Does Social Media Marketing Work?

Deconstructing a Mass Media Study

Mass communication researchers Goh, Heng, and Lin investigated this question in their mass communication study, check it out here.

Together, they searched for empirical research on the economical value of social media marketing. Let‘s break down their study

The researchers give a sneak-peek into their 20-page academic journal in the journal’s abstract. Here, they share methods of study, such as qualitative user-marketer interaction and the individual consumer level.

The introduction adds detail about the growing history of social media’s popularity and its relation to marketing strategies. Additionally, they address the gap in social media marketing research effectiveness.

Goh, Heng, and Lin share details concerning their research hypothesis. Here, the objective of the study is named.

“To assess the impacts of both UGC and MGC in a social media brand community on consumers’ repeat purchases behaviors.”

Next, the group states how they will accomplish this

“This will be achieved by measuring the informative and persuasive aspects of UGC and MGC of an apparel retailer’s Facebook page and matching them with the retailer’s customer reward program database.”

Their methodology addresses the best ways to overcome consumer purchase barriers by social media. Research vocabulary for this study is identified such as Content Information Richness, Content Valence, and Directed Communication versus Undirected Communication.

It also explains the game plan for the research.

“Our research context is a business fan page brand community on Facebook set up in July 2009 by FFS3 a casual wear apparel retailer in a small Asian market. The retailer provided customer info from their rewards program. “

Methods used:

-Text mining techniques by breaking up words and phrases leads to information richness.

-Valence is measured as the net positivity (number of positive concepts minus number of negative concepts).

-Facebook page likes.

-Facebook posts and comments.

-Online awareness levels of the brand.

-Communication intensity to weigh the impact of UGG and WGC.

-Related consumers to individual encounters before brand interaction and after.

-Total number of directed messaging

…just to name a few.

Ultimately, the researchers discovered a significant contribution of social media as a marketing strategy while noting limitations. A control group of 398 customer analyses was referenced through Facebook java code, source user details, and customer reward program database over a 104-week span.

Across all purchase transactions of their control group, customers spent on average $28.57 before social media and $40.52 after.

Looks like I’ll be keeping social media as a marketing strategy!