power point presentation

Executive Summary

Social media has created a major impact in today’s world. Especially the young generations are mostly influenced by the wave of this huge buzz. Social media in its own creation motive was created for socialising purpose but if we talked it as professional front it is now one of the powerful tools for the business to capture the market. Precisely speaking, almost all the organizations are changing their traditional approach to the online environment in order to promote and advance their products and markets in global arena. What is the most commonly used social media, and what are the motivating factors that lead or persuade a consumer to get influenced by what he saw in media is a subject of interest now.

Social media is a topic of research now due to increasing innovations in this field. Rather than being congested in motive of staying social, it offers wide range of benefits besides that for business areas. With a motive to highlight and further explore social media and consumer behaviour based on social platforms has been the main factor to choose this field for research and run this project work.

The research at first includes the basic ground for social media, internet along with some insight on consumer behaviours or their purchasing psychology. Various articles and literatures have been reviewed to collect the data and support the facts. The secondary data source is mostly used to support the arguments. Quantitative analysis using the survey method will be used as research methodology. Analysis, concluding arguments are done at the end to show the influence of the social media on consumer decisions and how further the impact can be reduced or increased.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………2

List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………....4

1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………5

1.1 Purpose…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..5

1.2 Background and significance………………………………………………………………………………………….5

1.3 Management problem, research question and objectives …………………………………………..…5

1.4 Research boundaries…………………………………………………...…………………………………………………6

1.5 Report outline……………………………………………………………….……………………………………………….6

2. Literature Review/Theoretical Framework…………………………………………….…………………..7

2.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..7

2.2 Topic 1…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….7

2.3 Topic 2……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………8

2.4 Topic 3……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………9

2.5 Implications (research gap and conceptual framework)………………………………………….…..10

3. Methodology…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..11

3.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..11

3.2 Rationale for method and justification……………………………………………….………………………..12

3.3 Details of specific data collection techniques……………………………………………………………….13

4. Proposed Analysis of Results…………………………………………………………………………………...14

References…………………………………………………………………….…...……………………………………………………15

Appendices…………………………………………………………………….…...………………………………………………….16

Appendix A: statistics showing the social media influences……………………………………..….16

Appendix B: Statistics of social media usage…………………………………………………………………16

Appendix C: Impact of social media on purchase…………………………………………………………17

Appendix D: conceptual model for analysis…………………………………………………………………18

Appendix E: Sample Questionnaire for survey …………………………………………………………….18

List of figures

· Consumer decision making process

· Gantt chart

1. Introduction

1.1 Purpose

Social media is a platform where people typically share their thoughts, ideas, and feelings and also express themselves. However, social media can be used as a marketing tool where people can use it to push their businesses and sales to new levels. This report and research will focus on the importance one's presence in the social media.

1.2 Background and significance

The widespread usage and proliferation of the internet and social media across various aspects in our lives, accounting for both the professional and social capacities, is highly significant for business people and entrepreneurs to comprehend the elements of the internet and social site environment to communicate successful with their potential consumers who tend to actively exploit or utilize this modern, internationally complex platform. Notably, there are three major objectives evident as to why consumers use the internet; entertainment, information as well as social aspects. With these facts, it is therefore essential and significant to conduct research study in regard to the subject problem.

1.3 Management problem and Research question

The aim of this project is to assess the effects of social media on the consumers’ decision making processes in the world. The general objectives of the research are to identify the various impacts social media imposes on people in making their consumption decisions. In short it leads to the following management problem identification,

What the individual are exactly looking for, and how they are processing or selecting the information before making buying decision from social sites. How an organization can manage themselves with the changing need of consumer and make marketing strategies?

The management problem hereby led to the identification of research question as follows,

· What are the major factor that motivates people in obtaining information and making purchase when talking about social media?

· Why and how social sites are making a huge difference in persuading the consumer toward positive buying response?

1.4 Research objectives

Based on the research motive or research questions the following objectives are identified,

· To govern the importance of social sites in promoting business products.

· Explore the social media, define it and mostly used media that is creating huge impact in consumer perception or decision making process in buying

· Determine how social media sites are actually creating difference in consumer decision making channels.

1.5 Research boundaries

The report will focus on the internet use and implication of social media on consumer behaviour. The essay will focus on the consumers in globally through online surveys with no geographical boundaries.

1.6 Report outline

This report will focus on the impacts of social media in marketing strategies. At first it will give quick glance on what social media are, consumer buying behaviour and the impacts the social media can put. The next step is literature review on relevant topic. The next part is methodology to gather data and final section will be the proposed analysis to the results.

2. Literature Review/Theoretical Framework

The current world is technologically driven. This advancement has led to the use of social media platforms to advance campaign marketing to a broad range of customers. An observation indicated that due to the rise of social media popularity, there have emerged virtual markets and communication channels that affect behaviour like decisions of purchase even though these communities may never actually meet in a physical manner. Social media has also overlapped emails as the most used online activity and mode of information sharing and feedback about brands and products. When the topic of social media comes up, the most common are Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (Conti and Passarella, 2017).

2.1 Introduction

Consumption studies have taken a new turn from the reasons people purchase products to consumer behaviour which includes market segmentation. Market segmentation is important due to similarity of product needs of consumers in the same segment and their intent and motives of purchase which are largely influenced by their physical and social environments. The decision to buy is largely influenced by numerous environmental factors. The commercial environment is made up of activities of marketing as attempts by various corporations to communicate with consumers. They are of the school of thought that buying decisions from the consumer’s standpoint, that brand objects like price ,service ,uniqueness ,quality and availability are the ways in which communication gets to the consumers, also by other objects like salespersons and the media. Buying is also steepened by social factors of the environment. A good example is by word of mouth (Djukic, 2011).

2.2 Topic 1: Social media and consumer

Social media can be defined as consumer generated media having various online contents created by user or people with motive of sharing to other in topic of their interest (Kohli, Suri, & Kapoor, 2014, p. 1). The As per e-marketers (2013) it is evident that one out of four uses the social media estimating 1.73 billion users worldwide. Social media is an effective tool that aids consumers using its social tool of interaction to find out about product brands and prices and thus influence their purchase choices. The interactive tools are viewed as more credible and believable for acquiring product information rather than corporation websites. Recommendations and opinions can be freely shared on social media enabling consumers to interact with each other on their experiences with various products. This information highly influences the choices made during purchasing (Dahl, n.d.). The social media concept, as the whole networking sites like Facebook, WhatsApp, Flickr and Twitter have been named, has become a critical part of business.

2.3 Topic 2 : Consumer buying decisions

In the occurrence of a problem, consumers look for pertinent information through information search, both internal and external. External information search inculcates visits to the stores, word of mouth and social media while internal information search is more of the buyer’s memory of the products. From a consumer’s standpoint, purchasing decisions involve where to fetch information both physical and online while looking for large amounts of data that are more than what is absorbable by an individual and consequently there being information that has been overproduced (Dahl, n.d.).

Figure: Consumer decision making process

Source: goggle .com

In this new movement created by social media, companies have commenced integration of social media systems and programs to facilitate their particular needs.

2.4 Topic 3: Influencing the consumer decision

These social media sites represent tools that are critical to information sharing pertinent to consumption, thus have great influence on all the stages of behaviour in consumption and the choices made i.e. Consumer Behaviour. In today’s world, consumers are more trusting of user reviews and recommendations offered online than traditional sources when choosing what products to partake. Social media has thus become essential for obtaining purchasing information from consumers during decision-making (Djukic, 2011). Let’s say about Facebook – “Holy Grail of marketers”, has always put impact on consumer buying decision. A like and good comment on product reviews always creates a positive impact. In this new movement created by social media, companies have commenced integration of social media systems and programs to facilitate their particular needs. The social media concept, as the whole networking sites like Facebook, WhatsApp, Flickr and Twitter have been named, has become a critical part of business.

Social media presence can be significant in the sense that it can lead to the building of a real relationship. Through this, and when one uses the social media correctly, they can interact with people thus creating a large customer base. One can read their posts and tweets as well as their status updates and acquire reviews and insights. Such reports and ideas can work as the basis for marketing strategies as well as compel one to adjust their marketing strategies in their favour to suit the market competition. One can learn about the products under high demand and which are most preferred by people in a particular niche. One can also learn on the people love to share and update, and this can help in customer interaction thus building a relationship (Djukic, 2011). The social media can also be used as an avenue where one can connect with the mom-competing businesses, complementary, tastemakers and thought leaders in their space. One can also link up with journalists in their field or who are covering and reporting in their industry. This can create a mutual friendship, probably out of a simple tweet or post and status update (Dahl, n.d.).

2.4 Implications – the research gap

The research and project work is solely based on the impact or influence of social media in consumer buying behaviour. Thus the research will aim at focusing social marketing through social media perspective in accordance to the consumer decision theories and models. The research will cover only the social media thus ignored other trend of marketing or area that affects consumer buying behaviours.

3. Methodology

3.1 Introduction

Since it is to find the influence of the social media on consumer buying behaviour, it is good to use the survey as design or data collection method through use of closed end questionnaire set. Since questionnaire is quantitative method of data collection, it is easy method and can be analysed using proper statistical tools. Meanwhile qualitative method for data collection will also be applied.

3.2 Research approach and justification

Notably, students make the largest number of internet users. They make use of social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to connect with people as well as exploring the world. This makes them a perfect sample to administer questionnaires relating to the topic to be covered. The research work includes two types of data collection methods. It will make use of both primary and secondary data. Secondary data will be collected as a means of the literature review that helps in supporting the research work and arguments and to have a better understanding of the research topic that relates the social media, consumer behaviour and their purchasing decisions. But to obtain more realistic figure to support the argument and research work, the paper will be focusing on the primary data. The research will make use of the survey questionnaire as a descriptive quantitative data collection methodology. It makes use of random sampling method to further analyse the data obtained. The questionnaire will be distributed to both male and female and the survey will be done in 30 students chosen at random.

3.3 Details of specific data collection techniques

The survey method with the help of relevant questionnaire will be used to gather the required information’s.

· Research Objective	· Data Collection Method/ Technique	· Specific research questions or sources
RO1 to determine what are the online activities the university students are engaged on the social Media sites ·	· Administering questionnaires, Data analysis, Books, journals, online articles and websites	· What are the online sites they often use · How long do they use online sites in a day · Do they come across marketing advertisement
RO2: To determine what are the online activities the general public are engaged on the social Media sites ·	· Administering questionnaires, Data analysis, Books, journals, online articles and websites	· What are the online sites they often use · How long do they use online sites in a day · Do they come across marketing advertisement
RO3: How does social media sited influence the decision making process?	· Administering questionnaires, Data analysis, Books, journals, online articles and websites	· Do they encounter challenges in making decisions · How do they deal with these confusions · How do they arrive at their purchasing decisions

Provide a timeline for the data collection. Use a Gantt chart.

Activity	Wk 1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
Topic search and defining RQ and RO
Journal and contents search
Submit proposal/background
Secondary data collection
Literature reviews
Progress review finalise
Submit progress report
Data collection
Analyse
Conclusion and recommendation
Presentation
Submit final report

3.4 Details of Specific techniques

The major techniques that will be applied for questionnaire will be

1. Survey Monkey: best for online professional survey and commonly used (surveymoneky.com, 2018).

2. Use of Microsoft word to create tables, and especially for documentation of the project

3. Use of the references from the Nike shoe brand Facebook page, Myer clothing Instagram profile etc to view social site influence

4. Use of gantt chart for the ensure of timely completion of specified project with breakdown of each task at certain interval or duration of completion.

4. Proposed Analysis of Results

This section outlines the analysis part.

The data collection method used for research is descriptive. The method of data collection is quantitative data collection. The questionnaire will be distributed to the people through online means as there are no restrictions for age group or gender. Particularly University student will be focused for survey as they are the one who are most busy in social Medias. All the result will be evaluated and further analysis will be done to see the influence social media has put in consumer buying behaviour. The opinion will be evaluated which will highlight whether media has put a positive influence in business in their promoting the product or not.

References

1. Conti, M. and Passarella, A. (2017). Online Social Networks and Media. Online Social Networks and Media, 1, p.iii-vi.

2. Cui, G. (2013). Evaluating Online Social Presence: An Overview of Social Presence Assessment. Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange, 6(1).

3. Culver, S. and Seguin, J. (2014). Media career guide. Boston: Bedford/St Martins. Dahl, S. (n.d.). Social media marketing.

4. Djukic, S. (2011). The role and importance of social media in communicating brand value. Marketing, 42(1), pp.17-26.

5. Gil-Pechuán, I., Palacios-Marqués, D., Peris-Ortiz, M., Vendrell, E. and Ferri-Ramirez, C. (n.d.). Strategies in e-business.

6. Leafman, J. and Mathieson, K. (2015). Online Instructor Perceptions of Social Presence and Educational use of Social Media. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 2(11).

7. Loader, B. and Mercea, D. (2012). Social media and democracy. London: Routledge.

8. Thulin, E. and Vilhelmson, B. (2017). Does online co-presence increase spatial flexibility? On social media and young people’s migration considerations. Cybergeo.

9. SurveyMonkey. [online] Available at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/take-a-tour/?ut_source=header [Accessed 12 May 2018].

Appendices

Appendix A: statistics showing the social media influences

Appendix B: statistics showing the social media influences

Appendix C:

Appendix D: conceptual model for analysis

Appendix E: Sample Questionnaire

Dear all,

I am Anil Khadka currently studying MICT in University of Sunshine Coast. I am currently doing a managerial project on social media and consumer behaviour. This survey will take few minutes to complete and your all response will be confidential.

Click the link below to start the survey!

1. Which of the social media do you often engaged in?

· Facebook

· Instagram

· Blogs\forums

· Photo & Video Sharing Sites like YouTube or Flickr

2. How often do you engage in social media in week?

· 0 hour

· 1-4 hour

· 5-7 hour

· 10 hour or more

3. Do you think that with the social media sites, you are able to seek out products/services information initiatively before usage (actively)?

· Agree

· Disagree

· Neutral

4. Do you have prejudgement (positive/negative) towards a particular product and/or service before making actual usage?

· Always

· Often

· Never

5. Do social media persuade you to purchase a product/service?

· Yes

· No

· Not sure

6. Do you agree that, for instance, advertisements/blog posts/ FB pages/user reviews on social media influence you to try new brands/products/services?

· Agree

· Disagree

· Neutral

7. Are you likely to share comments/reviews/blog posts/related articles etc. to peers or friends via social media after a purchase?

· Yes

· No

· Neutral

8. Do you agree that likes\comments\posts on social media can affect the purchase decision? It applies to you?

· Agree

· Disagree

· Neutral

9. Are you following any clothing or shoe brand in social media?

· Yes

· No

10. What can be the reason behind online social networks’ influence on consumers’ purchasing decision process?

· Connection between friends\colleagues

· Likes\comments\sharing

· Feature like sharing of information , opinions

· Word-of-mouth communication

· All

11. Do you encounter challenges in making your purchase decisions?

· Yes

· No

12. How do you deal with your confusion and arrive at purchase decision?

Answer:

Thank you for your time!

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