Significance of Social Media in Organizational Marketing Activities - Research Proposal Example

Research Proposal: Significance of Social Media in Organizational Marketing Activities Executive summary This research proposal provides a detailed framework of how a qualitative document analysis method will be used to conduct a study on the significance of social media on the marketing activities of organizations. It is proposed that the research be conducted using the interpretivist paradigm. The process of conducting the research is divided into the following four main stages: searching for relevant literature from multiple academic sources, analyzing the selected documents, interpreting the findings in light of the research questions and presenting the findings. Several ethical issues will be taken into consideration in the course of conducting the proposed research. The main issue will be about accessing and using secondary data. Care will be taken to ensure that, when required, acknowledgements are made and that the ethical protocols guiding the usage of such data are observed. The researcher will also endeavor to provide high quality research that will meet the needs of the target audience. It is based on this need that the researcher will use triangulation as a way of strengthening the reliability and validity of the research. The overall research plan, its contextualization within academic literature and methodological procedures provide the main strengths of this research proposal. On the other hand, the fact that there is no any clear method of determining when the data to be collected will be considered sufficient that is provided in this proposal is the main limitation of this proposal. Introduction This proposal is based on a research about the significance of social media on organizational marketing activities. The essence of the proposed research will be to determine the different ways in which the application of the social media as a marketing instrument is carried out within the context of organizations and determine how this process affects organizations in general. Hence this proposal provides a detailed framework of the nature of the proposed research and the methods and procedures that will be used to carry the research out. A discussion of the problem of the research, the context in which it will be carried out and the guiding paradigm assumptions is presented in this section. This is important because it provides a theoretical framework and background information that will be utilized in the course of conducting the research. The overall plans for the proposed research and the procedures that will be used to conduct the research are presented in the second section of this proposal. More so, details on how ethical issues will be managed in the course of the research and time that has been allocated for the specific activities of the research are provided in this section. The last section contains information about the limitations and delimitations that will be encountered and how these two issues will be managed. Research problem The need to carry out a research to determine the significance of social media in organizational marketing activities is informed by several factors. On one hand, professional interest in the field of marketing in general and how the manner in which organizations are carrying out their marketing activities is changing over the course of time, in particular, was one of the main factors that stimulated interest in this specific research topic. On the other hand, there are interesting perspectives about the subject upon which the research is based that emerge in academic literature as well as in practice. These are outlined briefly as follows. First, marketing is one of the main functions of organizations. Organizations rely on the marketing function for them to achieve their objectives and succeed in their markets. It is only when organizations can successfully sell their products and services to their customers in the market that they can be said to be operating successfully. For this to be achieved, organizations carry out specific activities as part of their overall marketing functions. These marketing communication activities that are carried out by organizations include the following; advertising, personal selling, personal selling, among others (Chikandiwa, 2013, p. 14). It is through marketing communication that companies are able to communicate the importance of the brand to their target markets. Hence, marketing communication is an important component of the overall marketing activities that organizations take to segment the market for their products, choose a specific target market and then position their products successfully so that the products are perceived to resonate to the needs and desires of the target market segment. Second, organizations carry out their marketing communication activities using different media. In the recent past, the social media has emerged as one of the most important media that organization use to communicate with their customers, both current and potential (Ghauri & Maqsood, 2011, p. 8). It is based on this realization that many companies have sought to develop social media marketing plans (Ghauri & Maqsood, 2011, p. 16). These are strategies that companies develop and expect to use to leverage on the rising popularity of the social media to achieve their marketing objectives. The essence is to use the many social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter and others to reach a larger audience of current and potential customers. From the foregoing, several key issues can be deduced. The first one is that the increasing use of social media may have negative as well as positive effect on companies. Whether companies benefit from usage of social media as a way of communicating with their customers and the market for their products and services in general depends on different factors (Charlesworth, 2014, p. 56). Hence, it is important that the specific ways in which the utilization of social media in marketing communication activities affects companies be evaluated. Relevant research contexts There are several groups of individuals who will be interested in the findings of the proposed research. These groups of individuals will form the stakeholders of the proposed research. The first group is the academic community. Essentially, this research will develop new knowledge about the different ways in which social media affects the marketing activities of organizations and whether or not this effect is beneficial to the organizations. It is important to note that there has been a considerable level of academic interest in the field of social media marketing. Researchers have sought to define what social media is and how best companies can use it to address their needs. However, the proposed research will focus on the interaction between social media and the marketing activities of companies. Hence, the findings of the proposed research will be important in that they will add a new dimension to the current literature about the relationship between social media and the marketing activities of companies. This is expected to stimulate further research in the subject. The second group of individuals that will benefit from the findings of the proposed research is made up of practitioners of marketing. Companies have their marketing departments which are charged with the responsibility of crafting and implementing the marketing strategies of the companies. The competitive nature of business makes it necessary for the marketing departments of companies to take advantage of new trends in marketing so that they can successfully differentiate their products. The results of the proposed study will offer a lucid understanding of how social media affects the marketing activities of organizations and whether this has a positive or negative effect on the organizations. Therefore, these findings will be of practical relevance to marketing practitioners. Apart from marketing executives in companies, the results of the proposed research will be beneficial to marketing professionals who work in marketing agencies. Such professionals are concerned with the need of helping their clients to benefit from the marketing activities that they propose that the companies use. By being aware of the significance of social media on organizations’ marketing activities, the proposed research will provide additional knowledge to marketing consultants. This will help the marketing consultants to deliver more value to their clients by taking advantage of knowledge about emerging trends in marketing. Brief literature review Studies have consistently identified the rise of the utilization of social media as the current trend in regard to how organizations conduct their marketing activities. For example, Pradiptarini (2011, p. 3) traces the development of social media starting with the launching of sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook in the early and mid-2000s. It is noted that following the emergence of these early sites, the number of users who are using them has been increasing tremendously (Pradiptarini, 2011, p. 4). Thus, the increase in the number of users has been the main force behind the development of new and diverse forms of social communication platforms. Similarly, Hajli (2014, p. 389) ties the rapid rise of social media to the development of new technological platforms. It is argued that the backbone of the rapid rise of social media is the development of Web 2.0 technologies (Hajli, 2014, p. 390). Web 2.0 is a form of internet technology that makes it possible for developers to develop online platforms that can be used to link up individuals. This has made it possible for individuals to collaborate with each other the more using online platforms. Paquette (2013, p. 4) explains the reasons as to why social media has gained acceptance in the field of marketing as one of the channels that are used to reach out to the market. It is argued that one of the forces behind this trend is the increasing number of people who spend most of their times online (Paquette, 2013, p. 5). As many individuals spend their time online, companies realize that it is only practical of them to use the different online platforms as a way of communicating with their customers and the general market. Hence, it can be seen that developments in technological capabilities and the rise of the popularity of social networking platforms have made it necessary for companies to adopt the social media as an important instrument of communicating with their current and potential customers. Another issue concerning the use of social media in the marketing activities of organizations that seems to have received considerable level of academic interest is the potential benefits that companies can get when they incorporate social media in their marketing strategies. Neti (2011, p. 4) argues that at the most basic level, companies stand to benefit from using social media in their marketing activities by reducing the overall costs that they use in their marketing activities and by getting more returns on the investment that they make in their marketing efforts. In the same vein, it has been pointed out that business organizations stand to gain a competitive advantage when they make use of social media to communicate to the markets of their products and services (Perdue, 2010, p. 7). The competitive advantage that organizations derive from using this strategy is a result of the trend that many consumers are nowadays using social media as a way of communicating and staying in touch with each other (Perdue, 2010, p. 13). Hence, companies can succeed in communicating to masses who are found in social media by adopting the right strategies that enable them to use specific social media platforms in ways that are most appropriate for them. From the foregoing, it can be seen that the bulk of the research work that has been done in the area of social media marketing is on how social media is actually used by companies to enhance their companies and the benefits that companies stand to benefit when they incorporate social media in their marketing activities. It is only in rare cases that the significance (positive and negative) of the application of social media for the marketing activities of the companies is examined. And even in cases where potential pitfalls of social media marketing are examined, the focus is on the extent to which companies can take advantage of the use of social media to gain a competitive advantage and not on the different ways in which the adoption of this very strategy can actually produce a net negative effect on companies. For example, Arca (2012, p. 33) shows how companies can benefit from social media marketing by leveraging on brand exposure and lead generation aspects of the process. The focus of the research is on how failure to analyze these aspects of social media marketing can make a company lose out on its potential benefits. In a similar fashion, Smith and Vardiabasis (2010, p. 194) argue that the ease with which companies can utilize social media marketing and reap the benefits of doing so depends on the size and nature of the business. It is argued that small companies, by virtue of their size and inherent flexibility, can effectively utilize social media marketing and benefit from doing so. It is based on these observations about the state of research in the field of social media marketing that the proposed research will be conducted. The essence of the proposed research will be to address an issue in the subject of social media marketing that has received relatively little attention yet it is of great importance to practitioners and academics alike. Paradigm guiding assumptions to be adopted The proposed research will be carried out using an interpretivist paradigm. There are several assumptions and principles of this type of research that will be used in the course of conducting the proposed research. These are outlined as follows. First, it is important to note that the interpretivist paradigm of research covers qualitative approach to research. The interpretivist approach to research is based on the need to understand the truth of an issue by examining it through the perspectives of different individuals (Horvat, 2015, n.pag; Merriam, 2009, p. 23). What this means is that under this paradigm, the truth is believed to be meaningful only when it is examined within a particular context. Therefore, the work of the researcher who is doing a research using this paradigm is to attempt to unravel the truth by reexamining the views and perceptions of others within different contexts. Thanh and Thanh (2015, p. 26) note that there is a clear connection between interpretivist paradigm of research and the use of qualitative methods. It is argued that by nature of its view of the reality, interpretivist paradigm makes it necessary for researchers to use qualitative methodologies when conducting their research (Thanh & Thanh, 2015, p. 27). This is contrary to what the case is when a researcher is using a positivist paradigm. In such a case, it becomes necessary for the researcher to use quantitative methods to conduct their studies. Therefore, in the case of the proposed research, the researcher will use document analysis as the method of conducting the research. The essence of qualitative document analysis method of research is that the researcher attempts to interpret documents that already exists (Beaudry & Miller, 2016, p. 86). There are two reasons for this. The first one is that this method will help the researcher to focus on analyzing and interpreting what has already been published in academic journals in regard to the subject of the research. The second reason is that this method ties well with the use of naturalistic methods in research studies that are carried out using the interpretivist paradigm. Research questions to be addressed The following questions will be used in the proposed research. 1. How does social media marketing affect the marketing activities of organizations? 2. Is the overall effect of social media marketing on the marketing activities of organizations positive or negative? It can be seen that two research questions will be used in the proposed research. These questions will underlie the overall approach that will be used in the research. On one hand, the specific effects of social media marketing on organizations will be determined. This will entail outlining the ways in which organizations use social media marketing activities to enhance their marketing communication activities. On the other hand, the proposed research will be concerned with evaluating the overall impact of social media marketing on the marketing activities of the organizations that use them. This means that the results of the research will be used to provide an answer to the question of what the net effect of using social media marketing on the marketing activities of organizations is. Research design Overall research plan The proposed research will be conducted in the form of four main steps. The four main steps of the research process will be interrelated in that the results of a preceding step will feed into the needs of the step that follows it. Further, the four steps are defined by the main activities that will be carried out in the course of conducting the research. The sequence of events that represent the steps of the research and how these will be carried out in the course of conducting the proposed research are briefly described as follows. The first step of the process of conducting the proposed research will be literature search. Essentially, this stage will include all the activities that the researcher will undertake to search for literature that will be used in the subsequent stages of the research. It should be noted that this will be a critical stage of the research process. The reasons for this are obvious. In the first place, the nature of the proposed research means that the researcher will only use documents that already exist. This is in contrast with what the situation is when other research approaches are used in which case the researcher seeks to obtain primary data from the field. Therefore, important consideration will be taken to ensure that only the documents that are relevant to the topic of the research are selected. Further, the process of searching for documents will be facilitated by the use of keywords and other phrases that represent the main topic of the research which is the consequence of the use of social media on the organizational marketing activities. Using this approach, databases and search engines will be used. The researcher will then survey all the documents that will be found and only pick those which will be deemed relevant to the research. The second step of the research process is document analysis. At this stage, the researcher will analyze all the documents that would have been selected in the first step of the process. The aim of analyzing the documents will be to determine what the opinion of researchers is in relation to the subject of the research. Hence the document analysis process will be carried out within the framework of the two questions that will be used in the proposed research. In addition to this, the process of analyzing the documents will be done in such a manner that the researcher will be able to address new issues that may emerge in the course of the research. Thus, the researcher will seek to read and re-read all the documents that will have been selected. The process of reading and interpreting the documents is meant to enable the researcher to identify specific issues that are pointed out by the other researchers in relation to the topic of the research. Further, the reading and re-reading is meant to help the researcher to be open to any new ideas that may emerge in the course of the research. The third step of the research process will be interpretation. At this stage, the findings from the reading of the documents that would have been carried out at the analysis stage will be used to provide insights into the issue under investigation. The main approach that the researcher will use at this stage will be to see how the insights gained from the documents can be used to interpret the main purpose of the proposed research. The researcher will, thus, rely on the two research questions when interpreting the results from the document analysis stage. It will be necessary to interpret the results, therefore, in terms of what has been found out to be the different ways that the use of social media affects the marketing activities of organizations and whether these effects have a negative or positive effect on the organizational marketing activities in general. The last steps of the research process will be to present the findings of the entire process. The researcher will present the results of the research process as a research paper. The focus will be on presenting the results in such a manner that the main aim of the research as well as the questions of the research is adequately answered. Managing ethical issues Ethical issues will be important in the course of conducting the proposed research. This will be the case even though in the research, the actual process of collecting data from participants, which is usually associated with ethical considerations in results, will not be undertaken. Therefore, as Lindorff (2007, p. 21) notes, ethical considerations are evident in any form of research and they should be treated with utmost importance. Hence, the following is an outline of the ethical issues that will be taken into consideration in the course of conducting the proposed research. The first ethical issue that will be taken into consideration is related to accessing material that is stored in digital archives. By its nature, the proposed research will make it necessary for the researcher to access different types of digital archives. This will be one of the main ways in which the researcher will be able to gain access to different types of academic articles that have been published. Although this is a common practice, there are several issues that are important and should, therefore, be taken into consideration. According to Grinyer (2009, p. 3), one of the main ethical issues at hand in relation to accessing digital archives is the need for the researchers to make sure that the materials that are used are not de-contextualized. Another ethical issue that is pointed out is the need to follow all the ethical codes of conduct that have been put in place to guide the use of digital archives (Law, 2005, p. 6). In this case, the researcher will ensure that the ethical protocols that are in place are taken into consideration and that the material collected from digital archives is utilized in the most appropriate manner. The second ethical issue that will be taken into consideration in the course of conducting the proposed research is related to the manner in which the results of the research would be of significance to its target. The research will be conducted to determine the different ways in which social media affects the marketing activities of organizations and whether this has a positive or negative impact on organizations in general. There will be different groups of individuals who will be interested in the findings of the research. These groups of individuals will form the different contextual groups for the findings of the research. It will, therefore, be the duty of the researcher to make sure that the study meets the expectations of its different target groups. To do this, the researcher will have to ensure that the findings that will be presented in the final research paper present new perspectives of the issue under consideration and that the findings are beneficial to the target groups. The third ethical issue is about validity and reliability in the proposed research. In theory, it can be seen that the issue of validity and reliability in research are important in qualitative research as much as they are important in quantitative research (Golafshani, 2003, p. 601). Validity in qualitative research is regarded as the extent to which the methodologies and approaches that have been used in a research are trustworthy (Golafshani, 2003, p. 602). On the other hand, reliability in qualitative research is regarded as the overall level of quality in the entire research (Golafshani, 2003, p. 603). Since these issues are important, it is ethical that a researcher takes them into consideration and ensures that they are fulfilled in a research. It is in light of this that in the proposed research, the researcher will seek to strengthen reliability and validity. This will be mainly done by use of triangulation. Triangulation is an approach in research in which different methods are used to minimize the possibility of errors and improve the overall level of quality of the research (Flick, 2009, p. 445). In this case, different types of sources and data will be used to conduct the research. By doing so, the researcher will ensure that adequate and varied information is used to help provide answers to the research questions. Timeline and resources for the project The following table indicates how the research will be conducted over the allocated timeframe. The plan is based on the four distinctive stages of the proposed research as follows: literature search, document analysis, document interpretation and findings presentation. Research Stage Wk 1 Wk 2 Wk 3 Wk 4 Wk 5 Wk 6 Wk 7 Wk 8 Wk 9 Wk 10 Document search Document analysis Document interpretation Findings presentation There are several things that should be borne in mind in relation to this timeline. The first one is that although the timeline appears to indicate that the proposed research will be conducted in a completely linear manner, this may not be the case when the research is actually conducted. Specific activities will be conducted at every one of the four stages of the research process. However, it should be noted that the researcher may be required to revisit previous stages of the research. This may be made necessary when the researcher discovers new knowledge or material that may have been omitted in the preceding stages of the research. Therefore, the research process will not be linear but rather flexible enough to accommodate changes that may be required to be implemented in the process. The second important issue is that by its nature, the research will not require a lot of financial resources. In practice, research studies that entail the process of collecting primary data from participants usually require a high amount of resources. This is the case since the researcher has to cover the costs of collecting data from the participants, whether this is done via interviews or surveys, and processing the data. Since these activities will not be carried out in the proposed research, it can be seen that less resources will be required. Nevertheless, accessing different materials and processing the findings of the research will entail usage of a considerable amount of resources. Strengths and limitations of the proposal Finally, the following is an outline of the strengths and limitations of this proposal. Strengths To start with, the proposal provides a detailed methodological framework that will be used to conduct the proposed research. It can be seen that the proposed research will be conducted using the qualitative methodology under the interpretivist paradigm. The proposal provides details on the reasons as to why this approach is appropriate for the proposed research. It also provides information on how this approach will be the used by the researcher in order to respond to the research questions using the qualitative document analysis method. Hence, the essence of the proposal is the argument that an interpretivist paradigm is the most appropriate one for use in the proposed research in order for the main purpose of the research to be achieved. Secondly, proposal provides a detailed outline of the research plan and methodological procedures that will be used to conduct the proposed research. In the proposal, the research process is divided into four distinctive stages and each stage has been allocated a specific length of time. This approach is important for two main reasons. First, it provides a basic framework that will guide the activities of the researcher. Two, it takes into consideration the need for possible changes in the sequence of events that will be undertaken as part of the research. Allowing for flexibility in the manner in which the research will be carried out is important because it corresponds to the requirements of the methodologies and processes that are used when conducting a research using qualitative document analysis method. In this case, the researcher will be free to move forwards and backwards in the course of conducting the research. This provision will allow the researcher to address any new issue that may emerge in the course of the research process. The third strength of this proposal is that it provides a clear contextualization of the research. Contextualization of the research is done in several ways. First, by providing a brief review of literature that is related to the subject of the study, the proposal has placed the proposed research within the context of other studies. The legitimacy of the study has been shown to arise from the observation that very few studies have actually addressed the issue that the proposed study is set to address in the specified perspective. Second, the specific target groups for the research are identified. These are groups of individuals who will be interested in the findings of the study for various reasons. By providing these details, the proposal helps to contextualize the research within practice and the academia. Limitations The main limitation in the proposal is that criteria that are to be use to determine when the information collected is sufficient are not provided. It is left to the discretion of the researcher to determine the amount of information that will be sufficient to provide meaningful answers to the research questions. 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