The new age of marketing: How social media has changed the marketing landscape

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Abstract

Chapter 1– Introduction
1.1.Aim and Objectives
1.2. Social networking websites and blogs
1.2.1. Social networking websites and Blogs
1.2.2. Cell phones
1.2.3. Engagement

Chapter 2 – Literature Review
2.1 Social Media Marketing: Concepts
2.2 Social Media Marketing: Types
2.3 Social Media Marketing: Advantages and Disadvantages
2.4 Metrics of Social Media Marketing
2.5 Impact of Social Media Marketing
2.6 Future of Social Media Marketing

Chapter 3 – Methodology
3.1 Purpose of Research
3.2 Research Design
3.3 Procedure
3.4 Methods
3.5 Reliability
3.6 Limitation

Chapter 4 – Findings: Results, Analysis and Discussion
4.1 Social Media Marketing and Conventional Marketing
4.2 Social Media Marketing and Integrated Marketing Communications
4.3 Impact of Social Media Marketing to Consumers
4.4 Social Media Marketing Options for Marketers
4.5 Advancement in Social Media Marketing

Chapter 5 – Conclusion and Recommendations

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

I take the opportunity to thank the many people who supported and helped me in the accomplishment of this dissertation report ‘The new age of marketing: How social media has changed the marketing landscape,’ but first of all I thank God for providing me all the courage, patience and help and support of people for this dissertation report. I am greatly thankful to my lecturer, Mr/Ms…..who continuously guided and corrected me for this report with due care and concern and I appreciate the pain he has taken in going through the dissertation report several times to suggest required necessary corrections without which it could not have the form it has now. I am also obliged and thankful to our principal Mr/Ms… for his support, guidance and providing opportunity to me for this dissertation report.

I am sincerely thankful to my faculty members, teachers, peers and all others who supported for the accomplishment of this report with their valuable suggestions and contribution of required materials. I have my deep gratitude for all the writers and the authors whose books, articles, journals, literature have been consulted for the preparation of this dissertation report. I am thankful to all other staffs of my institution like the librarians, typists, computer operators, etc. who have contributed tremendously to the accomplishment of this report directly or indirectly and at last, but not the least, I show my heartiest gratitude to my family members and friends without whom I could not accomplish it.

Abstract

The social media marketing has affected the landscape of the conventional marketing substantially and the frameworks and the methodologies of conventional marketing has also been affected significantly with the increase in popularity and influence of the social media marketing. The paper provides background information on the subject under research, including appropriate concepts, theories, ongoing debates and issues and the statement of the problem, the research questions and the appropriate hypothesis. The objectives of this dissertation are to illustrate the changes made by the social media marketing on conventional marketing landscape and its frameworks and methodologies. It also compares and contrasts the social media marketing and conventional marketing. The changes made by social media marketing on the current marketing landscape are demonstrated by analyzing current case studies. The dissertation also includes the analysis and recommendations of the ways which might lead to replacement of the conventional marketing methodologies by social media marketing methodologies in future.

A detailed description of social media marketing and conventional marketing is provided in the first section of this dissertation which includes the characteristics, key features, nature, scope, etc. of both social media marketing and conventional marketing. This section also provides the description of the areas to be covered in this paper such as the explanation of the relevant concepts, theories, etc. The next section of the paper provides the methods and techniques used in this dissertation and it also justifies the selection of the investigative method(s) and data-gathering technique(s) used for the investigation of the topic. It also makes appropriate referring to research methods textbooks and literature. The literary review section of the dissertation provides the critical analysis of the relevance and utility of materials relevant to the chosen topic. It includes a wide range of books, articles, journals, literature available on the topic written by different established author in the field. Though social media marketing is a new concept there is no dearth of good literature and research works in the field. This section of the dissertation provides a critical analysis of the literature on the topic under consideration identifying key issues and they are organised into themes on the topic of the research. In the methodology section of the paper the overall approach to the research is explained underlining that secondary research method has been selected for the research for which the data has been collected from various available sources and no any primary research was needed for the same. There are many books, literature, articles and journals available on the topic which provided appropriate data and information for this research. The qualitative method is quite appropriate for scientific researches and they provide required freedom to the researcher for selection and analysis of the resources for the research and this freedom enables the researcher to produce valid and reliable results. The end of the dissertation concludes the findings of the discussion and suggests recommendations. Social media has changed the marketing landscape and has become the new age of marketing, the companies planning to use social media marketing for the promotion of their products and services effectively need to be careful about many things related to social media marketing.

Chapter 1– Introduction

In general terms, social media marketing means the way to gain website traffic or to attract attention, using social media sites but in broader terms, social media sites have emerged as a very useful, efficient, cost effective source of social media marketing and have become a threat to the conventional marketing landscapes. On an average over 750,000,000 active users hit one or other social media sites every month and it has changed the concepts of advertisement and marketing. The roaring success of social media sites has introduced a new concept of marketing – social media marketing which seems to replace the conventional marketing in near future. The concept of social media marketing is used to spread a corporate message among users of social media sites which spreads at the fastest ever speed from user to user. Social media is easily accessible by any internet user and it has increased the communications multiple times and provided an almost inexpensive tool for marketing activities and social media marketing came into existence (Armstrong & Kotler, 2010).

1.1. Aim and Objectives

This research will aim to discuss how social media marketing has affected and changed the conventional marketing landscape and its frameworks and methodologies. This will be done by covering the following objectives in detail:

A. To critically review the literature on Social Media Marketing and to highlight its advantages and drawbacks
B. To compare and contrast Social Media Marketing and Conventional Marketing
C. To demonstrate how Social Media Marketing has changed the current Marketing landscape by analysing current case studies
D. To analyse and recommend how social media might replace conventional Marketing methodologies in future

The concept of social media marketing came into existence with the increase in popularity of the social networking websites and blogs. Social networking websites have helped in not only keeping the people connected but they have also multiplied the communications among them. Blogs are used for expressing views and ideas and both social networking websites and blogs are attracting many more new users every day which opened the door for social media networking.

1.2. Social networking websites and blogs

1.2.1. Social networking websites and Blogs

Social Networking websites and blogs can be compared with ‘word of mouth’ publicity of the conventional marketing as they allow the companies to post comments about their products on them which spread at a faster rate like the word of mouth publicity. It allows companies to interact with its followers which further speed up the process (Brassington, & Pettitt, 2005).

1.2.2. Cell phones

Another useful and efficient tool which is used for social media marketing is a cell phone as cell phones have inbuilt facility to access internet and the messages are delivered to them to the cell phone users through the internet. It serves the same purpose as the websites and the blogs (Funk, 2011).

1.2.3. Engagement

Stamoulis, (2012) and Worstall, (2012) said that engagement means that the stakeholders and customers are participants on the social networking sites and not viewers. The process of engagement is the fundamental factor for the success of the social media marketing as it allows everybody to share any idea or opinion on the social media sites and the businesses share their messages along the path of their business for the marketing of their products or services which makes the other participating user a part of the marketing campaign of the company and the messages, comments or reviews forwarded by that user is read by other users and the process continues further to an undefined limit (Horton, (2012) and Mangold & Faulds, (2009)).

Chapter 2 – Literature Review

Though, the social media marketing is a new concept there is no dearth of good books, articles, journals written by reputed and authentic writers in the field which have been selected for this dissertation. These literatures collected from various reliable and authentic sources are the base of this research.

2.1 Social Media Marketing: Concepts

Blanchard (2011) provided a detailed concept of the social media marketing with efforts required to manage and measure the impact of social media in an organization but his study would have been more influential if he had provided it with a balanced approach underlining the disadvantages of social media marketing. The work of Armstrong & Kotler, (2010) provided a detail description of the concept of social media marketing for this paper and the patterns and the trends of the social media marketing focusing especially on the last fourteen years and the book by Brassington, & Pettitt, (2005) helped in understanding the developments and changes social media marketing needs to replace conventional marketing. Their works were helpful in understanding the practical aspects of social media marketing and the need of introducing it into the educational arena. McAlister-Holand (2012) discussed various concepts of Social Media Marketing but the discussion was focused only on marketing and sales on social networks and a more valuable contribution would have made if other options would have been discussed. Scott (2010) introduces a new concept of social media marketing to be used for marketing and PR and he suggested ways to reach buyers directly by using social media, blogs, news releases, online video, & viral marketing. Smith and Zook (2011) highlight the concept of using social media marketing for Marketing Communications integrating both offline and online with social media, but he overlooked to discuss other aspects of marketing communication such as its advantages, disadvantages, etc. Castronovo and Lei (2012) also discuss about the use of social media marketing for marketing communication but they limited their discussion to Social Media in an Alternative Marketing Communication Model and the paper ignores other aspects of marketing communication in social media marketing. Ţierean (2010) suggested the use of social media marketing as a political marketing tool. Though the paper is limited to discuss the use of social media as a political marketing tool, it provides a detailed understanding of the concept of social media marketing. Lemberg (2012) introduced another new concept of Social Media Marketing and underlined the use of social media marketing for Chiropractors. This paper opens new door for social media marketing and introduces the concept of using social media marketing by health practitioners and therapists. His discussion is extended by Lee (2012) who presented a report on the plenty of potential Social Media Marketing has for growth in different sectors. Lee (2012) concentrated his discussion on the potential of the social media marketing which needed to be explored but he didn’t say anything about the ways of exploring the potential of the social media marketing. His discussion is complemented by Basil (2012) who suggested the ways of coverage of social marketing efforts in the mainstream media, the suggestions made by Basil (2012) are addressed to Non-profit &Voluntary organisations but they can be used by any organization. Kalmadi and Radhakrishnan (2012) have come with a new concept of social media marketing and narrated the ways social media marketing can be used for making payments called Social Media Payments. They extend their discussion by suggesting the ways of making payments through social media marketing and the practice can be used by the banks, but the paper does not discuss the safety and security issues related to payments through social media and the ways of receiving payments through social media. The most valuable contribution to the paper was made by Anonymous (2011) who presented a detailed concept of using social media marketing by the marketing experts of B2B companies for their social media communications to reach to their buyers directly and meet their targets of meeting buyers.

2.2 Social Media Marketing: Types

The article from Funk, (2011) was consulted to understand the differences between the Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Marketing on Social Networks (MSN) while Horton, (2012) and Mangold & Faulds, (2009) were consulted to understand the difference between social media and social networks. The work of Ryan & Jones, (2012) was consulted to understand the differences between social media marketing and conventional marketing. SearchEngineLand (2012) and SEOmoz (2012) also provided a well organised description of social media marketing and conventional marketing highlighting the borderline between them which was very useful for this dissertation. Smith & Taylor, (2004) and Smith & Zook, (2011) contributed to this paper with a description of the elements of the marketing mix and strategies needed to develop social media marketing. The book of Stelzner (2012) contributed to this paper by enabling to analyse the marketing principles, ethics and techniques of social media marketing and its implementation for a better outcome. The works of Sterne, (2010) and Tehrani, (2008) were consulted to study social media marketing and its impact on conventional marketing landscape in a new perspective with prominence over the latter. Zarrella (2010) differentiated in detail social media marketing and marketing on social media. According to him social media marketing is a marketing strategy requiring complete planning, budgeting for the promotional campaign of a product or a service whereas marketing on social media is only an activity which anybody can perform for promotion of a product or a service. This discussion is elaborated by Papasolomou and Melanthiou (2012) who suggested different types of social media marketing including social media marketing and marketing on social media networks (MSN) and advised that these new tools have emerged as the best friends of marketing professionals and professionals of Public Relations provided they understand the difference between them and have the ability to exploit these tools efficiently. Nga and Guillet (2011) investigated that for different types of marketing activities there was a need for different types of social media marketing and they further suggested social media marketing useful for the hospitality industry especially the Hotel Industry. The limitation to their discussion is that it focused only on the hotels situated in Hong Kong and didn’t discuss the issue in the perspective of entire hotel industry or the hospitality sector. Armstrong & Kotler (2010) discuss different types of marketing types and highlight the differences and similarities between social media marketing and conventional marketing and their discussion is extended by Basil (2012) who added that gradually the conventional marketing was becoming irrelevant with growing reliance on social media marketing

[...]