Title
The Impact of Social Media Marketing Activities on Brand Awareness: A study on D4E Media
Ltd - Digital Marketing Agency in the new normal
Research problem or justification
Firstly, I will talk about the background of the company that I am working for.
D4E Media Ltd – a Vietnamese creative marketing agency that offers a wide range of digital
marketing and E-commerce services. As the company has been newly founded since the
beginning of 2021, it is struggling to increase brand awareness to acquire new clients in the
current competitive landscape.
As a consequence of Covid-19, a study (Kemp, 2021) shows that there are 64 million internet
users, equivalent to a penetration rate of 67% in Vietnam. On average, users spend 6 hours and
52 minutes per day to access the Internet and 2 hours and 37 minutes using social media. From
a practical point of view, it is easy to see the strong possession of the Internet for users and can
see that traditional forms of marketing are slowly losing their effectiveness (Nguyen et al.,
2020). Instead, digital marketing on social media becomes the inevitable approach to
customers of every business, especially for start-up and small businesses (Anon, 2017).
Although social media offers potential opportunities, 93% of marketers believe that social
media has increased competitiveness in their sector (Sproutsocial, 2021). As the intense as the
competition is out there, it is vital to find which marketing activities on social media can help
differentiate the company from others.
Gap in the literature
Despite the emerging importance of social media marketing in various fields and many studies
on it, the study of the impact of such practices on brand value is still limited (Seo & Park, 2018).
Previous studies on social media can be categorized into four main categories, namely brand
communities, E-WOM, network analysis, and product-harm crises (Gensler et al., 2013).
Alalwan et al. (2017) divided these groups into subgroups including: first, studies addressing
the role of social media in predicting advertising activities, second, studies examined the role
of social media in customer- relationship management, third, the studies that analyze the
impact of the informative role of social media on consumer behavior, fourth, research focus on
the factors influencing customer adoption of social group, and finally the studies that focus on
social media from the perspective of organizations. Therefore, there is still a lack of studies
that examine social media marketing from the perspectives of branding literature.
When it comes to branding, researchers tend to explore the power of social media marketing
activities on brand equity and brand loyalty with insignificant emphasis on brand awareness
(Ebrahim, 2019; Koay et al., 2020; Riaz et al., 2019). The gap which motivated this study also
includes the limited amount of research on the usage of social media marketing activities for
digital marketing agencies as a branding strategy. Accordingly, this study addresses the gap
and investigates the effects of social media marketing activities on the brand awareness of a
digital marketing agency.
Despite all the closeness an Internet connection can provide, some behavioral differences mark
the borders between countries and require a unique social media strategy to align with it
(Washenko, 2015). Hence, this study is conducted to explore the situation on the specific
context of Vietnam in the New Normal Era.
Research aim, objective, question, or hypothesis
This research aims to examine the relationship of social media marketing activities and brand
awareness, and deeply focus on the case of digital marketing agency named D4E Media Ltd in
the New Normal Era. Also, this research is discovering which type of marketing activities are
most effective to improve brand awareness in Vietnam. Moreover, the practical importance of
this research is described how managers may use the results to improve their marketing
activities related to social networks to enhance the audience’s brand awareness.
Before we continue, it is important to sort out some of the term I will use
Brand Awareness refers to the level of consumer recognition, acceptance, and recall of a brand
in any case (Percy & Rossiter, 1992; Perreault et al., 2017). For any business, brand awareness is
crucial because it is the very first step in the marketing funnel, and a crucial foundation to
eventually acquire customers. Brand awareness is created through consumers’ repeated and
memorable exposure to the brand (Aaker, 1991). These exposures can be generated by brand
elements, including brand name, slogan or packaging (Keller, 2019), advertising (Yoo et al.,
2000) and Social Media Marketing efforts (Bruhn et al., 2012).
This study will focus more on Social Media Marketing Efforts and its effect.
Social Media Marketing Activities are defined as effective marketing communication methods
capturing engaged consumers’ perceptions and understanding of activities on social media
marketing (Chen & Lin, 2019; Kim & Ko, 2010, 2012). Yadav & Rahman (2018) have categorized
social media marketing activities as interaction, trendiness, information, customization, and
word of mouth communication.
Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed:
Research method and methodology
1. Data Collection:
The primary data will be collected using self-administrated online questionnaire, while all the
questions will be developed and adapted from the literature review.
The questionnaire consists of two main sections; the first section investigated personal
information and background information of users on social media, and the second section,
divided into five subsections, measured the items of the constructs for testing the hypotheses.
The questionnaire will be conducted by using Google Forms. The settings of software were
adjusted to remind participants of any unanswered questions before being exposed to the
next. The study targeted VIetnamese users on the social media context, over the period of two
months from January to March of year 2022. The link of the survey was sent to random users
on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
2. Measurements Tools:
The methodology of this research paper will be quantitative method. Hence, Likert five scales
was applied in asking the questionnaire questions and measuring the study variables which is
organized as strongly disagree to strongly agree and which takes the weight of (1-5), the
measurement approach is matches with the study population and is tested in precedent
studies.
3. Statistical Analysis:
To the study, descriptive statistics were computed using statistics program - JASP software in
analyzing the data obtained from the sample.
4. Sample Size:
The sample size was determined by depending on the requirements of the statistical tool used
in the analysis; and accordingly, a sample size of 200 is accepted
5. Gantt Chart:
To achieve the research’s aim and reach the conclusions, I will use the Gantt Chart to plan my
work in details, as you can see in this slide. From now to the end of December 2021, I will
develop the questionnaire form. The form then will be published and uploaded online from
January to March 2022. After getting 200 responses, it will take me about 2-3 weeks to analyze
data obtained and test the hypotheses, and a month to finish the research paper.
Conclusion
To sum up, the proposal of this research paper aims to examine the impact of social media and
brand awareness, and deeply focus on the case of digital marketing agency named D4E Media
Ltd in the New Normal Era. This study is also discovering which type of marketing activities are
most effective to improve brand awareness in Vietnam. The brief literature review and gap are
addressed first, followed by hypotheses with conceptual model. The paper concludes with the
description of a proposed methodology to investigate the conceptual model and the expected
contributions of the study.
https://sci-hub.mksa.top/10.1080/15332667.2019.1705742