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Title

An analysis of the role of social media as a marketing platform in retail industry: A study on ASOS

Terms of Reference (approx. 400 words)

There are 39% of the retail business in the UK use social media platforms to generate profit for their business (Statista, 2021). In this context, Facebook is highly used by retail firms to generate higher value for their business. The next social media platforms that are popular are Instagram and YouTube which are widely considered by the retail firms presently. Moreover, there are significant impacts of social media for marketing purposes. This is because it creates an opportunity to engage with a large number of customers in a quick or short time. This is the reason the topic has a notable area of interest as it provides an opportunity to study the vast impact of social media on the marketing function of the business.

There are a large number of uses of social media among the retail firms that provide an immense opportunity to take different insights about the topic. Increasing competitiveness in the retail industry has forced firms to evaluate the channels they use for marketing purposes. In this context, social media has emerged as a major channel for the marketing platform. ASOS, the chosen company for the research, is also largely involved in social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and others. It is a British cosmetic and fashion retailer that was founded in 2000. There are more than 850 brands sold by the company in which accessories, clothing is largely shipped in 196 countries (ASOS, 2021). The fulfilment centres of the company are Europe, USA and UK.

Social media platforms are found to be useful for marketing purposes among the firms that lead to adding greater value to the firms. Customers are also coming online as the number of internet users and use of devices are increasing. This provides an opportunity for the companies to target and showcase the product easily to prospective buyers. Therefore, social media is emerging as a marketing platform in the retail industry of the UK. Research Question

What is the concept of social media in the business?

What is the investigate the relationship between society and the efficient marketing platform of ASOS

What is the role of Social media as a marketing platform in the retail industry: A study on ASOS?

How social media can be more efficient as a marketing platform

Research Aim

The project aims to analyse the role of social media as a marketing platform in the retail industry: A study on ASOS.

Research Objectives

To identify and critically examine the concept of social media in the business

To critically analyse the factors that lead to the use of social media as a marketing platform

To evaluate the role of social media as a marketing platform in the retail industry: A study on ASOS.

To recommend ways by which social media can be more efficient as a marketing platform.

Relation to previous research (approx. 1000 words)

2.1. Concept of social media in the business

As per Olutade (2021), social media is an emerging concept in the modern business environment where there are a large number of youth-targeted. Social media is a collective term for applications and websites, interaction, collaboration, content sharing, and so on. People mainly use social media to relate to family, friends and several communities. There are a large number of actions globally using the social media platform. Major social media platforms found in the online platform are Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and others. In the retail industry, there is significant use of Facebook to connect with prospective buyers. It is used as a way of communication and to build a long-term relationship by using effective marketing tactics. Using quizzes, polls, stories, posts, newsfeed all are prominently used by the brand so that there can be an effortless promotion of the brand. Any new product launch, asking for feedback and different other methods are significantly used by the companies to connect with the customers. Moreover, the vast reach of social media acts as an efficient marketing platform for businesses.

2.2. Factors influencing the use of social media as a marketing platform

Nash (2019), has provided that there are both internal and external factors that influence the use of social media as a marketing platform. However, these platforms have a high influence on the buying behaviour of consumers. In this context, the factors that influence the social media use by the organisations are easy to use media, usefulness and enjoyment. A customer who is scrolling to the newsfeed of the Facebook page can learn about what new things have been added by the company. Moreover, any offers, fun campaigns all can be known without any major effort. In this case, both the company and customers have made convenient communication without any hassle by the use of social media. Businesses can also be able to show their new services and products that are available for the customers. However, there is a facility to give fast feedback which can be challenging for the business. This is because customers can give negative feedback that can influence the prospective customers too. The marketing tactics might fail in this case which shows the drawback of the use of social media for the business.

2.3. Social media as a marketing platform

According to Sheela and Ramya (2018), social media marketing is the access of a platform of social media to promote the service and product of the organisation. Moreover, the terms digital marketing and marketing are persistent in the present scenario, social media marketing is getting popular. Modern marketers do not want to lose any opportunity that can provide them immense support in marketing using digital assistance. Several social media platforms have analytical tools that pre-exist in the business. This tool enables the companies to track the success, progress and engagement. This is the reason social media is largely used by businesses to attain large customer attention and attraction. Companies use to address different stakeholders by using social media that consists of potential and current customers. On the strategic level, social media consists of marketing campaign management, setting the scope and governance. It also helps to build a company’s required social media lone and culture. It could be said that social media is emerging as a greater platform to market products and services or to promote them on a large platform.

2.4. Ways to improve social media marketing

Salo (2017), argued that research in the field of social media strategy development is highly required in particular business environments. Those companies in any industry like the retail ones have to set the future and current goals for meeting the business objectives. This is highly required when the industry is highly competitive. In this regard, researching the key competitors’ strategies, products, prices and other movements related to social media can provide a large amount of social media marketing success. Again, the best social media channel needs to have opted so that there can be an increased impact on the business profitability. The use of hashtags, images, user-driven content, live videos all can significantly help the business to improve the social media marketing, use of these tactics can help to bring bigger advantages for the company by increasing the awareness of the brand, large customer engagement, business profitability and different other advantages. It further provides opportunities to create online traffic, selective advertising that saves cost, partnering with influencers and different other benefits. In this way, social media as a marketing platform has a high potential to increase brand awareness and customer relationships.

2.5. The Marketing Mix

Thabit and Raewf (2018), argued that the most crucial marketing in the modern era is “marketing mix”. The elements of the marketing mix (price, place, product and promotion) are useful to determine how the marketing objectives will be fulfilled in the organisation. The organisations that want to create a good marketing opportunity can use marketing mix theory to understand how they will showcase the four elements in front of the customers or buyers. Retailers or any other firms can use this strategy to formulate a good marketing plan for their business. Again, there is a major requirement of focusing on the competitiveness in the industry so that a significant plan can be built. Similarly, for social media marketing too, there is a large scope to use this theory. Companies who want to create a good campaign can take the advantage of this theory to communicate significantly with the customers. Customer intention to purchase can be diverted to the positive side when the business uses a marketing mix to promote its brands on social media. However, the marketing objectives are required to be robust so that there can be effective promotional tactics applied.

2.6. Literature gap

There has been less scope for customer satisfaction level measurement using this topic that can provide a good impact on the paper. The sources in the literature also lack discussion on communication medium and its effect after adapting while using social media. Emphasis on only a single type of industry is also a major lagging point that has not been studied through the literature. Moreover, the environmental aspects are also not included in the study that can provide widespread knowledge about factors that influence social media marketing.

Methodology (approx. 600 words)

3.1. Research methodology

There are different types of methods that can be used in the research that are qualitative and quantitative. For this research, there will be the use of the quantitative method where the researcher will focus on seeking information from the real world. The major advantage of quantitative is the rapid collection of data and provides repeatable and reliable research. Moreover, disadvantages involved in this context are that data can be misleading and broader relationships and themes can be ignored (Codiroli Mcmaster and Cook, 2019). In this way, quantitative methods are found more useful for the research.

3.2. Sampling

Among different ways to collect the sample or participants for the research non-probability sampling, persuasive, random will be used for the research. This will include a total of 20 customers of ASOS which is the chosen organisation for the research. The advantage of using random sampling is that it provides a chance of doing data analysis that has less scope of occurring any error (Etikan and Bala, 2017). The drawback involved in random sampling is there is more time required to assemble the full detail of the overall participants. Apart from this, there is capital required, chances of business are high.

3.3. Data collection methods

Data collection will be done using questionnaires that will provide a major impact on the research. There will be a survey to which 8 questions will be asked which will help to identify the perception about social media. It can also help to learn which social media is used by the customers and how much time they spend on it (Kleka and Soroko, 2018). However, customers may be biased while providing the answers that can be a drawback of the questionnaire method.

3.4. Data analysis methods

For data analysis and presentation, there will be the use of MS Excel. Doing the data collection there will be the use of questionnaires to collect the data and present it in tabular form. The graphical representation of the data is also possible using MS Excel that provides a major advantage of using the beneficial tools. However, there are limitations like time consumption as the presentation of the data needs to be robust.

3.5. Ethical considerations

Different ethical considerations need to be taken in the research. These are mainly in terms of seeking the consent of the participants, not asking personal questions, providing confidentiality and so on. In this research, there will be the use of all mentioned ethical considerations to avoid any kind of issues while conducting the research. A consent form will be used, and participants will be told about the purpose of the research. In this way, taking ethical considerations will be helpful to conduct the research conveniently and increase credibility. GDPR will have a significant impact because it will abide by the researcher to protect the data collected for the research.

3.6. Research Limitations

The research uses a primary data collection method that takes time and it will be difficult to conduct such a vast topic in the given time period. Again, there will be the use of consent forms and questions will be asked. There are chances that some of the respondents might provide biased answers that can lead to less credibility. However, the consent form will be useful to avoid such issues.

Timeline

Research Activities	Sept 2021	Oct 2021	Nov 2021	Dec 2021	Jan 2022	Feb 2021	March 2022	April 2022
BRP Structure	x
Chapter 1: Terms of reference Research topic Research questions Research aim Research objectives	x	x
Chapter 2: Literature review	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
Chapter 3: Methodology		x	x
Submition-Proposal AS1				x
Questionare Design					x
Chapter 4: Data collection Data analysis					x	x	x
Chapter 5: Conclusion and recomandation							x	x
Submition-Final project AS2								x

References

ASOS, 2021. About us [online] Available at: https://www.asos.com/about/asos-brands/?ctaref=aboutus|asosbrands / [Accessed 16 December 2021]

Codiroli Mcmaster, N. and Cook, R., 2019. The contribution of intersectionality to quantitative research into educational inequalities. Review of Education, 7(2), pp.271-292.

Etikan, I. and Bala, K., (2017). Sampling and sampling methods. Biometrics & Biostatistics International Journal, 5(6), p.00149.

Kleka, P. and Soroko, E., 2018, August. How to Abbreviate Questionnaires and Avoid the Sins?. In Survey Research Methods (Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 147-160).

Nash, J., 2019. Exploring how social media platforms influence fashion consumer decisions in the UK retail sector. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal.

Olutade, E.O., (2021). Social media marketing: A new platform that influences Nigerian Generation Y to engage in the actual purchase of fast-moving consumer goods. Journal of Emerging Technologies, 1(1), pp.19-32.

Salo, J., 2017. Social media research in the industrial marketing field: Review of literature and future research directions. Industrial Marketing Management, 66, pp.115-129.

SHEELA, M. and RAMYA, D.M., 2018. Social Media as a Marketing Platform. International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research, ISSN, pp.2349-5162.

Statista, (2021). [online] Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1015789/social-platforms-driving-most-value-for-uk-retailers [Accessed 16 December 2021]

Thabit, T. and Raewf, M., 2018. The evaluation of marketing mix elements: A case study. International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies, 4(4).

Appendices (optional)

Ethical Review Form: Part 1

Part 1 needs to be completed by all Business Research Project students.

Please read the following two statements and insert X in the box that represents your research intentions.

Student Statement

Insert X

Student Action

Statement 1

I have read the above information. I confirm that my research does not involve human participants.

You do not need to complete Part 2 of this form. Ethics approval is not required.

Statement 2

I have read the above information. I confirm that my research involves human participants. (e.g using interviews or questionnaire survey)

Please proceed to complete Part 2 of this form.

	Yes	No
I have prepared a participant information sheet (including information on secure data storage), and submitted it in Appendix 1.
I have prepared a participant consent form (including information on right to withdraw from the study), and submitted it in Appendix 2.

	Yes	No
Does the study involve participants who are particularly vulnerable or unable to give informed consent? (e.g. people under the age of 18, people with learning disabilities, students you teach or assess)
Will it be necessary for participants to take part in the study without their knowledge and consent at the time?
Does the study involve audio or visual recording of people in public places?
Will the study involve the discussion of sensitive topics? (e.g. sexual activity, drug use, illegal activities, death, whistleblowing)
Are drugs, placebos or other substances to be given to the study participants or will the study involve invasive, intrusive or potentially harmful procedures of any kind?
Does your study involve a topic that would be considered ‘sensitive’ (age, culture, race, gender, sexuality, socio-economic standing, or religion)?
Is physical pain or psychological stress from the proposed project likely to cause harm or negative consequences beyond the risks in normal life?
Does the study involve groups or materials that may be construed as terrorist or extremist?
Will financial inducements (other than expenses) be offered to participants?
Does the study involve the collection of data that is not anonymised (contains identifying information such as name and address)?

Company consent

Print off this form and gain the required signature. You then need to scan the page and insert it as an image in Appendix 3.

Alternatively, the company may choose to give you a signed consent document of their own, which you will need to scan and insert in Appendix 3.

Consent from the host Company

Student Name: _______________________________________

Student ID number: _______________________________________

I consent to the aforementioned named student carrying out research on company premises or in relation to this Company.

Senior Manager Name: _______________________________________

Senior Manager Signature: _______________________________________

Host Company Name: _______________________________________

Appendix 1: Participant information sheet

Appendix 2: Participant consent form

Appendix 3: Company consent form

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