University Business Research Proposal: Social Networking Impact

This business research proposal examines the advantages and disadvantages of using social networking in business organizations. The report begins with an executive summary, followed by an introduction outlining the evolution of social media and its significance for businesses. The objectives and scope of the project are clearly defined, setting the stage for a comprehensive literature review. The literature review delves into the applications of social networking, its impact on business transformation, and the various advantages it offers, such as customer insights, brand awareness, inbound traffic, reduced marketing costs, customer satisfaction, and thought leadership. The report also addresses the disadvantages, including promotion management challenges, maintenance efforts, and policy considerations. A gap in the existing literature is identified, highlighting areas for further research. The proposal concludes with a summary of findings and a list of references. The appendix provides additional supporting information. This research aims to provide a critical analysis of social networking's role in modern business strategies and practices.

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

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Executive Summary
The following proposal will be focused on identifying the advantages and the disadvantages of
the use of social networking in the business settings. A critical analysis has been done on the
following topic identifying the major advantages and some disadvantages. Gap has been
identified in the literature where possible research can be conducted. The scholarly work on the
disadvantages of the topic is poor in number where prospect of research is high. The objectives
are set in the initial part of the research proposal along with the research scope.

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Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................1
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................4
2. Project Objective.........................................................................................................................4
3. Project Scope...............................................................................................................................5
4. Literature Review........................................................................................................................5
Social networking and its use in Businesses................................................................................5
Business transformation...............................................................................................................6
Advantages...................................................................................................................................7
Customer Insight......................................................................................................................7
Brand awareness and loyalty....................................................................................................7
Inbound Traffic.........................................................................................................................8
Reduced marketing Cost..........................................................................................................8
Customer Satisfaction...............................................................................................................9
Thought Leadership..................................................................................................................9
Disadvantages............................................................................................................................10
Promotion Management via Social Networks........................................................................10
Maintenance effort.................................................................................................................11
Policies and procedures..........................................................................................................11

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Literature Gap............................................................................................................................11
5. Conclusion.................................................................................................................................12
6. Reference List............................................................................................................................13
7. Appendix....................................................................................................................................16

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1. Introduction
Social media was once considered only a medium of connecting people. It was basically
a kids’ tool and no business can use it to gain profit out of it. Soon these sceptics proved to be
wrong and now it is considered as a useful tool for every business in various grounds primarily
in their promotion. It is useful in gaining customers’ valuable insights, increase brand awareness
and loyalty, run targeted ads with real time results, generate higher converting leads, provide rich
customer experiences, increase website traffic and search ranking, identify competitors’ activity,
share content faster and easily, geo-target content, build customer relationship and many more.
As there are advantages, there must be some disadvantages that come along with it. The report
will be flowing in a direction to identify these advantages and disadvantages of using social
networking in the business organizations (Whiting and Deshpande 2014). A thorough literature
review has been carried out in the following. Project objectives and scopes are also identified in
the following research proposal.
2. Project Objective
 To critically analyse the applications of social networking in Business Organizations.
 To identify the advantages and disadvantages of using social networking in the business.
 To critically evaluate the promotional activities of business organization through social
networking.

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3. Project Scope
The scope of the projects lies within the history of development of social networking and
the point of views of business organizations towards it. The change in the viewpoint and the
impact will also be considered.
4. Literature Review
Social networking and its use in Businesses
Social networking can be represent as a structure in the internet that joins people with
common interest. Its sole purpose is to connect people. Facebook, Pinterest, twiter are the msot
common social networking sites that are used by people around the world. It has become an
integral part of almost every business around the world. It has considerably modified the
thinking of the entrepreneurs. It not only contributes in providing information to identify new
opportunities, but also helps to in the process of implementation. The social networks help in
triggering the enactment of opportunities of the international businesses by bringing modification
in the way business organizations see the feasibility and desirable opportunities. The evaluation
of opportunities by experienced international businesses inclined to be linked with their strong
network ties. The new companies gain benefits from these experienced well-established
organization for setting up their business. Marketing and promotions are the two important
grounds where the social networking comes into action for the international organizations. It is
considered as the fastest means of getting public attention and recommendations (Nowiński and
Rialp 2016).

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Business transformation
Social network is playing vital role in changing way of communication, creation,
collaboration and consumption. It is one of the important transformative approaches taken by the
business organizations in information technology, within and outside the organization. It directly
influences in promoting the products and services and transformed the way. Popular social
networking sites like facebook, twitter, instagram and many more are used in the process.
Business organizations are using these social networking sites not only for promoting their
products but also to build customer relationship by allowing them to place their opinion asking
their feedback. It helps organizations in their social and economic value creation. They are
placing ads with the help of e-business management team that is often found in the social
networks that directly links to the business page of the company. It completely reframed the
business models of the companies. It has also impact on the CSR policy of the companies (Aral,
Dellarocas and Godes 2013). It also has advantages on Customer Relationship Management.
CRM is influenced by both social network marketing and customer-centric management, which
believed to have interactive effect in formation of firm level capabilities (Trainor et al. 2014).
The application of social media helps the organization to implement innovative form of
communication and co-create content with the customers. Transformation in the society is
currently forcing the business organizations to make their presence in the social network
platform. The social network can be integrated in the business organization is several ways
depending on the desired benefits and the usage. The relationship-based interaction model with
the customers is improving the social value of the organization (Tiago and Veríssimo 2014).

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Advantages
Various advantages can be identified of using the social network as a valuable tool for the
business organization. The following part of the proposal will be conducting research based on
existing literatures that are available in the market. This part of the literature review will be
identifying the advantages and a critical analysis will be done based on that.
Customer Insight
Social networking provides a huge amount of valuable data on the customers that can
provide an insight of their likings and dislike which will in turn help the business to focus on the
customer satisfaction. These relevant data help to take smarter business decisions. The business
that did not include social networking in their business model needs to conduct survey, which
needs greater capital investment. Moreover, question of reliability remains in the data acquired
from the survey (Roy, Maxwell and Carson 2014). Amazon adopted this advantage and used it
for serving their customers in an efficient way.
Brand awareness and loyalty
Presence in social network will increase the brand recognition as the business will be
engaged in a global audience of customers. It provides a greater exposure of the company, which
in turn will create a strong customer base. It can also show potential improvement in brand
loyalty. Customer satisfaction and brand loyalty are two sides of a coin which cannot be
separated from one another. For gaining high brand loyalty, it is important to get the customer
insight from the social networking sites. This process brings benefit to the company. It takes
more time and money to spread brand awareness to the customers outside social network in the

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age of technology (Kim, Lim and Brymer 2015). Australia based digital marketing company
WME has come a long way since their opening in 2007 with the help of various social
networking sites as the promotional platform.
Inbound Traffic
The number of customers is restricted to the usual customers for the companies who did
not make their presence in the social networking sites. Hence, it can be said that, social
networking is a gateway for the business to develop the number of customers. It will reduce the
difficulties in reaching anyone other than the loyal customers. More the number of profile one
make for their business in social media, more the chances are to get customers’ attention (Leung
et al. 2013). Making different pages for different target population will increase the brand
awareness among the customers. It will also supplement in increasing conversion rate. The
higher conversion comes with increased visibility. Increased interaction like frequent
commenting, sharing content, and posting status will in turn increase the visibility of the business
which will increase the conversion rate (Nord, Paliszkiewicz and Koohang 2014). Macy’s is a
international clothing store who actively uses the social networking sites like facebook,
instagram in the process.
Reduced marketing Cost
Potential advantages can be identified in making marketing budget of the business
organizations. It is also the most cost-efficient advertising strategy that is available today. It is
also gaining importance in destination marketing organizations. The popularity of the strategy is
due to the low cost and wide range of accessibility. The businesses can access the global market

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with ease. Almost everyone in developing and developed countries is accustomed with the social
network and uses them in their daily life. Hence, it is a golden opportunity for the companies to
promote their products and services (Fan and Gordon 2014). It also cut down the marketing
budget of the company. They can access global market with such low price using the social
networks. The impact of this on the customers also shows higher potential than other marketing
strategies for the same reason. With low investment in marketing, business can utilize their
capital in other fields which will gain benefit to the organization (Hays, Page and Buhalis 2013).
Customer Satisfaction
The use of social networking sites as an integrated tool of business management has
considerably changed the seller and buyer interaction. The use of social media by the salesperson
has indicated improvement in information communication behaviour, which simultaneously
enhances customer satisfaction and salesperson’s responsiveness. Customers are enabled to
provide opinion about the company on their social networking websites which can supplement in
creating value of the company by bringing modification to satisfy customers’ needs. The
salesperson’s better responses in social network proved to show positive impact in customer
satisfaction. It is a promising medium business can use to communicate information to
customers. For the purpose, the salesperson needs to enhance their behavioural skills to increase
customer satisfaction. Goals with relation to social media need careful assessment from the
manager to make proper use of their sales force. Hence, using social networking made it easier
for the company to provide customer satisfaction which out facing major challenges like
collecting data on the customers’ opinion (Agnihotri et al. 2016; Hudson and Thal 2013). Dan

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Murphy’s, a Australian liquor company using facebook as a platform to interact with the
customers to gain better insight for look after the customer satisfaction issue.
Thought Leadership
Creating a good profile by making well written and insightful content on the social media
can brush up the leadership skills in the particular field. There is no single way of becoming
thought leader; it demands work that can be supported by online networking tool. To become an
expert in the field, social media is a good medium to establish one’s presence (Jeske and Shultz
2016).
Disadvantages
As there are advantages in using social network in the business strategy, there are
disadvantages too. Different approaches are required for making profitable use of the social
network, failing of which can also have negative impact on the business. Proper planning is
necessary for avoiding these unwanted circumstances. Some of the major disadvantages are
identified in this report.
Promotion Management via Social Networks
Promoting through social networks requires active management of the presence, lack of
which can bring no real time benefits. Moreover, mismanagement can also create negative
impression of the business to the potential customers, which requires utmost avoidance. Potential
risk lies on unwanted or inappropriate behaviour on the social network page (Ngai, Tao and
Moon 2015). Moreover, exposure needs to be managed in appropriate manner. The low exposure

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will fail to establish the brand value to the customers. Likewise, high exposure also has its effect
on the social networks. Extra exposure will attract the risks like negative feedback, information
leaks or even hacking. These risk factors need to be eliminated with utmost priority (Sharda,
Delen and Turban 2013). Burger King is one of the companies whose social networking
promotion backfired on them due to their inconvenient tag line.
Maintenance effort
As the social network needs daily update, it requires daily monitoring on regular basis.
Failing in monitoring the pages on a daily basis can potentially reduce the brand value of the
organization. One needs to implement additional resources for the above reasons. It will help
maintaining the online presence of the business. Hence, it is important for appointing extra force
that will again require extra investment in the business (Laroche, Habibi and Richard 2013). On
the other hand, it will become easier for the owner to handle the situation much easier. The
handler must have experience of marketing and also social network strategy as these are required
to maintain and increase the benefits of the business. The manager with low expertise will surely
fail in preparing clear marketing strategy based on social networking will in term reduce the
benefits of the business (Zeng and Gerritsen 2014). Company like Amazon spends a huge
amount of money in maintaining their social network pages for their promotion which consumes
a noticeable portion of their profit. They need to decrease their investment in social networking
pages to increase their profit margin.