This research paper is focused on the factors that influence the success of SMEs Social Commerce, including the use of digital marketing and consumer attitudes towards social commerce. To find out what are the potential success factors for SMEs Social Commerce in Thailand and how to gain competitive advantage and remain in such a competitive market. To study the factors influencing the success of SMEs Social Commerce from the owners' point of view.
To prepare the factors that affect the success of being a Social Commerce SME in Thailand. This research paper focuses on the factors that influence the success of Social Commerce of SMEs, including the use of digital marketing and consumer attitude towards social commerce.
Digital Marketing
Online
Similar to search engine optimization, search engine marketing is also about increasing the visibility of a website in a search engine; however, it also includes other methods besides SEO that allow sites to increase their rankings. Unlike search engine optimization which allows web owners to use eclectic ways to place their ads on the top page, search engine marketing must rely on purchases to appear dominantly in the position of ads relevant to the keywords. Matt, H (2015) explained the benefits of search engine marketing in terms of capturing the keen interest and attention of the potential audience at the right time and helping to increase brand awareness, in addition to being easily measurable.
Pay-per-click advertising is another advertising tool used to increase a website's visibility on a search engine. When that ad is clicked, the company pays the search engine the amount bid per end-user click. The higher the amount the company bids on the PPC ad, the higher the position of the website link in the search engine results.
Apart from the benefits for the users, SMM also makes a complete contribution to any online business. Celine, A (2012) reiterated that social media marketing provides numerous benefits to any online business in terms of increasing brand reputation and brand awareness, increasing targeted traffic and search engine optimization, facilitating marketing effectiveness. viral and facilitating and recruiting public relations; Furthermore, any modern business can use social media marketing to assess how effective their marketing strategies are while being able to measure its results. This can create a level of credibility for the consumer to resist the feeling of spam and can greatly increase the chance that the user will view the content of the email.
On the plus side, all customized messages can be sent directly and immediately to the target customers, provided that this message must be relevant to their profile before successively sending more relevant emails.
Offline
This makes the event seem like more than just an opportunity to sell items, but to become part of the consumer's lifestyle. Many people travel to such events to celebrate products with other people, buy new products, and gain a sense of importance for companies' business decisions. Winsor, R (nd) defined the benefits of setting up a trade show for businesses by reiterating that a trade show is considered one of the best cost-effective advertisements for all a company's products and services, bringing together potential buyers as attendees to gather together. at the same exhibition site with the aim of establishing a good business relationship between sellers and future buyers.
Since social commerce is most likely to be prosperous in the near future, more and more online visitors would have the highest chance to visit their interested websites presenting their favorable services and products or also interesting product information. In this condition, it is easy for them to invite all the people with the same taste to try that website. Cassie, B (2017) said that more than ninety percent of modern consumers are more likely to buy the products from the company that uses social commerce as the main strategy, and there are up to 20% of UK retailers that sell the products their and services through social media channels.
Motivation/Influence
AIDA Framework
Building more partners means increasing joint ventures or business co-investors who are responsible for creating strong business together. In this context, the strategy of AIDA can be effectively applied for online social network advertising. It has been stated that the global marketing has been associated with AIDA strategy over the past because it is responsible for influencing target consumers' emotion; AIDA consists of attention, interest, desire and action, which can be effective for online marketing with multiple dimensions.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Methodology & Research Approach
Data Collection
Interview Questions
- About You & Your Business
- Social Commerce
- Customer Relation
- Social Media & Marketing
Since starting your business, have there been any mistakes you wish you hadn't made? Do you think more payment options will have an impact on your customers' purchase decision. Can you give some examples of what you have done to get new customers and to keep them.
What was the worst problem you ever experienced with your client and how did you deal with it.
DATA ANALYASIS AND RESEARCH FINDINGS
Data Analysis
- Branding
- Customer Relations
- Marketing
In terms of trust, it is still a very sensitive topic for the social commerce business in Thailand. Therefore, having a lot of followers on their social commerce pages helps their business to have more credibility which means that the company should invest in brand awareness at the initial stage. For example, credit card payment must be made on the company's official website or through a trusted third party such as the Paypal or Shopee app.
Because social commerce is a highly competitive industry, managers suggested that the shorter time they spend responding to their customers increases the chance of that customer making a purchase. He believes this is one of the reasons why his customers choose to buy his brand over his competitors. Some offline marketing tools have also been used for social commerce, such as branding, promotion, joining events and trade shows.
Some executives, whose companies have their own official websites, said that their companies implement SEO into their marketing plan because it helps their company attract more people who search for their products on search engines like Google. One of the managers suggested using a third-party service (ReadyPlanet) to issue corporate tax invoices. Therefore, one of the interviewees, who sells fresh fruit, came up with many ideas to meet the upcoming holidays.
Although this is the business of social commerce, some managers still pay attention to offline marketing, such as joining events related to their products.
SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION
- Conclusions
- Recommendations
- Limitations
- Further Research
Expanding your target market by attending events and trade shows can be used to capture customers who are not actively using social media. As this research was conducted using a qualitative research methodology to obtain in-depth information, there are some questions that the managers were not satisfied with and did not want to answer. As the researcher would like to obtain information from a successful Social Commerce company, there are some parts such as the company's business model or business strategies that are confidential or not yet officially implemented.
The researcher had only conducted interviews with 5 managers who work in Social Commerce business, which is considered a very small number compared to the total number of managers. They do not represent all existing Social Commerce companies in the market and the results may not cover all factors that may occur. Further research on this topic should include more interviews with a larger number of managers to cover more aspects that could be potential success factors.
Also, interviews or questionnaires of customers who actively purchase products from Social Commerce businesses should be conducted to understand their behavior and find out which factors from this study have most influenced their purchasing decisions.
Retrieved from http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions on tention-interest-desire-action-using-aida-for-social-media. Retrieved from http://www.campaignium.com/blog/why-is-content-marketing-important-for-your-business/. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/1364232/The_benefits_of_social_commerce_for_suppliers_and_customers.
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Questionnaire
Throughout the year, we tried to acquire new customers in several ways, but more importantly, to retain them or make them repurchase and become royalty customers. For example, opening a new branch in a new location is the most effective way to acquire a new group of customers. Another example of how to retain our customers is that I have to train my staff to treat each customer the way they prefer to maintain a good relationship with them.
Every time we post photos with the right hashtags and ads, there will be new customers contacting us. Another very effective example of how we keep our customers is that we send our customers gifts for the new year and looking at our record, if a vip customer does not buy for a while, we will send a letter saying that we miss you and will send news promotion. . Normally you might have to pay for them to post on their social media channel and tag our brand, but luckily most of them are my friends and I support them over time, so I don't have to pay.
I have faced many customer issues over the last 2-3 years of shopping both online and offline. One of the most frequent problems was about sizes of customers that do not fit perfectly into our size chart. To solve the problem, our brand decided to get customized and tailored to your size option at no extra cost.
There will be extra charge only for special design drawn by our designer especially for you or special fabric on request.
