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Topic: “The Effect of Social Media Marketing On Business Growth and Prosperity”

Introduction

Since early 2000s, businesses have seen the need of utilizing social media as a convenient platform to reach and engage their potential customers (Pourkhani et al., 2019). Social media has revolutionized the way businesses connect with consumers for the purpose of growing their brand. Notably, social media offers cheaper and highly accessible tools of marketing used by businesses to advance their promotional activities (Fan & Gordon, 2014). In United States, social media has highly transformed the world of business –allowing firms to innovate and improve their business plans in order to attain maximum growth and prosperity (As' ad & Alhadid, 2014). Therefore, this study explores the impact, benefit, and importance of social media to the growth and performance of businesses.

Purpose of the Study

According to Kane (2015), a researcher should have a tangible reason (s) for undertaking a particular study in any filed. Marketing is very crucial to each and every business. Marketing entails the need for companies to access the target markets and engage their potential customers. This is aimed at understanding customer needs and wants –something that is crucial in developing a product (s) which offer maximum satisfaction to consumers. Until late 90s, businesses relied on traditional mode of marketing which included radio, TV, newspaper, billboards, field-marketing, among others. Notably, these marketing channels were very expensive. However, the introduction of social media platforms in early 2000s availed cheap, accessible, and reliable means of reaching the target audiences. Consequently, there is need to explore the element of social media in order to establish its superiority and contribution in helping organizations to attain maximum growth and performance. Thus, this study seeks to establish the impact and benefit of social media platforms to organizations as far as elements of building brand awareness, increasing sales, and expanding markets are concerned.

Study Rationale

Before conducting a research, a researcher is supposed to explain clearly the importance of the study he or she is carrying out. This involves providing specific, valid, and ideally arguments in support of the research topic. The rationale of this study includes:

· Eliminating the gap in literature

There are several studies done of the that social media plays in businesses. However, this research topic has not been fully exhausted since there are some crucial findings that have not be explained. Despite the fact that a number of studies have been carried out on this topic, none of them explains the statistical impact of social media to business growth. That is, all the previous studies have not given substantial evidence on how to measure the role of social media in terms of increasing sales and brand loyalty. Thus, this research is seeking to bridge this gap in the literature concerning this topic.

Articles to be Used

As' ad, H. A. R., & Alhadid, A. Y. (2014). The impact of social media marketing on brand equity: An empirical study on mobile service providers in Jordan. Review of Integrative Business and Economics Research, 3(1), 315.

Fan, W., & Gordon, M. D. (2014). The power of social media analytics. Commun. Acm, 57(6), 74-81.

Pourkhani, A., Abdipour, K., Baher, B., & Moslehpour, M. (2019). The impact of social media in business growth and performance: A scientometrics analysis. International Journal of Data and Network Science, 3(3), 223-244.

Hypothesis

The list of hypothesis for this study:

· Social media have a positive impact in increasing the total volume of sales

· Social media helps to win the trust of customers and building of brand loyalty

· Social media has a positive effect in influencing consumer purchasing behavior

Research Methodology

This research will involve both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The research design is descriptive analysis.

The main participants will be companies’ marketing officers, customers, and social media influencers.

Procedure of study will include interviewing the participants, analyzing online materials, archives, government documents, financial statements of the companies, among others.

The instruments here will include interviews, questionnaires, and document analysis.

Data Analysis

SPPS will be used to analyze data and come up with reliable findings

Reference

Kane, G. C. (2015). Enterprise social media: Current capabilities and future possibilities. MIS Quarterly Executive, 14(1).