Social Media Marketing Impact on Dove: A Research Study

This research project investigates the impact of social media marketing on the business performance and growth of Dove, a personal care product brand of Unilever Australia. The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of social media marketing strategies, such as those used on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, on consumer behavior and overall business outcomes. The methodology employs a mixed-methods approach, combining primary data collected through consumer surveys with secondary data from industry reports, annual reports of Unilever Australia, and academic journals. The project outlines the problem statement, research aims and objectives, the chosen methodology, and the secondary sources and data that will be used. The analysis will involve quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the brand's performance and provide recommendations for Unilever to enhance its social media marketing efforts, ultimately aiming to increase its market size. The project includes a literature review and thematic analysis to derive meaningful insights from the data.

Running head: RESEARCH IN BUSINESS
Topic: Impact of social media marketing on the business performance of a product company: A
case study of Dove
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Table of Contents
1.0 Problem statement.....................................................................................................................2
1.1 Research aim and objectives..................................................................................................2
2.0 Methodology..............................................................................................................................3
3.0 Secondary sources and data.......................................................................................................3
References........................................................................................................................................5

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1.0 Problem statement
There are many factors that have significant impacts on the business performance of a
company. Among the influencing factors of the business, social media is one element that has a
very prominent impact. In the modern world, social media has been influencing every aspect of
people’s lives and hence, it plays a major role in consumer behavior, and the performance and
growth of a business is heavily dependent on understanding consumer behavior (Hajli, 2014).
This research study will explore how the social media can impact the business performance and
growth of a product company. To conduct this study, Dove has been chosen as the case study
company. Dove is one of the major personal care products of Unilever Australia. Although, the
Unilever group indulges in extensive marketing for each of its brands, yet the social media aspect
has not been yet focused much. They are still prioritizing the print and digital advertisements on
television and radio. Hence, this study will focus on evaluating the impact of social media
marketing on the business growth of Dove, Australia.
1.1 Research aim and objectives
The aim of this research study is to conduct an evaluation of the impact of marketing in
social media, such as, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. on the business performance and
growth of Dove, Australia.
The research objectives are:
 To explore the marketing strategies used by Unilever Australia for promoting Dove
 To evaluate the impact of social media marketing on the consumer behavior and business
performance of Dove in the last three years

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 To recommend appropriate strategies for Unilever to put more emphasis on social media
marketing to increase its market size.
2.0 Methodology
Mixed methodology will be adopted for this study. This methodology allows the
researcher to collect and analyze both the primary and secondary data and apply both the
qualitative and quantitative method to have a thorough research on the topic (Flick, 2015).
Primary data will be collected through a survey on the consumers of Dove. An open poll on the
social media will be created with 10 close ended questions and replicable scales for answering to
assess their preference of the brand, their awareness about it and their perception regarding the
social media campaigning of the brand. This data will be converted into numeric values and
quantitative methodology will be applied to analyze the response pattern.
Secondary data will be collected from industry reports and the annual reports of Unilever
Australia and literature from journals to get the significant information about the growth of
Dove, and its profits and revenues in the past three years, its advertising strategies and expenses.
These will be evaluated using qualitative methods to compare and validate the findings from the
primary data.
3.0 Secondary sources and data
The secondary sources for data collection will include various peer-reviewed journals,
annual reports of Unilever Australia and several industry reports focusing on the brand growth
and social media marketing.
Some of the article sources are:

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1) Ceicdata.com. (2018). Australia Retail Sales Growth Rate [Economic Data & Charts].
Retrieved from https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/australia/retail-sales-growth
2) Unilever.com. (2018). Annual Report and Accounts 2017 Highlights. Retrieved from
https://www.unilever.com/investor-relations/annual-report-and-accounts/
3) Henfrey, C., Graham, C., & Bennett, D. R. (2018). The Effects of Brand Portfolio
Management on Brand Choice Behaviour.
4) Dovema.org. (2018). Annual Reports. Retrieved from https://dovema.org/dove-2/annual-
reports/
5) Mendes, M. D. O. (2016). The effect of social media and celebrities on Millennials’
Consumers: the Pantene example(Doctoral dissertation).
6) Kwon, J. B. (2017). Essays in Advertising Messages, Mass Media, and Product
Positioning (Doctoral dissertation).
7) Young, A. (2014). Brand media strategy: Integrated communications planning in the
digital era. Springer.
For analyzing the secondary data, thematic analysis under qualitative analysis method
will be applied. This method will allow the researcher to choose few relevant themes or central
ideas under the research topic and present the findings under those themes. This method is quite
appropriate as that helps the researcher to organize the subject in a very narrowed down and
precise manner (Braun, Clarke & Terry, 2014).

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References
Braun, V., Clarke, V., & Terry, G. (2014). Thematic analysis. Qual Res Clin Health Psychol, 24,
95-114.
Flick, U. (2015). Introducing research methodology: A beginner's guide to doing a research
project. Sage.
Hajli, M. N. (2014). A study of the impact of social media on consumers. International Journal
of Market Research, 56(3), 387-404.