A Literature Review on the Advantages & Disadvantages of Social Media

This literature review investigates the advantages and disadvantages of social networks and social media in the context of business. It highlights target marketing and cost reduction as key advantages, while addressing copyright issues and time consumption as potential disadvantages. The review also discusses the importance of social interaction for brand reputation and customer relationships, balanced against privacy and data security concerns. Customer service is identified as a crucial area, with the potential for e-loyalty development, but also the risk of negative feedback and brand damage. The review concludes by emphasizing the need for companies to efficiently manage their social networks, respond to customer feedback, and address privacy concerns to effectively leverage social media for business success. Desklib provides access to this and other student-contributed assignments.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Social Networks in Business- A literature Review
Introduction
The social networks have been providing a new paradigm for communicating as well as
empowering the people towards networking beyond their geographical proximity and its
confines. According to Wang (2008), the online social networking has been seen to move from
being called as the niche phenomenon to the mass adoption. Various methods have been
presented by the social media like the user-sponsored blogs, social networking, company-
sponsored websites, multimedia sites, podcasts and collaborative websites etc. On the similar
grounds, Hastings (2013) stated that in terms of the business perspectives, the effective
networking can be considered as an essential component towards success. With the social media
tools that are present today, the organizations are able to bring about changes in their
organizational communication, marketing and the public relations. As stated by Walker (2014),
these technologies have been able to shift all their emphasis on the internet services in order to
be collaborative and interactive along with creating the opportunities of interaction between the
public and the organizations. According to the research performed by Tiago (2008), in spite of
the existing hot debate over the disadvantages and advantages of the social network in business,
the investments in such technologies is seen to be growing to its peak. Therefore, the study aims
to investigate the various advantages and disadvantages of the social networks and social media
and fill out the gaps between the literatures and researches.
According to Kaur (2016) with the help of the social media in the marketing sector and with the
emergence of digital marketing, various businesses have been able to investigate that the social
networks and the social media is beneficial in promoting the services and products towards the

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existing as well as potential customers. The social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook
have transformed the way the business are viewing advertising.
Discussion
Target marketing as advantage and copyright issues as a disadvantage
With the help of social media the marketers are able to target their audiences and consumers on
the basis of the personal interest of the users. With the help of smart marketing, the marketers
would be able to reach out to the people and would understand what has to be offered to the
customers. Additionally, the social networking helps the companies to enable the word of mouth
which will help in promoting the products beyond the expertise of advertising field (Nadaraja R.
and Yazdanifard, R 2013). The traditional marketing methods are seen not to appeal to some of
the customers as these customers focus on valuing the appearance of being on the cutting edge or
“in the know which leads to satisfaction among them when a new and exciting product or service
is launched (Nadaraja R. and Yazdanifard, R 2013). On the similar grounds, a study by Gregori
et al., (2015) indicated that such liberty to the customers and providing open information to them
can lead to creating problems for the companies associated with their trademarks and copyrights
while promoting their brands and products on the social platforms. The brand of the company
and other associated intellectual property are often seemed to be highly valuable. The capacity of
the social media is seen to facilitate the impromptu and informal communication on the real-time
basis which can help the companies to promote their brands and to disseminate their copyrighted
material. Furthermore, it can also leads to facilitation of the third-party abuse of the trademarks
and copyrights of the company (Gregori et al., 2015).
Reduction in cost as an advantage but time consumption as a disadvantage

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The major advantages of the social media in the businesses and organization are seen to be the
reduction in the costs and enhancement of the reaching capability to the clients, users and
targeted media. According to the experts in terms of marketing, the cost of using the cost of the
social media has been estimated to be lower as compared to the other marketing platforms like
face-to-face sales people or middlemen or distributors. Additionally, the social media also helps
the organization to reach towards the customers who might not be accessible because of their
Locational or temporal limitations of the existing distribution channels. The social network and
the media platforms are beneficial in reaching and reducing the costs by providing various
advantages to their customers (Watson et al. 2002; Sheth & Sharma 2005). Therefore, the social
media is highly interactive and successful. But for the promoting the product or for marketing,
the companies have to place their focus on establishing the long-term relationships in order to
turn into higher sales. The organizations have to monitor all the networks, respond to all the
comments and to provide the customers with the post production information and other related
information (Ismail 2017). If the organizations fail to manage their work on the social networks,
it will be highly difficult for the organizations to compete. According to Ismail (2017), in spite of
the higher profits involved the social media marketing of the company is seen to require
significant investment in time which can prove out to be highly disadvantageous for the
company. Therefore, according to the researchers, the company must realize the importance of
necessary time commitment related to the operations of the company (Ismail 2017).
According to various researchers, the social interaction is another one of the notable phenomena
of social media. The organizations can use social media for communicating with customers,
advertising and marketing, communicating with customers and building relationship with
customers (Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2014). Similarly, the internet and social media usage

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in turn help providing interactional and transactional benefits (Stelzner 2012), provide strategic
benefits such as revenue generation, cost reduction, and managerial effectiveness (Aral, S.,
Dellarocas, C. and Godes, D., 2013), improving the export marketing performance, improving
the innovation, reducing the marketing cost, improving the customer relationships and improving
the company image and competitive position etc., (Ashley, C. and Tuten, T., 2015). With the
constant social interaction, the company is able to enhance their brand reputation, improve their
brand equity, relationship and value. The social interaction in turn helps in promoting the
products, services and brand of the company. However, it is seen that the more the social
interaction, the more the chances of implicating privacy, trust and data security issues. According
to (Jiao, H. and Lu, L., 2015), the lack of promotion and improvements in the products by the
company can also lead to creating problems like brand name erosion. These privacy concerns
can leads to major public fiasco in the major social media marketing or any other corporate
function which ultimately leads to erosion of the brand image. Similarly, Kim reflects his ideas
on the major trust issues that are present in the social networks and the sensor networks. Even the
study by (Kim et al., 2016) suggests that the fear of fraud credit card during the online
transaction is one of the major reasons the customers are not willing to undergo extensive online
buying. Therefore, there is a need of ensuring that all the operational campaigns are not
engaging the consumers or some other related parties to engage in their practice which can
ultimately lead to violation of the social media privacy policy of the company in case the
company uses third-party social media. Further there is a need for the companies who are
administering their own blog to maintain the comprehensive policies which are responsible for
disclosing the data collection of the company, storage practice, use and all the responsibilities
associated with the data security and privacy. However, on the same note, a study by Gommans

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et. Al (2001) indicates that the third party approval can be used as a tool for generating the trust
among the customers. This gap in all the studies between social interaction and the issues of trust
and loyalty indicate that the trust in brand of the company is the only factor that can help in
overcoming the disadvantage of the social network and can help in reducing the uncertainty.
Customer Service as an advantage but negative feedback from the customers as a
disadvantage
One of the most crucial areas while performing business operations using the social media is the
customer service. Usually, the website designers face issues related to the degree of complexity
associated with the architecture of the website and therefore the company needs to have a
thoughtful and thorough customer service system. Therefore, the companies are seen to create a
link associated with the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to towards linking to the online
representatives especially in the case of online buying websites in order to assist the customers.
Therefore, the social media helps the organization to not just sell their products but also to offer
online assistance. Gommans et al.(2001), states that the use of toll free phone number for
customers while performing the business operations online can lead to creating a e-loyalty
among the customers. Further the order fulfillment and rapid delivery systems are among the
other factors that help in generating e-loyalty development among the customers. With the help
of social network the company can create a thoughtful logistic system in order to guarantee a fast
delivery and in turn contributing towards the customer satisfaction. This leads to generation of
loyal behaviour among the customers. Additionally, the companies can gain a lot from the social
media. According to Gommans et al. (2001), the customer service using the social media is one
of the way of minimizing the insecurity among the social media purchase of product or service.
Whereas, the study by (Akar, E. and Topçu, B., 2011) indicates that with the help of social media

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the customers gain extensive rights and any fault by the company can be lead to eroded brand
reputation as the customers are also entitled towards generating negative feedback on the social
media toward the company and its products and services. This leads to creating a negative or
positive pressure of the company depending on the quality of services that are presented to their
customers. Similarly, a study by Ghose, Ipeirotis, & Li (2009) indicates that the consumer-
generated product images, review and even the tag can prove out to be a valuable source of
information when the customers are making their online choices. This can be helpful for the
company to enhance their strategies and to point their drawbacks. But the negative post
responses from the customers can damage the marketing campaigns by presenting them in the
bad light. The unhappy customers or the rivals in the industry can use this feedback platform to
post disparaging or offensive pictures, posts or videos against the company and the marketer
would be in no position to prevent such occurrences. The high end provided to the customers
during the customer services and the liberty of posting their feedbacks on the social media
reflects on the gap between the extent to which the customers should entertained by the
company. Therefore, it is important for the company to manage their social networks efficiently
in order to respond immediately to such post and neutralize them effectively which in turn is a
time consuming process.

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REFERENCES
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Aral, S., Dellarocas, C. and Godes, D., 2013. Introduction to the special issue—social media and
business transformation: a framework for research. Information Systems Research, 24(1), pp.3-
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Ashley, C. and Tuten, T., 2015. Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory
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Ghose, A., Ipeirotis, P. and Li, B., 2009, September. The economic impact of user-generated
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Hastings, G. and Domegan, C., 2013. Social marketing: From tunes to symphonies. Routledge.
Ismail, A.R., 2017. The influence of perceived social media marketing activities on brand loyalty
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Jiao, H. and Lu, L., 2015, December. Concerning Popularity in an Online Trust Relationship.
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