HI6008 Business Research- Social Networks in Business

restaurant business in Brisbane, Australia. Further, the secondary objective is to determine the major impact of social sites on the net sale of restaurant business and the correlation with the customers.

In the research work, the central research questions would be based on the review of the literature. Based on these two parameters, the researcher would select relevant data from various sources that would be analysed and discussed. In order to keep high level of accuracy, the research scope would be limited only for the restaurants located in Brisbane or more preciously for Mac- Donald and Hungry Jack. Also, the social media would primarily imply Facebook while the business would be limited businesses as highlighted above.

In the recent times, by way of empirical research, it has been found that many business personals are using social sites in their business in order to reach or interact with customers. The literature review would also extend the scope of research study and the theoretical model result would be used to compare the outcome of the research work. This literature review would generally provide the ground for the research work which would include the factors associated with the usage of Facebook in the promotion of the food business.

The usage of Facebook reduces the cost of expenditure that would be incurred in the marketing process, increase the level of interaction and create values to the customers. It has been observed that Facebook is a platform to efficiently target the selected population. Further, there is plethora of issues raised by incorporating Facebook for social marketing for the food business (Bloomberg, Cooper and Schindler, 2011). It is because utilization of Facebook would enhance the probability that customers or critics would post their negative/ positive feedbacks on Facebook regarding the restaurant. Therefore, it is the choice of the restaurant to use Facebook for the social marketing for their business after considering all the respective factors.

In case of McDonald and Hungry Jack, it has been found that they are actively using Facebook for their social marketing. With the help of Facebook, they are targeting population (youths) who are actively using Facebook and enhancing the popularity of their brand among the other brands (Thaichon, 2016). This would also provide them a ground to highlight their products, service, discounts, and offers among the customers. Further, they are also using this platform to interact with the respective suppliers and food manufactures to enhance the business domain and find the prospective suppliers. However, as per the past research, it is believed that it is essential to keep an eye and measure various parameters with a defined interval of time to check whether Facebook site is providing any positive impact on business or not. According to Society of Human Resource Management, the selection of social sites for marketing mainly depends on the type of business (SHRM, 2012). Further, the use of social sites has great impact on employees (internal public), customers (external public) because both would be affected with the usage of social sites.

5.1.1 Primary Question 

What are the major impacts of using social sites (Facebook) for social marketing on internal and external publics and the food business?  

1.2 Secondary Question 

What are the effects of using Facebook on the net sales of the food business?

What the critical parameters and suggestion that would be taken into account while using Facebook for marketing especially for food business?

4.2 Research Hypothesis

Null Hypothesis H₀:  Usage of Facebook for business is significantly related to the restaurant business growth.

Alternative Hypothesis H₁: Usage of Facebook for business is not related to the restaurant business growth.

5. Research Design and Methodology

Research methodology is considered to be an imperative part of research work. Appropriate research design, research philosophy, methods to collect data from various sources and analysis techniques or tools would be decided in research methodology. The selection of the correct methodology and design would mainly depend on the research topic and literature review (Saunders, Thornhill and Lewis, 2009).

This type of research design would be selected by the researcher only when the limited information is present regarding the research topic/statement. Although, researcher wants detailed precise information in regards to create better understanding for the topic which would help the researcher to make correct hypotheses to conduct the respective statistical testing. Further, with the help of exploratory research design, the researcher would be in the position to get vast knowledge and information regarding the research topic would become the base ground for the research work (Bloomberg, Cooper and Schindler, 2011).

6.1.2 Explanatory Research Design 

This research design would be taken into account when the research statement does not provide the clear understanding about the actual problem/ opportunity. In such scenario, the researcher would select available theoretical models and respective techniques to conduct the research work.

6.1.3 Descriptive Research Design

It is considered to be a pivotal and most favourable and efficient research design because the researcher would actually collect data and information related to the research work. This would include offline/online survey, one to one interviews or semi structural interview, with the help of prepared questionnaire.  The data collect from the above highlighted sources would be termed as primary data. Moreover, the researcher would decide to collect data from web pages, newspapers, articles in order to get secondary data.

In the present case also, the research world select descriptive research design to conduct the research work. It is because descriptive research design would provide flexible and accurate data which would help the researcher to frame the hypotheses (Gaber and Wright, 2014).

This type of research method would be used to analyse the non-numeric data set. The issues, experiences, perceptions and the set of suggestion collect from various targeted population would be preciously analysed by the researcher (Creswell, 2013).

6.2.2 Quantitative Research 

This type of research method would be used to analyse the numeric data set collected from surveys, interviews, or from secondary data. To analyse the data and information, various quantitative research method would be used such as development of mathematical models and so on. The data would be analysed and presented in tabular form and in graphs/ charts in MS Excel for better understanding (Creswell, 2013).

Sample size - 85 (30 customers and 10 employees, 2 managerial level personals of Mac-Donald and 30 customers of 10 employees and 2 managerial level personals of Hunger Jack and 1 retired manager of any of the above two restaurant).

Targeted Area – Brisbane (Australia) Questionnaire would be prepared by the researcher based on the research question and research topic. The researcher would conduct an offline survey and semi-structural interview. The responses would be collected and would be analysed.

6.3.3 Secondary Data 

Researcher would collect data and information from articles, newspapers and webpages related to the current research topic. Further, it is essential that the data must be updated with respect to the current trends.

The collected data from questionnaire, interview and secondary sources would be then analysed. For non- numeric data set, qualitative research analysis method would be taken into account. Various correlations would be formed and their association would be highlighted in the tabular form. Further, numeric data would be analysed with the help of quantitative research analysis method and final outcomes would be represented in charts, ratios, percentage, tables and so on. Moreover, if required, the linear regression would be used to find the association between the variables to check the hypothesis. Finally, the conclusion would be drawn and represented in the final report along with the set of answers for the research question (Hillier, 2006).

There would be some research limitations for the research work which are highlighted below:

• Researcher has selected a broad topic for the research work which would be quite difficult to cover whole of the aspects of the research topic. In place of broad topic, the researcher should select some specified range or certain points of the research objective. This would help the researcher to focus on the narrowed range for the research objective.
• Data collection method is an imperative integrating method and if the research has selected unnecessary data from several sources then it would be difficult to handle and analyse the data. This would decrease the scope and depth of the data analysis and would not address the actual research issue (Creswell, 2013).

Conclusion 

The final conclusion would be drawn based on the above discussion. The researcher would be in the position to comment on the factors which must be taken into consideration by the food business personals, regarding the usages of Facebook in their business. The conclusion would be made regarding the aspect that whether food business should use Facebook for their social marketing or not. Moreover, the research work would provide the ground for future research work and the necessary suggestions to the owners of the Mac-Donald and Hungry Jack to use of Facebook for their business chain in Brisbane.

References 

Bloomberg, B., Cooper, D. R. and Schindler, P. S. (2011).Business Research Methods,  London: McGraw Hill Publications. 

Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research Design: A qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.   

Gaber, H.R. and Wright, L.T. (2014), ‘Fast-food advertising in social media. A case study on Facebook in Egypt’, Journal of Business and Retail Management Research, Vol. 9 No.1, pp. 52-63.   

Hillier, F.(2006).Introduction to Operations Research,New York:McGraw Hill Publications.  

Kim, Angella J., and Eunju Ko. 2012, 'Do social media marketing activities enhance customer equity? An empirical study of luxury fashion brand', ournal of Business Research, vol 65, no. 10, pp. 1480-1486.  

Saunders, M.N.K., Thornhill, A.  And Lewis, P. (2009). Research methods for business Students, London: Printhall.   

Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 2012, 'Social Media: What are the advantages and disadvantages of social networking sites? What should we include in a policy?', 1 Jun 2012, viewed 7 June 2017, <https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/socialnetworkingsitespolicy.aspx>.   

Thaichon, P. (2016) ,Fast food companies use social networking sites to target children, The Conversation, [Online] Available at https://theconversation.com/fast-food-companies-use-social-networking-sites-to-target-children-63189 [Assessed June 07, 2017].