The Impact of Social Media in Marketing Management

Abstract

The advent of the social media has brought about tremendous changes and advancement in the marketing process and has made it much better on the one hand and much worse on the other. However, nowadays, it has been widely accepted that social media is the next big trend in the marketing world and several studies have shown that these media or channels are often more effective than the traditional ones. Since the turn of the century, social media has steadily emerged ahead of the mass media as the most used media. Both print circulation and TV viewership have been falling consistently over the years; for instance, TV viewership has gone down almost 50% since 2002. In contrast, social media has reported massive gains since the early days of MySpace, with social media usage among U.S. adults increasing by 800% over the past eight years (Edwards, 2013).For marketers, this is a huge advantage because the rapid transition from mass to social media resents the opportunity to create impactful, relevant marketing messages. This data-powered personalized marketing approach is not only much more effective, but also more costefficient and scalable. Recently, social media has become a term synonymous with business marketing. Although still in its early stage, there is still so much to social media that businesses have yet to discover. Social Media is fast evolving as one of the most reliable ways to connect and stay informed about the most recent developments in a particular industry. It offers a platform for discussions and information sharing about anything and everything, helping users build their online identity and reputation and so much more. This study describes the important effects that social media has on the consumers purchases of products, patronage and brand loyalty and also the limitations and challenges brought by social media into the marketing world as well as ways of managing them. The research is designed to examine the impact of social media on marketing management and to access the extent to which social media affects brand patronage. The method and procedure to be used in carrying out this research are stated in this chapter. The survey research method will be used to collect related information from customers and consumers of products and members of the public. The respondents cut across different spheres of life in order to have a representation of all shades of opinion.