The Influence of Social Media on Customer

Relationship
IntroductionMarketers are working in challenging times. Never before have we been
able to get so close to our customers and engage with them in such a
timely and relevant manner. Harnessed with customer relationship
management, social media can deliver financial benefits to companies no
matter what sector. The benefits are centred on increasing customer
experience, awareness and engagement and are not peripheral but
fundamental to driving business performance. Financial benefits apply
across the customer life cycle, in acquisition, retention, value
development and managing cost to serve. In addition, social customer
relationship management (SCRM) can deliver insight, which will help drive
real customer centric innovation.
At the end of it all, Social Media on CRM is about people and relationships
and demands a customer focus as never before. Forget that and you have
little chance of success.

Engagement

Chen (2011) suggested that people are involved and engage in

Social Media because it gratifies a need to connect with others while
Mayer (2011) enunciated that engagement focuses on the relational
engagement and implies the gratification of a persons intrinsic
motivation not only to connect with similar others, but most
important, to connect to the organization that develops and
manages the channel.

Experience
Marketing practitioners need to accept that experiences people
have with their designs exist within ecology of experiences. As
Maklan and Klaus (2011) argueed in their study of customers
experiences, peoples experiences are likely to arise in part from the
cumulative effect of media channels, rather than being driven by a
single episode. Nevertheless, because of its configuration, it is
conceivable that peoples experiences of a brands social media are
qualitatively different from those encountered via other media such
as retail, television and print. (Arnold et al. 2005).

Awareness

Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to

be conscious of events, objects, or sensory patterns as defined by
(Ofir & Simonson 2007). The author later goes on to state that
knowledge and know how are the two key components which
help a consumer in perceiving a sense of awareness about a brand
or a firm on any form of media.

Thus from the above literature that has been analyzed and reviewed, it is
clear that the authors have failed to address how engagement, experience
and awareness in social media tends to influence customer relationship
management and through this existing research I will aim to challenge the
existing theories and variables to help bridge the gap between the two.

Research Objective
To identify and examine the influence of social media factors on customer
relationship.

Research Question
What are the factors responsible for determining the influence of social
media on customer relationship?

Conceptual Model

Engagement

Experience

Customer
Relationship

Awareness

H1: High Engagement on social media has a positive effect in developing good
Customer Relationship.

H0: High Engagement on social media does not have a positive effect in
developing good Customer Relationship.

H2: Favourable Experiences on social media has a positive effect on Customer

Relationship.

H0: Favourable Experiences on social media does not have a positive effect on
Customer Relationship.

H3: High Awareness of social media has a positive effect on Customer

Relationship.

H0: High Awareness of social media does not have a positive effect on Customer
Relationship.

Research Design
I plan on conducting this study using data collected from a mixed sample
compromising of 50 students from schools, 50 students from colleges and
50 employees from various organizations located around ITPL and
surrounding areas. The reason for using this sampling type is mainly
because not only is it easy to obtain raw data from respondents but also
allows for random selection eliminating bias, but saves my time and cost.
Another reason for selecting this survey method is because it allows me to
collect quantitative data and analyse it using inferential statistics. In
addition it will also help me find the relationship between various
variables.
The tool I intend on using to conduct this research is a structured
questionnaire which I will be distributing either in person or through a
web-based tool. The questions will mainly comprise of a mix of open and
closed ended questions and will help in determining the influence social
media outlets such as twitter and face-book has on building customer
relationships.
I plan on measuring the variables using multiple items using a five point
scale
1) Strongly disagree
2) Disagree
3) Neither Agree non Disagree
4) Agree
5) Strongly Agree

Proposed Outcome The study of my research found that there existed a strong and positive
relationship between the level of user experiences, engagement and
awareness of Social Media which contributed towards developing and
establishing good Customer Relationship on forums online.

References

Chen, G.M. Tweet this: A uses and gratifications perspective on how active Twitter
use gratifies a need to connect with others. Computers in Human
Behavior, 27, 2 (March 2011), 755762.
Maklan, S. & Klaus, P. (2011) Customer experience: are we measuring the right
things?
International Journal of Market Research, 53, 6, pp. 771792.

Arnold, M., Reynolds, K., Ponder, N. & Lueg, J. (2005) Customer delight in a retail
context:
investigating delightful and terrible shopping experiences. Journal of Business
Research, 58,
8, pp. 11321145.

Ofir, C. & Simonson, I. (2007) The effect of stating expectations on customer

satisfaction and
shopping experience. Journal of Marketing Research, 44, 1, pp. 164174.