The Role of Social Media in Business: A HI6008 Research Report

This report, prepared for a Business Research course (HI6008), investigates the significant role of social media in business development and performance. It begins with an introduction highlighting the transformative impact of social media on modern business practices. The report outlines the research objectives, focusing on how social media influences business success, and defines the scope of the study. A comprehensive literature review synthesizes existing research on social media's impact on business, including its effects on marketing, customer relationships, and overall business performance. The study poses key research questions and hypotheses regarding the influence of social media on business growth and B2B relationships. The report details the research design and methodology, including both qualitative and quantitative approaches, data collection methods, and sampling strategies. It also acknowledges the limitations of the research and presents a time schedule for the project. The report concludes with a summary of findings and a list of references.

Running head: BUSINESS RESEARCH
Business Research
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Project Objective.............................................................................................................................2
Project Scope...................................................................................................................................3
Literature Review............................................................................................................................3
Social Media for business................................................................................................................3
Effect of social media on business development.............................................................................4
Influence of social media on business performance........................................................................4
Benefits of social media for the businesses.....................................................................................5
Gap in literature review...................................................................................................................6
Research Questions and Hypothesis................................................................................................6
Hypothesis.......................................................................................................................................7
Research Design and Methodology.................................................................................................7
Research limitations.........................................................................................................................8
Time Schedule.................................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
The purpose of the study intends to analyze role of social media in business. Over the last
few years, social media has attained desirable position in the person’s life and has become the
discussion across various sections of businesses. Innovations in technology has led to huge range
of changes in the economies and also lowered the complications in business operations. Increase
in utilization of advanced technology has brought about numerous reforms in the business
organizations. Different social media platforms in several companies has been playing major role
in the development of business and better financial performance. There have been shift in
strategy of conducting business within the business environment across the globe owing to rise in
social media. Proper utilization of social media has facilitated the organizations to develop new
marketing techniques that meets to particular consumer choices and predict demand of specific
commodities (Aral, Dellarocas & Godes, 2013). This also helped the business enterprises to
increase its consumer base and significantly enhanced management practices as well as
motivates innovations and knowledge sharing. Social media permits an enterprise to closely
communicate with the target audience while enhancing the business to rise its brand visibility.
Project Objective
The objective of the research study is to determine the role of social media in business
and success of business with help of the social media tools. In order to address and accomplish
research aims, the following objectives have been recognized-
 To examine the influence of social media on business performance
 To evaluate the influence of social media in business with special focus on business to
business (B2B) relationships (Jussila, Kärkkäinen & Aramo-Immonen, 2014)
 To examine effective social media utilization for business development

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 To investigate how business benefits from use of social media
Project Scope
The focus on the research study is how social media influences the enterprise business
development and performance. This study also provides huge scope to the academic as well as
research communities on how the social media has put better utilization in business growth and
performance. It helps the business owners to attain knowledge regarding creation ad well as
development of the social media sites. The study will aid the marketing team of the enterprise to
examine major marketing techniques to be used on social media channels. This paper has given
huge scope to the business owners to know how social media might be used as vital tool for
reaching out to their customers. Overall, it gives empirical data on how the business
organizations can employ present social media as well as maximize opportunities.
Literature Review
This section of research explores the affect of social media on the business performance.
It also focuses on how integration of social media aids in business development and growth. This
segment also reviews on how the organizations benefit from use of social media.
Social Media for business
Several articles have pointed out that social media is a contributing factor to the business
success. The present research reveals the present as well as future influence of social media at
the workplace. Trainor et al. (2014) opines that, social media is of huge significance to the
business since it helps in productive work. The organizations across varied industries are
exploring social media for tapping opportunities in the market research. Recent evidences reflect
that the companies are focusing on building their brand, product development and promotion,

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collaboration with the stakeholders, effective customer service and recruitment of skilled
candidates. Habibi, Laroche and Richard (2014) mentions that the companies are using social
media to recruit large number of skilled candidates, for networking in business or to perform
market analysis. Ahearne, Lam and Kraus (2014) found out that, the enterprises operating in
various areas mainly target various approaches in marketing their products through social media.
In addition to this, social media is an effectual way in presenting new commodities and services
to their customers.
Effect of social media on business development
Treem and Leonardi (2013) found out that the enterprises have been spending huge
amount of resources, time and money to garner positive impact of social media to increase their
opportunities. Sustainable social media growth has been possible owing to wide spread
awareness as availability of internet and also reach the popularity among the customers. Several
enterprises have identified significance of social media in the business development and have
began exploring qualities of web. Now-a- days, social media has become the place of promotion
for goods and services and also attract the target customers. The rising social media popularity
has increased the visibility of businesses and perceived value in the brand development. Besides
this, social media has led the platform to demonstrate the corporate governance of the enterprise,
which in turn adds value in its reputation.
Influence of social media on business performance
Leeflang et al. (2014) states that, social media offers challenges as well as opportunities
to the business organizations. It also provides certain level of uncertainty among stakeholders in
respect of effort, time and budget allocation. The social media practitioners takes decision
without even comprehending affect of social media on enterprise performance. As per Treem and

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Leonardi (2013), huge influence of social media on business performance is seen in different
domains namely, finance, corporate social performance, marketing and so on. The effect of
social media is generally rampant in business performance when it comes to customer
preferences, social capital, social marketing. Now- a- days, the organizations have started
building as well as maintaining social media pages as they realized significance of applications,
increase consumers interest within businesses and build relation with online communities.
Moreover, social media tools has facilitated employees in cultivating social ties as well as
understand their businesses and profession. The organizations are also considering the customer
reviews or feedbacks in order to develop unique model or make changes in their products that
can assists them to make future choices and offer particular options. The companies also benefits
from understanding the negative effect of products on customers. Its engagement in the online
chatter aids to reduce negative customers perspectives. Thus, rise in social media has motivated
the businesses to perform better and be successful in the market place (Melanthiou, Pavlou &
Constantinou, 2015).
Benefits of social media for the businesses
Some of the main advantages of social media for businesses are described below-
 Improved consumer insights- Businesses attain proper understanding of the customers
insight since they becomes aware that enterprise is listening to them. Even social media
permits the business managers to understand the opinions of potential customers and also
network with them.
 Better customer service- Chua and Banerjee (2013) opines that social media permits
businesses for responding to customer grievances and concerns. Customers need to be
ensured that if they face some problems, they will receive proper assistance.

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 Cost efficient- When the businesses has been running on the fixed marketing budget,
social media is the cost- efficient way for promoting as well as market the business. Few
social media like twitter, facebook permits any business to share the content for less
costs. Thus, social media is considered as the low-cost advertising platform (Okazaki &
Taylor, 2013).
 Establishment of brand awareness-With the advent of social media, businesses
enhance their brand awareness among the customers since they can create brand
awareness by building enterprise image (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014).
 Increasing business sales-Through rise in social media, it increases traffic within the
business enterprises. As a result, this converts potential customers to the actual
customers. Thus in turn enhances overall sales in business.
 Connectivity-Social media helps the businesses to connect with their customers in terms
of varying preferences, resources as well as adapt with changing interest of customers.
Moreover, the organizations might be able to meet dynamic interests as well as innovate
on marketing campaign.
Gap in literature review
Several studies are conducted for understanding significance of the businesses to be
connected to social media. But this study has not highlighted on the disadvantages of using social
media in businesses. This research study has not provided an overview on how the social media
has affected the performance of employees. Therefore, this study has intended to analyze
positive influence of social media on growth as well as performance of business.
Research Questions and Hypothesis
The primary question of this research study is-

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 What is the role of social media in businesses?
The secondary questions of the study aligning with the research topic are-
 How the social media influences development and performance of business?
 Do social media improve B2B relationship within the competitive business environment?
Hypothesis
Hypothesis 1
H0-Social media do not influence business growth and its performance
H1-Social media influence business growth and its performance.
Hypothesis 2
H0-There is no correlation between utilization of the social media and rise in business sales
H1-There is correlation between utilization of the social media and rise in business sales
Research Design and Methodology
Descriptive research design has been integrated for conducting this research study as it
helps to depict the participants in accurate way. The deductive approach has been applied in this
study in order to inspect influence of social media in business. This approach has been used in
this study for exploring various theories and testing validity in specific situations. Moreover,
positivism philosophy has been integrated in this study as it includes existing theory that aids to
develop and test hypothesis. Both primary and secondary method have been conducted regarding
how the organizations use social media for different business functions in marketing its
commodities (Lewis, 2015). The secondary study has been conducted by taking information
from the websites, journal articles and newspapers. In fact, the primary study has been done on

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10 companies from different industries using structured questionnaires for finding out whether
these companies used social media to promote their commodities and recruit employees
(Broughton et al., 2013). The primary study has been done for acquiring information about the
benefits and challenges of social media that the marketers face during the business operation.
Even both qualitative and quantitative data analysis method has been used in this study for
attaining accurate data and draw proper conclusions of this research.
Quantitative analysis-The quantitative data has been collected through survey questionnaire
processes. This procedure has been used in this study for acquiring accurate data from huge
sample size. Simple random sampling has been used in this study since it estimates fair
procedure of choosing sample from large population of employees in these companies. Sample
size of about 50 employees of several companies in Australia has been selected for the online
survey questionnaire procedure. A structured questionnaire has been framed for avoiding any
kind of difficulties during the process. Self-completed questionnaires has been delivered to the
respondents during the survey questionnaire process.
Qualitative data analysis- This data analysis method has been integrated in this study for
attaining insights about the present research problem. The method that is adopted for collecting
qualitative data is interview procedure. The interview process has been conducted on 10
managers from different companies in Australia.
Research limitations
There have been certain limitations while conducting this research study. It has been
difficult to gather information from the employees and managers of the companies as some of
them chose to give biased answers. Some of them also chose to avoid giving information relating

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to this research topic. Even in few websites, no updated version of data relating to this research
study has been available. However, it has been difficult to collect secondary data from reliable
websites.
Time Schedule
Figure1: Gantt Chart
Source: (As created by author)
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that social media has huge impact on the
business organizations. Even though social media creates challenges to the businesses, it help the
organizations to develop and improve its performance. The businesses benefit from promoting its
products to the customers, attaining their feedback and improving the products and services
accordingly. Effective advertising of goods with the help of various social sites facilitate to
increase visibility of goods as well as attract more customers. This aid business to expand across
the globe by maximizing the profitability level and incurring less cost of advertising.

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References
Ahearne, M., Lam, S. K., & Kraus, F. (2014). Performance impact of middle managers' adaptive
strategy implementation: The role of social capital. Strategic Management Journal,
35(1), 68-87.
Aral, S., Dellarocas, C., & Godes, D. (2013). Introduction to the special issue—social media and
business transformation: a framework for research. Information Systems Research, 24(1),
3-13.
Broughton, A., Foley, B., Ledermaier, S., & Cox, A. (2013). The use of social media in the
recruitment process. Institute for Employment Studies, Brighton.
Chua, A. Y., & Banerjee, S. (2013). Customer knowledge management via social media: the case
of Starbucks. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(2), 237-249.
Habibi, M. R., Laroche, M., & Richard, M. O. (2014). The roles of brand community and
community engagement in building brand trust on social media. Computers in Human
Behavior, 37, 152-161.
Jussila, J. J., Kärkkäinen, H., & Aramo-Immonen, H. (2014). Social media utilization in
business-to-business relationships of technology industry firms. Computers in Human
Behavior, 30, 606-613.
Leeflang, P. S., Verhoef, P. C., Dahlström, P., & Freundt, T. (2014). Challenges and solutions
for marketing in a digital era. European management journal, 32(1), 1-12.

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Leonardi, P. M., Huysman, M., & Steinfield, C. (2013). Enterprise social media: Definition,
history, and prospects for the study of social technologies in organizations. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 19(1), 1-19.
Lewis, S. (2015). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches.
Health promotion practice, 16(4), 473-475.
Melanthiou, Y., Pavlou, F., & Constantinou, E. (2015). The use of social network sites as an e-
recruitment tool. Journal of Transnational Management, 20(1), 31-49.
Okazaki, S., & Taylor, C. R. (2013). Social media and international advertising: theoretical
challenges and future directions. International marketing review, 30(1), 56-71.
Trainor, K. J., Andzulis, J. M., Rapp, A., & Agnihotri, R. (2014). Social media technology usage
and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social CRM.
Journal of Business Research, 67(6), 1201-1208.
Treem, J. W., & Leonardi, P. M. (2013). Social media use in organizations: Exploring the
affordances of visibility, editability, persistence, and association. Annals of the
International Communication Association, 36(1), 143-189.
Tsimonis, G., & Dimitriadis, S. (2014). Brand strategies in social media. Marketing Intelligence
& Planning, 32(3), 328-344.