Social media : a need for a contemporary organisation

Abstract

Today, with the help of technology, the majority of the people are connected to the Internet in one way or another. People use the internet not only to search for information that they are seeking but also want to interact and share information with each other. This interaction is made possible using Social Media. Since people started using Social Media, the marketers saw this as a window of opportunity to start influencing their clients by social media. This study is to study whether an organisation needs to have a social media account to disseminate information and be in contact with the customers. This study was carried out in Malta, were many of the food items that are consumer are imported. Local food manufacturers can find this study helpful as it highlights the use of Social Media to instigate an ethnocentric effect on the consumer. For this study an experiment was designed, were participants were divided into two groups. One of the groups was exposed to the social media of the local company behind the dairy products produced under the brand Benna, while the other group did not have such an exposure. The results were analysed and were compared using t-test to confirm whether there were any significant changes on the ethnocentric attitude of the participants. This study found that there were changes in the attitude of the participants when they were exposed to the social media page in contrast with the participants who did not have the exposure to the social media page. Since this experiment was part of a dissertation, no resources were available to do the experiment on more participants or to study the effects of more than one local brand on the participants. This study suggests that social media is indeed needed by an organisation to promote its products across the market. Therefore, marketers should use this type of media to reach out to potential customers and engage with current customers.