Research Methodology: Social Media Impact on Businesses Report

This research report investigates the impact of social media on businesses in the current era, exploring both its advantages and disadvantages. The report outlines the project's objectives, scope, and provides a comprehensive literature review on the benefits of social media for brand awareness, cos...Read More

Research Methodology (Assignment 2)
Student Name
Institute Name

Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Project objective.........................................................................................................................4
Project scope..............................................................................................................................4
Literature review........................................................................................................................5
Justification................................................................................................................................7
Research questions.....................................................................................................................9
Primary question.....................................................................................................................9
Secondary questions...............................................................................................................9
Research design and methodology.............................................................................................9
Qualitative research................................................................................................................9
Quantitative research..............................................................................................................9
Sample size...........................................................................................................................10
Sampling...............................................................................................................................10
Variables...............................................................................................................................10
Data collection......................................................................................................................11
Data analysis.........................................................................................................................11
Expected outcome/conclusion..............................................................................................11
Reliability and validity.........................................................................................................12
Research limitation...............................................................................................................12
Time plan.................................................................................................................................12

Reference..................................................................................................................................13
Introduction
The concept of social media can be a very crucial tool for the businesses in the current time
since it brings benefits to the engagement of the audience and increasing the overall traffic of
the website. But there can also be certain drawback which consists of resources needed and
negative feedback. Based on the pros and cons can assist people in determining the best
approach towards social media for the business. Presence of social media has basically
transformed the way business is done or communicated to the consumers and the people at
large (Borgatti et al., 2018). The important factor is to highlight on how social media can
work on improving marketing and customer service. The report discusses about the research
methods with positive and the negative factors of handling social media in organisations.
Project objective
The main objective of the report is to understand the impact of social media on the businesses
in the current time. This will be explained by analysing advantages as well as disadvantages
of social media on business.
Project scope
Social media, unlike other kinds of marketing, where marketers can retain some level of
control in the area of messaging in addition to there is no form of control on the social media.
There are a number of platforms like Twitter and Facebook that permit anyone as well as
everyone to come forward and actually share their views. (Bryman and Bell, 2015).

Literature review
The social media works on assuring a proper improvement in the centric approach with
handling the negativity that could impact the organisation as well. It is, therefore, become
very crucial to constantly supervise the social media account to make sure that the business
always looks in right picture. It is important for the business to create to make an effort and
create positive content about the business that will rate highly in the search engines so that
consumer can always get to see the best side (Bryman, 2015). Following are the benefits of
the business of effective use of social media are discussed in detail below: -
1. Brand awareness: relevant and compelling data that can grab the attention of many
potential consumers and raise the visibility of brands
2. There are so many kinds of compelling and crucial content that can get the attention
of many prospective consumers and raise the overall brand visibility.
3. Brand reputation: people can answer in an instant to the growth of the industry can be
visible as leaders who have taken some efforts in the field. This further can help in
improving the business and how it is seen by the market.
4. Cost effective process. The process of social media can be very cheap in terms of cost
than any other conventional advertising as well as promotion functions. The overall
cost of maintaining the presence of social media is minimum. When people select or
decide to invest in paid level advertising, one needs to spend as much or as little as the
budget permits (Buettner, 2016).
5. Website traffic benefits. Impactful social content can help in boosting the overall
traffic on the website. This further can lead to rising online customers like sales as
well as leads.

6. Evaluation: it is simple to calculate how a website traffic can get from the social
media. One can also establish tracking to decide how sales are normally generated
through paid advertising on social media.
7. Customer conversation: businesses can now offer an improved level of customer
service and answer in an effective manner to all forms of feedback. When there is
positive feedback which is in public space and can also be very persuasive many other
prospective consumers (Burns, 2016). There is negative feedback as well as which
throws light on areas where the business can take efforts to improve.
When businesses try to promote their product, social media can be an immense help. The
important thing to note is that the current and prospective consumers are already in the
market space. Facebook along has users which are more than one billion on a routine basis
and therefore there can be the usage of more than one platform for advertising.
The number of the audience which can be targeted on social media is huge. Apart from
Facebook, Twitter too has more than three hundred million active users every month. Then
there is Instagram with approx. five hundred million users and many more. Though
businesses don't require to use every possible platform available, developing an account on
just one or two can provide people with much-needed exposure to so many people all across
the world (Cook, 2017).
Another most distinct benefit of social media is the capacity to get some assistance from the
number of followers. The important thing to understand is that people actually love
immensely to share things about their life on the network and this can be used for the
research.
The disadvantage of social media
Following is the detailed discussion of some drawback of using social media: -

1. Resources: people will have to commit to the resources in order to manage the social
media presence while answering to the feedback and also producing the new form of
content. This consist of hiring as well as training the staff members, with an
investment as a process of paid advertising and also paying for the cost to create
content in the form of video or image content (Dubos, 2017).
2. Review: it is simple to properly quantify the process of return on investment which is
related to online sales created with the help of social media advertising and there is
some less form of tangible advantages. In addition, it can also be very hard to
calculate and use a monetary value on the basis of awareness of brand and reputation
that social media can bring. It is also challenging to understand how social media can
impact the sales in-stores (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015).
3. Ineffective level of usage: the presence of social can used in an ineffective manner.
For instance, usage of the network to further push the drive to sell without any form
of engagement with consumers or completely failing to answers to a negative
feedback may further harm the reputation.
Justification
There are so many advantages and disadvantages of using social media from the business
point of view. Moreover, with rising in the overall reach of the brand, social media also
permit the company to enhance the overall brand loyalty. Also, there is a number of studies
that show the large percentage of people follow the brand on social media and they are more
likely to stay loyal to different brands.
Social media can also be used to gain effective or valuable data about the consumers that can
assist to ensure smart business decisions. For instance, social listening permits people to
actually discover how people actually perceive the brand as well as the company (Hair Jr et

al., 2015). Social listening can further uncover the interaction related to business as well as
also answer questions about the offerings.
There are some negative points also as discussed above. The users of social media have the
freedom to express in which way they want. This further means that all the customers which
are satisfied can leave good reviews on the page, however, they can also leave a bad and
angry comment about the business.
Also, it is very simple to get actually get caught in social media and further post things which
can be bad for the company and which further can lead to bad results negatively affecting the
business. For so many organization that entertains the large audience, errors are bound to
happen and it will not go unnoticed. This all can happen in the matter of few minutes and all
because of social media and its users who are very quick in reacting and also have the
tendency to share the content which is all over the important media places in some time only
(He et al.,2015).
In addition, it takes time as well as hard work to be able to maintain as well as have an
interactive social media presence. When a small group of people with the restricted resource,
it becomes challenging to commit or dedicate the required resources to social media.
Companies will have to supervise every platform, answer questions and feedback as well as
post right content. There are some people who can view this as a disadvantage, giving time to
social media can further assist people or business to develop a lasting association with
consumers that will keep returning for so many years.
Research questions
Primary question
What are the advantages and disadvantages of social media usage on the businesses in the 21st
century?

Secondary questions
1. How can social media be used in right manner for effective outcomes for the
business?
2. How can drawback take the company into a lot of trouble if not managed in the right
manner?
Research design and methodology
Qualitative research
Particularly, including qualitative features based on data collection will ensure to gain clarity
on complicated nature of the features that can be studied and therefore more understanding.
Thus, the accounting procedure consists of many human approaches which are mixed with
relevant research that can help in gaining a clarity of the nature od use of social media
information. The qualitative research will thus be utilised in the form of a detailed
questionnaire which consists of open-ended and close-ended queries (Luo and Zhong, 2015).
Quantitative research
To implement quantitative methods, a well-structured interview can help in conducting the
business with the same number of applicants through various mediums like phone or face to
face. This will make sure that every interview consists of a similar set of queries. The
important thing is that there will be a comparison that exists between different kinds of social
media platforms and will further make it simple.
Sample size
This case will cover all form of people that are using social media will be part of the study.
This can further be done to make sure that the opinion based on social media marketing in a
number of the financial institutes will cover a detailed description of all ages. Moreover, there
are many users that can be interviewed just to know their possible reactions and opinion

based on social media usage (Prpić et al., 2015). After recognising the population, it further
becomes crucial for the researcher to actually draw a sample from the actual population. This
sample can work as a representative of an overall population that can further be interpreted
on the basis of studying the population.
Sampling
The study will cover simple but random sampling methods that can be used as a process of
interviews responses, answer the questions and evaluate all form of hypotheses. The pilot
study will have conducted that will help in understanding the overall effectiveness of data
collection technique right before the main study.
Variables
The variables of the research can be categorised as dependent where the research is actually
taking interest and independent where it impacts many dependent elements. The important
thing to understand is that dependent elements consist of age and gender of the respondents
(Sekaran and Bougie, 2016). There also exist many independent elements that will consist of
the nature of a business, whether they utilise the standard which is common, level of impact
of the study, nature of the business.
Data collection
While selecting the sample for the study, kind of informed level consent is sent to many
studies the candidates through hand delivery or electronically handling it. The main motive of
the study can be explained to candidates and response will be further be promised as a part of
confidential data and compiled at one place with an opinion of other participants to make a
common conclusion with a list of recommendations.

Data analysis
The answer accomplished from the questionnaire will be part of excel, coded as well as
edited in right manner. The data can also be exported into so many version of data analysis
software, evaluated and presented by using a descriptive form of statistics like means, mode-
based percentage and standard deviations (Turban et al., 2015).
Expected outcome/conclusion
In the current world, there is no form of business which is without any kind of
communication. Too many managers and business owners in the present time, social media
usage is treated as the next most effective things. The overall emergence of many online
technologies that permits in reaching the effective crowd without mainly meeting then has
shown an important but temporary fad that can be used properly while it is still in trend
(Turban et al., 2017). The group of entrepreneurs, reaching towards the virtual market has
presented as the main step, not to settle the brand, however, also earning acceptance in the
current market. There are people who have also gone ahead to settle online shops where the
consumer can comfortably order as well as wait for the products to be offered without any
important visit to the product stores.
Reliability and validity
The usage of mixed methodologies in research is based on threats towards reliability and
validity of the obtained outcome. For the sake of primary research, a test for the sake of
validity and reliability can be conducted to get whether the same outcome can further be
reproducible. But, for secondary data, there can no requirement to carry out any test since the
data will already be part of publication as well as signed as information is passed on social
media to business (Turban et al., 2017).

Research limitation
There is a number of restrictions on the current methodology in the present research and it
can be defined as the long-term or effort needed. In addition, the research also needs many
resources to collect a lot of data in order to respond to the current set-out research-based
questions (Turban et al., 2017). There are many sources of data that can be answered to gain
more confidence with the help of research findings and there are chances that some data can
be obtained and cannot be very collaborative and therefore could be an option and there can
discrepancy in outcomes.
Time plan

Reference
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Bryman, A. and Bell, E., 2015. Business research methods. Oxford University Press, USA.
Bryman, A., 2015. Social research methods. Oxford university press.
Buettner, R., 2016, January. Getting a job via career-oriented social networking sites: The
weakness of ties. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2016 49th Hawaii International Conference
on (pp. 2156-2165). IEEE.
Burns, P., 2016. Entrepreneurship and small business. Palgrave Macmillan Limited.
Cook, N., 2017. Enterprise 2.0: How social software will change the future of work.
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Dubos, R., 2017. Social capital: Theory and research. Routledge.
Eriksson, P. and Kovalainen, A., 2015. Qualitative methods in business research: A practical
guide to social research. Sage.
Hair Jr, J.F., Wolfinbarger, M., Money, A.H., Samuel, P. and Page, M.J., 2015. Essentials of
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Prpić, J., Shukla, P.P., Kietzmann, J.H. and McCarthy, I.P., 2015. How to work a crowd:
Developing crowd capital through crowdsourcing. Business Horizons, 58(1), pp.77-85.
Sekaran, U. and Bougie, R., 2016. Research methods for business: A skill building approach.
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Turban, E., King, D., Lee, J.K., Liang, T.P. and Turban, D.C., 2015. Electronic commerce: A
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