An Exploration of the Effect of Social Media in Developing Integrated Marketing Communications by Some Selected Firms in Bangladesh - a Study on Facebook

...

Since VBCs depend on individual users’ participation, both group unity and awareness can strengthen users’ participation, both group unity and awareness can strengthen users’ satisfaction with a VBC (Casaló, Favián and Guinalíu 2008). The study done by Casaló, Favián and Guinalíu (2008) demonstrates the powerful sway VBC and an online interaction between consumers can have on their buying behavior, satisfaction with a VBC (Casaló, Favián and Guinalíu 2008). The study done by Casaló, Favián and Guinalíu (2008) demonstrates the powerful sway VBC and an online interaction between consumers can have on their buying behavior, satisfaction with a VBC (Casaló, Favián and Guinalíu 2008). The study done by Casaló, Favián and Guinalíu (2008) demonstrates the powerful sway VBC and an online interaction between consumers can have on their buying behavior.

The potential power and scope of opportunity provided by social media platforms comes with a whole set of new purposes for the marketing practitioner and researcher alike and has become an integral part of marketing strategy. The ways in which Social Media has created a global, interactive, user-driven space where the fundamental principles of mass communication are less relevant, means that marketing communications are redefined and new approaches to trusted, traditional marketing practices must be proposed, trialled, tested and shared (Winer 2009).

Subjective evidence from market research reports suggests that firms use Social Media, to build direct relationships with customers, increase traffic to their website, identify new business opportunities, identify trends and keep up with competitors, create communities, distribute content, demonstrate product, collect feedback from customers and generally to support their brand (Barnes 2010; Breslauer & Smith 2009). Chu (2011) examined the link between Facebook brand related group participation, advertising responses, and the psychological factors of self-disclosure and attitudes among members and non-members of Facebook groups. The study determined that users who are members of groups on Facebook are more likely to disclose their personal data than non-members are. Chu (2011) explains group participation and engagement with online ads requires a higher level of personal information because users openly reveal their connections with Facebook groups and promote brands or products when they pass on ads to their friends. “Facebook groups provide channels that consumers deem useful when seeking self-status in a product category, as does passing on viral content about brands to their social contacts” (Chu 2011, 40).

Chu (2011) also found that users who are Facebook group members maintain a more favorable attitude toward social media and advertising. Users who have more positive attitudes toward advertising are more likely to join a brand or a retailer’s Facebook group to receive promotional messages. Based on this result, Chu (2011) suggests that a link exists between consumers’ use of and engagement in group applications on a social media sites. The relationship between consumers’ use of and engagement with group applications influences the rate and effectiveness of advertising on social media, particularly Facebook. Generally, as Chu (2011) notes, Facebook’s college-aged users have the most favorable attitudes toward social media advertising and are the largest growing demographic, which suggests that social media sites are a potentially rich platform for online advertising campaigns, especially for companies with a younger target market.

Cox (2010) also investigated the correlation between age and attitude and found that social network user attitude toward online advertising formats (i.e. blogs, video, and brand channel or page) differed to some extent across age groups. She explains that users who fall in the 18-28 age brackets had strong positive attitudes towards blogs, video, and brand channel ad formats. This was because users’ found these ad formats to be eye catching, informative, and amusing. The 35-54 age groups preferred ad formats on video and brand channels because they found them to be more eye catching, informative, and had better placement within the online page layout. Overall, online advertising formats with positive attributes are welcomed by users; however, ads that are intrusive or interfere with online social networking activities, such as pop up, expandable, or floating formatted ads were disliked by network users (Cox 2010).

Social media marketing is a part of E- marketing. There are a lot of journals and research can be found on this. Electronic marketing can be viewed as a new philosophy and a modern business practice involved with the marketing of goods, services, information and ideas via the internet and other electronic means. By reviewing the relevant literature it is noticed that definitions of electronic marketing (E-Marketing) vary according to each authors point of view, background and specialization. For that, while Smith and Chaffey defines it as: “Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital technologies” (Smith and Chaffey, 2005: 11), Strauss and Frost define it as: The use of electronic data and applications for planning and executing the conception, distribution and pricing of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals (Strauss and Frost, 2001: 454).

Number of studies has been conducted on integrated marketing communications and Facebook, independently. But, no studies have been found focusing on the impact of the social media in managing the integrated marketing communications program. This study have tried to identify the effect of social media in developing integrated marketing communications, by some selected firms in the context of Bangladesh.

Research Design

This research is mainly exploratory and descriptive in type. The exploratory research methods have identified the initial factors of Facebook marketing. After that, the descriptive research technique (personal interview) has been applied to explore how Facebook marketing helps to develop the integrated marketing communications and how they get responses from customers. In particular, the reason for conducting personal interview as the survey method is the desire to obtain significant information from the sample (Brinberg and McGrath, 1985).

Three digital agencies - CookieJar, Magnito and WebAble, who are using Facebook as their marketing tool to develop integrated marketing communications for their client companies, have been selected as the target population of the study. The extent of the study is the Dhaka metropolitan city.

Both, secondary and primary data have