INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING ON PRODUCT DISTRIBUTION AND PROFITABILITY OF RETAIL FIRMS IN LAGOS NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined the influence of social media marketing on product distribution and profitability of retail firms. The study employed the descriptive survey design. Two research questions guided the study and two hypothesis were tested using the independent t- test and one -way Analysis of variance (ANOVA) at 0.5 level of significance. The population of the study was 480 retail firms’ customers and 20 retail firms’ managers. Purposive sampling technique was used to draw10 key informants who were used as initial samples. This was used because the researcher is aware of the fact that the initial samples have adequate knowledge of the subject matter. Using the chain referral and respondent driven mechanism, the key informants or referral will recommend other respondents who by their assessment are knowledgeable of the subject matter. This referral (snowball) sampling was used to generate additional470 respondents bringing the final sample to 480 respondent (Customers) and 20 managers. The main instrument for data collection was a four point rating scale questionnaire with 28 items. The data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and determine the homogeneity or otherwise of the respondents while the independent t-test and one -way Analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to test the hypotheses. The findings revealed that social media marketing influenced retails firms’ product distribution and also their profitability level. It was concluded that the use of social media facilities will increase retail firms’ brand awareness. Based on the findings and conclusion of the study, it was recommended among other that Retail firms’ managers should ensure they make use of social media facilities effectively to enable them market and distribute their products to numerous customer of different level, age, sex and demography. They should ensure the quality of products they market on social media and delivered to the customers meet the standard of standard organization of Nigeria. It was also recommended that Retail firms should ensure they build customer trust by providing quality products and making sure the quality of products they marketed on social media are same as products delivered. This will enable them have more customer loyalty which will increase their sales turnover and leads to improvement in the firms profitability

 

Key words: Business, Social media, Product distribution, Profitability