Investigating Social Media's Impact on the Globalization of SMEs

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Added on 2024/06/28

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This report investigates the influence of social media on the globalization of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), focusing on its impact on customer satisfaction and overall business growth. It explores the relationship between social media and globalization, utilizing both primary data from questionnaires and secondary data from literature reviews. The findings indicate a positive correlation between social media usage and SME globalization, leading to increased productivity and improved economic conditions. The research also addresses the challenges faced by SMEs in leveraging social media for globalization, highlighting changes in consumer behavior and the importance of managing customer satisfaction through these platforms. The report concludes with recommendations for future research, suggesting the incorporation of methods like interviews and focused groups to gain deeper insights into the subject.

PART 2
Influence of the social media on globalization of SM’s
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Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.......................................................................................................... 3
INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... 4
METHODOLOGY................................................................................................................... 8
RESULTS AND FINDINGS.....................................................................................................10
DISCUSSION........................................................................................................................ 16
CONCLUSION...................................................................................................................... 18
REFLECTION........................................................................................................................ 20
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................... 21
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Globalization is increasing rapidly and the world is becoming a smaller place where
everyone can connect with each other easily, in this report the influence of the use of social
media on the globalization of small as well as medium enterprises has been discussed. The
main purpose of the research is to analyse the impact of social media on globalization, and
changes in customer satisfaction. The objectives of the research were to analyse the
relationship between social media and the globalization. Different types of research
methods have been used in the project, for finding the primary data questionnaire method
has been used and for the secondary data literature review has been conducted. The
findings of the questionnaire and the literature explain that people are getting positive
results and responses with the use of social media on the globalization of SME's. The
research project also aimed at managing customer satisfaction with the help of social media
and supported in increasing productivity of the small and medium-sized companies. At last,
the conclusion from the result was that the researcher was successfully able to analyse the
influence of social media and how the market has changed and helped in improving the
economic conditions along with improving organizational growth. After analysing and
studying the results of the research, it has been recommended that various other methods
could also be used by the researcher in the research such as interview method, focused
group method, personal observation method etc. these methods could be helped in finding
the precise knowledge and deep information for the research.
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INTRODUCTION
Globalization is the activity that allows many organizations, industries and business to
perform their business operations that will help in increasing their revenue for the growth
of the company (Beck, 2018). In the modern world, the idea of the innovation has come
through the process of globalization as the companies emerged and connected with each
other, the competition among various industries increased and lead to the introduction of
creativity as well as globalization for providing satisfaction to their customers (Beck, 2018).
BACKGROUND
The project research has been conducted with the objective of determining the various
impacts of social media on the globalization of SME's. In the modern world with the increase
in the globalization the industries are expanding and growing by increasing their revenues
but it becomes difficult for the small and medium enterprises to expand their business in
the new market where there is a large investment for setting up business as well as for
conducting the market survey for the better performance. But these challenges have
overcome with the use of social media on the globalization of SME’s. The use of social media
has impacted many areas related to the small business and their customers and thus they
will be discussed in deep for the better understanding of the topic and analysing the
outcomes of the research.
PURPOSE
The main purpose of the research project is to analyse the relationship between the
globalization and the social media in context to SME’s. This also needs to be finding out, the
influence of social media on the globalization in relation to the different cultures and
behaviour. The project also aimed at analysing various changes in the habits of consumers
due to the use of social media with globalization. Various challenges that have been faced
by the small, as well as medium enterprises with the use of social media in their business
operations, have been analysed with the help of this research.
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Literature review
The study conducted by the Beck (2018) the term globalization had been explained as the
connection of the economies of the world, in which different individuals and organizations
are included. Globalization is a broader term that helps many businesses by providing lots of
opportunities to grow in the market area. Beck (2018) has also stated in his study that
globalization has provided ease of doing business, many problems that arise in the daily
functioning of business has slowed down and thus globalization plays a significant role in the
scenario of today’s business world and it has helped in reframing the structure of the whole
marketplace.
Dollarhide (2019) stated that the term social media is can be used as the online platform
that helps many individuals to share and use information among themselves. The
information can be of different types, it can be in the form of text, audio, video etc. This
platform can be said as the best platform for interacting with many people in remote areas.
The social media and the globalization are interconnected to each other, or this can be said
that with the introduction of the use of social media the globalization has increased because
social media enables users to connect with people worldwide, to gather information and the
user data from any part of the world. Thus with the greater access to the technology and
the media, people are able to find out new things and they want to try out new culture and
behaviour, with this introduction the economies started fulfilling consumer needs by the
integration of the various businesses across the world.
Talukder et al (2020) stated as the term SME's like the small and medium enterprises that
are operated at a small level with less investment into the business. Small business are
explained as organizations which include employees from 10-50 and the defined turnover
for the year must be under €2million to €10million and whereas the medium enterprises
require 50-250 numbers of employees working with them, who are supposed to take out
the turnover of €10million to €50million a year.
The globalization of small and medium enterprises has benefitted with the use of social
media, the trade has become easier because the social media provides many ways for the
promotion and advertising of the goods and services offered by different organizations.
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Yang and Wan (2016) stated that with the use of social media, the companies are able to
grow and bring innovation in their products, the social media helps in connecting people
and the idea of globalization is to integrate economies for doing trade practices. Thus both
terms are running on the same idea and integration of the social media along with the
globalization has supported small business in many different ways.
According to Crane et al (2016), the distribution and the networking of the business have
become easier, the SME’s also got help in finding out resources and arranging funds for their
enterprises. Small businesses take time to grow and when they enter into the new market it
becomes very difficult for them to understand their culture and trend easily, social media
has given solution to this problem also. Friedrichsen and Kamalipour (2017) shown in his
findings that many challenges in the globalization of SME's have overcome with the use of
social media, such as small & Medium business get the huge customer base to promote
their product, this also provides ease of promotion with low investment in the advertising
and marketing activities. The customer reach of the companies increases.
Friedrichsen and Kamalipour (2017) stated that, many of the consumer habits have been
changed with the globalization of SME's through social media, the consumers prefer
collecting information about the products and services with the help of online platform,
consumers prefer to check reviews of the companies through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
etc. these platforms are the best tools to find out the general information about the
business and to know how they will be used. Not only business organizations but also
consumers have benefited by the globalization through SME's.
The companies also get help in their recruitment processes, by putting an advertisement of
the various requirements of different positions of the organization, the best knowledgeable
and skilled persons would be hired from any part of the world. It is also beneficial for the
various individuals as they get many opportunities for job and for making their future bright
by applying for the required area. According to Yang and Wan (2016), social media has
contributed a lot to the growth of small enterprises and supported SME’s in adopting
globalization to increase their revenue generation. The various departments in the
companies took help of the social media in conducting research on the various habits and
cultures of the different people across the world.
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Dollarhide (2019) explained that globalization of the SME’s has reached its height of growth
with the help of social media, the latest trends and the consumer preference could be
analysed with the help of social media, companies also take advantage of finding out the
cheapest resources that could be used in the production process of the company so that the
overall costing of the company could be reduced.
Thus social media played a significant role in the process of globalization of the various small
enterprises as well as the medium enterprises, the social media has provided many ways to
reduce challenges that SME's has to face before. Now the SME's are trying to expand and
grow because of the support of social media that helped in connecting world at a different
level.
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METHODOLOGY
RESEARCH ONION
In this research, the model of research onion will be used for effective and the successful
completion of the project report, this model has been used by many researchers because
this explains the various stages required in the research and make it easier for the
researcher to find out results (Sahay, 2016). The various activities explained in the research
onion model must be taken into consideration while starting this research. The various
activities that would be determined in this research would be Research approaches,
philosophies, strategies, techniques, time horizons and the various methods of collecting
data in the manner that is defined in this model. This model is helpful in many ways; it also
helps in the collection of data and conducting an analysis of that data (Sahay, 2016). The
model also helps in understanding the whole structure of the research project.
RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY
There are basically three types of research philosophies that could be adopted by the
researcher while conducting research and these are positivism, pragmatism and the
interpretivism. The collection of the quantitative data for the purpose of testing the
hypothesis is done with the help of positivism philosophy. The method of interpretivism is
used for the utilization of the various skills and knowledge of the persons so that useful
results can be drawn from the research findings (Walliman, 2017). The philosophy
pragmatism makes use of the above-discussed philosophies for finding out the conclusions.
Here in this research, the method of pragmatism will be used by the researcher that will
help in finding the detailed knowledge about the research. The researcher would be able to
find out the influence of the social media on the globalization of SME's and how to what
extent Globalization of SME’s has impacted through this (Steger, 2017). This will also help in
analysing the impact on the habits of consumers because of the use of social media.
RESEARCH APPROACH
Mainly the two types of researches are used by the researchers and these are either
deductive ort the inductive approach (O'Leary, 2017). The deductive approach helps in
analysing the quantitative data whereas the inductive approach focuses on using the
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person’s knowledge and skills and try to derive conclusions through the qualitative method.
In this research, the deductive method would be used to find out the results because with
the help of collecting quantitative data it will be easier to analyse the impact of the social
media on the globalization of the SME’s (O'Leary, 2017). This will also help in ensuring that
the data collected from the survey of a few people could provide a conclusion and help in
analysing the impact of social media on globalization.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
There are various tools and methods included in the process of the research strategy such
as the method of the questionnaire, surveys, interviews, case study methods etc. In this
research, the main objective is to find out the influence of social media on the globalization
of SME's (Kumar, 2019). The research will make use of the questionnaire method for the
collection of data and the data will help in finding out the best results.
SAMPLING
Sampling is the method that could be used for finalising the number of members that would
be taken in the research while collecting data. This method helps the researcher to make
the task easy. In this research, the method that is used for the sampling of the people is the
method of stratified random sampling in which the people will be selected randomly for
conducting the questionnaire method. The sample size that is selected for conducting the
method of the questionnaire is 100 members.
COLLECTION OF DATA
For the collection of data in this research, the methods that will be used are the primary and
the secondary methods. The primary method will include conducting the questionnaire
method with a sample size of 100 (Quinlan et al., 2019). The questionnaire method includes
the questions and mostly the close-ended questions would be asked for collecting the
precise data. The secondary research will include the findings and collection of useful
information from the literature review conducted. Thus both the methods help in analysing
the impact of the social media of the globalization of SME’s.
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ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
This is the ethical responsibility of the researcher that all the personal information and the
personal data of the respondents must be kept confidentially. The researcher must ensure
to the respondents that the information provided by them would be used for the future
researches and studies and would not be used in any wrong aspect (Patten and Newhart,
2017). The researcher is also responsible for providing the confidentiality letter and would
provide the choice to the respondents of not answering those questions in which they do
not feel comfortable.
RESULTS AND FINDINGS
What is the age of the respondent?
Total 100
20-30 50
30-40 35
40+ 15
age
20-30
30-40
40+
What is the gender of the person?
Total 100
Male 75
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Female 25
gender
Male
Female
Is social media helpful in increasing customer satisfaction?
YES 60
NO 10
NOT SURE 30
TOTAL 100
64%
25%
11%
Is social media helpful in increasing
customer satisfaction?
YES
NO
NOT SURE
Does social media helpful in getting the economic price products to customers?
YES 75
NO 10
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NOT SURE 15
TOTAL 100
64%
25%
11%
Does social media helpful in getting the
economic price products to customers?
YES
NO
NOT SURE
Does the market trend has changed with the use of social media?
ABSOLUTELY TRUE 40
TRUE 30
NOT SURE 25
NOT AT ALL 5
TOTAL 100
59%23%
10% 9%
Does the market trend have changed with
use of social media?
ABSOLUTELY TRUE
TRUE
NOT SURE
NOT AT ALL
The challenges that customers faced before the globalization of SME's has reduced?
YES 70
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