The Impact of Social Media on the Rare of Growth of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises - Essay Example

Assignment 2 – Analysis of the questionnaire The impact of social media on the rate of growth of small and medium scale enterprises Introduction It is an open secret that social media has come to be one of the most influential aspects of information and communication technology and that social media constitutes a greater percentage of the use of technology tools and the internet than any other aspect of information and communication technology (Wolfe, Brown, and Thompson, 1962). It is in light of this that the researcher sought to find what the impact of social media is to the rate of growth of small and medium scale enterprises. This was done under the research question, “what impact do social media have on the rate of growth of small and medium scale enterprises?” Critique of the questionnaire There is a major weakness with the questionnaire in terms ethical consideration. As an academic research, it is expected that the researcher makes a lot of provision for ensuring ethical protection for respondents (Yeo and Windels, 2008). Some of these ethical protections should include the assurance of anonymity of respondents (Zinkhan, and Fornell, s1989). The researcher must also keep responses highly confidential. Such assurances make respondents highly confident to in the answers they provide. The questionnaire should have therefore had a preamble that gives respondents these ethical assurances. What is more, there is repetition of questions throughout the questionnaire. There are questions that have been reframed in different ways but seek to collect the same piece of data. There should have therefore be a better mopping up exercise to rid the questionnaire of repeated questions (Sweetser et al, 2008). Again, the questionnaire lacks clear cut categorisation of questions with headings. In the absence of such categorisation, respondents are often confused on what a particular question is seeking to find. In this event, they may misunderstand the questions and answer them in different contexts (Taylor, 1999). In future research, there would be conscious effort to present the questions in a more presentable way by clearly stating question numbers and categorising the questions according to a minimum of four major themes. Data Presentation Use of social media The questionnaires were distributed among two hundred (200) respondents. These respondents were selected from different industrial backgrounds including hospitality, education, health, entertainment, transport, financial service, manufacturing, politics and so on. This was to ensure a large representation base. Among the two hundred (200) respondents, the chart below represents those who use social media and those who do not. After the data on the use of social media were collected, the researcher grouped the responses according to the field of industry. This was done in order to find the time of industries that practiced the use of social media most. In this regard, it was found that business to customer enterprises used social media more often than business to business enterprises. Kind of social media network used After identifying which of the respondents used social media and which did not, the researcher went ahead to find out the specific social media that was used by these enterprises. The reason for collecting this particular data was because the literature review had proofed that some of the social media networks were more popular than others (The Right User at the Right Time, 2009). The researcher therefore wanted to find out how the popularity of a particular social media network influenced and impacted the reasons for which the respondents were using them. The chart below represents the allocation of respondents and the kind of social media network they used. Reason for using social media The researcher sought to find from respondents, the reasons why they used social media. This was an important data because the literature review has revealed that using social media serves diverse purposes (Ottesen, and Gronhaug, 2004). The researcher therefore wanted to have a confirmation of which of the purposes prompted the respondents to go in for social media. Greater part of the respondents indicated that they were actually into the use of social media in order to build trust and develop relationships with their customers. There was also a large part of the respondents who pointed out that their major reason for using social media was to enhance their business performance. They sought to achieve this because of the conception that they would have input from customers as to what they customers expected from the companies. There were also those who were into social media as a means of increasing awareness of their business to customers and other potential customers. There were only few respondents whose initial reason for using social media was to increase sales. Effectiveness of running social media The literature review had already pointed to the fact that if social media are used as a formality, there would be very little effectiveness in their running and this would subsequently affect the impact that the social media could have on the businesses (Palda, 1966). It is in line with this that the researcher wanted to find out the various ways by which the respondents monitored and improved their social media usage. The table below represents the number of times that the respondents updated, monitored and advanced social media networks. Frequency of Update Number of Respondents Percentage Several times a day Once a day Every other day Once a week Less than once a week 39 89 15 20 25 20.74 47.34 7.98 10.64 13.30 Total 188 100 Impact of social media on enterprises Having established the reasons why the respondents went into the use of social media, the researcher became concerned about finding the relationship between the reasons why the respondents went into social media and the actual impact that social media had on their businesses. This was also in line with answering the research question which had been posed earlier. Four major themes of impact were set on the impact of social media on enterprises for the respondents to select the one that applied most to their businesses. The data that was collected has been presented below. Analysis and discussion of findings The data presented earlier has been discussed and analysed according to five main themes. This has been done to ensure clarity with the analysis and simplicity in the discussion process. Availability of social media From the data presented, it can be seen that greater percentage of the respondents use one form of social media or the other in the running of their business. The ratio of 188:12 could be expressed in terms of percentage as 94% of respondents who use social media. This is in clear consonance of the literature that says that social media has gained a lot of dominance among users of the internet and other technology tools. Indeed, these findings are indication that the use of social media is not popular only among individual users of the internet but businesses as well. The fact that there are a percentage of respondents who do not use social media is also worth discussing. Upon careful scrutiny, it would be observed that those who do not use social media are those whose business orientation do not deal so much with customers but have a business to business setting. The implication to this is that the more a business has larger customer setting, the more important it is to integrate social media in the daily interactions with customers. Preference for Social Media Network It is not so surprising that Facebook and Twitter top the list of preference for social media network used. This is because current research shows that among social media networks, these are the two most popular (Pashupati and Kendrick, 2008). In an attempt to use social media to serve customers and other business clients in one way or the other, it is always important to choose a platform that would reach a larger population of the target group. It is for this reason that these two social media networks top the list because the respondents are very certain that greater percentage of their customers use one of these networks. It is however admonished that businesses should have more than one platform of using social media. This is because if they use only one platform, their customers and clients who may not have access to the particular platform used by the business may be left out in the thrill. Again, the selection of a preference social media network should be based on a lot of research work that identifies the specific kind of social platform that can best meet the demands of the business (Goldsborough, 2009). Those who would need to be more interactive would have to opt for choices like Facebook, Twitter and Skype but those who want to be more informative could opt for platforms like forum discussion, wikis, YouTube and blogs. Reason for using social media The reasons that respondents pointed out as to why they use social media seem to be entirely different from what was seen in the literature review. This is because authors whose works were reviewed under the literature review were more particular about the use of social media for wealth creation (Hunt, 2002). However, this did not seem to be the primary aim of most respondents. Rather, respondents were looking at reasons such as developing greater customer relationship. It is however important to note that this trend of response may still go down to the same point as what was raised under the literature review. The reason why this point is being made is that the more interactive businesses get with their customers, the more the likelihood that business activities among the customers would be enhanced. For instance the more customers get interactive, the more they will learn more about products and services offered by the companies. This way, customers will become more appreciative of the need to conduct businesses with the companies (Kemp, 2001). This way, the eventual hypothesis of researchers that the use of social media leads to wealth creation will be achieved. Efficient running of social media The use of social media should not be done just because it has become the order of the day. Rather, it should be seen as a very important means of achieving growth of businesses. But before small and medium scale enterprises can amass such benefits of using social media, it is imperative for them to devise efficient ways of running their social media. The major lesson that the literature review gave about the operation of social media is that in order to ensure efficiency, the network should be updated as regularly as possible. It is therefore not surprising that greater percentage of the respondents update their social media network pages at least once a day. This is an important move for ensuring efficiency because customers would always want to be updated on the most current events and activities going on in the company. Other forms of ensuring efficiency should include the uploading of the most appropriate information and data that meets the demands of customers. As much as possible, the platform should be used in educating customers and users of the media about the company and what goes on in the company rather than merely using the platform to entertain patrons (Adams, 2006). Impact of social media on growth of enterprises This is one area of data collection that brings out a lot of knowledge and answers to the research question on the impact of social network on the growth of small and medium scale enterprises. From the data collected, it can be said that indeed social media contributes greatly to the growth of small and medium scale industries. The higher turnover that was experienced by most respondents actually is a manifestation of the two other impacts, which are enhanced customer relations and company branding. This is because the better customers become interactive with companies and the better a company creates an image and branding of its self through social media, customers gain more confidence in doing business with such companies (Altheide, 1987). Ultimately, a customer who is pleased with a company’s social media platform would tell another about it and the more this happens, the larger the size of the customer base of the company would be. It is not surprising therefore that as many as 79 out of a total of 188 respondents pointed out that the most outstanding benefit they get from social media is high turnover. For any given business, the higher the turn over, the greater the possibility of achieving growth in the business (Batra and Vanhonacker, 1986). The conclusion The aim of this research work was set out to use questionnaire to collect data on the impact of social media on the growth and development of small and medium scale enterprises. The choice of this particular research aim is from the fact that social media is gaining so much popularity among internet users today. From the data collection, it was established that greater percentage of companies today uses one form of social media or the other in undertaking various forms of corporate social relationships. The few group of enterprises who do not presently use any form of social media plan to do so in the nearest future. Among the small and medium scale enterprises that use social media, a lot of positive and diverse advantages have been recorded. The importance is described as diverse because they cut across several areas of the corporate management process. Some of these include in the area of customer relationship, recruitment, publicity, advertisement, dissemination of information, generation of new customer base and the overall increase in company turnover. For future research, it is suggested that researchers have a follow up data collection process among present non-users of social media who may later adapt the technology to ascertain the differences in growth and revenue margin. REFERENCE LIST “The Right User at the Right Time.” YouTube. Retrieved on May 3, 2009 from http://www.youtube.com/advertise. Adams, J. 2006, Striking it Niche–Extending the Newspaper Brand by Capitalizing in New Media Niche Markets: Suggested Model for Achieving Consumer Brand Loyalty. Journal of Website Promotion, 2(1/2), 163-184. Altheide, D. 1987, Ethnographic Content Analysis. Qualitative Sociology, 10(1), 65-77. Batra, R. and Vanhonacker, W. 1986, "The Hierarchy of Advertising Effects: An Aggregate Field Test of Temporal Precedence." working paper. 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