Impact of Social Media on Brand Awareness in the Commercial Banking Sector of Developing Country (GC01524)
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.0 Research objectives:
- To analyze the usefulness of social media as a marketing tool in the business of developing countries
- To analyze how brand awareness contributes to the business of developing countries
- To analyze the impact of social media on brand awareness in developing countries.
- To analyze the impact of social media on brand awareness in the commercial banking sector of developing countries
- To provide recommendations for the marketers in developing countries in using social media to improve brand awareness among customers
1.2 Research questions
- How does social media as a marketing tool useful in the business of developing countries?
- How does brand awareness contribute to the business of developing countries?
- How does social media influence brand awareness in developing countries?
- How does social media affect brand awareness in the commercial banking sector of developing countries?
- How the marketers in developing countries can use social media more effectively to improve brand awareness among customers?
Chapter 2: Literature Review
2.1 Social Media
2.1.1 Definition of Social Media
In today’s generation, social media has become an integral part of our life. Safko, (2015) stated that social media can be defined as an electronic communication form by which the users mainly communicate and share their information, data, interests and messages with others in a community they have created. Hyder (2016) defined that, social media as collections of communication channels that operates through using the internet and are determined for inputs, interactions, sharing of contents based on community and association of many users. According to Kerpen (2014), social media is the technology that works through the computer and their main activities are to facilitate the formation and share of the contents, data, and personal interests through association and networks that created virtually. Nicole and Ellison (2013) stated that social media is a platform that offers their users an easy and simple communication process through which they can share their messages, ideas and the creation of many contents. These contents involve photos, videos, images and writings. Social media is a very strong communication platform and has the capability to share any kind of message or content from any part of the world as long as the sharer and the sender have social media accounts.
On the other hand, Bo Fu, and Declan, (2015) suggested that social media is a virtual network where the user can not only share their creation or thoughts, they can search for information or further options for careers and products they want to buy. Nowadays, social media is not only used for communication, it is also used for marketing. Marketers share their product details on social media. The customers can directly buy or communicate with the marketers for placing an order through social media. Dijck, (2003) divided social media definition into two parts. First, he defined the “social” part as interaction with other people by sharing messages, photos or videos. Then he defined the “media” part as a tool for communication made by the people. Dijck, (2003) combined that definition and stated that social media is a communication instrument that uses the internet and makes people enable to establish interaction with each other by exchanging information.
Lan (2016) recommended that social media is an online system where the users have to create an account in order to share their personal information with others. As the system works based on the internet, the users can share their information and messages sitting from any part of the world. On the other hand, Solis (2010) stated that social media’s default setting gives the capability to their user to share their opinion through the comment section and review section. If they like others shared things they can like the content with just a click of a mouse or finger on the smartphone (Nicole and Ellison, 2013). If they don’t like the content they can also report to the online social community in order to block them from spreading hateful information or contents. This modern generation is highly dependent on social media. Social media is a platform where anybody can share their opinions or thoughts through different ways like writing, making videos and taking photos (Acquisti and Alessandro, 2009).
2.1.2 Technology behind the social media
With the development of modern technology almost every people in this world owns a laptop or smartphone which have access to the internet (Weiser, 2000). Only a few years ago, people had to use a personal computer or PC to do their work on the internet. However, the advancement of technology has made it possible to bring the world under one fingertip of human beings through smartphones (Muise, 2009). Moreover, social media has made people’s life easier and simpler. To use social media, one just only requires a smartphone or laptop with access to the internet.
Now, most of the people of this world are present in at least one social media or social networking site (Horton, 2009). Social media use 2.0 technologies in their system. There are about 300 social networking sites present at this moment. Among them, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ etc. are most commonly used by people all over the world (Raacke, 2011). According to research, about 35% of adults have social media accounts.
In the case of teenagers or young adults, studies show that they are active about 65% of them are active in multiple social networking sites. About 75% of them are active or have an account on at least one social media site (European Union, 2011). To manage these millions of users all over the world, social media use open soft wares and thousands of servers (Roos, 2017). The most commonly used social or website stack to manage social media is called LAMP. LAMP is the acronym for the Linux operating system, the Apache HTTP Server, the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), and the PHP programming language (Rouse, 2017). For example, LinkedIn, Twitter and my space all use Linux. On the other hand, Facebook uses F5 Big-IP which is mainly originated from Linux and considered a family of Linux-based applications (Lan, 2016). In the case of using a web server, all of the social media prefer Apache HTTP Server. However, LinkedIn adds Sun ONE Web Servers with Apache HTTP Server to have better performance. However, though social media use the open-source software, they are not available to their users (Roush, 2005).
To use social media through the phone, one has to own a smartphone. The smartphone is considered a handheld computer. Unlike the “basic phone” which only enables the user to call and send text messages, a smart phone enables the user to have extensive computing capabilities through third-party software application (Leng et al. 2011). This software is available in the app store. Unlike the “basic phone” smartphones give the user access to high-speed internet by using mobile broadband LTE (long term evolution) and Wi-Fi (Barnes et al. 2003).
The smartphones have many mobile operating systems like android, iOS, Tizen, Microsoft, Sailfish OS, Blackberry OS, Firefox OS and so on (Chhajed, 2015). Among them, the most commonly used mobile operating systems are Android and iOS. Android was founded by Andy Rubin and iOS is the product of Apple Inc. Most of the mobile operating systems are based on Linux-based open-source background which enables the mobile to use many kinds of applications including Social Medias (Nicole and Ellison, 2013). Due to the evolution of modern technology, many companies have launched smartphones at very affordable prices. Therefore, whether the user is from a developing country or developed country, they can have a smartphone of their own and they can use social media from any part of the world (Ploderer et al. 2011).
2.1.3 Evolution of social media
The era of social media started with phreaking in the 1950s to the early 1990s. The term phreaking is the word “freak” with ‘ph’ which refers to phones or different kinds of audio frequencies to manipulate the phone system (Dickey et al., 2008). Phreaks or phreakers are the people who participate in phreaking. Phreaking is the slang term of the acts of people’s culture who studied, experimented or explored the telecommunication system that was connected to public telephone networks (Dorbian, 2010). Phreaks mainly reversed engineered the tone system which routed the long-distance calls. In this activity of phreaking, they recreated the tones to switch the call from the handset and do a free call to others (Ellison et al., 2011). Phone phreaking mainly got started in the late 1950s in the US. The phreaks usually spent a lot of time to understand the main function of the telephone. They listened to the patterns of the telephone called tones to know how the calls were routed. They read the technical journals of the telephone company and learned how to impersonate the telephone operators and spent a lot of time digging the trashed of the telephone company to find any secret documents (Dickey et al., 2008).
Phreaking is compared to the current day’s computer hacking. Taking inspiration from the first phreaks Engressia and Draper, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, later on, founded the company Apple which launched the iPhone of current days (Ellison et al., 2011). The phreakers were the earliest social media explorers who built electronic boxes that could generate free calls. After the phreaking era, The Bulletin Board system started in 1979 to 1995 (Dickey et al., 2008). Ward Christensen first developed and opened the Bulletin Board in public in the year of 1979. The bulleting board is one kind of server that was used through PCs and required a modem to dial and get access (Goldsborough, 2009). Through this bulletin board, the users could download or upload software and could interchange messages and emails but first, they had to log in first (Dorbian, 2010)…………….
2.1.4 reasons why people love to use social media
Using social media has become a very common activity in our daily life routine. Whether to use social media for business or pleasure, people will open their accounts of social media every day at least once (Solis, 2015). Before using social media for business purposes, the users open their accounts for their personal purpose. Everyone wants a platform where they can be a part of a community or can express their thoughts or opinion freely (Hyder, 2016). There are many reasons why people love to use social media very much. They are given below:
People want to be a part of the community
Human is a social being. Nobody wants to live alone. Although in this modern and advanced generation everybody leads a very busy life where they rarely have the “me” time. However, when people get time from their work, they want to become a part of society or community. Therefore, they join clubs, churches or other religious groups (Hyder, 2016). Social media give their user the capability to become a part of the community through virtual life which is not made based on any dictated space or location (Leng et al. 2011). These communities neither have any boundary nor any specific requirements from the users. As there are many social media platforms, people can be part of many communities at once. These virtual communities give a sense of family and unity (Muise, 2009).
People want to extend their community
On social media, there are many communities that also exist in the real world. Like a group of people who loves anime or church group who exist in the real world, also have their community in the virtual world via social media (Nicole and Ellison, 2013). The reason behind existing in both worlds is they want to spread their interests and they want to extend their community with the people with whom they cannot meet or be physically together (Leng et al. 2011).
People want to reconnect with their once known one
Social media is a very big platform. In this generation, almost every person use social media for various purpose like communication, amusement, business and so on. However, when Facebook was launched by Mark Zuckerberg, their main purpose was to reconnect people with their known one through their site (Roos, 2017). People all over the world can find the persons once they lived with or read with school or college. Bo Fu and Declan, (2015) suggested that social media makes their user able to create memories with their known people and share them online to search and reconnect with them……………..
Full Documents Click Download Button
