The Impacts of Social Media on the UK Events Industry - Research Proposal Example

I. Exploring Social Media and Its Impacts on the UK Events Industry This paper is an exploration of social media about its impacts on the United Kingdom events industry and concerning the different tools for marketing that are in use for advertising purposes (Neff; Smith and Zook; Kaplan and Heinlein; Agichtein et al.; Gilbert and Karahalios). II. Rationale A. Advancing a Case for the Current Research Social media has become central to our idea of communicating with the rest of society, not just with friends, and to our notion of consuming content, rivaling traditional forms of media, and increasingly taking up larger and larger portions of our time. Its reach has come to extend to the most intimate parts of our lives, including our most cherished social rituals. This has implications for the events industry in general, and for the way, the events industry ought to capitalize on social media trends to remain relevant. These developments also augur well for the industry, as they represent new opportunities that the industry can exploit to thrive moving forward (Neff; Smith and Zook; Kaplan and Heinlein; Agichtein et al.; Gilbert and Karahalios). B. Identification of Management Issues Gaping holes in the marketing mix can result from events industry participants ignoring recent trends relating to the growing power and influence of social media in the lives and the finances of its customers. An understanding of the intricacies of social media as they are used to supplement or to make up the core of the important promotions and place aspects of the marketing mix can have profound implications for the events industry as a whole (Mangold and Faulds; Asur and Huberman; Xiang and Gretzel; Correa et al; Eyrich et al.; Kietzmann er al.; Thakeray et al.; Bian et al.). C. Statement of Research Question How does social media impact the UK events industry? What are the implications of the explosion in social media use on the events industry in the UK, as they pertain specifically to the way the industry markets itself and provides services to its customers? (Neff; Smith and Zook; Kaplan and Heinlein; Agichtein et al.; Gilbert and Karahalios). D. Aims and Objectives This paper aims to derive insights from recent research relating to the impacts of social media on the UK events industry in particular, and the intricacies of social media use and how such affects the way the UK industry markets itself and provides services to its customer bases (Neff; Smith and Zook; Kaplan and Heinlein; Agichtein et al.; Gilbert and Karahalios). III. Literature Review There is the growing sense that social media is of vital importance in many aspects of businesses that have to do with facing and relating to customers, as evidenced, for instance, in the way public relations professionals have come to embrace social media tools and paradigms. This has implications for the UK events industry, which is largely driven by people-facing dynamics, and largely rises and falls on the strengths of the industry's ability to relate to people. Specifically, the UK events industry is likewise assumed to be as affected by the use of social media by relations experts as the other key industries that deal directly with customers daily (Eyrich et al.). On the other hand, a blind embrace of social media can result in marketing and product decisions that fail to connect, and thus instance must understand relevant literature that deals with what the building components of social media are, and the dynamics of people's use of social media. Apart from the surface constituents of social media as consumption platforms for digital content, there is a whole infrastructure of social relationships and relationships-based consumption that needs to be understood. The take is that social media impacts the way people consume services too, such as events company services, and it is necessary to be able to understand how social media works (Kietzmann et al.). Social media, for instance, has given birth to the new marketing paradigms, such as social marketing and related concepts, and this is an arena that can negatively impact events businesses' bottom lines if not properly understood. Meanwhile, with proper use, social marketing promotions and strategies are said to hold the promise of furthering important business goals for the events industry too. Services, in general, can benefit from emerging paradigms on social marketing (Thakeray et al.). Aspects of social media participation, on the other hand, are important about understanding how events industry customers use social media in the first place. Questions such as how do events industry customers interact with social media content are relevant in crafting marketing messages and product delivery paradigms that work. The assumption here is that social media is different from traditional media in the way customers relate to content and respond to marketing and product messages, to the point that events industry practitioners who continue to rely on strategies that are culled from experiences with traditional media may be at a disadvantage. This disadvantage translates to poorer marketing results, and also poorer business outcomes in comparison to more social media savvy competitors (Correa et al.). Earlier literature that may not be directly tied to the events industry and the use of social media, on the other hand, can also be a source of insights into how events industry players leverage knowledge on the way social media users consume and collaborate on content. The take from such literature is that the events industry needs to incorporate insights into the collaborative nature of content creation in social media platforms to be able to craft effective product delivery and marketing programs (Bian et al.). Meanwhile, the reality on the ground is that social media use has largely become synonymous with Internet use, to the point that for events industry practitioners in general, to miss out on social media is equivalent to missing out on the large market of Internet users who may also be procurers of services provided by the events industry. To put it another way, the market for events industry services is not different from the market for Internet services, as the general population has come to embrace social media with the same fervor and ubiquity as traditional media channels like television and print media. For the events industry, this means having to take social media as a viable platform for the kinds of activities that were formerly reserved for traditional print and TV media. On the other hand, as has been discussed earlier, this means not just blindly applying strategies that worked with traditional print and TV, as the social media paradigm is substantially different on many levels (Kaplan and Haenlein). There is likewise literature on the ability of users to find content that is relevant to them, and how much can impact the way events industry players craft and present products and marketing, to cater to the ways that customers search for and surface information that is relevant to them. The take is that quality information is an aspect of the relevance of that information to the target market for events industry services. What applies to the general market for such services in the rest of the world, it can be argued, can likewise be applied to the events industry in the UK, with some modifications to suit the particular needs of UK customers (Agichtein et al.). Literature exists too, that maps social media users to a relationship infrastructure where users have varying levels of relationship strengths with different users and different “friends”, further complicating any planned marketing and product launches on the part of UK events industry practitioners. It is important, for instance, for industry practitioners to realize that marketing to customers in the UK entails a more fine-grained approach that takes into consideration the various levels of relationship strengths among friendship networks. The right focus ought to be, for UK events industry practitioners, to tailor products and, marketing programs that cater to strong social networks, rather than on weaker ones where the ties are less durable and less imbued by such elements as trust and collaboration. These realities further stress the need for the events industry player to understand the dynamics of social media use by customers more intently (Gilbert and Karahalios). There are aspects too, of social media being a new kind of promotional platform that the events industry can leverage if properly understood. Insights into the use of social media as platforms not only for business to customer interactions, but also for the customer to customer direct interactions, can impact the way events industry players present themselves. This implies the need for greater transparency and trustworthiness, for instance, as customers can compare notes, and compare services for quality and price, for instance. All these imply a shift in the power balance favoring customers, that the events industry needs to take into consideration (Mangold and Faulds). Meanwhile, literature now exists that essentially forward the thesis that social media shapes future outcomes for different businesses, in a way implying that those who can master social media in the events industry and in many other industries will survive, while those who do not, will not fare as well (Asur and Huberman). In the events industry as in many other industries, as well, the ability of social media to surface information about services implies a titanic power shift accelerated by the ability of customers to share information on a growing scale, further tilting the power balance towards customers. Players in the events industry need to understand this shift in the power dynamics, and craft business and marketing strategies that factor this power balance shift (Xiang and Gretzel; Neff). Works Cited Agichtein, Eugene et al. “Finding High-Quality Content in Social Media”. WSDM 2008/ Emory University. 2008. 20 October 2012. Asur, Sitaram and Bernardo Huberman. “Predicting the Future with Social Media”. HP Labs Social Computing Labs. 29 March 2010. 20 October 2012. Bian, Jiang et al. “Finding the Right Facts in the Crowd: Factoid Question Answering over Social Media”. ACM 2008. 2008. 20 October 2012. Correa, Teresa et al. “Who interacts on the Web?: The intersection of users’ personality and social media use”. Computers in Human Behavior 26. 2010. 20 October 2012. Eyrich, Nina et al. “PR practitioners' use of social media tools and communication technology”. Public Relations Review 34. 2008. 20 October 2012. Gilbert, Eric and Karrie Karahalios. “Predicting Tie Strength with Social Media”. ACM 2009/Purdue. 2009. 20 October 2012. Kaplan, Andreas and Michael Heinlein. “Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media”. Business Horizons 53/ Elsevier/ Kelley School of Business Indiana University. 2010. 20 October 2012. Kietzmann, Jan et al. “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media”. Business Horizons 54. 2011. 20 October 2012. Mangold, W. Glynn and David Faulds. “Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix”. Business Horizons 52/Elsevier. 2009. 20 October 2012. Neff, Gina. “The Changing Place of Cultural Production: The Location of Social Networks in a Digital Media Industry”. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 2005. 20 October 2012. Thakeray, Rosemary et al. “Enhancing Promotional Strategies Within Social Marketing Programs: Use of Web 2.0 Social Media”. Sage Publications. 2008. 20 October 2012. Xiang, Zheng and Ulrike Gretzel. “Role of social media in online travel information search”. Tourism Management 31 (2). April 2010. 20 October 2012. Read More