ABSTRACT
Since the advent of social media has bring a new landscape and present a new grid of personal connections, businesses have been seeing a tremendous opportunities and are intense to draw from (social media or the trend). Many studies has been conducted stating the reasons to draw from social media and in other to help companies to gain a better position in the transition, The main reason for writing this research is to analyze the influence of social media on Lagos Nigerian businesses.
The objective of the research was achieved by divided the thesis into theoretical part and empirical part. In other to ensure the validity and quality of the research, the theoretical framework rests on desk research of social media, traditional media, as well as previous studies relating to influence marketing. Quantitative research method was used to gather data for empirical part, by sent out questionnaire to companies in Lagos, Nigeria.
The research result showed that Lagos Nigerian businesses are more effective on social media comparing to mass media, and businesses are willing to show case their brand, products and services to the world. The findings indicates the drawback facing Nigeria business clime as lack of network access, ignorance and low ICT (information and communication technology), thus, the service offered by internet service providers in Nigeria are still far behind the world level and the development of this sector would bring better opportunities to businesses. Also Nigeria needs to address the benefits of social media to businesses and youths.
The Findings and conclusions presented in this research are only valid within the population selection (Lagos, Nigeria) and cannot not to be generalized elsewhere.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Objectives of the research
1.2 Scope and limitation of the research
1.3 Research structure
2 SOCIAL MEDIA
2.1 What is social media
2.2 Social media outlets categories
2.3 Social media marketing
2.4 Benefits of social media to business
2.5 Cost effectiveness of social media
3 TRADITIONAL MEDIA VS SOCIAL MEDIA
3.1 Traditional media
3.2 Differences between social media and traditional media
4 INFLUENCE MARKETING
4.1 Influence
4.2 Definition of influence marketing
4.3 The influences of decision making process
5 RESEARCH METHOD
5.1 Method used
5.2 Data analysis background
5.3 The usage of internet and social media for company activities
5.4 Problem recognition
5.5 The companies knowledge on influence of social media on business
5.6 Open ended question analysis
6 CONCLUSION
6.1 Comparison between how companies’ use social media in Nigeria and elsewhere
6.2 Limitation and future research
6.3 Own learning process
REFERENCES
1 INTRODUCTION
The exponential growth of social media over the past decade ‘Web 2.0’ is one of the most formidable developments in the history of commerce. Social media can also be defined as a connection between people in which they share, create and exchange ideas on networks with interest on relative information. Social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological founda-tions of Web 2.0, another buzzword where it not only encourages user - generated contents, but also focus on the users by giving them exhibit contents to share among different networks.
Social medial have made communication easy in today’s world with easier way of finding the lost ones, linking business to business together, virtual meetings, online interview, chatting and sharing pictures. It has been an essential tool in job creation and boosting the economy of many countries.
According to McKinsey (2011) it has revealed that when companies focus on their business and interact with individuals, they will be able to produce large quantity of “exhaust data,” for example, the data that will be combined with other activities to create a by-product. Billions of individuals around the world are contributing won-drous amount of data to social media through many devices like smartphones and so on.
By looking at the enormous amount of social media campaigns, forums, e-commerce websites, sales emails etc., it shows that companies of all sizes have been translating their marketing approaches to the Internet because of its accessibility to their target audience and the money required to do so. (Manyika and Chui et al., 2011)
Social media are not to be overlooked. According to Stone (2010) Revenues for Fa-cebook for 2011 is estimated to be $1.585 billion. Youtube was sold for $1.65 billion in 2006. (BBC News 2006) Global companies such as Coca – cola and Pepsi has 20 million and 30 million Facebook fans respectively, and one of the leading Nigeria bank GTbank has 1,473,200 million Facebook fans. Businesses are already integrat-ing Facebook as a part of their marketing plans. One of the motives in social media marketing is that sellers in different social media channels have more tools in per-suading consumers to buy than the ones who are not present there. (Shuen 2008 pp. 77)
Companies of all sizes are using social media with 72% of the Fortune 500 compa-nies have Facebook accounts. (Pick 2013) Small companies are there to benefit from using social media, since most of them are free to join and it can be managed with a low budget. Marketing through social media would be an alternative perspective of interfacing with individuals, and yet the most influential applications of social technol-ogies in the global economy are largely untapped. (Manyika and Chui et al., 2011)
Social media provides marketers a new set of tools to interact with consumers and to integrate them into their brands through innovative ways. Thus, companies need to understand which social site to find their right audience and how the social media influence consumer buying behavior.
In the 21th century, Africa has received a swelling huge of internet which influencing businesses in strategic thinking and creating opportunities for proactive organization to connect with their clients, agents and consumers with accurate information. There-fore, that will offer organizations and customers the chance to join a conversation with other billions of customers around the world. “Nigeria has a population of 167million and internet penetration of 55million (the largest in Africa) as at December 2012. Represent a major market for both internet service providers and businesses that are active on the social media”. (ITU 2013)
The social media platforms that command the most usage in Nigeria are Facebook and Twitter with over 6 million and 4 million users respectively as of June 2012. With the growing range of internet penetration (43.9 million in 2012), and increased num-ber of users joining the platforms, figures indicating weekly additions of about 64,000. (Socialbakers 2013) The social media represents a considerable chunk of the Nigeri-an and potential customers’ populace.
Some businesses are yet to understand the importance of social media, while a wide range of businesses are already taking the advantage of this platform. A leading bank in Nigeria Guaranty Trust Bank GTB and a leading communication brand MTN Nige-ria represent the companies with the highest fanbase/potential customers on Face-book with both companies having over 1 million likes. Other companies like commodi-ty retailers Jumia and Konga are also taken the advantage of the new presence of the internet and social media in establishing their businesses with over 300,000 po-tential customers for them on Facebook.
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