Media-Sponsored Surveys - Research Paper Example

Media-sponsored surveys3422820 of New Brunswick Media-sponsored surveys In the context of this research paper, I have highlighted and discussed various aspects related to media – sponsored surveys. However, there are many different types of research methods currently used by different business organizations. In the field of business management, media - sponsored surveys are very helpful and widely used by top of the list organizations. This research method can help an organization to achieve its business objectives along with accomplishing business goals. According to Fowler & Floyd (2008) “Surveys are fundamentally a matter of asking a sample of people from a population a set of questions and using the answers to describe that population”. The importance of surveys is well established in business world and they are widely use to analyse various business approach towards clients. Hancock, D.R Algozzine (2006), further stated, “If time and resources are limited, a quantitative approach may be more appropriate. This is because quantitative research often involves instruments such as surveys and tests, to measure specific variables.” Davies & Beaumont (2007).“Empirical or experimental research based projects. These include surveys, statistics, questionnaires, or fieldwork.” The concept of media-sponsored surveys refers to use of survey by business organization challenging traditional ideas about marketing and brand management while creating new opportunities for organizations to understand customers and connect with them instantly. (Jim Davis 2010). According to survey conducted by Ann Charles, CEO BRANDfog (2012) social media raises the Brand profile and instills confidence in a company’s leadership team. It builds greater trust, Brand loyalty and purchase intent. In talking about research methods currently adopted by various organizations in the context of business management, there is an increasing trend of social media sponsorship. This is a kind of rapidly evolving strategy, which provides compensation to the global media influencers against the blog posts, content sharing, and other status updates. However, in social media sponsorship, uniqueness is the key, where brands or business organizations offer cash benefits, vouchers, coupons and other products against their unique and quality contents. There is no room for copied contents. They truly want something which is said to be unique and special. Something really which can attract the target audience. Media – sponsored surveys have large impact in modern business marketing techniques. They are also falling in the category of business strategies. In fact, one of the key elements for a company success is determined by the company reputation through the media (Dowling &Weeks, 2008). But still they are falling into the category of effective business strategy to find out new customers, digging out strength and weaknesses, and achieving goals and objectives related to business strategies. In true context of business, media – sponsored surveys are very helpful in finding the target audience and what people have in their minds about your brand or business. For example, if a music company wants to research how many people download music, then would pay researchers to do the study. According to McKendrick (2011), today’s business scene has external and internal risks, and close to half of respondents are concerned about the negative impacts of inefficient and weak business processes. The trend of media sponsored survey conduction and analyzing these results to improve existing marketing strategies and devising new ones since this proves to be a direct response from the customers. International Business Machine Corporation in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology business school conducted a survey of nearly 3,000 executives, managers and analysts working across the globe for IBM. One of the important results from this study showed that there is strong tendency to improve brand marketing strategy especially through media (Steve LaValle 2010). Solid way of applying this through media-sponsored surveys since this would provide companies a direct access to customers in economical and compact manner. Therefore, the above is suggesting about how much beneficial is to conduct media sponsored survey in order to discover different elements connected with the organizational risks. In order to measure the success of the business, media –sponsored surveys are very much helpful. According to Jupp (2006),Social Surveys, which are the systematic collection of data from or about units of analysis, usually individuals, often using sampling techniques and…. Basically, surveys are very much helpful in analyzing various aspects. As mentioned above, it is a very organized way to analyze the collected data. However, there is always a sampling technique involved to analyze that data collected via using surveys. According to Helms (2006), “Market research differs from competitive intelligence in that it is usually conducted when a new product is in the planning or development stage and often utilizes surveys, focus groups, and other research tools to study the market.” The reason for shift towards social media is because of the vast number of customers using them now. Statistics show that there were more than 50 million tweets this year and Facebook has over 500 million worldwide users. Moreover, according to Forrester research, a third of adults post at least once a week to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and about 70% read blogs and tweets, and watch YouTube and more than 50 percent of customers respond to posts of their interest on social media (Nate Elliott 2012). To attract these huge numbers of customers using social media is what strong business organizations look up to. According to Dr. Greener (2008), “Many surveys are conducted every day throughout the world to prove a particular point.” This describes that surveys can be used for many purposes and is mostly seen in large business organizations. According to Finlay (2012), “A common way of conducting quantitative research is using a survey.” This tells that surveys are said to be the most common way to do quantitative research, whether it has been happened for new product or existing product. Media – Sponsored Surveys is important in the context of business management. They are used to find attitudes towards your sales and brand, and evaluate performance or your brand’s value in the market. A media – sponsored survey is a kind of research which involved looking at public opinion in the context of business. Basically, the media – sponsored surveys involved various reasons like generating target audience through web traffic, creating brand awareness among the public, engagement with both prospects and customers, creating or defining definition of your brand, generating quality lead, revenue generation, increasing lead volume, and receiving product or brand feedback. According to the Murphy (2012), “Marketers are increasing their spending on social media sponsorships, and social media users are more receptive to advertising through their channels.” Media Sponsored Surveys play a significant role in political campaigns. Readers Digest 2012) not only showed President Obama’s majority but also stated that this presidential campaign was the most expensive campaign ever in American History. Surveys by American Statistical Association are primary uses of census data are for reapportioning the U.S. House of Representatives, redistricting within states, and allocating federal funds. All this when considered in bigger picture will affect the business and will set market trends so gives a clear link between media-sponsored surveys and growth of business. According to Punit Renjen (2012) “social media is used as a crutch in building workplace culture and appearing accessible to employees”. This is rightly said, as media surveys are introduced specifically for the analysis purpose. We can perform different analysis based on the data retrieved from a specific survey. While concluding this research paper; it has been observed that Media –sponsored surveys are getting more and more important while considering the nature and requirements of modern business needs, especially when you talk about social media. Currently, large business organizations are using online media channels to conduct survey like social networking sites over the internet. These types of surveys are in comparison to the regular survey (paper) is lower in cost and capture large number of audience. Companies do find problem in this part as per the paper published by Harvard Business Review Analytical Service Analysis. For instance:” Three-quarters (75%) of the companies in the survey said they did not know where their most valuable customers were talking about them. Nearly one-third (31%) do not measure effectiveness of social media.Less than one-quarter (23%) are using social media analytic tools. Fractions (7%) of participating companies are able to integrate social media into their marketing activities.” So companies need to work on the analysis of their media advertisement. For the customer internet is easiest way to find any sort of information related to any person, place, country, product, services, or anything else. Business will be more interested on doing those kinds of surveys because the number on behalf of internet users is increasing throughout the third-world countries. Basically, the survey is an essential element of a larger business research. It leads to the efforts in order to understand and know about the overall improvement and competitiveness of the business needs. References Ann Charles (2012), Ceo, Social media & Leadership survey. Davies, W., & Beaumont, T. (2007). Case Studies: Research Methods. Melbourne: University of Melbourne. Dr. Greener, S. (2008). Introduction to Research Methods. Ventus Publishing Aps. Finlay, A. (2012, November 3). Introduction to Basic Research Methods Handout. Retrieved November 3, 2012, from Itrainonline: http://www.itrainonline.org Fowler Jr, Floyd J. (2008) Survey research methods. Vol.1. Sage Publications, Incorporated. Given, L. (2008). The Sage Encyclopedia of Quantitative Research Methods. California : Sage. Hancock, D., & Algozzine, B. (2006). Doing Case Study Research. New York: Teachers College Press. Helms, M. (2006). Encyclopedia of Management. 5(Ed). New York: Thomsan Gale. Jupp, V. (2006). The Sage Dictionary of Social Research Methods. London: Sage. McKendrick, J. (2011). Strategies for Managing Risky Business Processes. New Providence: Unisphere. Dowling, G. & Weeks, W. (2008) .MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 49 Issue 3,p28-34, 7p Murphy, T. (2012). State of Social Media Sponsorships. Retrieved November 3, 2012, from IZEA - Innovations in Social Media : http://www.izea.com Nate Elliott, Emily Riley, Sarah Glass, James McDavid (2012). Social Media Metrics That Matter. Forrester Inc. Punit Renjen (2012). The Social Divide - Employees, Executives Disagree on the Role of Social Media in Building Workplace Culture: Deloitte Survey. Survey published in 1998 by American Statistical Association Committee on Privacy and Confidentiality. Reader Survey: Election Edition, Published October 22, 2012 Steve LaValle, Michael S. Hopkins, Eric Lesser, Rebecca Shockley, Analytics: The new path to value. 2010. IBM Global Business Services Business Analytics and Optimization Executive Report Y a 1500 words of student writing Y literature review of where this research method is used in the academic literature and Y where this research method has been used in a business context Y how this research method has been used in a business context Y 10 academic journals and Y 5 others from government, business articles, news etc.). Read More