RESEARCH PROPOSAL SUBMISSION:

“THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

MARKETING IN BANGLADESH”

MKT 470
Section: 8

Spring 2019

Submitted To

Syed Kamrul Islam (SKI)

Department of Marketing and International Business

School of Business and Economics

Submitted By:

Name ID
Md. Nurul Samnan 1611333030
Rehnuma Tarannum Rashna 1610056030
Maisha Naoshin 1611819030
Fuad Hossain Rafi 1530472630

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 LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL
12th December, 2018

Syed Kamrul Islam

Senior Lecturer

Department of Marketing and International Business

SBE, North South University

Subject: Letter of Transmittal for the submitting our report.

Sir,
This is the submission of research report on “effectiveness of social media marketing in
Bangladesh”. It was a very enriching and exciting experience for us to complete this report. We
have applied our course learnings and contents to complete this report which enabled our skill to
adapt in the real market situation. If you have any kind of questions or comments regarding the
interpretation of this report, feel free to ask for any clarification. It would be our pleasure to
answer your enquiries. We hope this paper can fulfill the purpose according to the provided
guidelines which it was meant for.

Thank you for believing in us and giving us this wonderful opportunity to work in such an
exciting project.

Sincerely,

Md. Nurul Samnan

Rehnuma Tarannum Rashna

Maisha Naoshin

Fuad Hossain Rafi

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 ABSTRACT
This topic of our research paper is about the “Effectiveness of social media marketing in
Bangladesh”. Our research has followed to the guidelines that are necessary for the research.
Internet has created vast of opportunities in the daily lives of consumers. Here we as a group
conducted the research on a sample size of 100 people. In this research we surveyed users to give
us a brief overview to understand the credibility of social media marketing. As it is essential to
look deeper into the psychological aspects that drives the minds of the people whom the products
are targeted towards. The companies need to be able to realize the possibilities, leverage the
opportunity and reserve the perceived value of consumers. It is also very essential to understand
the media vehicles that marketers are using, are they effective enough, if not then why.
Moreover, how the future looks for Bangladesh in the digital scenario. Our hypotheses tried to
prove whether the brand name and popularity affected purchase decisions made by the
consumers. Also, whether the categories and range of products matter to consumers, whether
they give importance to price of the product or the convenience provided by online shopping
through Facebook creates greater value to them. And, lastly to what extent customer satisfaction
matter to customers have been found out through this research. We have even used to test the
hypotheses, then based on the analysis we have input our recommendations.

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Table of Contents
LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.......................................................................................................2

ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................................3

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................5

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY.......................................................................................................5

LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................6

HYPOTHESIS.................................................................................................................................7

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY....................................................................................................8

Target Group:...............................................................................................................................8

Primary Research:........................................................................................................................8

Secondary Research:....................................................................................................................8

STATISTICAL TECHNIQUE AND JUSTIFICATION................................................................8

DATA ANALYSIS.........................................................................................................................9

HYPOTHESIS TESTING AND INTERPRETATION.................................................................14

FINDINGS.....................................................................................................................................16

RECOMMENDATION.................................................................................................................17

SCOPES AND OPPORTUNITIES...............................................................................................18

LIMITATION AND CHALLENGES...........................................................................................18

CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................20

BIBLIOGRAPHY..........................................................................................................................20

APPENDIX....................................................................................................................................21

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 INTRODUCTION
Digital Bangladesh, a dream that has been dreamt for quite a long time. A vision where
everything in Bangladesh will be digitalized. The growth of digitization is the perfect example of
the progress that we have made so far. But when it comes down to marketing, we need to find
out if it is progressing at the same pace.

We always wanted a more economical, efficient and scalable media vehicle where we can
communicate with our target audiences. After the emergence of digital marketing, that
communication medium was this. But the irony is, when the whole world is capitalizing on
social media marketing, only 2% marketing expense goes to social media marketing in
Bangladesh. (LightCastle Partners, 2019)

Now the main question is, in the context of Bangladesh, how effective social media marketing is.
In this research, we would want to address that. Throughout years, we have conducted a lot of
researches on traditional marketing, we have yet to discover how impactful social media
marketing is. How people react to digital media commercials, and most importantly their
perception towards the credibility of the digital communications.

By unveiling all those insights, we actually would like to help the marketing industry to realize
the potential of social media marketing and penetrate in to it as well. This research will also help
us to know the future of marketing in Bangladesh is, and how we can make positive changes to
make it better.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

Due to the effect of globalization, the availability of products of different category and different
brands has become very much accessible to the consumers because of social media marketing.
The growth is fueled by opportunities like digital communications, cultural diversity and their
conjunction and people travelling around the globe (Okonkwo, 2009). In order to sustain in the
fast moving competitive market, it is very important to identify and understand the key drivers
that play a major role in this industry.

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The purpose of this study is to understand the credibility of social media marketing. As it is
essential to look deeper into the psychological aspects that drives the minds of the people whom
the products are targeted towards. The companies need to be able to realize the possibilities,
leverage the opportunity and reserve the perceived value of consumers. It is also very essential to
understand the media vehicles that marketers are using, are they effective enough, if not then
why. Moreover, how the future looks for Bangladesh in the digital scenario.

To sum up, through our research, we would want to find out,

1. The credibility of social media marketing in Bangladesh

2. The variables that affects social media marketing
3. The perception of value adding proposition by the social media users

LITERATURE REVIEW
In today’s world, almost everything runs with the help of technology and this is where the use of
social networking sites gains its popularity. Social media sites are used by many retailers all
around the world to showcase and promote their products. Social media outlets have the
capability to build a strong relationship with customers. This is usually done by opening a
Facebook page of that specific brand. Companies later fill this page with messages, videos,
images and etc (L De Vries, 2012) Social media gives a platform for a smooth connection and
communication between brands and consumer. Through the emergence of social media, the
method of communication has changed a lot. People now are mostly available in such places and
thus brands need to learn how to display their products to customers via social media. This new
trend of promoting the product in soil media has been into the market for the last decade and thus
many studies have been conducted ever since to understand its effectiveness and consumer
behavior towards it even though, social media marketing is a popular topic nowadays, only
experimental and theoretical research has been conducted or this. After going through many
studies it can be analyzed that people are now focusing on how exactly social media works and
the consumer behavior related to it. This research is on the very initial stage and still has a very
far way to go and especially in Bangladesh. Digital Bangladesh is a dream that has been dreamt
for quite a long time. It is a vision where everything in Bangladesh will be digitalized. The

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growth of digitization is the perfect example of the progress that we have made so far. But when
it comes down to marketing, we need to find out if it is progressing at the same pace. After the
emergence of digital marketing, that communication medium was this. But the irony is, when the
whole world is capitalizing on social media marketing, only 2% marketing expense goes to
social media marketing in Bangladesh. On the contrary, there are around 3,282,600 users who
use social media today in Bangladesh. According to the March 2019 statistics, 93.35% of the
total social media users use Facebook, 3.07% use YouTube, 1.63% use Pinterest, 1.45% use
Twitter, 0.15% use Reddit and 0.14% use Instagram.

So this is why we conducted research on the effectiveness of social media marketing in

Bangladesh and tried to work on four different hypotheses. We ran four different tests and came
out with some enlightening factors that affect social media marketing. In our research, we ran a
few tests such as chi-square, correlation, multiple regression paired t-test to find out certain
associations.

HYPOTHESIS
Social media marketing today, is not just measured by the size of a company’s fan base. Rather
how fans communicate with a company, how they share company’s content, how they
recommend a company to their friends, how many followers and fans a company can gain and
how many fans company can keep and lot more.

So we needed to know how all of these things work in the context of Bangladesh. Thus, we made
some hypothesis to prove the effectiveness of social media marketing in Bangladesh. These are:

1. Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing is positively correlated with quality of the

content.
2. Social Media Marketing is more effective for the tech savvy niche who are more active
on social media platforms.
3. People who think Facebook is an effective medium also think social media marketing is
overall effective.

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 4. There will be significant prediction of the effectiveness of social media marketing by the
social media usage rate and social media ad ignorance rate.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research methodology is one of the most crucial part in this research. Research Methodology is
the process used to collect information and data for the purpose of making business decisions.
The methodology may include publication research, interviews, surveys and other research
techniques, and could include both present and historical information. For this specific research,
we would want to use both primary market research and secondary market research.

Target Group:
For this research we are mainly targeting the urban based students, from the age group of 18-26.
We are choosing this demographics, because these are the people who have a very active social
media life. Probability of any marketing communication reaching them is higher than reaching
others. Our sample size will be around 100 people. So that we can get an authentic insight from
our research.

Primary Research:
Primary Research will include surveys, investigations, or tests carried out to acquire data first-
hand, rather than being gathered from published sources. For the primary research, we will also
have to visit some digital agencies to understand the market properly.

Secondary Research:
For secondary research, we would use various sources such as newspapers, internet browsing,
articles to find policies, for further assurance and credibility of our researched information. The
most important information in the secondary research would be from the different company’s
online platforms, such as Facebook page, Website, LinkedIn profile etc. The secondary research
will be very helpful for us to solidify our research.

STATISTICAL TECHNIQUE AND JUSTIFICATION

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For the hypothesis testing, we decided to use four techniques. Using these four techniques we
hope to unveil the answers that we are looking for. These are:

Chi-Square: As we have analyzed our collected data using the software SPSS. One of them is
the Chi-square test. This particular test is done to test hypothesis that are in association between
two variables.

Paired Sample t-test: Now when we wanted to test the difference between two variables and
one single sample, we have decided to use the independent sample, t-test to come to our
conclusions.

Correlation: When we wanted to test for how much and to what extent the variables were
effecting the depending variable. So we used correlation test for that.

Regression: To judge the significance of each co-efficient will ran multiple linear regression.

DATA ANALYSIS
We have surveyed around 100 people. When we actually started reviewing the results, to our
utter surprise, we were very thrilled because of how the perception of people were different from
us. The results of the survey are given below:

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 HYPOTHESIS TESTING AND INTERPRETATION
We have conducted four different tests for our four different hypothesis. The tests and hypothesis
are discussed below:

H1: Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing is positively correlated with quality of the
content.

For conducting this hypothesis testing we have used correlation testing so that we can find out to
what extent the variables are affecting the effectiveness of social media marketing.

Interpretation: From the table we can see that the significance level is 0.47 which is more than
0.05 and thus we fail to reject the null hypothesis.

H2: Social Media Marketing is more effective for the tech savvy niche who are more active
on social media platforms.

For conducting this hypothesis testing we have used paired sample t-test to test the difference
between two variables and one single sample.

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Interpretation: From the table we can see that the significance level is 0.00 which means it is
highly significant and thus we can reject the null hypothesis. The confidence interval was 95%
and the DF value wa calculated by using the formula n-1.

H3: People who think Facebook is an effective medium also think social media marketing is
overall effective.

For conducting this hypothesis testing we have used chi-square test to test hypothesis that are in
association between two variables.

Interpretation: From the table we can see that the significance level is 0.00 which means it is
highly significant and thus we can reject the null hypothesis. Also we can see that the DF value
is 10.

H4: There will be significant prediction of the effectiveness of social media marketing by
the social media usage rate and social media ad ignorance rate.

For conducting this hypothesis testing we have used multiple linear regression test to judge the
significance of each co-efficient will ran multiple linear regression.

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Interpretation: Since the p-value is greater than .05, we cannot reject the null hypothesis as the
value is less significant. An analysis of the coefficient of the independent variables tells us that
convenience explains the most variability in the time people are often on social media followed
by the ignorance rate of advertisements in social media.

FINDINGS
After analysis the results thoroughly, we have derived some findings. These are:

1. We could not reject our first hypothesis which was ‘’ Effectiveness of Social Media
Marketing is positively correlated with the quality of the content.’’ This simply
means that effectiveness of Social Media Marketing is not positively correlated with
the quality of the content.
2. We could reject our first hypothesis which was ‘’ Social Media Marketing is more
effective for the tech savvy niche who are more active on social media platforms.’’
This simply means that social Media Marketing is more effective for the tech savvy
niche who are more active on social media platforms.
3. We could reject our first hypothesis which was ‘’ People who think Facebook is an
effective medium also think social media marketing is overall effective.’’ This simply
means that people who think Facebook is an effective medium also think social media
marketing is overall effective.

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 4. We could not reject our first hypothesis which was ‘’ There will be significant
prediction of the effectiveness of social media marketing by the social media usage
rate and social media ad ignorance rate.’’ This simply means that there will be
significant prediction of the effectiveness of social media marketing by the social
media usage rate and social media ad ignorance rate.

RECOMMENDATION
From the findings, we developed some recommendations for this specific topic. These are:

1. Right product to the right target group - it is very important that the right target group of
consumers is focused. Not every group of consumers is used to social media thus;
focusing on the wrong group of consumers will bring in no profit for the business at all.
For any product to be a success it needs to be delivered to the right marketing in
Bangladesh, we can clearly say that the young group of people are more into social media
than older people. Therefore, keeping this in mind products need to be marketed
accordingly. A product targeted for the right target group of consumers can bring a large
profit and success for the business. In addition, no matter how much amazing one product
is, if the right target group is not focused then it is not worth it. Therefore, delivering the
right product to the right target market is very much needed.

2. Target tech-savvy people – tech-savvy group of people are the once who are always
enthusiastic with new gadgets and spends most of their time on technological devices and
also on social media. Therefore, mobile phones are a great way for using social media
these days. It is more convenient to carry and use it everywhere. For these people social
media plays a vital role thus focusing on this group will bring good feedback. Tech-savvy
people are usually very active on social media; therefore it is easier to focus them for
marketing on social media. Moreover, they are the first to notice or observe new
marketing of products from social media.

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 3. Capitalize on Facebook – from the information we have collected, we actually saw that a
majority of people use social media and have access to internet. Also, we found out that
Facebook is the most common platform for social media marketing. Most people in
Bangladesh use Facebook and thus marketing products through this platform will help
sellers reach their maximum consumers. Thus, marketing through Facebook should be
more concentrated and more investments should be done on Facebook. Capitalizing on
Facebook for social media marketing for products has great future prospects. Looking at
the current scenario, people have become busier with life and they prefer to shop online
for products thus capitalizing on Facebook are likely to grab a huge number of
consumers.

SCOPES AND OPPORTUNITIES

There are right now 24+ million Facebook users in Bangladesh. (LightCastle Partners, 2019)
Which will give us a huge scope to get authentic results out of them. The internet penetration in
Bangladesh is about 39%. (Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, 2019) So more
people are getting into the digital world. There is a shifting demographics of about 32%. (Pew
Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech, 2019) Which is a clear indication of the new
generation taking control over the decision making process in their families. Finally, about 76%
of the population of Bangladesh are already daily users of social media. (LightCastle Partners,
2019) So we can clearly say that it is a booming market, and the credibility of the channel must
be addressed.

LIMITATION AND CHALLENGES

Though there are a lot of scopes for social media marketing, but finding out the effectiveness of
this specific topic can have some limitations. Which are:

1. Data security - in today’s world everything is about data. Huge amount of data storages
are created by companies to store all their valuable data. Data security refers to the

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 process of protecting data from unauthorized access and data corruption throughout its
lifecycle. Therefore, the single most important reason to implement data
protection strategies is fear of financial loss. Data is recognized as an important corporate
asset that needs to be safeguarded. Loss of information can lead to direct financial losses,
such as lost sales, fines, or monetary judgments.

2. Data sharing – since data security is very important therefore not everyone wants to share
their data. Sharing data has high chance of data getting lost or being misused. So sharing
data increases the risk of data getting misplaced as well. Since, people are very conscious
about their data thus not everyone is willing to share data. In such cases, data collection
becomes a limitation as people or the respondents as well do not always feel comfortable
sharing their information.

3. Non Responsive Bias – this occurs when the respondents are not well responsive. They
do not answer the questionnaire being interested rather give answers which might of no
use or invalid. This is a very common limitation during any research as not respondents
will be interested or fir with their answers, they would just fill up the survey just for the
sake of it. Therefore, answers from this kind of respondents are usually considered to be
null as they are of no use.

4. Systematic Error – this kind of error occurs throughout the process or the system. These
could be during the data entry, or while doing surveys. Systematic errors can affect the
whole research findings. As without proper data input or any errors occurred during the
whole process can change the research findings. To avoid such errors, we need to be
careful from the very beginning of the research. As, if we are careful for the first, then all
the steps will be done with care and thus, less chance of a systematic error occurring.

5. Deliberate Falsification – this refers to when respondents deliberately answer the

questions wrongly, which means some people might intentionally give wrong answers to
the questions to make the research findings not fruitful. It is difficult to avoid limitations
as we cannot control the answers of the respondents. In addition, the respondents should

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 be chosen accordingly based on the research topic as not all groups of people will give
suitable answers for any topic.

CONCLUSION
We have in total did four tests to check our hypothesises. They are multiple regression analysis,
chi square test, paired sample t-test and lastly correlation. We could not reject the null hypothesis
in our first hypothesis which was ‘’ Effectiveness of Social Media Marketing is positively
correlated with the quality of the content.’’ We could reject the null hypothesis in our second
hypothesis which was ‘’Social Media Marketing is more effective for the tech savvy niche who
are more active on social media platforms.’’ Moreover, we could also reject the null hypothesis
in our third hypothesis which was ‘’People who think Facebook is an effective medium also
think social media marketing is overall effective.’’ Lastly, we could not reject the last null
hypothesis for our fourth hypothesis which was ‘’There will be no significant prediction of the
effectiveness of social media marketing by the social media usage rate and social media ad
ignorance rate.’’

Therefore, two of our hypothesises were rejected and two were accepted. Overall conducting a
research requires proper data collection and data input. Once all the data have been collected
properly then we can use the SPSS, input all the data entry and find the research findings.

So we can finally say that, social media marketing is also very effective in Bangladesh like the
whole world and it is booming.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. LightCastle Partners. (2019). Digital Services and ICT - LightCastle Partners. [online]
Available at: https://www.lightcastlebd.com/industries/digital-services-and-ict.
2. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. (2019). Internet and Technology.
[online] Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/.

3. L De Vries, S. G. (2012). Popularity of brand posts on brand fan pages: An investigation

of the effects of social media marketing.

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APPENDIX

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