Social Media Marketing and Organisational Efficiency of Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Abstract

Declaration

Certification

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Table of Contents

List of Tables

List of Figures

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
1.2 Statement of the Problem
1.3 Purpose of the Study
1.4 Research Questions
1.5 Conceptual Framework
1.6 Research Hypotheses
1.7 Significance of the Study
1.8 Scope of the Study
1.9 Limitations of the Study
1.10 Definition of Terms

CHAPTER 2: Review of Relevant Literature
2.1 Theoretical Foundation
2.1.1 Social Exchange Theory
2.1.2 Social Penetration Theory
2.1.3 Digital Marketing Application Theory
2.2 Concept of Social media marketing
2.2.1 Concept of Marketing
2.2.2 Blog Marketing
2.3 Dimensions of Social Media Marketing
2.3.1 Concept of Blogging
2.3.2 Facebook
2.3.3 Twitter
2.3.4 LinkedIn
2.4 Concept of Banks’ Efficiency
2.5 Measures of Banks’ efficiency in Social Media Marketing
2.5.1 Conversion Rate
2.5.2 Web Traffic
2.5.3 Customer Engagement
2.6 Trust
2.7 Operational Framework and Variables
2.7.1 Blogging and Conversion Rate
2.7.2 Facebook and Conversion Rate
2.7.3 Twitter and Conversion Rate
2.7.4 LinkedIn and Conversion Rate
2.7.5 Blogging and Web Traffic
2.7.6 Facebook and Web Traffic
2.7.7 Twitter and Web Traffic
2.7.8 LinkedIn and Web Traffic
2.7.9 Blogging and Customer Engagement
2.7.10 Facebook and Customer Engagement
2.7.11 Twitter and Customer Engagement
2.7.12 LinkedIn and Customer Engagement
2.7.13 Moderating Effect of Trust on Social Media Marketing and organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria
2.8 Social Media Marketing and Banking Sector in Nigeria
2.9 Summary of Literature Review

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Research Design
3.2 Population of the Study
3.3 Sampling Technique and Sample Size
3.4 Test of Validity/Reliability
3.4.1 Validity Test
3.4.2 Reliability Test 105
3.5 Methods of Data Collection
3.6 Operational Measures of Variables
3.7 Data Analysis Techniques
3.8 Model Specification

CHAPTER 4: DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
4.1 Data Presentation
4.2 Data Refinement
4.3 Administration and Retrieval of Questionnaire
4.4 Demographic Information of the Respondents
4.5 Presentation of Univariate Data
4.5.1 Blogging as a Dimension of Social Media Marketing
4.5.2 Facebook as a Dimension of Social Media Marketing
4.5.3 Twitter as a Dimension of Social Media Marketing
4.5.4 LinkedIn as a Dimension of Social Media Marketing
4.5.5 Conversion Rate as a Measure of organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria.
4.5.6 Web Traffic as a Measure of organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria.
4.5.7 Customer Engagement as a Measure of organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria.
4.5.8 Trust as a Moderator of Social Media Marketing and organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria.
4.6 Bivariate Analysis
4.6.1 Statistical Test of Hypotheses and their Interpretations (Multivariate Analysis)
4.6.1.1 Effect of Social Media Marketing on Conversion Rate
4.6.1.2 Effect of Social Media Marketing on Web Traffic
4.6.1.3 Effect of Social Media Marketing on Customer Engagement
4.6.1.4 Test on the Effect of Trust on social media marketing and organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria.
4.6.2 Multivariate Analysis (Multiple Regression on the Association between Social Media Marketing and Measures of organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria.)

CHAPTR 5: INTERPRETATION AND DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
5.1 Effect of blogging on organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria
5.2 Effect of Facebook on organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria
5.3 Effect of Twitter on organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria
5.4 Effect of LinkedIn on organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria
5.5 Effect of Trust on Social Media Marketing and organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria.

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSIONS, IMPLICATIONS AND RECCOMENDATIONS
6.1 Summary
6.2 Conclusion
6.3 Theoretical Implications of the Findings
6.4 Practical Implications
6.5 Recommendations
6.7 Suggestions for Further Studies

References

Appendix A: Cover Letter
Appendix B: Questionnaire
Appendix C: List of Banks and their Email Addresses
Appendix D: IBM SPSS Statistics 22 Window Outputs of Social Media Marketing and organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria.
Appendix E: Reliability Tests for Each of the Variables
Appendix F: Univariate Analysis of Social Media Marketing Variables
Appendix G: Univariate Analysis of organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria Variables
Appendix H: Univariate Analysis of Moderating Variable
Appendix I: Multiple Regression Analysis of Social Media Marketing and organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria.

Abstract

The study examined the effect of social media marketing on organizational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria. Blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were used as the dimensions of social media platforms in this study. The study used conversion rate, web traffic and customer engagement to measure organisational efficiency of banks. Also, trust was used as a moderating variable in this study. The study adopted descriptive and inferential statistical tools to analyze the data and test the hypotheses. The study used a questionnaire to elicit information from the respondents. The population of the study consisted of all the 22 deposit money banks approved by CBN. The study sampled 154 respondents from 22 deposit money banks in Nigeria and validly used 133 respondents representing 86.36% response rate for data analysis. The study found that banks use blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to conduct their marketing activities in the manner of brand promotion and persuasion of customers to patronize them and these activities enhance organisational efficiency of banks. The study revealed that blog has positive but insignificant effect on conversion rate and web traffic but positive and significant effect on customer engagement. The study discovered that Facebook has positive and significant effect on conversion rate, web traffic and customer engagement. The study revealed that Twitter has positive and significant effect on conversion rate, web traffic and customer engagement. The study found that LinkedIn has positive and insignificant effect on conversion rate and customer engagement but negative and insignificant effect on web traffic. The study also, found that trust moderates and has strong positive and significant effect on social media marketing and organisational efficiency of banks. The study concludes that as banks use blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to create awareness about their products and services on the internet their conversion rates, web traffic and customer engagement are significantly and positively boosted. The study therefore recommends that bank managers should use blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to their advantage by encouraging bank staff and not just the marketing department to participate in social media marketing which in turn covers more ground for the enhancement of conversion rate, web traffic and customer engagement leading to organisational efficiency of banks.

DECLARATION

I, ENYIOKO, Newman Chintuwa (PG.2015/02315) declare that the work in this thesis represents my original work and has not been previously submitted elsewhere or in this university for the award of a degree.

Signature:.

Date:.

CERTIFICATION

We, the undersigned, certify that this work was carried out by ENYIOKO, Newman Chintuwa (PG.2015/02315) under the supervision of, Prof. G.A. Okwandu, Prof. B.C. Opara and Prof. N. G. Nwokah in the Department of Marketing, Faculty of Management Sciences, Rivers State University, Nkpolu-Oroworukwo, Port-Harcourt, has met the partial requirement for the award of Doctor of Philosophy in Marketing.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I sincerely express my profound and unquantifiable gratitude and praises to the Almighty God for His love, care and protection throughout these turbulent years I have lived to accomplish this arduous task with all the rigours involved. My deepest gratitude goes to my lead supervisor Prof. G.A. Okwandu for his patience//perseverance in guiding me through to see the completion of this work. I am also, indebted to my other co-supervisors, Prof. B.C. Opara and Prof. N.G. Nwokah for their meticulous observations, critical comments and academic encouragement / advice helped me greatly to the successful execution of this thesis. I appreciate also the Acting Head, Department of Marketing, Dr. J.U.D. Didia as well as Dr. P.M. Nadube for the useful advice and critical insights they have brought to bear in this work. I thank Prof. Donald I. Hamilton, the Dean Faculty of Management Sciences for his humane dispositions to students and others. I appreciate Dr. Harcourt Horsfall, Mrs. Edith-Onajite Lolia Hamilton-Ibama, Mr. Adiele Kenneth Chima, Mr. Ateke Brown Walter, Mr. Okechukwu Agburum, Mrs. Amadi for their encouragement. I am also grateful to my colleagues in the doctoral programme, Mrs. Chinyere Acee-Eke, Hon. Tonye, E. Isenah, Gibson Ogonu and Mrs Chinyere Stella Nwulu for their collaborative proclivities in the course of the programme. I thank Mr. Ikegwuru Mac-Kingsley, Barr. Matthew A. Onwukwe, Nwabueze Ukaegbu, Rev. C.A. Nwaogu, Pst. Ken Kanu, Onyebuchi Obiekwe. I thank my friend and supporter Dr. Chidi Julius Lloyd and his family for their encouragement. I am grateful to my beloved wife Mrs. Chioma Newman Enyioko and Children – Esther and Elizabeth for their patience and understanding throughout the period of this study.

I find it impossible to make a comprehensive list of all those I should like to thank as this embraces not only my peers; but almost all my members in ANCA especially Elder Steve Eguzo, Friday Onyeubani, Winners Chapel, WSF Total Village, Prayer Force and Gold-Anchor. I thank my friends Sir Uzondu Abraham, Pstr Ken Akobundu, Alozie Ufomba, Helen, Stella, Simeon Nwandu, John Ordah, Dr. C.A. Akujuru, Ibe Nnaukwu and Paul Ezekiel Somina. I acknowledge my mother Mrs Rodah Mgbeahuru Enyioko for her great inspiration and encouragement. I thank my brothers and sisters. All who in one way or the other contributed to the success of this research work, I want to say thank you; may the Almighty God reward you richly and abundantly.

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to God Almighty, the greatest inspiration of all time and dear Lord and Father of all Mankind.

LIST OF TABLES

2.1: Definition of Marketing Summary by AMA

2.2: Summary of Social Media Types/Dimensions

2.3: A summary of prior studies on the moderating effect of trust on social media marketing and other variables

4.1: Test of Reliability

4.2: Administration and Retrieval of Questionnaire

4.3: Gender Distribution of the Respondents

4.4: Respondents’ Current Job Position

4.5: Respondents’ Years of Experience in the Present Bank

4.6: Respondent’s Level of Education

4.7: The Social Media Channels Used for Marketing Activities in Banks

4.8: Main Objectives for the Use of Social Media to Carry out Marketing Activities

4.9: Blogging as a Dimension of Social Media Marketing

4.10: Facebook as a Dimension of Social Media Marketing

4.11: Twitter as a Dimension of Social Media Marketing

4.12: LinkedIn as a Dimension of Social Media Marketing

4.13: Conversion Rate as a Measure of organizational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria.

4.14: Web Traffic as a Measure of organizational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria.

4.15: Customer Engagement as a Measure of organizational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria.

4.16: Trust as a Moderator of Social Media Marketing and organizational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria.

4.17: Results of Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Conversion Rate (CR)

4.18: Results of Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Web Traffic (WT)

4.19: Results of Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Customer Engagement (CE)

4.20: Result of the Regression Output of the Effect of Trust on social media marketing and banks’ efficiency (Stepwise Model)

4.21 Result of the Regression Output of the Effect of Trust on social media marketing and organizational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria. (Stepwise Coefficients)

4.22 Result of the Regression Output of the Effect of Trust on social media marketing and organizational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria (Stepwise -Excluded Variable)

4.23 Summary of the Results on Test of the Research Hypotheses

4.24 Model Summary of Social Media Marketing (SMM) and organizational efficiency of banks in Nigeria (OEB)

4.25 Results of Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Organisational Efficiency of Banks (OEB)

LIST OF FIGURES

1.1: Conceptual Framework of Social Media Marketing and Organisational Efficiency of Banks in Nigeria

2.1: Social Media Marketing/Elements in terms of Organisational Efficiency of Banks/ Marketing Mix

2.2: The Social Media Landscape 2018

2.3: The four levels of the blog marketing ecology

2.4 : Example model of digital marketing measurement

2.5: Engagement areas of measurement with customer buying process

2.6: Operationalised Conceptual Framework of Social Media Marketing and Organisational Efficiency of Banks in Nigeria

2.7: The ways social media monitoring and web traffic can impact the business Performance

3.1: Research Onion for Data Collection and Analysis

4.1: Bar Chart Showing the Administration and Retrieval of Questionnaire

4.2: Pie Chart Showing the Gender Distribution of the Respondents

4.3: Bar Chart Showing the Respondents’ Current Job Position

4.4: Bar Chart Showing the Respondents’ Years of Experience in the Present Bank

4.5: Pie Chart Showing the Respondent’s Level of Education

4.6: Pie Chart Showing the Respondent’s views on the Main Objectives For the Use of Social Media to Carry out Marketing Activities

4.7: Histogram showing effect of trust on social media marketing and organisational efficiency of banks

6.1: Heuristic Model of Social Media Marketing and Organisational Efficiency of Banks in Nigeria

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Marketing activities have changed significantly of recent because of internet-based possibilities. The traditional marketing model and marketing approaches do not adequately and efficiently utilize the possibilities of the Internet. The social media marketing is one approach that uses the new potentials on the internet (Järvinen & Karjaluoto, 2015). Some of the channels being utilized by social media marketing include Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, websites, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ among others to reach the customer satisfactorily (Ewing, 2009). Social media marketing is the marketing process of gaining attention on website traffic through digital applications that help the company to publicize its products and services. It is used for promotion of products or services in different social networks in form of advertisements or in form of content. The basic goal is to increase sales of a product/service or to build brand awareness (Ryan, 2014).

The marketplace has been undergoing a transformation and companies are facing a new digital marketplace (Berman, 2012). Customers have access to a larger volume of information, which forces companies to change from being business-centric to more customer-centric (Matt, Hess & Benlian 2015). Berman (2012) argues that the transformation depends on the industry as every industry is under a pressure to undergo major changes. Social media marketing is defined by Elena (2016) as a new erarevolutionizing tool that allows communication between individuals, companies and different groups from all around the world to share and exchange information and ideas in an interactive way for the purpose of attracting customers to patronize their companies. Social media marketing platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Blog have offered the opportunity for clients to discuss their online programmes, projects, reviews, recommendations and agree or disagree regarding different aspects of products or customer services. With the opportunities offered, social media marketing has had a major impact on how companies communicate with their distributors and customers, thus the traditional marketing may not have all these elements to cater for the customers’ needs and wants (Rapp, Beitelspacher, Grewal & Hughes, 2013; Crumpton, 2014; Kumar, Bezawada, Rishika, Janakiraman & Kannan, 2016).

According to Peters, Kaplan, Ognibeni and Pauwels (2013), social media have become more frequent and significant for marketing activities of proactive and dynamic companies. Social media marketing is already widely applied in business-to-consumer (B2C) context (Kho, 2008; Rapp, Beitelspacher, Grewal & Hughes, 2013). Kho (2008) argues that the use of social media for marketing activities might lead to a greater outcome in the banking sector than it has in other sectors. This is apparent because the social media allow a high degree of personalized interactions and can enhance the relationships with customers and suppliers in the banking sector. Researchers like Rapp, Beitelspacher, Grewal and Hughes, (2013) and Järvinen, Tollinen, Karjaluoto and Jayawardhena (2012), contend that the potential outcomes for organizations and banks embrace social media marketing like Facebook on the grounds that the reception expands request and energizes support for the same number of clients progressively. What is more, expanded exercises of organizations on the web will serve the requirements of their clients internationally (Sharma, 2002).

For Rapp, Beitelspacher, Grewal and Hughes, (2013), firms can utilize social media marketing to accomplish enhanced execution in a focused market. A repeating motivation behind why organizations can profit by utilizing social media in their marketing technique is the likelihood to interface and make solid organisations with their current and with new or potential customers. Not only does the social media bring the opportunity of a stronger relationship with the customers and two-way conversations; they have also the capacity to increase the communication efficiency, thus lowering the marketing costs and at the same time creating more sales opportunities with increased profit for companies (Järvinen, Tollinen, Karjaluoto & Jayawardhena, 2012). Even if social media are becoming more common in B2B marketing, companies are still in an early stage of the adoption and are struggling to integrate it in their marketing strategies (Järvinen, Tollinen, Karjaluoto & Jayawardhena, 2012).

In their research Leefang, Verhoef, Dahlström, and Freundt (2014) found three major challenges inherent in adopting social media marketing by companies. The challenges include data, how to analyze it, and how the digital marketing can contribute to a better performance. While Järvinen and Karjaluoto, (2015) argue that the practice of social media marketing has facilitated the measurement of marketing effectiveness/efficiency. Leefang (2012) states that there is often a lack of understanding among marketers on how to analyze and measure the data gained from social media. The availability of social media metrics is continuously increasing, which has made the measuring of social media complex (Leefang, Verhoef, Dahlström & Freundt, 2014; McCann & Barlow, 2015). Also, Fisher (2009) argues that the complexity of measuring the outcome is a major obstacle when adopting social media as a marketing plan, as it requires qualitative measurements rather than quantitative.

The impact of using effectiveness/efficiency to measure social media marketing is hard to be proven or determined in banking sector when variables such as conversion rate, customer engagement, and traffic are not qualitatively and quantitatively utilized (Michaelidou, Siamagka & Christodoulides, 2011). In addition, many organizations are cynical about the impact of social media marketing on their performance (Järvinen & Karajaluoto 2015). However, there has been growing understanding and awareness among marketers today and marketers are always asked to use tools such as: return on investment, traffic intensity, conversion rate, number of clicks, customer engagement, costs and benefits analysis, traffic and so on in order to find out the effectiveness and efficiency of the social marketing activities (Spiller & Tuten, 2015; Ling-Yee, 2011; O’Sullivan& Abela, 2007; Michaelidou, Siamagka & Christodoulides, 2011).

According to O’Sullivan and Abela (2007), no matter how important a single metric is, it is always more valuable to have the ability to measure the marketing performance across all the marketing activities. Existing models for doing so are often criticized due to their complexity (McCann & Barlow, 2015). Several authors have highlighted the need for linking financial and non-financial metrics together in order to develop an overall measure of the effect of social media marketing (Leefang, Verhoef, Dahlström & Freundt, 2014; Agostino & Sidorova 2016).

Literature has advanced knowledge in the field of social media marketing strategies and organisational efficiency of banks in Nigeria by evaluating the metrics used by such firms (Bax, Meyer & Wilkins, 2013; Nwokah & Gladson-Nwokah, 2012; Hacioglu & Gök, 2013; Järvinen & Karjaluoto, 2015; Agostino & Sidorova, 2016). Building theoretical frameworks that link the multifaceted marketing impacts on market outcomes, financial value, and firm performance have also elicited the interest of researchers (Royle & Laing, 2014; Chaffey & Charlesworth, 2014). Despite the theoretical progress made over the years, there is no empirical evidence that social media marketing impacts significantly on the measures of digital marketing efficiency. In view of the above backdrop, this thesis evaluated the effect of social media marketing on organisational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Social media marketing has taken the business world by surprise as it has revolutionalized the patterns through which consumers could be reached as a community. Many people did not know what social media marketing was and the effect it would have on all of our lives. It has been an exciting interactive medium that suddenly takes the world by storm to such an extent that it becomes something that no business, small or large, local or global, could afford to ignore. Currently, there are more than 1.28 billion active users on Facebook alone, currently the world's most popular social network (Shad, Jamali & AleAhmad, 2017).

Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog, Facebook, Google+ and various other web traffic have hundreds of millions of active users engaging in marketing activities through their platforms. Social media have importance for general web clients as well as businesses. Social media allude to the methods for communications among individuals in which they make, share, as well as trade data and thoughts in virtual networks and systems (Järvinen & Karjaluoto, 2015).

Several studies have shown that banks’ use of social media can lead to great advantages, such as, strengthening relationship with customers and creating awareness. However, there are still challenges that decrease the incitement to adopt social media as a marketing strategy. Leefang, Verhoef, Dahlström and Freundt, (2014); Fisher, (2009) and McCann and Barlow (2015), all agree that the major challenge is the lack of well-developed key performance indicators to measure the effects of the activities. Previous literatures agree upon the need to carefully develop a strategy for the use of social media, which include clearly defined goal and objectives, as well as, what metric to use in order to ensure that the objectives are met (McCann & Barlow, 2015; Järvinen & Karjaluoto, 2015; Agostino & Sidorova, 2016). The measuring process should then be an ongoing process for companies to ensure that social media are used in an appropriate way (McCann & Barlow, 2015).

The issue of using blogs to achieve marketing objectives that hinge on corporate efficiency in connections with the firm’s overall performance is a recurring problem, which has become hard to ignore (Wiersema, 2013). Marketing activities often have effects that do not immediately show, this might be a challenge when it comes to connecting the effects to efficiency and effectiveness (Stewart, 2009). Although some marketers mainly focus on the immediate effects, marketing activities can also be structured to have long-term and short-term period effects. These issues are germane and identified gaps that need to be trashed in this study.

There is also the problem of utilizing Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as parts of social media marketing programmes to perfect marketing activities that have routings in the optimization of organizations efficiency without being perceived as invasive to privacy. These have led to the creation of tools to avoid or obstruct the social media marketing practice thereby leading to the ineffective and inefficient use of these social media tools to achieve effective marketing performance (Pofeldt, 2015). In Nigeria the case is even more prevalent and alarming as ‘yahoo; ‘yahoo’ boys use social media to commit atrocities that are said to be marketing in inclination (Udorie, 2016).

The negative effects of social media marketing have been enumerated by Bax, Meyer and Wilkins (2013) to include: 1) the experience of frustration and irritation, as well as the development of negative feeling and mood by users with respect to advertising; 2) the development of negative attitudes toward advertisements hosted at websites; and 3) the reduction of visitors to sites and increase chances of negative word-of-mouth. Also, Barbaro (2006), affirms that “intrusiveness has been recognized as a leading cause of social media marketing annoyance” (p. 84). Brengman and Karimov (2012) model proposes that social media marketing frustration can affect their marketing value, which greatly affects the social media users’ mindset towards organizational efficiency. The gaps arising from these issues need to be investigated empirically. In line with the above; this study sought to determine the critical effects of social media marketing strategies (blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) on organisational efficiency of banks (involving conversion rates, customer engagement, and traffic).

1.3 Purpose of the Study

This study investigated the effect of social media marketing on organisational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria. Based on this, the study sought to achieve the following specific objectives:

1). To determine the extent to which blog affects organisational efficiency of banks.
2). To investigate the extent to which Facebook affects organisational efficiency of banks.
3). To find out the extent to which Twitter affects organisational efficiency of banks.
4). To explore the extent to which LinkedIn affrcts organisational efficiency of banks.
5). To examine the moderating effect of trust on social media marketing and organisational efficiency of banks.

1.4 Research Questions

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the effect of social media marketing on organisational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria. In line with this, the following research questions have been raised and investigated in this study:

1). To what extent does blog affect organisational efficiency of banks?
2). To what extent does Facebook affect organisational efficiency of banks?
3). To what extent does Twitter affect organisational efficiency of banks?
4). To what extent does LinkedIn affect organisational efficiency of banks?
5). What is the effect of trust in moderating social media marketing and organisational efficiency of banks?

1.5 Conceptual Framework

This study evaluated the effect of social media marketing strategies on organisational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria. In carrying out the study, four dimensions of social media marketing strategies (independent variables or predictor variables) namely; Blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were examined. These dimensions were adopted in line with the works of Agostino and Sidorova (2016); Nwokah and Gladson-Nwokah (2015); Nwokah and Irimagha (2017) and Cavazza (2018). Also, organisational efficiency of banks served as the key dependent or criterion variable under which the measures such as conversion rate, web traffic and customer engagement were appraised.

The study adopted part of the classification of organisational efficiency of banks espoused by Järvinen and Karjaluoto (2015); Nwokah and Gladson-Nwokah (2015) and Nwokah and Irimagha (2017) in marketing performance evaluation involving efficiency and effectiveness rating instruments. The imperative of the usage of these elements to measure organisational efficiency of banks has become obvious as could be seen from the conceptual framework of the Study“social media marketing and organisational efficiency of deposit money banks”, (see figure 1.1).

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1.6 Research Hypotheses

This research investigated the effect of social media marketing on organisational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria. Accordingly, the following hypotheses relating to the purpose and problems of the study were formulated and investigated:

Ho1: Blog has no significant effect on conversion rate of banks

Ho2: Facebook has no significant effect on conversion rate of banks

Ho3: Twitter has no significant effect conversion rate of banks.

Ho4: LinkedIn has no significant effect on conversion rate of banks.

Ho5: Blog has no significant effect on web traffic of banks.

Ho6: Facebook has no significant effect on web traffic of banks.

Ho7: Twitter has no significant effect on web traffic of banks.

Ho8: Twitter has no significant effect on web traffic of banks.

Ho9: Blog has no significant effect on customer engagement of banks.

Ho10: Facebook has no significant effect on customer engagement of banks.

Ho11: Twitter has no significant effect on customer engagement of banks.

Ho12: LinkedIn has no significant effect on customer engagement of banks.

Ho13: Trust has no significant effect on social media marketing and organisational efficiency of banks.

1.7 Significance of the Study

Banks should aim at satisfying human needs and wants through “managing the evidence and 'tangibilizing' the intangible products (Levit, 1981: 61 cited by Enyioko, 2014, p.52). To achieve this objective, the organizations should identify the needs and wants of their customers/clients, innovate appropriate products/services, promote and deliver the products/services efficiently to the clients. This study shall contribute to the development of effective social media marketing practices for businesses, more especially for banks. Competitive strategy examines the way in which a firm can compete more effectively to strengthen its market position. Any such strategy must occur in the context of the rules of the game established by ethical standards.

The study will provide empirical evidence of the practice of social media marketing efficiency in banks. It shall also be of tremendous help to business practitioners in various fields to develop their business/marketing strategies through the social media platforms. In addition, the study shall be of good use to policymakers to know the shortcomings in this area and integrate same to guide them in their future planning.

1.8 Scope of the Study

The content scope of this study aims at examining the effect of social media marketing on organisational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria. This covers all the banks that utilize the social media to enhance their marketing objectives. The study unit scope which involved the unit of analysis was restricted to the staff of the surveyed banks in Nigeria. It was mainly an organizational level analysis. The staff involved included General Managers, Marketing Managers, Sales Managers, Internet Managers, and General Staff. Copies of the questionnaire were given to them for their responses. The geographical scope covered all banks in Nigeria. This study was restricted to the banks in Nigeria that are involved in social media marketing activities. The geographical scope of this study was, therefore, Nigeria.

1.9 Limitations of the Study

Collection of data for the study was done through a structured questionnaire basically on the internet and there was the fear in employees to honestly provide the accurate circumstance as it exists in the selected banks. Like any other academic research, this work was without constraints. Time and cost posed many challenges as well as hoarding of data by the respondents. This work considered the entire banks in Nigeria, but the limitations imposed by time and cost influenced the researcher’s decision to concentrate on banks in Nigeria. The researcher also encountered certain difficulties in connection with data collection. The nature of this study required the researcher to collect data on the internet from the banks in Nigeria.

Finally, it was difficult to convert the research and analysis of social media marketing and organisational efficiency of banks into a problem formulation that allowed for a critical investigation including enough theories to explore and concretize same, and this limited the depth of the study. In spite of these delimitations, the study domain holds sufficient academic curiosity for thorough investigations and perusals.

1.10 Definition of Terms

Deposit Money Bank: A deposit money bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates credit. A bank is authorized by a government as an institution to accept deposits, issue and clear cheques, grant loans, and carry out other financial transactions and services to its customers.

Organisational efficiency of banks: The rightful and prompt use of online key performance indicators to improve customers’ delivery outcomes with the grounded understanding that each step of a customer’s purchasing journey is harnessed and attended to sharply in order to optimize customer’s satisfaction and maximize marketing performance of banks. The variables used in this study to measure organisational efficiency of banks include conversion rate, web traffic and customer engagement.

Blog: This refers to a website or part of a website, where articles are written and posted for people to read. Blogs are mainly written by individuals who openly share their thoughts on a precise or general topic, while others are written as multi-author mutual efforts.

Conversion Rate: Conversion rate is often used as a key performance index (KPI) to review the effectiveness and efficiency of e-commerce sites. In this study, conversion rate is being used to measure the organisational efficiency of banks of the surveyed banks.

Customer Engagement: This refers to the level of a customer’s actual physical, cognitive and emotional presence in their relationship with an organization. It represents a deliberate vital process activated by marketers to gain and maintain a competitive edge over competitors.

Facebook: Facebook is a platform that helps to access persons linked and to make them open to others, to share their interests and to convey what needs be tied in with anything. It is a social utility platform built upon foundation site functions and applications, which helps people, communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers.

LinkedIn: This is an online social network designed specifically for professional business networking, to help them find and share valuable business and professional information among members. One needs to register and create a profile page before he can start using LinkedIn.

Financial institution: Organization that deals in fund provision and management (commercial banks, insurance and leasing banks etc.).

Internet Marketing: This refers to any online marketing activities, and may include such as video advertisements, email marketing, online promotional operation etc.

Social Media Marketing: Social media marketing is the marketing process of gaining attention on website traffic through digital applications. It is used for promotion of products or services in different social networks in form of advertisements or in form of content.

Trust: Trust is a belief or expectation that the word or promise of the merchant can be relied upon (i.e. credibility) and that the seller will not take advantage of the customer’s vulnerability for granted.

Twitter: Twitter is a social networking account service provider that is used to post and receive messages to a network of contacts, as opposed to sending bulk email messages. One can build a network of contacts, and invite others to receive the tweets, and can follow other members' posts. Twitter makes it easy to opt into or out of networks. Additionally, you can choose to stop following a specific person’s feed.

Web Traffic: This denotes to web users who visit a website and is measured by the number of visitors to the site.

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter has been used to review the literature relevant to the study. To achieve the literature review objective, the study critically examined the theoretical foundation of the study, social media marketing, social media platforms, marketing, blog marketing, concept of blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, trust, organisational efficiency of banks, conversion rate, web traffic, customer engagement, empirical literature, social media marketing and organisational efficiency of banks, social media marketing and banking sector in Nigeria, summary of the literature review with evidence of gaps in literature.

2.1 Theoretical Foundation

This study examined the effect of social media marketing on organisational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria. In this section, the theoretical framework underpinning the study has been explored. Theories such as: Social exchange theory, social penetration theory and digital marketing application theory have been x-rayed in this section.

2.1.1 Social Exchange Theory

An understanding of the real motive behind users’ participation in social media is fundamental since social media depends on the user providing contents. Social exchange theory has its base from sociology studies and explores the exchange and relationship shared between persons or minor clusters (Emerson 1976). It utilizes the cost and benefit analysis framework and comparison of alternative actions and their outcomes to explain how human beings communicate with, form relationships and bonds with each other, and how to use communication exchanges to form communities (Homans 1958). Social exchange theory states that individuals engage in behaviours they find rewarding and avoid behaviours that have too high a cost. In other words, all social actions and behaviour are based on an individual’s subjective assessment of the cost-benefit contribution to a social exchange.

The mutual fortification could be scrutinized through a microeconomic framework, though many times the rewards are not monetary but social, such as opportunity, prestige, conformity, or acceptance (Emerson 1976). Homans (1958) summarized the theory by stating that it is an exchange of goods material goods and non-material goods such as the symbols of approval or prestige. Persons that give much to others try to get much from them, and persons that get much from others are under pressure to give much to them. This process of influence tends to work out a balance in the exchanges that is best seen as a give and take relationship. According to Homans (1958) for a person in an exchange, what he gives may be a cost to him, just as what he gets may be a reward, and his behaviour changes less as the difference of the two, profit, tends to a maximum. Therefore, there is an expectation of what one stands to gain either in reputation or influence from others, the expected reciprocity on the part of others or the direct reward. However, participation in the social media does not bring compensation directly.

Campbell, Mohr and Verlegh (2013); Millenial Branding (2013) and Kelly (2013) note that the users of social media can be grouped into four. These are: (1) watchers who use content only to help in their decision making; (2) sharers who forward and upload information to others (3) commenters, who review and rate products and comment on those who do in an effort to participate and contribute; and (4) producers, who generate their own content to express their identity and recognition. However, more research is advocated for, to test the validity of such groupings, since grouping users according to their exchange behaviors has a certain degree of face validity. The same strategy and content should be used as well for customers. In any case, more research is required to test the legitimacy of such groupings, since gathering clients as per their trade practices has a specific level of face legitimacy. On account of the distinctive levels of clients in light of dynamic trades, firms wishing to impact web-based social networking further bolstering their good fortune endeavor to draw in customers in the four levels of division. For watchers, the undertaking is to first recognize the particular web-based social networking they utilize, what data they look for, and what makes it engageable to create and position content that is pertinent.

A similar procedure and substance ought to be utilized also for sharers. Be that as it may, the propensity of sharers ought to be encouraged by advertisers by improving the way toward sending content (e.g., Retweet and Facebook forward connections) and perceiving and compensating the coveted conduct. Facebook's OpenGraph has allowed a user to "like" or "comment" on any content on the web (Zukerberg 2010). Firms may gain advantages in getting ahead of this trend by practically adding a feature that enables users to comment on each of their web pages. By doing so, enabling them to directly manage the content of such comments which in effect will discourage spammers and trolls. For producers, firm’s attempts to engage with their customers may produce dividends at the brand or chain level.

2.1.2 Social Penetration Theory

The social penetration theory focuses on how human exchange results in relationships (Altman & Taylor 1973). It focuses more on the individual and small group levels while the social exchange theory explains behaviour at aggregated and or organizational levels. Social exchange theory postulates that people form close relationships through self-disclosure. It notes that one must disclose himself by continuously exposing his inner self through such information as gender, clothing preferences, ethnicity and slowly the relationship progresses to the level of sharing inner feelings and goals, followed by sharing of one’s feelings, ambitions and belief (Altman., Vinsel & Brown, 1981).

In the social media marketing, different layers of information can be separated by marketers through designing social networks. There might also be ways to determine the levels of relationships from the mode and frequencies of communication, which could be tracked online easily through web traffic. Gaudin (2010) notes that a recent privacy lawsuit against Facebook highlighted the importance following the layed down rules of social penetration.

2.1.3 Digital Marketing Application Theory

Social media marketing strategy refers to the degree to which digital media platforms and efforts are perceived as satisfying, attractive, satisfactory and suitable to elicit consumers’ decision to purchase goods and services digitally (Bonnardel, Piolat, & LeBigot, 2011; Tsai, Chou & Leu, 2011). It is believed that digital market appeal involves such social media marketing platforms as blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn which have the latent force to translate a user’s first impression of the digital platform to a favourable long-lasting feeling. Since both marketing and technical elements of social media marketing contribute towards shaping the users ’perception of digital instruments, a theoretical framework should represent all these dimensions appropriately. Park and Gretzel (2007) and Tsai, Chou and Leu, (2011) provide a set of factors that incorporate elements of social media marketing and marketing functions. The social media marketing elements identified by this study sufficiently cover the marketing activities propelled through blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn on the internet. The marketing rudiments do not totally cover all marketing features related to digital marketing. Therefore, the study derives the social media marketing dimensions by using the elements defined in the studies by Risius sand Beck (2015) and Tsai, Chou and Leu, (2011) as blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The dimensions used in this study agree with Chaffey and Smith (2013) because to their all-inclusive coverage of social media marketing features and significance to online shopping domains.

The study would be measuring organizational efficiency of banks with three attributes, namely; conversion rate, web traffic and customer engagement which have earlier been used by Chen, Lu, Chau and Gupta, (2014); Charlesworth (2014) and Guay (2015). The operationalization of overall social media marketing strategies as it relates to digital elements and marketing mix elements as adopted by this thesis based on digital marketing application theory are depicted in Figure 2.1:

As shown in figure 2.1, the general social media marketing rudiments are additionally ordered into five parts: Look and feel center around the tasteful interest of social media page, its comprehensibility, and download time, and additionally its similarity with the programme. Navigation on a website may be assessed in terms of presence of a site map, performance of the search engine, internal links etc. Credentials emphasize the trustworthiness of a social media platform’s owner, as well as the reliability of the information available on the website. Content establishes the accuracy and validity of textual and visual information. Customization (or Personalization) features on a website enable users to modify page elements to fit their preferences (Hemani, 2015).

The elements in the second set are those that can be attributed to the marketing mix. The marketing mix is a generic term that refers to the combination of tools used by a firm to accomplish its marketing objectives (Kotler & Armstrong, 2011). In social media marketing, the element of the product is assessed in terms of assortment, validity and sufficiency of product description, in addition to the availability of product upon request. The element of price is evaluated on the basis of its competitiveness and negotiability, as well as the multiplicity of payment options. Place in the marketing mix normally refers to the distribution of the product. In social media marketing, this element is measured in terms of delivery time and geographical coverage (Chaffey & Smith, 2013).

Promotion, the element focusing on communication, implies an assessment of online advertisements, special offers, direct mails, member benefits, social networking options, etc. Social media marketing’s processes are assessed in terms of adaptive design features as well as ease and timeliness of order confirmation. The element of people primarily assesses a website’s customer support. Its evaluation is based on the quality and availability of online help and interactivity offered to connect with sales staff and other user groups. The term physical evidence refers to physical cues that support a customer’s evaluation of intangible services. In social media marketing, these cues may include brand name, overall online experience, corporate affiliations through logos, and other signs of an actual physical presence (e.g. office address, pictures of the headquarters, etc.).

With emerging social media and increasing development of web 2.0 and web 3.0 applications personalization in marketing has become evident. Through the combination of emerging technologies and the increasing from the interaction between customers via the internet, there is a greater degree of customization of products and services through social media marketing (Sullivan, 2017).

Participation allows customers to participate in what a brand should stand for digitally. What the direction of the product should be and the style of advertisements, creating a free flow of information between customers and companies. Peer-to-peer also referred to as social computing has become increasingly important in the digital marketing even right form of the traditional balance in marketing, as customers’ bases are being replaced by active customer communities. Rather than the companies imposing brand awareness and advertising it is increasingly engaging towards the customers as active instruments in the selling process (Li & Kannan, 2014). Predictive modeling as explained by Sullivan (2017) is the neural network algorithms used in applied marketing problems. In essence to try to predict the best probability of an outcome on the basis of detection theory, in social media marketing predictive modeling has become imperative. Extensively developed, an analytical customer relationship management helps plan out the expectations that a customer will take a particular action. These elements lay the theoretical foundation for developing an instrument to evaluate the effect of social media marketing on organisational efficiency of deposit money banks in Nigeria.

2.2 Concept of Social media marketing

There is no precise or an inclusive definition of social media marketing because of the dynamic nature of social media marketing today as different definitions of social media marketing have been developed by different scholars. Nevertheless, Ewing (2009) considers social media marketing as a new observable fact of traditional marketing which allows marketers to speed up their communication with their customers. Social media marketing is also seen by (Ryan, 2014) as an interaction between the marketers and their consumers through a two-sided digital platform. Social media marketing also pertains to the use of technology-based marketing tools in order to promote fast and efficient communication and delivery to the product users. It is well known that social media marketing has technology as its bottom-line to enables easy communication with the customers, as well as facilitates ‘the interaction’ phase of marketing. For Nwokah and Aeenee (2017), social media marketing is the use of internet marketing channels like Blogs, Twitter, mobile phones, etc, to reach the customer satisfactorily.

Social media marketing is carried out on social media which is seen as internet and mobile-based social networking platform built on the foundations of webs that allow users to exchange information, interact, and socialize with others, as well as share opinions and content. It also deals with the building of networks and encouragement of user participation, engagement and content creation (Chaffey 2013; Charlesworth, 2014). Currently, social media constitutes as one of the most significant toolkits obtainable in digital marketing communications. Bax, Meyer and Wilkins (2013) state that today, many businesses have made social media central to their marketing activities. According to Dunant (2014), social media tools are used by businesses to achieve marketing objectives, communicate their new products, present their offers and sales, building customer loyalty and providing real-time customer service.

Some major benefits of social media marketing are that it helps the marketers to measure and know the level the customers perceive and experience brand equity (Kanovska & Tomaskova, 2012), help to continuously take on new customers while keeping the existing ones (Hoban & Bucklin, 2015). Also, Hoban and Bucklin (2015) note that the effectiveness of social media marketing is mainly determined by communication occurrence and communication content. It also reduces the roles of agents drastically since organizations are able to market directly to the consumers' social media.

In their investigation of the mix of new media with more traditional techniques, Batra and Keller (2016) called attention to that incorporation of advertising interchanges which is critical for effective promotion exercises in the light of mechanical advances of social media, very moving media designs, and holding firm on a customer who has separated consideration. Further, Batra and Keller (2016) opine that "social media marketing, specifically, offers gigantic potential benefits through their more noteworthy adaptability and accuracy, yet they likewise make more prominent business challenges". Stelzner (2016, p. 17) notes that online life advertising increases customer expansion, creates faithful fans, gives commercial centre knowledge, and produces/ showcases leads.

Chen, Lu, Chau and Gupta (2014) likewise contend that traditional and social media marketing ought to be a piece of an advertising community changing and helping to change web-based life into a state of impactful business. Batra and Charlesworth (2014) have contended that social media marketing activity can attract and build up an organisation of or a firm with clients. The relationship component is regularly alluded to as social customer relationship management (CRM). Generally, social media marketing exercises are increasing in essential importance worldwide to the detriment of traditional types of marketing. Web-based social networking promotion is a quick and practical path for brands to make new types of connection and commitment with potential clients (Dunant, 2014). Social media marketing is a type of marketing being widely used to promote products or services and to reach consumers using digital channels.

Advertising and marketing of brands today consolidate an online networking system into their conventional types of marketing, which incorporate TV, daily paper, radio and magazine publicizing. Chen, Lu, Chau and Gupta (2014) express that, "innovation has changed the conventional model of marketing communications. The ascent in intelligent computerized media has slung organization and customer contact" (p. 27). Since social media marketing is a generally new type of marketing, the methodologies are being conveyed by organizations on shifting stages and at various degrees of usage. Online life is about connections; it is about the organisations amongst individuals and groups (Sen, 2015). As indicated by Shad, Jamali and AleAhmad (2017), Social Media can be depicted as online instruments where content, suppositions, points of view, bits of knowledge, and media can be shared (p. 45). Social Media Marketing/ Web-based social networking apparati incorporate informal communication destinations, microblogs, web journals, photograph and video sharing locales, Facebooks, Twitter, LinkedIn and business organizing destinations.

The importance of a bound together and inventive advanced promotion procedure can be seen by the class' emotional development. Social media clients are anticipated to develop by 37.8 percent to achieve a sum of 2.95 billion clients by 2020 (Statista, 2016, p.7). Organisations presently see social media as a fundamental piece of their marketing strategy. The 2016 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, notes that 90 percent of marketers’ trust that online channel is fundamental to their business (Stelzner, 2016). Over the time, organizing which online networking technique to utilize has changed and has been prescriptive, depending on industry in question (Scott, 2010).

Social media platforms vary in their component, substance, reason and client profiles; along these lines, it is useful to aggregate them in view of their writers to show signs of improvement in understanding. Internet-based life field is overwhelmingly wide and various; web-based life arrangements can be found in writing and on the web. As indicated by Ryan (2014), the motivation behind why such a large number of arrangements exist is basically that some web-based social networking platform incorporate numerous traits and parts that don't fall into one correct class. Online networking channels have been arranged by Chaffey and Smith (2013), into ten fundamental composes as takes after: Social systems (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+), social distributing and news: daily papers, networks (Tumblr, Pinterest), social remarking on web journals (organization websites), social specialty networks (TripAdvisor, Trustpilot, Yelp), social client benefit: administration and bolster networks (Get Satisfaction), social information: reference (Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, SlideShare, Quora), social bookmarking (Reddit, Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious), social gushing: photographs, recordings (YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, Vimeo), social hunt: labels, remarks, voting (Google+1) and social trade: retail segment surveys, appraisals, bargains (Chaffey & Smith 2013).

SmartInsights.com, (2017), when contrasting the advanced promotion radar with the discussion crystal, the radar could be viewed as more relevant to the general computerized advertising strategy, as it seems less complex and gives more visual characteristic. It additionally has a more extensive limit and furthermore indicates choices for expanding brand cognizance, and in addition, helps prioritization in various classifications. Also, digital marketing radar considers the greatest communication stages as well as distinguishes and assess different classes of apparatuses and other social destinations and focused on networks (SmartIn-sights.com, 2017).

In Cavazza's (2018) most recent version of the Social Media Landscape (Figure 2.2), the focal position of the figure is taken by Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, on the grounds that Cavazza's (2018) needs to underscore the fact that they are every one of the three providing an extensive assortment of functionalities and that they are frequently utilized as transfers for what web clients are doing on other internet platforms.

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Figure 2.2: The Social Media Landscape 2018

Source: Cavazza, F. (2018). The Social Media Landscape 2018.Retrieved from

www.fredcavazza.net. Accessed on 8th August, 2018

This graph illustrates greatly the very dense ecosystem which symbolizes social media, spreading the various services over families:

Publishing: blog engines (WordPress, Blogger…), wiki platforms (Wikipedia, Wikia…), liveblog services (Tumblr, Posterous…) and social Q&A (Quora)

Sharing: dedicated online services for videos (YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo…), pictures (Flickr, Instagram…), links (Delicious, Digg…), products (Pinterest), music (Spotify…) and documents (Slideshare, Scribd…)

Playing: major editors (Zynga, Playdompcap…), dedicated platforms (Hi5…) and smaller but innovative editors (Digital Chocolate, Kobojo…)

Networking: professional (LinkedIn, Viadeo…), personal (MySpace, Badoo…) or for former acquaintances (MyYearBook, Classmates…).

In their study of performance measurement system to quantify the contribution of social media Agostino and Sidorova (2016) note that organizations use an excess of emerging marketing situations dealing with the social media marketing and customer engagement. Ahuja and Medury (2010) asserts that for companies use the platforms provided by social media to achieve higher reach and engagement of more customers through advertising and promotion options for content. Companies can also connect and engage their customers freely with their products on social media. In addition, the investment in own community managers and resources are lucrative in the social media. Social media networks such as Facebook content embark on their network even within followers of the organization pages, without investment in promotion. Companies also sponsor their own content to achieve higher reach, by targeting and advertising offered by other social media networks to promote their posts or increase the number of followers on the company’s platform (Järvinen, Tollinen, Karjaluoto, & Jayawardhena, 2012).

As posited by Holt (2016), social media are utilized by B2B companies in different ways such as monitoring and listening platform of what the customers are commenting about the company’s products and services, provision of support to customers through answering questions and providing information. Ashley and Tuten (2015) state that social media is used to execute specifically targeted campaigns and engage customers on social media platforms, with the aim of achieving overall business and marketing objectives. Social media is also used as part of the optional digital marketing framework for banks increasing their efforts on e-marketing investment, and in obtaining special information from their peers directly (Stollak, Vandenberg, Felhofer& Sutherland, 2014). Social media marketing also plays the role of supporting and enabling organizations to achieve their objectives and actions. Blanchard (2011) notes that social media can be utilized for monitoring, listening or research use as the imminent and major effect can be achieved in brand and product awareness achievement through involvement, especially with content marketing. Additionally, help in the achievement of advocacy effect from engaged customers.

2.2.1 Concept of Marketing

Marketing has been conceptualized and defined in various ways by many authorities. It involves assembling the required goods and services and exchanging them profitably with considerations to customers who buy for the satisfaction of their wants and needs. Drucker, (1965) sees marketing as "so basic that it cannot be considered a separate function. It is the whole business seen from the point of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view... Business success is not determined by the producer but by the customer" (p.43). The British Institute of Marketing (BIMARK) cited by Appleby, (1969) defines marketing as: The creative management function which promotes trade and employment by assessing consumer needs and initiating research and development to meet them. It coordinates resources of production and distribution of the goods and services, determines and directs the nature of the total effort required to sell profitably the maximum production to the ultimate user (p.181).

In fact, business success is determined by marketing activities because of this creative function of marketing. A definition given by Achumba, (2006) sees marketing as the business process by which products and services are matched with the market and through a transfer of ownership so as to maximize long-term earnings per share. Kotler, (1994) in his own definition opines that marketing is "a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products of value with others" (p.6). This definition of marketing as outlined by Kotler, (1994) rests on the following core concepts: Needs, wants and demand; product, value, cost and satisfaction; exchange; transaction and relationships; markets and marketing.

Exchange plays a very vital role in marketing and as such certain conditions must be met before it takes place. The five conditions necessary for exchange to take place are; there must be at least two parties, each party has something that might be of value to the other, each party believes it is appropriate or desirable to deal with the other party and, each party is free to accept or reject the other.

Also, Hamermesh, (2005, p.1) defines marketing as: "The total system of interacting business activities designed to plan, price, promote and distribute want-satisfying product and services to present and potential customers". This definition centres on how effectively and efficiently the organisation is able to use its marketing mix (4Ps) to achieve its aims and objectives. For the purpose of entrepreneurial business, Siropolis, (1994, p. 424) defines marketing as “the effort to identify and satisfy customer’s needs and wants”. This definition sees the customer as the central focus of marketing.

Hence, two important factors of marketing are the attraction of new customers (acquisition) and the retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers (base management). Once a marketer has converted the prospective buyer, base management marketing takes over. The process for base management shifts the marketer to building a relationship, nurturing the links, enhancing the benefits that sold the buyer in the first place, and improving the product/service continuously to protect the business from competitive encroachments, hence the need for marketing strategies (Okwandu, 2016).

The American Marketing Association (AMA, 1960, p.2) states that: “Marketing is the performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producers to consumers". Achumba, (2006) argues for the significance of marketing and notes that this has major inference for our understandings of value in markets. Our view emphasizes value as constituted by marketers and consumers in their activities and discourses by means of an enacted process, a social construction that takes place prior to, during and after the real exchange and use(s) occurs.

AMA, (2004, p.4) gave the definition of marketing as: " an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders".

The debate in definition of marketing has continued unabated that in July 2013 AMA approved and consolidated on the definition that says that: Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large, (AMA, 2013, p.1).

Table 2.1: Definition of Marketing Summary by AMA

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Source: AMA, 2013.

Elliot (2014) suggests that many discover an exchange between “developing deep functional expertise through specialization vs. subordinating functions to teams managing linked processes (p.69).” Likewise, Hunt (2015) refers to this as the “cross-functional dispersion of marketing activities” and predicts that it will lead to the reduction in the need for a strong marketing function (p.29). In this thesis, the argument is for the value of the marketing function beyond an organization-wide market orientation. This argument suggests that the marketing function can and should coexist with a market orientation and that the effectiveness of a market orientation depends on the presence of strong function that includes marketing in social media. To make this case, the study presents a framework that defines the scope of the marketing function and how it operates in the cross-functional world of a market-oriented firm that is proactive and digitally pragmatic. At the heart of this framework is the idea that the marketing function facilitates the link between the customer and various key processes within the organisation (Hunt, 2015). The thesis adopts both the value of the marketing function and its scope in a large-scale empirical effort. Efforts of reviewing and conceptualising marketing elements, concepts and philosophical attitudes for effective and efficient marketing practices have been amplified in this study. This is in consideration of what Opara, (2016) noted in a lecture on 26(2); that "marketing is an organisational philosophy and activity applicable to all types of organisations". It should, therefore, be seen as having the 'central mission of the entire organisation' aiming to 'satisfy customers’ needs at profit'. In any case, with new challenges, technologies and internet facilities marketing functions should be more effective and efficient at the macroand microlevels of the economy. This thesis, therefore, adopts this all-embracing concept of marketing copiously.

2.2.2 Blog Marketing

Blog marketing is often looked at as a type of transaction done through the help of social media. It is an online based marketing medium which presents contact among bloggers and readers and creates social organisations, known as blogosphere (Brengman & Karimov 2012). Blog marketing involves implementing a marketing plan for the reason of raising the efficiency of the blog. Hence, the blog becomes an effective marketing asset (Ahuja and Medury, 2010). Increasing the reach of the blog is one of the most fundamental steps in blog marketing as well as an essential step in blog marketing (Vulghan, 2012). Bloggers utilize various online tools to sponsor their blog links to other social media i.e., Facebook, Twitter account, Pinterest links and StumbleUpon). Barbaro (2006) posits that this creates a big opportunity for posts to boost the Internet and social media with one click in a computer. This way a post can reach a wide audience via various channels very fast without the effort of the marketer. The readers spread and share the content throughout the social media themselves. Brengman and Karimov (2012) argue that a blog is a powerful tool for distribution views, information, reviews on different products and services. Vulghan (2012) notes that readers frequently watch out for opinions on products from other users and blog present one of the channels to find them. Instructively, Walters (2008) contends that as consumers tend to trust other consumer’s opinions more than the traditional advertisement, blogs now seem to have become a preferred tool to help them decide if they should purchase a product or not. Davey (2015) has conceptualised blog marketing as any process that publicizes or advertises a website, business, brand or service via the medium of blogs. This includes but is not limited to marketing via advertisements placed on blogs, recommendations, and reviews by the blogger, promotion via entries on third party blogs and cross-syndication of information across multiple blogs.

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