Westpac Social Media Impact: A Business Research Project

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Business Research
Project

Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................3
Research Methodology.........................................................5
Findings Summary..............................................................14
Conclusion..........................................................................17
Reference............................................................................18

Introduction
The current report provides the information related to the
research methodology that has been used for the
assessment. The topic for the entire research is the impact
of social media on Westpac. The research methods used for
the research is qualitative approach of research in which
different studies has been reviewed. For the entire research
Westpac has been considered, for which there are two
assessments have already been done. The previous
assessments included proposal for the research and the
literature review was included in the second assessment.
This assessment is majorly focussed on providing
information for research design and the methodology for the
research. The research used the qualitative approach for
data collection, the different approaches of data collection
has been provided in the research. For qualitative approach
of data collection different aspects such as primary and
secondary data collection is considered effectively. The
secondary data collection methods have been identified
effectively. The present report contains different sections
such as introduction, a detailed research methodology and
findings summary and the conclusion have been provided. In
order to answer the research questions qualitative research
approaches has been used which is helpful in the accurate

identification of the data evaluation is done. The validation of
the research type is also provided for the research. The data
collection methods that have used for the research are
secondary research approach such as surveys, experiments
and evaluating existing data. The major research focus is on
the objective of the research and the aim of the research has
been classified in the assessment of research methodology
present in the current assessment. For the research
questions that have been provided in previous assessment
have been justified by the research methods used in the
study. The pros and cons of social media for business has
been the considered for the research in terms of Westpac.

Research Methodology
The research methodology is a process by which information
related to the collection of data for decision making
processes has been provided for the business. It includes
the tools that are used for the data collection and the
techniques that are needed to evaluate the collected data.
There are various types of research methodologies present
namely publication research, surveys and interviews
(Wisker, 2019). There are various methods of research are
available for the research method and design. That includes
experiments, surveys, questionnaires, interviews, case
studies, and observation of participant, observational trials
and the Delphi method. It is very important to use the correct
tool and technique for the research as the data collected
form the research will be of utmost importance in deciding
the future working of the company or business. In the current
research quantitative research approach has also been
considered only to collect the statistical data that measures
the impact of social media on the business of Westpac.
Participants were asked to provide answer to how the
company will enhance their social media presence. The
sampling approach used for the research was random
sampling in which the participants were chosen randomly
(Alavi, et al., 2018). The use of qualitative approach of the

research has been used for the research as various
research journals have been analysed for the collection of
data for the research. There is also taken use of mixed
methodology approach in which the data was collected from
questionnaire which is a primary form of data and the
analysis of the data and its evaluation was done that
provided the secondary data. There are two major methods
of collecting data for the research namely qualitative and
quantitative methodology (Boyd, 2018).
Figure 1: Research Methodology
Source: (Avidinfomatics.com, 2019)
Qualitative research method
The qualitative method of research is type of market
research in which data collection is done using open ended

method of communication. In this research method data
related to opinions of consumers about a business and what
they think of their product and what is the reason of their
perception of the business (Mihas, 2019). Unlike quantitative
research method the data collected form qualitative research
approach is non numeric. For example for a provided
business that sells products of all types and is a
convenience store, but it was found that majority of
customers of the business were male and very few females
were visiting the store (Babbie, 2019). After conducting a
research for the purpose of finding data related to the reason
why females were less interested in the store it was found
that there were less products available for the women in the
store. This data was collected by directly interviewing the
women who were selected through random sampling
(Shekhar, et al., 2019). The characteristic of this research
method are that data collection is at the sight where the
issue is generated, the real time data is collected, different
forms of data is collected from this approach, various forms
of sources are considered for collecting data and it does not
rely on a single source. The data collected from this method
is raw and unaltered and is considered as more
communicative method. The type of qualitative research
method are:

 Interview
 Focus groups
 Ethnographic
 Case study
 Record keeping
Similarly for Westpac, it was found that there is great
negative impact of social media on the business of the
company. So for searching the reason of their down fall on
online platforms a research was conducted that included
conducting interviews with social media users to find a
reason for the same. This is a more flexible type of research
approach in which questions that are asked to the
participants have answer other than yes and no. The
response of the participants are gathered that provide an
opinion of the users of the product.
Quantitative Research Method
This type of research method includes exploring required
data from the numerical and statistical data collected from
questionnaires and surveys. In this a large amount of data
related to the consumers opinion about the company or
product is collected. The data that is used for the research is
the analysis of the data collected from primary sources. It is
focussed on the collection of numerical data from various

sources such as questionnaire and surveys (Bryman, 2017).
This is a more inflexible type of data collection and research
approach as the questions asked to every participant is
similar and is in the same order. The major characteristic of
the quantitative research method are the data collection is
done by the research which is structured in form, the result
of the research is by considering the sample size of
sampling which represents a large population. The question
used for the research are already defined and have range of
answers to choose from. For the research including Westpac
and the effect of social media on its business. Has been
analysed by collecting data from the users and for that a
questionnaire was used that included questions. Using
questionnaire to collect data is more of a simple way as
information is directly collected from the people (Goertzen,
2017). The questionnaire mainly includes question related to
the business, use of product of the company by users and
their opinion about its advantages and the level of
satisfaction that the user experience form the product or
service of the business. In the case of Westpac the
questionnaire included questions related to the effect of
social media on deciding whether the business organisation
is worth of buying the product or not. While using the
quantitative research method the result have to be provided

that is able to clearly explain the collected data and tables
can be used for providing the major values (Morgan, 2019).
For using quantitative research method questionnaire has
been developed that considers the effect of social media on
Westpac’s business.
Questionnaire:
The questionnaire was developed with questions that have
options to choose from and for the research people were
chosen by random sampling who were active users of social
media and are aware of its working. The sample size of the
research was 100, as the number of participants for the
research was 100.
Q1 Are you aware of Westpac’s services?
a) Aware
b) Never heard of it
Q2 Are you active on social media?
a) Yes
b) No
Q3 Are you satisfied with Westpac’s services?
a) Satisfied
b) Somewhat satisfied

c) Not satisfied
Q4 Are you happy with the loan terms and conditions of
Westpac?
a) Yes
b) No
Q5. What factors you don’t like about Westpac’s services?
a) Insurance policy
b) Loan policy
c) Interest rate
d) Customer service
e) Other
Q6 How much impact the reviews of Westpac over social
media have?
a) High
b) Medium
c) Low
Data Collection Method
Questionnaires are used for the data collection as they are
helpful in providing the data that is exactly needed. It
contains the questions that are directly related to the
business and the evaluation of that data will provide the

answer to the problem. The major advantage of using
questionnaire is that it is helpful and inexpensive process
and provide the result which is helpful for generating the
future tactics for the organisation. There are some of the
drawbacks for using questionnaire are that there is low rate
of response, delayed response and missing and ambiguous
answer.
The data collection for the current assessment has been
done by reviewing various journals that have conducted the
research on impact on social media on the business. The
appropriate data is collected from the analysis of these
sources of data. The research papers were effective in
providing information from authentic sources as the data
provided in the research journals has been collected by the
research by doing an in depth analysis of the subject. There
were different theories that were provided by these journals
such as gratification theory and theory of media system
dependency (Puckett, 2018).
For the analysis of the collected data, the information that
has been collected from different research approaches and
methodology are cleaned up so that the excess and not
important data is cleared and then analysis is performed on
that data. In the analysis process the data is evaluated to