The new age of marketing: How social media has changed the marketing landscape (PDF)

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: B, The University of Chicago, language: English, abstract: The social media marketing has affected the landscape of the conventional marketing substantially and the frameworks and the methodologies of conventional marketing has also been affected significantly with the increase in popularity and influence of the social media marketing. The paper provides background information on the subject under research, including appropriate concepts, theories, ongoing debates and issues and the statement of the problem, the research questions and the appropriate hypothesis. The objectives of this dissertation are to illustrate the changes made by the social media marketing on conventional marketing landscape and its frameworks and methodologies. It also compares and contrasts the social media marketing and conventional marketing. The changes made by social media marketing on the current marketing landscape are demonstrated by analyzing current case studies. The dissertation also includes the analysis and recommendations of the ways which might lead to replacement of the conventional marketing methodologies by social media marketing methodologies in future.
A detailed description of social media marketing and conventional marketing is provided in the first section of this dissertation which includes the characteristics, key features, nature, scope, etc. of both social media marketing and conventional marketing. This section also provides the description of the areas to be covered in this paper such as the explanation of the relevant concepts, theories, etc. The next section of the paper provides the methods and techniques used in this dissertation and it also justifies the selection of the investigative method(s) and data-gathering technique(s) used for the investigation of the topic. It also makes appropriate referring to research methods textbooks and literature. The literary review section of the dissertation provides the critical analysis of the relevance and utility of materials relevant to the chosen topic. It includes a wide range of books, articles, journals, literature available on the topic written by different established author in the field. Though social media marketing is a new concept there is no dearth of good literature and research works in the field. This section of the dissertation provides a critical analysis of the literature on the topic under consideration identifying key issues and they are organised into themes on the topic of the research.