UK COLLEGE

BUSINESS AND COMPUTING

Research Skills
Lecturer: ANNE SALIU
Campus: Wentworth Houses - Gants Hill
Student name: Alexandru POPA
January 2014
THE INFLUENCE OF

SOCIAL MEDIA

FOR CONSUMERS
The AIM of this study was to observe the positive and
negative influence for all categories of consumers.

In order to do that my subjects had to be from different
activity domains. I have conducted the research using the
unstructured interview to capture the real connection that
people have daily activities through social media.


I had 3 volunteer subjects: a businessman who owned a
small transportation company, a hair-stylist and a man who
was between jobs.



My interviews started with the same simple question:
How did social media (social networks) help you in your
domain?. The answers were pretty different but in the essence
were all alike.

Even though the businessmans company
was on the market for some while, he
hadnt been using social media promoting.
After he had found out about this kind of
promotion, he promoted his company as
well. The results came in as a success by
raising his earnings.
Hair-stylist: being in a foreign country, he was in need of all
kinds of daily information. He told me that even the nearest,
cheapest places for food he found were on the internet. He
was really glad about the fact that he could be up to date at
his job using social networks.
A man who had finished a contract was in search of a
job. He easily found information offered by the possible
employers through Facebook and Linkedin such as
phone numbers, addresses, job requirements and all
necessary details in order to get a job. Using these
methods, the process of getting a job was accelerated.
As we already know, the unstructured interview is
not containing prearranged questions, it is a qualitative
research method, allowing people to be spontaneous. The
results of my research could not be generalized on a larger
population because the number of subjects was poor (only
3).
These three interviews I was able to use as a pre-test, and I
conducted a questionnaire.
The answers of my interview subjects I converted in a
questionnaire for all types of people: employee,
unemployed, businessman or not.

1. If you were a business owner, do you think that social
media would help you expand/raise your profits?
Yes No
2. Imagine yourself in a different country, another one that
you live in; could you find the needed information through
social media?
Yes No
3. Do you consider that a person (or you) could find
out more about a specific field of work through
social media?
Yes No
4. Linkedin or Facebook are good methods for
searching a job?
Yes No
5. In daily activities, social networks or social media
are able to offer you considerable assistance?
Yes No

Conclusions
My brief and full of content questionnaire measured
how people, generally speaking, see social media as a
daily helper.
I have used closed-ended questions - simple structure
(with dichotomous response).
RESULTS
I had 20 respondents.
75% think that social media is very good for business, for raising profits(Q.1) 15 out
of 20 subjects;
50% of them consider that social media offers information of use if they were in a
different (new) country (Q.2) 10 out of 20 subjects;
75% think that they could get information about a field of work (Q.3) 15 out of 20
subjects;
85% find Linkedin and Facebook a good help in search for a job (Q.4) 17 out of 20
subjects;
65% of them consider that social media offers assistance in day by day activities(Q.5)
- 13 out of 20 subjects.



My research showed clearly that people are indeed
helped by social media in their day by day
activities. Furthermore, they think that most of the
important information can be found on the internet.
Despite the fact that social networks have a negative
impact on children, when is overused, social media has
important positive effects when used for informational
purpose.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNSTUCTURED_INTERVIEW
References: