Facebook is an effective channel for conducting marketing research since it provides vast amounts of data from people around the world. A marketing researcher can find data about the specific market niche through targeted searches on Facebook (Malhotra, 2012). Among the advantages of collecting data on Facebook is availability as people freely give personal information and express their opinion on Facebook. The drawback is that Facebook users are not always honest.
Block sampling and stratified sampling can be useful for research on Facebook since the social network is vast and homogenized. The stratification should focus on the most effective demographic segment to target on Facebook (Fields, 2012). This demographic is women between the ages of 25 and 40. This group is among the most candid in Facebook and also the most lucrative to market to. A global or multinational company can market on Facebook as social networks are available globally and in different languages (Malhotra, 2012). Among the ethical issues involves collecting data from the internet is the issue of breach of privacy. Most people post their information on Facebook, hoping to communicate with friends and loved ones, not have the data used for marketing research and targeted advertising.
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Part II: Article Summary
The article Franz et al. (2019), outlined the benefits and opportunities available when using Facebook for marketing research. Among the advantages outlined include the vast number of users, making it easier for the marketer to evaluate a large potential market base. The second advantage is the large and variable data available on Facebook, including multimedia content and behavioral content such as likes and dislikes. Conversely, the article Hofacker & Belanche, (2016) addresses the pitfalls and vagaries of using social media for marketing research. Such vagaries include the variability of the data provided on Facebook. Social media users do not answer research questions but rather post comments, stories, photos, videos, or make likes and dislikes. Reducing all this variable content into analyzable data is an onerous and expensive task.
References
Fields, R. (2012). The statistical sampling morass-Getting it right from the start. J. St. Tax'n , 31 , 13-45.
Franz, D., Marsh, H. E., Chen, J. I., & Teo, A. R. (2019). Using Facebook for qualitative research: a brief primer. Journal of medical Internet research , 21 (8), e13544. DOI:10.2196/13544
Hofacker, C. F., & Belanche, D. (2016). Eight social media challenges for marketing managers. Spanish Journal of Marketing-ESIC , 20 (2), 73-80.
Malhotra, N. K. (2012). Basic marketing research: Integration of social media . Pearson.
