Social Media Marketing as a Tool to Affect Brand Awareness in the Retail Industry of UK (GC01520)
Acknowledgment
Firstly, I thanks to our God as well as thanks to my dearest father and mother for their sacrifice as well as support in my life. I would like to express thanks to my supervisor at London Southbank University who supports me in different situations. His guidelines advice and suggestions make me more confident to complete my research work. The supervisor was very friendly and had a helpful mind. Secondly I l would like to thank the respondents who were the most important part of the research. Without free consent, I could not complete my research work. Therefore, I again thanked them for sharing with me the relevant information about my topic. I also thankful the participants for creating their valuable time and consent to me that helped me strongly to complete my research. Lastly; I would like to give thanks to the publishers of secondary sources like books, journals, and websites that applied to my research. The librarians at London Southbank University hold better friendly mind and they also helped me in various ways.
Abstract
This study aims to analyze the impact of social media marketing on brand awareness in the perspective of UK retailers including Morrison. Then, the study aims to provide recommendations for the UK retailers including Morrison so that they can use social media more effectively to improve their brand awareness among the target and potential customers. The objectives of this study are: To evaluate different marketing communication models and theories used for increasing brand awareness among customers; To understand the significance of brand awareness for the UK retailers including Morison; To understand the significance of social media users in the UK retail sector; To analyze the impact of social media as a marketing tool on the brand awareness in case of UK retail sector; To provide suggestions for the UK retailers including Morrison so that they can use social media more effectively to improve their brand awareness among the target and potential customers
In this research, the researcher has been applied pragmatism philosophy. The researcher has been applied descriptive and explanatory research design for completing the research. The researcher also has been collected both the primary and secondary information from various reliable sources. The researcher has been mentioned various literature views as secondary information and used a survey, an interview for collecting primary data. The researcher has been selected a sample of 100 customers of Morrison to evaluate the impact of social media on brand awareness. Among 16 questions, 15 open-ended questions were included and 1 close-ended was included in the questionnaire.
From the finding of this study it has cleared that brand awareness is an important concept in the business field. Most of the participants replied that the customers brand awareness helps to select a good brand before purchasing of goods and services. The participants also mentioned that the business firms need to apply various types of marketing media like social media for increasing brand awareness of the upcoming customers. The primary and secondary data reveals that social media as a tool of marketing plays an important role in the improvement of the brand awareness of the customers.
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.0 Introduction
Brand awareness is an important concept in the business field. The customers brand awareness is the main factor for the customers to select a good brand before purchase the desirable goods and services (Kapferer, 2017). The business firms also faces new challenges for improving the brand image for attracting the customers (Kotler et al., 2014). For increasing brand awareness of the upcoming customers, most of the business firms are applying various types of marketing media like social media includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. Social media play an important role in the improvement of the brand awareness of the customers. Most of the times, Social media has positive effect on the brand awareness of the customers but sometimes it has negative effects (Dragon, 2016). After all, the use of social media is increasing day by day by the business organization for increasing brand awareness of the potential customers.
1.1 Background
Brand awareness can be defined as the consumer response on the brand that depends on the quality of the products and services. It is the day of competition and business firm can’t exist without better image of brand (Miller, 2017). At present, it is the challenge for the every organization to build a good brand and also increase the brand awareness of the potential customers (Palmer, 2016). Wright (2016) mentioned various factors are affected the brand image and brand awareness of the potential customers. The most important factor is the quality of products and service of the brand. Therefore, business organization takes necessary steps to improve the overall conditions of the quality of products and services. Ali (2018) mentioned that better brand awareness helps to share positive response on the products and services. Busche (2017) suggested that brand awareness is the most vital factor to survive in this digital market world.
Therefore, marketers are applying and using various types of digital marketing media for improving the brand image as well as brand awareness of the potential customers. According to Kawasaki (2016), social media can be regarded as a media over the internet that used as social platform to interaction among various people. Social media includes various types of social sites that include Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn etc. Quesenbery (2017) mentioned that Social media helps to increase the visual content of the products and services that increase the brand image as well as brand awareness of the customers. For this reason; marketers use social media as a marketing channel for increasing the brand awareness of the customers.
1.2 Research rationale
Morrison is one of the largest retailers in the UK. This company has 16.9% of the market share of the UK capital market. This company is now applying the It different social media for improving the brand awareness of their customers as well as potential customers. The follower of Morrison in the Facebook page has more than 850,000 likes, The follower of Morrison in the Twitter has more than 110,000. Already, Morrison has sold out their products and services 330,000 followers through using Tweets in the Twitter (Stone, 2013).
At present, Morrison has applied the LinkedIn as a marketing channel for improving their brand image and brand awareness of the customers. Morrison has already able to connect more than 2 million customers through using social media. Morrison has already created relationship with YouTube bloggers like Zoella, Hannah Maggs, Alfie Deyes, and Tanya for sharing their product’s information to the potential customers. UK’s Mum’s Eye View channel encourages its viewers to its brand. Morrison has already made a contract with Mum’s Eye View channel to advertise their products and services to the audiences.
These YouTube channels and TV as well as other social media have more than million viewers. Only channel of Mum’s Eye View has more than 10 million viewers in one year (Groceries.morrisons.com, 2019) Form this data, it is cleared that Morrison is trying to attract more than million of potential customers that helps to increase the brand awareness of the target customers. This paper aims to identify the effect of social media to improve the brand awareness of the customers. Social media plays a vital role in the development of customers’ awareness about brand and brand development (Blanchard, 2016).
In these days of competition; the necessity of social media for developing the brand awareness of the customers can’t be ignored. Lardi (2016) stated that through using social media, the information about something specially the products and services has been spread to millions of users very rapidly ‘just for one click’. That’s why; this paper identifies the positive and negative effect of social media marketing on brand awareness of the customers
1.3 Research Problem
The main competitors of Morrison are Aldi, Lidl and Tesco, Sainsbury. Morrison Annual Report (2016) noted that due to this competition, the amount of sales of Morrison decreased by 5.8% in 2015). The main reason behind of these low sales is the competitive price in the market of Sainsbury and Tesco. These companies set a relatively lower price of products and services than the price of Morrison. That’s why; it negatively affected the selling amount of Morrison. It has also found that the score of Morrison’s ‘Index’ was decreased by 2.8 points (Aaker, 2016). At present, the position Morrison is behind Tesco and Sainsbury. For this reason, it is the challenge for the Morrison to overcome this situation and again build a strong position in the market. There, Morrison is taking various marketing strategies to recover their brand image and increase the brand awareness of the customers (Alhaddad, 2015).
Among these strategies, social media marketing is one of them. However, Morrison faces a number of challenges to maintain its brand reputation via social media marketing. This research paper is identified the main effect of social media marketing on brand awareness of customers in the retail industry including Morrison. Miller (2017) described that social media marketing has great role to develop customers’ awareness about brand and brand development. The necessity of social media for developing the brand awareness of the customers can’t be ignored at all. Ali (2018) noted that through using social media, the products and services information has been spread to millions of users very rapidly just for one click. Thus, this paper identifies the effect of social media marketing on the brand awareness of customers.
1.4 Research Aims and Objectives
Aims
Social media as marketing tool is now widely used by UK retailers to increase their brand awareness among the target and potential customers. This is why this study aims to analyze the impact of social media marketing on brand awareness in the perspective of UK retailers including Morrison. Then, the study aims to provide recommendations for UK retailers including Morrison so that they can use social media more effectively to improve their brand awareness among the target and potential customers…………
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