relationship between social media and customer attraction and retention of
Barclays?
Rationale of the Study and Review of the Problem:
Employee attraction and retention is quite imperative and helpful for every organisation
to effectively progress in the business and effectively sustain in such a dynamic and competitive
business environment. Barclays aim to retain their buyers lately and and it is very complex to
track the level of satisfaction of the customers. Barclays is attracting millennials as their potential
customers to provide them better services (U.K. Millennial Wallets Are The Target: Digital And
Mobile Is The Key, 2019). To achieve this, the company is planning to incline its operations
towards more usage of technology. For this, the firm is opting for social media as an effective
measure to retain their customers as well as attract new ones. This is a viable strategy for
Barclays as young customers are quite active on social media and could enhance their familiarity
with the operations of Barclays. Millennials could be appropriate target customers for the bank
as the new age customerrs are inclined towards technological advancements and use of social-
media. The impact for the same on customer attraction and retention could be well witnessed in
case the target customers are active users of social media. It is also important for Barclays as this
would allow the firm to spend their time and resources in developing strategies that would allow
the company to provide effective services to its clients and achieve their organisational targets.
This could be achieved by development of effective corporate strategies and governance (Amran,
Lee and Devi, 2014). Social media would help the managers to manage internal as well as
external stakeholders of the firm. The firm could develop effective strategies by establishing
effective communication channels with their stakeholders as well as the board. In addition to
this, social media could be used by the company to formulate and make customers familiar with
their internal regulations as well as policies. Social Media is being given extreme importance
lately as without this, the bank would fail to attract customers outside its niche market
effectively. In addition to this, without social media, the firm would have to spend a lot of money
in marketing its services and attracting new customers towards the firm. This research would
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allow the firm to measure the accurate impact of social media on the firm and its agenda of
attracting and retaining customers. In addition to this, this research would also allow Barclays to
effectively formulate their strategy through social media tools to attract and retain more
customers in a healthy manner and for a long-term purpose. This study would also focus on
various departments within Barclays that would be affected by this decision of the firm to use
social media as a method of attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. It is imperative
for Barclays to conduct this research in order to determine various methods and social media
tools that would aid the purpose of the study in the best manner possible.
Structure of the Report
The following report is divided into various sections that are describing different aspects
of the impact which social media has on customer attraction and retention.
The first aspect covers Literature review which gives a detailed review of the concept of
social media. It describes how social media is advantageous in the current business scenario. In
addition to this, it discusses various social media portals and how they could effectively help the
companies in achieving various objectives using each portal.
Next, the report covers research methodologies that have been used by the researcher to
effectively conduct the research. For this research, there are two types of research methodology
used, mainly, primary research and secondary research. The report covers effective discussion on
both these methodologies along with various methods that could be used to conduct the research.
After research methodology, the report covers a detailed critical analysis of the outcomes
of these methodologies. For secondary research, literature review has been analysed. As for
secondary research, a questionnaire is prepared and distributed among 50 respondents. Their
responses have been effectively interpreted to examine the impact of social media on customer
attraction and retention for Barclays.
Lastly, the report covers recommendation and action plan for Barclays Plc to effectively
channelise their resources to maximise the impact of social media for acquiring new customers
and retain existing ones. Moreover, a detailed emphasis has been given on corporate strategy and
governance which are equal determinants to scale a firm towards success.
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LITERATURE REVIEW
Literature review refers to those articles that cover published information about a specific
subject area. It is a quite important part of the research and undertakes evaluation of sources and
provide relevant information to the researcher.
Concept of Social Media
According to Driver Saige (2018), Social Media is imperative for businesses as it is
considered to be one of the most effective and a cheap marketing tool. Its campaigns could help
companies reach a lot of customers. Social media provide companies with effective targeting
capabilities and a wide reach than other methods used by companies to approach and attract
customers.
As per Maina Antony (2018), there are various social media platforms that are used by
individuals as well as organisation to exchange information and communicate and manage
customers respectively. One such platform is Facebook. It is by far the most popular social
media platform and majority of business organisation working at small as well as large scale uses
this portal to conduct some of their business activities like marketing an promotion. Another
social media platform is twitter that is widely used by companies to give short updates and share
effective links for various important content. YouTube is yet another social media network
which solely works over sharing of videos. Business organisations could use this portal to make
people familiar with their business processes, product and service specifications and techniques
of customer and employee management. Specifically for business purposes and with 260 million
monthly users, LinkedIn is designed to create professional networking. Firms use this portal to
hire talented individuals for their companies to enhance their workforce. These platforms help
companies to assure complete transparency with their targeted and potential customers.
From the viewpoints of Lazano Dhariana (2016), there are various benefits if companies
use so social media for their business operations. The first and foremost benefit of using it is that
it helps organisations to make customers aware about what companies have to offer. In addition
to this, companies could indulge in conversation with interested customers to address their
doubts which could get them interested in organisations' offerings. Moreover, the biggest benefit
of social media is that there are a lot of customers that use these portals for different purposes.
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Illustration 1: 23 Benefits of Social Media for Business
(Source: 23 Benefits of Social Media for Business, 2019)
As per the image, a large number of individuals use social media and this could be an
advantage for companies to attract customers using effective techniques and customer
engagement methods which will contribute in their sustainable growth and profitability. Social
media could also be used by companies to promote content as well as involve customers in
decision-making process. In this manner, customers will be engaged and would provide effective
contribution to the firm's new product ideas and designs.
Indicators of customer attraction and retention
As per the views of Steiner, W.J., and et. al., (2014), customer attraction and retention
depends upon the pricing as well as quality of the products. The agenda for each company is to
earn profit, however, they must set such a price for their offerings that attract and retain a lots of
customers. More companies are giving importance to customer retention lately rather than
customer acquisitions in the market. To retain these customers and to ensure their loyalties, it is
becoming quite important for them to set the prices in the most appropriate and effective manner
that are favoured by customers and help organisations to attract and retain their buyers.
According to Lowenstein Michael (2015), alongside prices, firms could also gain
customer loyalty overtime by providing effective value for money and superior quality products
to its customer base. This would help them in increasing demands for their products as people
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want organisations that provide them comfort and quality both on a favourable price range. This
pattern must also be quite consistent for companies to effectively retain their existing customers.
Quality of products and services require companies to perform extensive market research to
determine what modifications could the company perform in order to satisfy current demands of
the marketplace.
According to Ngai, E.W., and et. al., (2015), it is essential that companies apply some
effective corporate strategies to ensure long term customer retention. It also helps companies
sustain in a highly competitive environment. There are various models that govern how
companies could retain their customers. One such model gives a full circle approach as an
effective method to retain buyers within a company's targeted environment.
Illustration 2: Why a focus on the fundamentals of customer retention is essential to
business growth
(Source: Why a focus on the fundamentals of customer retention is essential to business growth,
2017)
Such a model could be effective for companies to gain a 360-degree overview on each
customer and could develop strategies that could provide customer satisfaction. These strategies
include inducing an emotional connection with the consumers. This makes it hard for them to
shift onto another firm. Another strategy calls in for providing value for money, which could
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help a firm stand effective against their competitors. Then comes effective customer service that
would allow the firms to encourage customers in buying their products repeatedly. The last stage
of this model requires customers to recommend the offerings in their interest groups.
Role of customer retention in improvisation of competition
As per the viewpoints of Heinz Matt (2018), loyal customers contribute in a firm's
growth and success. These customers could effectively make a company achieve their corporate
objectives and effectively enhance their competitive strengths. Customer retention in
organisations really help in them gaining competitive edge. As per Hinshaw Michael (2019),
One way is that they effectively identify current customer experience and future trends and their
anticipated preferences which could be beneficial for a company's strategy of developing new
products and introducing innovation in existing ones. Higher customer retention denotes high
customer experience that a firm offers. This aids a company in establishing itself in the
marketplace. Customer retention allows organisations to experiment with their products
according to a large number of consumer preferences that is one effective strategy to beat
competition. Customer retention also helps to gain insight in the experience gaps which enables
the companies to modify strategies according to customer touchpoints. This aids in creation of
new market opportunities for companies in the current as well as future market scenario.
Another role that customer retention plays in improvisation of competition is that higher
retention restricts new companies to enter the marketplace as existing organisations with a huge
customer base. This further helps companies in gaining a competitive advantage over other
companies in the market.
Relationship between social media and customer attraction and retention in Barclays
According to the Saige Driver (2018), Social media is the platform which is designed and
control to influence the various social idea and involving the consideration of product planning,
pricing, communication, distribution and marketing research. It has played the necessary role in
getting the customer attraction along with retaining their physical existence for beneficial of the
business entity, especially for banking business like Barclays. When particular customer is
looking for any products & services, social media is best suitable to target the pin-point of the
customer related to that items. Social media has put positive impact by building the effective
relationship with the customer's or follower to be get influenced by the business of any firm. The
best ways for the customer retention is building an effective relation with the prospective to get
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their response and attraction for the future period of time. In context with Barclays bank, social
media is the major tool for this banking organisation to enhance their prospective customer
attention towards the business activities or any new products.
It was noticed in various past researches that business entities use this tool majorly for
customer service along with post-purchase actions and plans. Also, Barclays use social media for
receiving any issues or queries about their products to convert it into the corrective actions. It is
also used to communicate with wider audience about offerings and values. Along with this,
social media has put reverse impact of its positives by decreasing the traditional work process
which has effected the current work accountability with losing the past customers who has
believe over the Barclays system. Apart from this, the good response is that customer acquisition
and retention has becoming convenient and profitable for an organisation. Hence, it is necessary
for this organisation to engage social media platform on an optimized and productive manner. It
is pecuniary for every organisation to make the strategic action plan with focal purpose of
gaining the maximum customer attention along with strategic retention.
METHODOLOGY
Research Methodology refers to the process which helps in effective collection of data as
well as important information that helps a firm in appropriate decision-making (Flick, U., 2015).
It helps companies to evaluate the study on the basis of their reliability and validity. It also helps
organisations in choosing the best type of methodology that help them to gather and analyse the
most relevant type of information of their research topic (Mackey and Gass, 2015).
Data collection is a process of collecting information from various sources regarding the
research topic. It also assists in measuring the collected information on various targeted variables
which helps in evaluation of the relevant information. The integrity of this research is dependant
upon the accuracy of the data collected (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault, 2015). In addition, this
process is imperative to determine how well the information collected is accurate and defined. It
also helps to identify validity of findings too. Thus, it is imperative that the most appropriate
instrument be used in order to ensure an appropriate way of data collection.
Barclays could use two types of techniques to gather information relevant to employee
attraction and retention. These types are mentioned below:
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Primary Research
This type of research enables the researcher gathering primary data effectively, i.e.,
information that has never been collected before (McCusker and Gunaydin, 2015). It is a new
research where the researcher effectively collects raw data relevant to the research topic directly
rather than depending on previously collected data. It is solely performed to address a specific
issue which requires an effective in-depth analysis (Silverman, 2016). There are several methods
by which primary research could be carried out. These methods are described below: Questionnaire: This is a research instrument which contains certain questions regarding
the research topic. These questions are presented to the respondents to identify their
responses which set up the base for analysis. The major benefit of questionnaire is that
they are cost-efficient. Another benefit of questionnaire is that they provide faster result
to the researcher. The type of questions used in the questionnaire are closed type. This is
because open ended questions cover a very wide spectrum of evaluation and are very
complex to analyse. Whereas closed questions provide with relevant and specific
information required to accomplish the agenda of analysis of the research questions. Interviews: These refer to direct interaction of the researcher with the respondent. These
could be conducted in different ways like telephonic or face-to-face. Interviews allow
customers to give descriptive and subjective answers which could help researchers to
gain a deeper insight on the research topic. Moreover, face-to-face interviews help in
getting more accurate responses as the respondents are interested in discussion of the
research topic as well as the chances of accurate responses are highly likely.
 Focus Groups: This type of research enables researcher to gain data from a small
number of individuals. These individuals are generally experts of the matter in question
and allow them to discuss their viewpoints with the researcher which helps in gathering
more valuable and diverse information.
Secondary Research
In this type of research, the researcher gathers data through existing sources and by
synthesising existing researches (Johnston, 2017). Unlike primary research, this research helps in
gathering data which has already been gathered by previous researchers. This type of research
includes materials that have been published in previous research report and other documents.
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