The Impact Of Social Media On Customer Purchasing: A Case Study Of Australia

Objective and scope of the project

Discuss about the Impact of Social Media Advertisement on Purchasing Behaviour of Consumers: A Case Study of the Fashion Industry in Australia.

This research paper will demonstrate the impact of social media on customer purchasing by taking the case study of Australia. Advertisements have the ability to educate the customers and make them aware towards the products for which they may desire. With the help of social media networking sites the customers can compare the prices of the commodities which facilitate them to get affordable price. The project objective and scope have been defined in an efficient manner so that the purpose of the paper can be cleared. The research methodology is the important section of this research will help to define that from where data has been collected to make the research. Research plan and limitations will be elaborated effectively.

The project objective of this research is to focus on making detail information about the social media advertisements on the customer behavior towards purchasing the products. Another objective is to define the methods in an appropriate manner of collection of data.

The scope of the research is considered as huge because it has the wide concept in which it can be used by the researcher in further research. The research will help the potential organization, reader and researcher to understand the use of social media advertisements for increasing the sales.

According to Si, (2016), the use of social media is increased day by day as a number of customers all over the world rely on the online services to buy different kinds of products. It is because the social media platforms provide them a several options to opt the products and services at affordable rate. The retailers of a company have developed digital marketing and social networking to reach potential customers in an effective way by using online retailing (Australian Communications and Media Authority, 2011). On the customers have initiates making more research on social sites to compare the same products before making online buying. It has been found in the previous assignment that most people of Australia have used Facebook and YouTube. As per Shafigullina and Palyakin, (2016),  the process of customers a behavioral pattern at the time of purchasing goods and services in which they earlier search cues of latest fashion for rewarding their requirements in setting their perceptions. It has been analyzed that the businesses that are an insufficient strategy to reach their customers are considered as the ones who endure bottleneck in industry. It is not possible that the customers without attaining knowledge about the products and services buy the products. It is vital for the business to have the accessibility and transparency of information that impacts the decision making process of customers and that is why the fashion industry requires to evaluate the concerns and gaps between their customers and the recent prospects (Siricharoen, 2012). 

Importance of social media advertising

It has been discussed earlier that the companies that have a better understanding of the power of advertising latest fashion in relation to the social networking sites. These companies have gained the unexpected buyer making online purchases. It is vital for the fashion industry of Australia to satisfy its customers by providing them latest fashion in their products (Australia Post, 2017). When the experiences of the customer are inefficient towards the products and services, their choice develops into devaluates and thus the customer initiates making substitute searches and other choices for potential buying (Quick and hall, 2015). It has been analyzed that the advertisements made on Facebook refer more response in Australia in comparison to any other social sites because it permits sharing ideas by comments and likes which is able to make brand famous. It impacts the customer behaviors and makes them ware about the latest trends, on the other hand, latest brands can bring the concern for them who have not capacity to buy latest trends because in such case they have to face degradation in the view point of a society that may influence their social activities. According to Oyza & Edwin, (2015), it is vital for brands to handle both the separate features at the time of creating social media marketing to get feedback from consumers in an affirmative manner. It is necessary for the retailers of the fashion industry In Australia to advertise the products related to the fashion on social sites by keeping consideration of the customer behaviour (Solomon, et. al., 2014) .

The research question for this research is defined below:

• What is the role of social media advertising on the buying behavior of customers?
• What factors are required to be considered at the time of selecting social networking platforms to advertise the products?
• Is social networking impacted the social status of the people of Australia?

Hypothesis

• Social media advertisements have a positive impact on the consumer behavior in the fashion industry.
• Social media advertisements affected the reputation of the customers adversely

This section has huge importance in the research as it contains the various methods from where the data is collected.

Research method

There are numbers of research methods available that can be used by the researcher to implement the research but for this research, the qualitative and quantitative research method has opted. Both data are appropriate to gather the information about the research topic (Sekaran and Bougie, 2016) 

Research approach

The qualitative approach facilitates to collect the data by enhancing knowledge of concepts behind the research topic. Along with that the primary and secondary sources have been selected in which research paper, journal articles and information available on the internet is used to accumulate the information (Smith, 2015).

Data collection

Data collection is facilitated to gather the effective information about the research topic for executing the program in an effective manner. The primary source is facilitated to gather the information directly from the respondents. It is helpful to provide the current information and quick answer by the respondents. The questionnaire has been made to get a quick response from the respondents in which ten questions are being prepared to analyze the consumer behavior of purchasing products through online sites. On the other hand, the secondary sources of data are collected from those articles or research paper that have already used by other researcher or others to conduct the research or another purpose (Churchill and Iacobucci, 2006).

Data collection methods

Sampling size

It is a challenge for the researcher to analyze the large quantity data within short span of time. Random sampling technique has been chosen for analysis the collected data because it facilitates to provide equal opportunity to the selected people and evaluation has been done on the opted samples. 

Research strategy

It is vital for the researcher to complete research program within the time frame. The research should be conducted in a proper manner to attain the goal. A systematic approach is being opted to this research in which will facilitate the implementation of each activity of the research in systematic or sequential manner. This has outcome into entailing each part without skip omitting important activity (Vigneron and Johnson, 2017).

Targeted market

It is vital for the research to set the target where information regarding the research is to be gathered. The researcher has chosen the primary sources as well as the secondary sources as the combination of this research. The questionnaire has been made to gather the data of primary data. Secondary sources are gathered from the journal articles and the sources from the internet for making sure the reliability articles.

Ethical consideration

Ethics values and principles are considered on top priority at the time of executing the research program. The main aim of this research is to gather the information in fair manner without being bias and maintaining the confidentiality of the collected data so that the trust of people can be maintained in an efficient way.

At the time of the execution of the plan, several issues have chosen as a limitation and influenced the implementation process of the research program. These limitations are described below:

• Limited availability of the time is the biggest challenge for this research that is why random sampling technique has opted.
• Lack of access is another limitation of this research which may impact the implementation of the research.
• Lack of resources is a limitation of this research because different sort of resources are required for the execution of the research

Serial no.	Activities	Initiation date	Duration (days)	Completion date	Description
1)	Selection of the research topic	18 May 2018	2	20 May 2018	The topic will be chosen for the research
2)	Creating research plans	21 May 2018	4	24 May 2018	Plans will be created within time frame for the research.
3)	Implementation of the created plans	25 May 2018	5	29 May 2018	Plans will be made as per the created plan
4)	Data collection techniques	30 May 2018	3	1 June 2018	Data collection method will opt for the implementation of research.
5)	Analysis of the selected data	2 June 2018	3	4 June 2018	Data will be analyzed in this time frame.
6)	Explanation of results	5 June 2018	2	7 June 2018	Results will be drawn from the analyzed information.
7)	Conclusion and recommendations	8 June 2018	1	9 June 2018	The conclusion will be drawn as per the analyzed and interpreted data.

Conclusion

From the above discussion on the research topic, it can be concluded that the importance of social media advertising has increased all over the world that attracts a number of customers towards purchasing the products by online. The research methodology helped researcher to gather the data in an effective manner by keeping consideration of the research ethics in an appropriate way. Primary and secondary sources are being opted to conduct the research and action time plan has been made to maintain the sequence of the activities.

References

Australia Post, 2017. Inside Australian Online Shopping. [Online] Available at: https://acquire.startrack.com.au/pdf/Inside%20Australian%20Online%20Shopping%202017.pdf [Accessed 24 April 2018].

Australian Communications and Media Authority, 2011. Communications report 2010–11 series Report 1—E-commerce marketplace in Australia:Online shopping. [Online] Available at: https://workspace.unpan.org/sites/internet/documents/B6AU11%20E-commerce%20Marketplace%20in%20Australia%20Online%20Shopping.pdf [Accessed 24 April 2018].

Churchill, G.A. and Iacobucci, D., 2006. Marketing research: methodological foundations. New York: Dryden Press.

Oyza, I. and Edwin, A. M., 2015. Effectiveness of Social Media Networks as a Strategic Tool for Organizational Marketing Management.  Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce.

Quick, J. and Hall, S., 2015. Part three: The quantitative approach”,Journal of perioperative practice, vol. 25, no. 10, pp. 192

Sekaran, U. and Bougie, R., 2016. Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Shafigullina, A. and Palyakin, R., 2016. Social Media Marketing as an Effective Instrument of the Promotion of Social Business-Project in Social Entrepreneurial Activity.  Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 20, pp.1–7.

Si, S., 2016. Social Media and Its Role in Marketing. Business and Economics Journal.

Siricharoen, W. V., 2012. Social Media, How does it Work for Business?. International Journal of Innovation, Management and Technology, Vol. 3, No. 4.

Smith, N.L., 2015. Using Action Design Research to Research and Develop Evaluation Practice. New Directions for Evaluation, vol. 2015, no. 148, pp. 57-72.

Solomon, M.R., Dahl, D.W., White, K., Zaichkowsky, J.L. and Polegato, R., 2014. Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being (Vol. 10). Pearson.

Vigneron, F. and Johnson, L.W., 2017. Measuring perceptions of brand luxury. In Advances in Luxury Brand Management(pp. 199-234). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.