CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Introduction
Through the use of social media, firms and their customers have developed complex,
multifaceted, and intensified interactions over the last decade. On the one hand, businesses
are using social media platforms to broaden their geographic reach to buyers, improve brand
evaluations, and establish closer relationships with customers. Customers, on the other hand,
are increasingly empowered by social media and taking control of the marketing
communication process, becoming message creators, collaborators, and commentators. As
social media has progressed from a single marketing tool to a source of marketing
intelligence (through which businesses can observe, analyze, and predict customer behavior),
it has become increasingly imperative for marketers to strategically use and leverage social
media to achieve competitive advantage and superior performance.
The goals of a company's social media marketing
Varadarajan (2010) find out in his study that Social Media Marketing Strategies (SMMSs)
may differ, even though they operate in a similar context, depending on the firm's strategic
objectives. According to resource dependence theory (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978), the firm's
social media marketing goals can be justified by the need to acquire external resources
(which do not exist internally) that will assist it in meeting the challenges of environmental
contingencies. Customers can serve as resource providers in a social media context, which
can take several forms (Harmeling et al. 2017). In addition, According to Felix (2017),
proactive and reactive social media marketing objectives can differ depending on the type of
market targeted and firm size. While firms use social media to increase brand awareness,
generate online traffic, and stimulate sales for proactive objectives, monitoring and analyzing
customer activities is the focus for reactive objectives.
Initiatives for social media engagement by businesses
Firms take steps to motivate and engage customers in order for them to make voluntary
contributions in return (Harmeling et al. 2017; Pansari and Kumar 2017). These firm actions
can also be explained theoretically by resource dependence theory (Pfeffer and Salancik
1978), which contends that firms must take initiatives to encourage customers to interact with
them in order to generate useful autonomous contributions that alleviate resource shortages.
Harmeling et al. (2017) distinguish two types of social media marketing initiatives used by
businesses to engage customers: task-based and experiential. While task-based engagement
initiatives use structured tasks to encourage customer engagement and foster emotional
attachment, experiential engagement initiatives use experiential events to intrinsically
motivate customer engagement and foster emotional attachment. Thus, firm engagement
initiatives can be viewed as a continuum, with the firm at one end using monetary rewards to
engage customers and the firm at the other end proactively working to deliver effective
experiential incentives to motivate customer engagement.
Customer behavior on social media
Customers' use of social media results in a variety of behavioral manifestations, ranging from
passive to active (Maslowska et al. 2016). Depending on customers' attitudes and information
processes during interactions, these customer social media behaviors can be either positive or
negative (Dolan et al. 2016). According to Harmeling et al. (2017), customers who engage in
positive behaviors are "pseudo marketers" because they contribute to firms' marketing
functions with their own resources, whereas those who engage in negative behaviors may
turn firm-created "hashtags" into "bashtags." Muntinga et al. (2011) divide customers' brand-
related behaviors in social media into three categories based on uses and gratifications theory:
consuming, contributing, and creating.
Challenges and Risks of Social Media Marketing
As previously said, Social Media Marketing provides SMEs with a wide range of options in
terms of various Social Media platforms, as well as several perks, such as those listed in the
benefits section. However, Social Media Marketing for SMEs necessitates knowledge and a
lot of effort, and it comes with its own set of problems and hazards to overcome before
attaining success (Stelzner, 2014).
Social media marketing isn't always simple or cost-effective. Depending on the sort of firm,
its size, age, and management style, hard off orts may be required in specific regions. To
begin, SMEs must devote human and time resources to managing their social media profiles.
On a daily basis, an employee, or perhaps a group of employees, must be prepared to connect
with consumers and respond to their feedback and complaints. Employees involved in social
media operations should be highly skilled and trained in order to efficiently reply to every
query and complaint that customers have, as well as regulate and control any potential
unfavorable remarks before they are viewed by hundreds or thousands of people.
Furthermore, the results of Social Media Marketing must be monitored and measured in order
to establish how effective this strategy is and what is working and what is not. Depending on
the type of business and consumer target, some Social Media Marketing channels may be
more efficient than others for SMEs, while others may not, and they may be viewed
excessively time-consuming and expensive in comparison to their benefits. However, as
previously stated, calculating the return on investment in Social Media Marketing is rather
challenging. Measuring the return on investment of social media is a difficult undertaking.
This may be considered a serious challenge for SMEs implementing Social Media Marketing;
the inability to measure Social Media Marketing results prevents them from knowing which
channel is the best way to go, and they may implement a completely ineffective strategy,
wasting time and money without having a real impact on their brand reputation and sales
(Gilmore et al., 2007)
Female entrepreneurship and social capital
Starting a business is not an easy task for either women or men. Difficulties in obtaining
loans, a lack of purchasing power, and infrastructural problems all create impediments
towards establishing and running a business. Along with these hurdles, women face the added
obstacles of social and family-specific duties. Gary Akehurst et al. (2012) found that women
face both external and internal barriers in turning a business into a success. These hurdles
impact the motivation behind launching a business as well as running it. They found that the
“main motivation for women to create a business was the same as those for men: the need for
success, independence, economic reward and job satisfaction”
Focusing on women in developing countries such as India, Ashima Bhatnagar et al. (2017)
found that the reasons women decide to launch a business were “autonomy and adequate
income, flexible working environment, opportunities to use and develop human capacity,
inducement of empowerment and growth and promotion of societal responsiveness”.
Moreover, Flexibility in work hours and work environment has been identified as being more
important to women who have children than to men (Hill et al.. 2008; Plantenga & Remery,
2009). E. Jeffrey Hill et al. (2008) noted that “depending on life stage, 48–63% of the men
and 64–85% of the women valued flextime”
In addition, Social media can offer support to women entrepreneurs by providing the
flexibility of being able to incorporate work into their daily lives. Celestine Lugaye Ukpere et
al. (2014) argued that “social media has enabled [women] the luxury of being able to
adequately manage their time and daily tasks enabling them to represent in all aspects of
daily developments of their family and business spaces”. Other reasons for using social media
in doing business are low cost, global reach and direct interaction with customers (Genç &
Oksüz, 2015; Rahadi & Abdillah, 2013;).Social media is a tool that can help women
overcome certain obstacles in the way of professionally running their businesses. Francesca
Maria Cesaroni et al. (2017) suggested that the cultural background of a country plays an
important role in understanding the circumstances under which women use social media for
businesses. Social media can provide support for those in a subordinate position faced with
many social and family obstacles. For instance, social media can help individuals expand
their networks, which women can utilize to expand their businesses (Cesaroni et al., 2017).
Similarly, culture also plays a role for businesswomen in the United Arab Emirates, where
Instagram users were found to depend on their immediate network for business. Eman Wally
and Swapna Koshy (2014) explain: The fact that Instagram derives its success from the
cultural emphasis on family and social groups which is a basic feature of the Emirati society
is non-negotiable. The Emirati culture and tradition is strongly based on the tribal concept all
for one and one for all. All the participants highlighted the importance of the family support
not only for finances but also on the emotional front. All of them had family members as their
first line customers.
Prominence of social media marketing in a business
Businesses have taken it upon themselves to adapt to emerging marketing tactics, specifically
social media marketing, with the development of social media. In the twenty-first century,
social media marketing is an integral component of business. Small business owners are
utilizing this marketing technique to promote their company in order to acquire awareness,
viability, and sustainability in order to thrive in today's competitive environment (Taneja
2014). Social media marketing is defined as “the process of gaining traffic or attention
through social media sites” Zhu (2015) stated that for social media marketing to be effective,
marketing efforts must be coherent and linked with the various demands of social media
users. The marketing objectives of social media marketing are brand awareness, brand values
or reputation, building relationships and sales.
Entrepreneur utilizes Social Media for business
According to Cox (2012), understanding today's social media-driven world is essential for
small businesses. They should also understand the tactics for leveraging social media
platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to expand their business, stay competitive, and reach
their target markets. However, when many small businesses first started using social media,
they lacked a strategy. The study was carried out to gain a preliminary understanding of how
small businesses were recognized for using social media to develop their brand and increase
their customers. Bandee, an Internet-based accessories shop and wholesaler founded in 2009.
According to the findings, Bandee increased the number of their clients who were aware of
their products and services by utilizing social media. They also thought social media was
essential for connecting with customers and building relationships. It also allowed Bandee to
form many relationships with other firms and clients that would not have occurred otherwise.
According to the report, social media marketing enhances brand awareness, sales, and
business profit.
Efficacy of Social Media in promoting a business
Although there are some issues with their implementation, the efficacy of social media
marketing adds to the success and future growth of small and medium-size enterprises
(SMEs) (Musa et al., 2016). According to (Shahid 2019), the effectiveness of social media
marketing is positively related to client involvement and content quality. Customer
engagement is positively influenced by the user experience and frequency of visits. Social
media will only be useful as a marketing tool if the organizations that use it supply consumers
with accurate and timely information (Bashar et al., 2012). The efficiency of social media
marketing is also determined by the techniques employed. Effective social media marketing
will greatly aid in the creation and promotion of brand awareness, resulting in increased sales
performance for the organization (Al-Mohammadi & Gazzaz, 2020).

Information involved on the business with the use of social media

Social media marketing can be viewed as a new field and a new business practice involved
with the marketing of goods, services, information, and ideas via the online social media.
However, there is also confusion between the discipline called social marketing and social
media marketing. Numerous references on internet have mislabeled social media marketing
as simply social marketing. Social media offer a unique marketing communication method
(Eagleman, 2013). Social media marketing makes use of these social media applications as an
extension to fulfil the traditional marketing. Marketing activities via online applications that
allow the production of information and being collaborate among users (Kaplan and
Haenlein, 2010) and leverage mobile and web-based technologies to create interactive
medium where users and groups member sharing, co-creating, discussing, and modifying
known as user-generated content (Kietzmann et al., 2011). By manipulating the user
generated content has enable businesses to forecast the future purchasing behavior of their
customers more accurately (Kim and Ko, 2011), enhances brand post popularity (Vries et al.,
2012), attract new customers (Michaelidou et al., 2011), build awareness, increase sales and
build loyalty (Castronovo, 2012). The rapid use of users and the intensity of user-generated
content might create not only a lot of opportunities for small business enterprises but also can
eliminate a lot of its threats. As Michaelidou et al. (2011) noted that using social media does
not require a great financial investment relatively low cost. In this paper, the terms social
media marketing and Internet marketing will be used interchangeably and will be taken to
include the activities of emarketing. The definition of social media marketing includes using
the social media platforms and its related technologies and features to help achieve marketing
objectives in conjunction with other marketing communication tools.
Consumer Interaction with business owners using social media
Mangold and Faulds( 2009) found that social media has seen increased flexibility and
visibility in marketing content and a change in the way individuals and organizations interact.
There has been a shift in power to customers, as they move from passive receivers of
marketing content to active participants in the brand message. In line with this shift, most
social media-centric research has focused on interactive customer experiences, which are said
to act as a significant influencing factor of many consumer behavior aspects, including
information acquisition, purchase behavior and post-purchase communication (Mangold and
Faulds, 2009). Scholars have emphasized consumer roles such as product and brand-related
advocacy (Chu and Kim, 2011, Riegner, 2007), customer-led content generation (Vivek et al.,
2012) and customercreated product innovations (Hoyer et al., 2010, Sawhney et al., 2005).
Social media usage has been found to contribute positively to brand performance and
consumer loyalty (Rapp et al., 2013). Research has explored the concept from varying
perspectives, including the usage motivations of participants (Joinson, 2008, Raacke and
Bonds-Raacke, 2008), social interactions, usage patterns (Golder et al., 2007, Hsu and Lin,
2008, Lampe et al., 2006) and characteristics of users (Gjoka et al., 2008, Hargittai, 2007).
Scholars have also focused their attention on online and virtual brand communities (Aksoy et
al., 2013), online brand culture (Schembri and Latimer, 2016) and anti-brand community
behaviors (Dessart et al., 2016). As a result, there is a significant amount of social and
network value provided to both users and organizations through social media as users
comment, review and share information online. While such streams of research place a strong
perspective on consumer experiences through social media forums, the use of social media
from an organizational and strategic perspective has received less attention.

Conclusion
To sum up, this research focuses on uncovering the efficacy of promoting a business or
organization on social media. The purpose of the study is to identify the factors, risks,
advantages, and possible variables when using social media as a marketing tool in a town
such as Alicia, Isabela. The research goal is to formulate what social media platform is the
most effective, what strategies are needed to be done to reach more users, and how to market
based on the industry of the business. This study will be beneficial to entrepreneurs who wish
to learn how to use social media as a marketing tool. This study will further expand previous
related researches that has been studied before. Furthermore, the results of the study will
provide suggestions and recommendations that will be helpful in improving their social
media marketing strategy for both future researchers and students who aim to conduct the
same study. They may come up with solutions that are beneficial and effective for the
development of their business.