Advertising in Social Network Sites byJohannes Knoll and Holger Schramm - Research Paper Example

RESEARCH EVALUATION CHOSEN STUDY: Johannes Knoll and Holger Schramm (2015) - Advertising in social network sites – Investigating the social influence of user-generated content on online advertising effects The main objective of this research was to determine the influence of user-generated content on the behaviour of users of social networking services towards advertising-related content. To achieve this objective, the research made use of quantitative data collected from a sample of participants. The following is a detailed evaluation of the research methodology that was used to conduct the study. First, the data collection process that was used by the researchers was appropriate for this research. The participants were first asked to visit any of the four randomly-created Facebook profiles and watch the content that had been uploaded on the profiles. The participants were then asked to click on a link that led them to the questionnaire. They were required to complete the questionnaire by indicating their responses to every statement that was included in the questionnaire. It was based on the responses that the participants in the study provided by completing the questionnaires that the hypotheses that were used for the study were tested. Given that this was a quantitative survey type of research, the data collection process used was suitable for the study. A random sampling method was used to get the sample of students who were used in the study. In general, the researchers developed a sample of 118 students of the university. All the students who formed part of the sample that was used in the study were young students who had been students at the university for at least 8 months. Also, the researchers ensured that the students who formed the sample that was used in the study were ordinary students who were conversant with what was happening at the university and were fond of their studies. Using such a large sample in a quantitative survey is relevant for various reasons. First, this form of study, as it is the case with all studies that assume a quantitative approach, required a relatively large size of sample. A large sample size helps to provide reliable results and avoid possible bias in the final results. Therefore, the sample size that the researchers used, which was made up of 118 students initially, was appropriate for the study. Quantitative data was collected in the course of the experiment. The data that was collected was related to the hypotheses that were used to conduct the study. Moreover, the quantitative data that was collected in the course of the experiment was in the form of the responses of the respondents to the various statements that were provided on the research questionnaire. The respondents were required to read every statement provided on the questionnaire, reflect on it and choose an option that they felt best described what they felt towards the statement. Using the Likert scale, the respondents were required to select an option that best suited their personal feelings. The Likert scale ranged from ‘I strongly disagree’ to ‘I entirely agree.’ It was based on the choices that the respondents selected for every statement that the raw quantitative data for the research was collected. The data that the researchers collected for the research was appropriate for the purpose of the research. There are various reasons for this assertion. First, the data helped the researchers to effectively cover all the various measures that were used in the study. For example, the responses of the respondents in the study helped the researchers to measure the attitudes of the respondents towards the product that was used in the study. Also, the data that the researchers collected was appropriate in helping the researchers measure the purchase intention of the respondents towards the product. This was appropriate since it helped the researchers to establish how the user-generated content on social media influences the perceptions of the individuals who consume the content towards advertisements. Moreover, the appropriateness of the data is seen in the way it was used by the researchers to measure the intention of the respondents to recommend the product to others. The respondents, when responding to three statements in the questionnaire, indicated the likelihood of recommending the Google Glass product to others. Based on the nature of the research, the hypotheses that the researchers used and the design that they adopted for the study, no other type of data could have been appropriately used for this study. What this implies is that the discrete form of quantitative data that the researchers chose to use was the most appropriate one for the study. If, for example, the researchers would have chosen to use the continuous form of quantitative data, they would have had a difficult time testing the hypothesis of the research. Normally, continuous data is used to measure attributes such as weight and others that cannot be measured using discrete figures. In this case, the various measures related to the opinions of the respondents towards advertisements as influenced by their relationship towards the persons generating the content are best measured by the discrete form of quantitative data. On the other hand, qualitative data, which is non-numeric in nature, could not have provided the researchers with the best method of measuring the various attributes that they sought to measure. The 2 by 2 between-subject design that the researchers chose for the research was appropriate for various reasons. First, it provided the researchers with the most effective method of controlling the two variables that were used in the course of the research. The research used the following independent variables: the interpersonal connection between the source and the respondents and the collective connection between the source of the user-generated content and the individuals who participated in the research. For the two independent variables, two options were used. Thus, four options were created to form the basis of the design of the researchers. The interpersonal connection between the source and the participants could either be existent or not. Similarly, the collective connection between the source of the content and the participants could be existent or non-existent. Given the nature of the variables and the measures that the researchers intended to use, such a design was suitable. Therefore, this design was appropriate because it helped the researchers to evaluate all the options that arose from their intended objective for the study. One of the main strengths of this design that the researchers adopted for the study lies in its relationship with the hypotheses of the study. The first hypothesis of the study was that individuals on social networking sites who receive advertising content from people they are connected to as individuals tend to view the advertising content positively. The second hypothesis was that collective influence has a positive effect on the perceptions of users towards advertising content on social networking sites. The third hypothesis of the study is that both interpersonal and collective connections between users of social networking sites and the individuals who produce content on the sites have a positive influence on the behaviour of the users towards the advertising content. Therefore, it is important to note that this design helped the researchers to effectively test the four hypotheses of the research. The design that the researchers chose affects the quality of the research in various ways. First, the design is based on correlation. Because of using this approach, the researchers were focused on testing the correlation between the relationship of the respondents to the source of content on social networking sites and how the respondents react to the content. Therefore, a correlation-based design determines the quality of the research. Using this type of design helped to guarantee the quality of the entire research process and the findings. On the other hand, this design may compromise the quality of the research. For example, the findings do not indicate the causation. They do not show why individuals, for example, react positively to content that has been posted on social networking sites by people they are interpersonally or socially related to. However, given that the purpose of the research was to show whether or not a relationship exists, this weakness, which is inherent in this form of research design, cannot be said to have a negative effect on the quality of the research. Finally, the researchers relied on descriptive and more detailed statistical analysis procedures to analyse the data that they had collected from the respondents. The researchers analysed data from 92 of the original 118 respondents, having disqualified the rest because the researchers determined that the respondents had intimate knowledge of the product that was to be used during the research. For every measure that was used in the research, the researchers measured the mean and standard deviation of the responses of the respondents. The researchers then calculated the mean and standard deviation of the respondents for all the measures. Therefore, the results of the tests of the hypotheses and the various measures used to match the data and the conclusions of the researchers, which are that all the four hypotheses are true, are legitimate. Read More