The Rise of Social Electronic Commerce: A Research Proposal

This research proposal investigates the impact of social electronic commerce on business profitability. It begins by defining social e-commerce and outlining project objectives, which include exploring its emergence, highlighting problems and opportunities, recognizing its impact on profitability, and recommending implementation strategies. The project scope encompasses the concept's recent rise in business. A literature review covers the concept, challenges (like negative reviews and PR issues), and benefits (transparency, brand awareness). The research questions address the influence on business profitability, customer decision-making, and recommendations for implementation. The methodology includes both qualitative (interviews with e-commerce managers) and quantitative (surveys with customers) data collection, along with discussions of sampling techniques, reliability, and validity. The proposal also acknowledges research limitations, such as time and budgetary constraints, and presents a time schedule. The conclusion anticipates insights from respondents, discusses potential challenges like competition and inactive users, and emphasizes strategic actions for businesses entering social e-commerce, including building strong social analytics. The proposal concludes with a detailed reference list.

Running Head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Research Proposal
The Rise of Social Electronic Commerce and its impact on Business Profitability
Student’s name:
Name of the university:
Author’s note:

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
2. Project Objectives........................................................................................................................3
3. Project Scope...............................................................................................................................3
4. Literature Review........................................................................................................................4
4.1 Concept of social electronic commerce.................................................................................4
4.2 Challenges of social electronic commerce............................................................................4
4.3 Benefits of social electronic commerce.................................................................................5
4.4 Actions to be taken for implementing social electronic commerce.......................................5
4.5 Impact of social electronic commerce on business profitability...........................................6
4.6 Gap in literature.....................................................................................................................6
5. Research Questions......................................................................................................................6
Primary Question.........................................................................................................................6
Secondary Questions...................................................................................................................7
6. Research Design and Methodology.............................................................................................7
6.1 Qualitative research...............................................................................................................7
6.2 Quantitative research.............................................................................................................8
7. Research Limitations...................................................................................................................9
8. Time Schedule.............................................................................................................................9

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9. Conclusion.................................................................................................................................10
Reference List................................................................................................................................11
Appendix........................................................................................................................................13

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1. Introduction
Social electronic commerce is new subset of electronic commerce and it is involved with
social media and online media. This study focuses on mainly on the impact of the recent
emergence of social electronic commerce and its impact on business profitability. In the first part
of the study, the main objective of the research project will be described. In the following
section, scholarly articles and papers will be reviewed in the literature review section. Literature
gap will be highlighted in order to explore research questions. This study will also provide
research methodology and highlight the process of data collection for research project.
2. Project Objectives
The objective of the project is to explore the emergence of social electronic commerce
and its problems and opportunities on business. Objectives of the research project can be
segregated:
 To explore the concept of emergence of social electronic commerce
 To highlight the problems and opportunities in social electronic commerce
 To recognise the impact of social electronic commerce on business profitability
 To recommend some possible strategies that a business can take in implementing social
electronic commerce
3. Project Scope
The project covers the concept of social electronic commerce and its recent emergence in
business premises. The scope of the study is broad as it discusses various ideas related to social

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electronic commerce. In recent time, businesses are taking the advantage of online market and
social electronic commerce adds more marketing opportunity to reach maximum customers.
4. Literature Review
4.1 Concept of social electronic commerce
Social electronic commerce can be described as expanding strategy of e-commerce. This
concept was coined in the year 2005 by Yahoo in order to measure product interest of the
customers. Social electronic commerce has its own set of characteristics and shopping through
using online platforms always inspires others to recommend and purchase. As stated by
Bharadwaj et al. (2013), social electronic commerce are of two types, first one is e-commerce
site itself as this platform is managed by the owner of the company and other is social media
sites and people can make comment about products by taking names. Some of the famous social
electronic commerce platforms are Pinterest, Shoppe, Facebook and Soldsie.
4.2 Challenges of social electronic commerce
As opined by Baethge et al. (2016), it is one of the biggest challenges for the e-commerce
sector to impact on the influence of purchasing experiences. People can buy the products through
online platforms and they can face the technological glitch or they can face issue from e-wallet.
Moreover, when the products get delivered, customers may find that the products do not match
the expectation of them. These types of experiences make the customers’ dissatisfied and they
provide negative comments on social media pages or in community pages. As pointed out by
Spencer et al. (2014), if the e-commerce has social interaction pages, users may provide negative
customer experience as they might face cumbersome and lengthy process of purchasing the
products.

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In addition, customers read reviews of the products before making purchase and social
interaction about those particular products can influence their minds. 40% of the customers leave
the products and change their mind because of reviews gave on-e-commerce page in Australia
(Alalwan et al. 2017). Customers switch the brand if the products have negative comments on
review section and customers are no longer loyal to the brands. As highlighted by Castells
(2015), organisations have been facing issues in making a perfect PR team who can adjust the
brand reputation on social media pages as a single comment of the customer can go viral and
harm the reputation of the brand.
4.3 Benefits of social electronic commerce
Customers in a global context are shifting mainly to the online platform in order to buy
their products. E-commerce disrupted traditional business model and people like to make a
purchase from e-commerce. However, from the perspectives of e-commerce organisations, social
interaction on e-commerce makes the business more transparent. Customers can make their
decisions perfectly and they can interact with other customers before and after purchasing.
Customers’ service teams do not now need to provide answers, other users can provide the
clarification of any customers before that (Celine 2012). E-commerce companies are now getting
better exposure and brand awareness because of social interaction on social media pages.
4.4 Actions to be taken for implementing social electronic commerce
E-commerce businesses want to generate profitability from social electronic commerce
through implementing this strategy. As suggested by Collins et al. (2014), e-commerce
companies give extra discount or points in making review or comments of any products under
the name of ‘verified customers'. Moreover, the e-commerce companies make a connection to
the customers through doing surveys and polls. Business organisations are taking the help of

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social media analytics that provides respond the customers accordingly. Social media analytics
bring development in understanding the behaviour of users on social media platforms.
4.5 Impact of social electronic commerce on business profitability
Today’s generation is smart and technology friendly. Before making any purchase, they
check users’ ratings and comments about the products. Before making decision of purchase from
an e-commerce, they also search the users’ experience about this. As opined by Sashi (2014),
social electronic commerce helps to get advice from trusted individuals and if the customers are
not satisfied with the e-commerce site or products, people may not make the purchase from this
e-commerce. According to Edosomwan et al. (2016), social electronic commerce provides
customers to compare the products and research about the products; this advantage can lead to
purchasing of the products also.
4.6 Gap in literature
In previous time, scholars identified the emergence of social media and e-commerce; they
provided the benefits and issue both of these. Amalgamating the idea of social interaction on e-
commerce is new. Social electronic commerce have several opportunities as well as problems.
The businesses which work on social media platform have opportunities of enhancing their sales
volume, expanding the markets and of innovating their products and services as per the
requirements of the customers.
5. Research Questions
Primary Question
How does social electronic commerce influence the business profitability?

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Secondary Questions
1. How does social electronic commerce can influence the customers’ decision making?
2. What are the problems and opportunities of social electronic commerce?
3. What could be some possible recommendations to business in implementing social electronic
commerce?
6. Research Design and Methodology
6.1 Qualitative research
Data collection methods
In this project, the researcher will collect primary data. The researcher will gather
qualitative data through conducting interviews. According to Mackey and Gass (2015),
qualitative data is information about observation and quality that cannot be measured. The
researcher will interviews 3 Australia based e-commerce managers through Skype. Moreover,
the researcher will make 5 open-ended questions in order to ask e-commerce managers based on
social electronic commerce’s challenges and opportunities.
Sampling technique
The sample size of qualitative research will be 3. The researcher will select non-
probability sampling technique. According to Taylor et al. (2015), in non-probability sampling
technique, samples are gathered in a method that does not provide all the persons in the
population equal chances of being selected.
Reliability and validity

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In qualitative research, the researcher will conduct interviews and the researcher will take
only credible information from the interviews. The researcher will take interviews to the
trustworthy managers. In addition, transferability is the ability to which the results can apply to
other settings also. The researcher will corroborate the research findings on the secondary
sources also and the researcher will definitely recheck the data.
6.2 Quantitative research
Data collection methods
In order to collect the quantitative data, the researcher will conduct a survey. According
to Orkin (2014), quantitative data deal with numerical data that can be measured through
quantitative and statistical analysis. The researcher will select 55 customers of e-commerce
through social media pages who will be interested to answer survey questionnaire. The
researcher will make 10 close-ended multiple type questions about social e-commerce and its
impact on business profitability and preferences of the customers. The researcher will upload this
set of questions on community page on social media network and ask the users to answers the
questions. This survey data will be analysed with the help of quantitative data analysis and will
be presented through tables and excel bar graph and pie-charts
Sampling technique
The researcher will select the sample of 55 Australian customers of e-commerce
organisations. Sample size will be 55. The researcher will select simple random sampling
technique. According to Smith (2015), a simple random sampling technique is a subset of the
statistical population through which each individual of the population has equal opportunity of
getting selected.

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Reliability and validity
The researcher will not be biased in analysing the quantitative data. In quantitative data,
repeatability is the fact to become reliable as obtaining results can be repeated and it does not
need reliability. The researcher will use focus group before making choice of sampling and in
case the information would contradict with previous observation, the researcher will recheck the
data and ensure conformability.
7. Research Limitations
The Researcher may face the issue of time constraint as being student it is difficult to
continue a research. The budgetary limitation will be another issue for the researcher. Moreover,
the researcher may face limitation in handling a large amount of data as a researcher will do both
qualitative and quantitative research. The researcher would select the sample size of 55 in
conducting a survey and only 3 for interview; this is quite a small sample. If the researcher
would have got extra time, he would have chosen the large sample to get an unbiased judgement.
8. Time Schedule
Activities Week 2 Week 4 Week 6 Week 8 Week 10 Week 12
Selection of topic
and research
question
✓
Review the
literature
✓
Identify the ✓

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research
methodology
Collection of
primary data
✓
Analysis of data ✓
Drawing
conclusions and
recommendations
✓
Table: Gantt chart
(Source: Created by researcher)
9. Conclusion
The researcher anticipates that respondents of the survey and interviews will put their
views about social interaction on e-commerce. Social electronic commerce can also create high-
level competition for the businesses and the other problem can be inactive users on the internet.
At last, the strategic actions are discussed which can be taken while adopting e-commerce on
social platforms. The companies should create an appropriate strategy before entering into social
e-commerce and should build excellent social analytics so that the company can run on the basis
of needs and requirements of the customers.

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Reference List
Alalwan, A A, Rana, N P, Dwivedi, Y K and Algharabat, R, 2017. Social Media in Marketing: A
Review and Analysis of the Existing Literature. Telematics and Informatics. 1(2), pp.43-45
Baethge, C, Klier, J and Klier, M 2016, ‘Social commerce—state-of-the-art and future research
directions’, Electronic Markets, 26(3), pp.269-290.
Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O.A., Pavlou, P.A. and Venkatraman, N.V., 2013. Digital business
strategy: toward a next generation of insights. International Journal of marketing. 9(1), pp.23-25
Castells, M., 2015. Networks of outrage and hope: Social movements in the Internet age. John
Wiley & Sons.
Celine, A.R.C.A., 2012. Social Media Marketing benefits for businesses. Master of International
Marketing.
Clemence, A., Doise, W. and Lorenzi-Cioldi, F., 2014. The quantitative analysis of social
representations. Abingdon: Routledge.
Collin, P, Rahilly, K, Richardson, I and Third, A 2014, ‘The benefits of social networking
services’.
Edosomwan, S., Prakasan, S.K., Kouame, D., Watson, J. and Seymour, T., 2016. The history of
social media and its impact on business. Journal of Applied Management and
entrepreneurship, 16(3), p.79.