The study of the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention: A case study of blueseed digital company

THE STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING ON PURCHASE INTENTION: A CASE STUDY OF BLUESEED

Abstract

Social media marketing is becoming increasingly popular and important nowadays Blueseed Digital company is a digital marketing agency that helps clients to promote products There is lots of competition in this industry This research aims to investigate the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention in Viet Nam in the case study of Blueseed Digital company Additionally, the study also explores factors of social media marketing that influence the purchase intention of the customers From this, the study suggests appropriate strategies for Blueseed Digital company to improve social media marketing to target customers and catch their attention This study was qualitative research Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of 6 participants in Ho Chi Minh city, in Viet Nam Thematic analysis was used to analysis the interview transcripts of the participants The research findings indicated that social media marketing influenced the purchase intention of customers The results showed that four themes of social media marketing had impact on purchase intention, including ―Content of the advertisement,‖ ―Information of the product in the advertisement‖, ―Electronic word-of-mouth‖ and ―Interaction between brand and customers‖ The theme ―Content of the advertisement‖ had three subthemes to explain more about this theme The study suggests some strategies to improve social media marketing of Blueseed Digital company to affect purchase intention of the customers This study provides a valuable contribution to this field of academic resources Also, the study offers new insight for future studies in this topic

Keywords: social media, social media marketing, purchase intention, Blueseed

Digital company

Acknowledgement

First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Anupam Mazumdar His support and guidance throughout this dissertation's project were great contributions and valuable to me to complete this study

I would also like to express my gratitude to Mr David Ratcliffe and Ms Pham Thi Tuyet Trinh for providing support to help me conduct the study

Also during the research period, I could not have done it without the supports of tutors and staffs from Ho Chi Minh University of Banking and University of Bolton

I am so grateful for the staff of Blueseed Digital company for supporting me to collect data for the research

I cannot thank you enough for my participants, who spent their time sharing their ideas with me in the interview

Finally, I also want to thank my family and friends, who always love, support, and encourage me to do this study

1.1 Overview of social media marketing 1

1.2 Overview of Blueseed Digital company 2

2.6.1 The research of Angella Jiyoung Kim and Eunju Ko (2010) 15

2.6.2 The research of Mai Ngoc Khuong and Tran Thi Huong (2016) 17

2.6.3 The research of Bader M A Almohaimmeed (2019) 18

2.8 Conclusion 19

3.8 Techniques and procedures 27

3.8.1 Data collection method 27

3.8.2 Sampling technique 28

3.8.3 Data collection approach 29

3.8.4 Data analysis technique 30

3.8.5 Reliability and validity 31

4.3.1.3 Right time for advertising 39

4.3.2 Theme 2: Information of the product in the advertisement 41

4.3.3 Theme 3: Electronic word-of-mouth 43

4.4.4 Theme 4: Interaction between brand and customers 45

4.5 Conclusion 47

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 49

5.1 Discussion of the findings 49

5.2 Contribution of the study 51

5.3 Implications of the study 51

5.4 Limitations of the study 53

5.5 Recommendation for future research 53

Reference list 55

Appendix 66

Appendix 1: Research ethics checklist form 66

Appendix 2: Interview questions 73

Appendix 3: Interview transcript of coder 76

Appendix 4: Interview transcript of marketer 80

Appendix 5: Interview transcript of sales manager 84

Appendix 6: Interview transcript of digital marketing agency 88

Appendix 7: Interview transcript of IT help desk manager 92

Appendix 8: Interview transcript of student 95

List of tables and figures Figure

Figure 1: Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) 13

Figure 2: Research model of Kim and Ko (2010) 16

Figure 3: Research model of Mai and Tran (2016) 18

Figure 4: Research model of Almohaimmeed (2019) 19

Figure 5: Research onion model (Saunders et al., 2007) 20

Figure 6: Thematic map 36

Table Table 1: Demographic information of participants 35

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Overview of social media marketing

Social media is becoming more and more popular nowadays It has become an alternative communication tool between people around the world (Gautam and Sharma, 2017) In recent years, the number of users on social media platforms are enormous According to Dixon (2023), the number of users of Facebook in the world in the fourth quarter of 2022 was approximately 2.96 billion monthly active users In Viet Nam, from the report of the Ministry of Information and Communication of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam (2022), in September 2022, Facebook had the highest number of users in the country with 75.6 million active users, followed by Zalo, a local social media platform, with 74.1 million active users With a huge user base and the rapid growth of social media platforms, marketers now can have more options to approach target customers that can reach a million people in a few seconds As a result, social media has changed the world of marketing (Dash et al., 2021)

Felix et al (2017) stated that social media marketing is the concept that uses social media together with other channels to create value for stakeholders to achieve the goals of the organization Social media marketing had an effect on customer engagement (Barger et al., 2016) Also, Du et al (2017) stated that an opinion of a person may change due to social networking sites The contents in social media marketing are various and flexible to catch the attention of customers However, sometimes, it can be annoying that people ignore social media advertisements (Liu et al., 2021) This

demands marketers to understand more about aspects of the customer as well as social media marketing to have an effective marketing campaign

Many studies about social media marketing were conducted thoroughly Nevertheless, the research about the influence of social media marketing on purchase intention was little and the related studies in Viet Nam were rare Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of social media marketing on purchase intention in Viet Nam

1.2 Overview of Blueseed Digital company

Blueseed Digital Joint Stock Company is a marketing agency that focuses on social media marketing, content marketing, data-driven service, etc The company is established in 2014 Blueseed Digital became Vietnam’s top 1 Video Ad Network and Vietnam’s top 2 multi-platform Ad Network that reached 9 million video users in 2015 Blueseed Digital became partner with Google, Facebook, Tiktok, etc The company is an expert in digital marketing that has customers from various industries like the banking industry, delivery services industry and soft drink industry, … The company already has in-house marketing This allows the company to implement detailed plans from the beginning of the process to finally evaluate and report the results to the client

1.3 Problem statement

Blueseed Digital company is a marketing agency that helps clients (brands) promote products/ services to attract their target customers The company was very successful in working with small brands and organizations However, Blueseed Digital company currently faces a big challenge The company struggled with normal and luxury brands,

in social media marketing field The support of the company was no longer as effective for the clients as it used to be in the past With this problem, the company can lose its clients in this sector to competitors For the company, the most important thing is what factors affect purchase intention in social media marketing and why it happened There are a lot of theory and empirical studies about the influence of social media marketing on purchase intention (Kim and Ko, 2010; Balakrishnan et al., 2014; Mai and Tran, 2016; Gautam and Sharma, 2017; Laksamana, 2018; Almohaimmeed, 2019) However, nearly no research uses qualitative research and is conducted in Viet Nam market

1.4 Research aim and objectives

This research aims to investigate the influence of social media marketing on purchase intention of customers in Viet Nam to help firms understand and improve the quality of social media marketing plans To do it, the following one will be the objectives:

1 To explore the factors of social media marketing that affects purchase intention of customers

2 To evaluate the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention 3 To propose recommendations for improving social media marketing of

Blueseed Digital company

1.5 Research question

After the research objective is the research question

1 What factors of social media marketing affect the purchase intention of customers?

2 What is the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention?

3 What could be done to improve the social media marketing of Blueseed Digital company?

Practical contribution:

This study explores the factors of social media marketing that affect the purchase intention of customers in Ho Chi Minh city, in Viet Nam In addition, this study evaluates the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention From the results of this

study, the author suggests some appropriate implications and strategies This supports Blueseed Digital company to provide better products and services to help clients catch the attention of target customers

Chapter 2: Literature review

In chapter two, the author will conduct a critical literature review about the concepts and roles of social media, social media marketing and purchase intention Then, it reviews about the theoretical base and previous studies, related to this topic

Chapter 3: Research methodology

The third chapter will present and make justifications for the choices, including the research philosophy, research approach, research strategy, research choice, time horizon, technique, procedure and research ethics

Chapter 4: Findings

In chapter four, the author will demonstrate the results through thematic analysis From this, the author discusses and evaluates the impact of social media marketing on

Chapter 5: Conclusion and Recommendation

Chapter five will summarize the findings to make a conclusion and some recommendations Also, in this chapter, the author will show the academic and practical contribution as well as limitations of this research for future research

1.9 Conclusion

In chapter one, the author demonstrated the overview of the research topic about the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention, problem statement, research aim, objectives, research question, significance and the structure of the study In the next chapter, the author would discuss the literature review of this study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction

In this chapter, the research would have a critical literature review with the definitions, beliefs and arguments about social media marketing and purchase intention In addition, the research also discussed theories and empirical studies Firstly, the study would discuss social media, followed by explaining about social media marketing and purchase intention Then, theoretical framework and previous studies were presented in the later section After that, the research discussed the research gap and conclusion

2.2 Social media

Social media can be defined as a group of Internet applications that were built n Web 2.0 that allow users to exchange and create the contents (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010) Social media was also defined as technology webs use to interact and communicate to share and create knowledge and information with public communities without any boundaries (Zahoor and Qureshi, 2017) However, Almohaimmeed (2019) argued that social media was based on two main elements, that are the Internet and public interaction

Social media has become a part of many people in the world that become an alternative communication tool (Gautam and Sharma, 2017) The number of users of social media increased significantly in recent years, which can be seen clearly in many social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit, … For example, according to Dixon (2023), the number users of Facebook in the world in the fourth quarter of 2022 was approximately 2.96 billion monthly active users Social media

supported customers to gain information about preferred products with good price options and reviews from other customers (Yadav and Rahman, 2017) Social media created private space that everyone was anonymous With it, consumers could freely and directly review the products and share their buying experience with other people

From time to time, besides being a means of communication and connection between users, social media has gradually become a source of information and a place to advertise the products to consumers Balakrishnan et al (2014) emphasized that social media has become operational method for human interaction in the 21st century With enormous users in social media site networking, companies can utilize social media to communicate and understand customers more (Qin, 2020) Therefore, social media was an effective means for firms to engage with customers (Voorveld et al., 2018) and to build a solid reputation with the public (Szwajca, 2017)

Dash et al (2021) claimed that the appearance of the Internet and social media have changed the world of marketing It influenced the way firms connect and communicate with the customers, even with big or small brands Kim and Ko (2012) pointed out that social media created opportunities for integrated marketing activity with less cost and effort because of no restriction on time, place and media Now, marketers not only can approach consumers from traditional media but also from social media (Dehghani and Tumer, 2015) As a result, any business could have the opportunity and potential to grow and compete with opponents in the market

2.3 Social media marketing

Social media marketing was the tool that the company uses to connect, build and

explicit definition for social media marketing There were many schools of thought about the definition of social media marketing Choi et al (2016) considered social media marketing as a tool for communicating and interacting with customers to build relationships through social network sites However, according to Zahoor and Qureshi (2017), social media marketing was considered an extensive part of traditional marketing that uses social media tools Conversely, Yadav and Rahman argued that (2017) social media marketing was defined as the process the companies use social media platforms to deliver online marketing to stakeholders about existing and trending products and services With Felix et al (2017), social media marketing was the concept that uses social media together with other channels to create value for stakeholders to achieve the goals of organization Similarly, Tuten and Solomon (2018) believed that social media marketing is to make use of social media platforms to interact with customers and exchange offerings to bring value to the organization

Social media marketing can be characterized and analyzed from different perspectives, depending on the purposes Teo (2005), Chan and Guillet (2011) used digital marketing framework (relate, attract, engage, retain, and learn) of Kierzkowski et al (1996) for social media marketing studies However, there were disagreements between authors in the questionnaire items for general framework Meanwhile, for luxury fashion brands, according to Kim and Ko (2010), social media marketing was measured by five factors: entertainment, customization, interaction, word of mouth, and trend This was to explore the influence of social media marketing on customer relationships and purchase intention However, it was slightly different with Balakrishnan et al (2014), social media marketing can also be measured by electronic word of

mouth, online communities and online advertisements This aimed to understand the impact of social media marketing medium on purchase intention and brand loyalty among generation Y In comparison, Almohaimmeed (2019) classified characteristics of social media marketing from the perspective of the customers as social effects, application types and enabling technologies Laksamana (2018) measured the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention and brand loyalty in the retail banking industry by five factor entertainment, interaction, trendiness, customization, electronic word of mouth Depending on the purpose of the study, every classification had its value and contribution to academic research

Social media marketing was a method to advertise products or services of firms to customers Before making a decision, consumers usually find detailed information about products or services through the Internet and social media According to Du et al (2017), an opinion of a person could be changed or shaped by social networks A great advertisement can leave a good impression on customers A first impression can overshadow the latter one and had a long effect on the behaviors of a person (Muthukrishnan and Chattopadhyay, 2007; Hirshleifer et al., 2021) In the future, when choosing a product among brands, customers may buy the one that had a strong impression on their minds

Moreover, social media marketing helped firms reduce the gap between firms and customers With social media, firms can quickly receive the complaints and buying experience of the customers From the feedback, the company can flexibly make adjustments in the strategy to meet the demand of the customers (Nguyen et al., 2015) With enough information, giving brilliant marketing campaign was possible, social media

marketing helps firms gain more online presence and catch the attention of target customers

In addition, people nowadays received numerous pieces of information daily This can lead to information overload and constant social media interaction (Yu et al., 2018) So, Zhu and Chen (2015) believed that marketers needed to understand the needs and motivations of using social media of users Different purposes need different strategies in social media marketing Therefore, people classified social media marketing into five types of social media marketing, including content marketing, sponsorship, influencer marketing, social media management, paid media Content marketing was a way to attract attention and engage audiences with firm by creating and distributing contents through videos, blogs, … (He et al., 2021) According to O'Reilly and Madill (2012), sponsorship can be known as a way for corporate to affect consumer-oriented objectives and promote products or services through an event While, influencer marketing was a marketing communication tool that requested influencer who has an impact on consumer buying intention to advertise products (Ye et al., 2021) Social media management was related to managing the resources in social media to gain the best results Finally, paid media was explained that a firm bought advertising space on social media platforms to promote products

2.4 Purchase intention

Scholars and researchers have shown the relationship between social media marketing and purchase intention Many researchers agreed that social media marketing has significant effect on purchase intention (Kim and Ko, 2010; Balakrishnan et al., 2014; Gautam and Sharma, 2017; Laksamana, 2018; Almohaimmeed, 2019) So,

it was important to understand the concept of purchase intention to have comprehensive knowledge of this research

Purchase intention was referred to the willingness to purchase a product or service According to Spears and Singh (2004), purchase intention was considered an intentional plan of customers to buy a product However, Kim and Ko (2010) argued that purchase intention can be defined as the possibility that customers will purchase in the future Also, Balakrishnan et al (2014) expanded this definition and explained that purchase intention can be known as the willingness to buy product in the future and repurchase the product Similarly, purchase intention was a promise to oneself to buy a product next time (Kudeshia and Kumar, 2017)

Besides the Internet, social media was full of customer reviews and suggestions This provided users a chance to read honest opinions about the products However, among them, consumers can see the promotions of firm through social media posts From this, consumers could get more information about firm’s products and decide to buy products So, purchase intention can be used as a tool to measure the effectiveness of a marketing strategy (Lal and Sharma, 2021) When measuring the purchase intention of customer, marketers could design marketing activities to reach the target customers and catch their attentions easier

2.5 Theory of Planned Behavior

Theory of Planned Behavior was developed by Ajzen (1991) from the foundation of Theory of Reasoned Action This theory was one of the earliest theories to predict human behavior In this theory, the behaviors of a person were affected by intentions

subjective norm and perceived behavioral control) This relationship was shown in Figure 1 below Ajzen (1991) claimed that the more the intention of a person engaged with the behavior, the more possibility that person performed that behavior

Figure 1: Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991)

- ―Attitude towards the behavior‖ was the degree that a person shows positive or negative attitude toward the behavior

- ―Subjective norms‖ was known as what an individual can do or not under the pressures of society and the perceived expectations of other people

- ―Perceived behavioral control‖ was the ability to control an individual to perform a behavior

The Theory of Planned Behavior can be used to anticipate different intentions and behaviors This theory provided a basic knowledge to understand the impact of attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control toward the intention Also,

intention had influence on behavior With this, the theory can be expanded and developed more in other fields This theory contributed and was successful in predicting many behaviors in many previous studies such as pro-environmental behaviors (Oreg and Katz-Gerro, 2006), passenger behavioral intention for low-cost carriers (Pan and Truong, 2018), mask-wearing intentions on airplanes (Pan and Liu, 2022), etc

However, Ajzen (1991) also claimed that for predicting behaviors, the three factors in the theory can have various results due to different situations and contexts The study of Kim et al (2013) agreed with this point of the author that perceived behavioral control has no impact on the intention in eco-friendly restaurant situation Also, Kim et al (2013) also believed that emotion was an independent variable, that played an important role and was different from attitude In addition, Sniehotta et al (2014) argued about this theory that it is less predictive when using objectively measured and longitudinal design

Though the Theory of Planned Behavior of Ajzen (1991) had some limitations, this dissertation would use this theory as a main reference to conduct this research This theory was applied in different fields to predict the intention of people and the aim of this study was to investigate the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention Exploring the factors that affected purchase intention was crucial for the study Additionally, the theory provided researcher valuable insight It was analyzing from difference perspectives to build appropriate model The factors influenced purchase intention that could be related to ―Attitude towards the behavior‖, ―Subjective norms‖ or ―Perceived behavioral control‖

2.6 Empirical studies

The impact of social media marketing on purchase intention was an interesting topic that was conducted and developed in many studies Three empirical studies would be discussed in detail in this section

Among the studies, the research of Kim and Ko (2010) was the most suitable for this study The research framework of Kim and Ko (2010) provided general knowledge about this topic and was later expanded and developed by many scholars that can be used in many industries such as e-commerce industry (Yadav and Rahman, 2017), retail banking (Laksamana, 2018), ready-to-drink industry (Aji et al., 2020), … In the second research, Mai and Tran (2016) conducted the research with the same country and topic as this research With the third study, the research of Almohaimmeed (2019) was one of the newest studies in this topic However, there was no research that used qualitative method and carry out in Viet Nam

2.6.1 The research of Angella Jiyoung Kim and Eunju Ko (2010)

In ―Impacts of Luxury Fashion Brand’s Social Media Marketing on Customer Relationship and Purchase Intention‖ by Kim and Ko (2010), the purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of social media marketing on customer relationship and purchase intention in luxury fashion industry through five factors (entertainment, customization, interaction, word of mouth, and trend) Customer relationships were measured by intimacy and trust Because of the economic downturns and threats from lower sectors at that time, this study can help improve social media marketing performance and attract customers The study was quantitative research that the data were collected in Seoul metropolitan area, in Korea 133 respondents out of 150 were satisfied with the research The survey questionnaires had 25 measurement items that

Social media marketing Customer relationship

Figure 2: Research model of Kim and Ko (2010) Entertainment

17

2.6.2 The research of Mai Ngoc Khuong and Tran Thi Huong (2016)

The research of Mai and Tran (2016), ―The influence of social media marketing on Vietnamese traveler’s purchase intention in tourism industry in Ho Chi Minh city‖, was a quantitative research The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between social media marketing and purchase intention through online advertising, online communities, electronic word-of-mouth, and evaluate the mediate role of trust between those variables The primary data was collected through paper questionnaires The valid responses were 400 people, who was young and had high demand for traveling, in Ho Chi Minh city, in Viet Nam The results of this research indicated that online advertising and electronic word-of-mouth directly had positive effect on purchase intention, while online advertising and online communities indirectly affected purchase intention through trust Also, online advertising had the most effect on purchase intention that the authors suggested focusing more on this factor to catch the attention of the customers The limitation of this research was conducted a long time ago in Viet Nam There could be some possible events that makes significant changes in Viet Nam For example, according to National Institute for Finance (2022), after Covid-19, there were huge changes in daily life of Vietnamese people So, it is important to conduct and update with the current situation of Viet Nam

Social media marketing

Online advertising

Figure 3: Research model of Mai and Tran (2016)

2.6.3 The research of Bader M A Almohaimmeed (2019)

The aim of ―The Effects of Social Media Marketing Antecedents on Social Media Marketing, Brand Loyalty and Purchase Intention: A Customer Perspective’’ by Almohaimmeed (2019) was to explore the influences among the factors in one model (antecedents of social media marketing, social media marketing, brand loyalty and customer purchase intention) However, the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention in the research of Almohaimmeed (2019) was discussed particularly, since other factors are quite not related to the research of this dissertation Social media marketing was measured through application types, social effects and enabling technologies A questionnaire was distributed to 500 people randomly in three malls in Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia However, only 377 respondents were returned and valid for this quantitative research The results revealed that social media marketing was found to have a statistically significant effect on customer purchase intention (Almohaimmeed, 2019) The limitation was the measurements that were based on a small number of indicators The research needed more indicators in the measurement to increase the validity and credibility

Social media marketing

Application types

Figure 4: Research model of Almohaimmeed (2019)

2.8 Conclusion

There were some gaps that was found in the literature review Firstly, many studies about the influence of social media marketing on purchase intention were conducted and carried out in different countries but rare in Viet Nam Different countries may have different results There could be possible changes in customer behavior So, it was essential to study about the influence of social media marketing on purchase intention in Viet Nam Secondly, previous studies used quantitative methods to conduct and lack of qualitative research Therefore, this research used qualitative method From the literature review above, this study would use Theory of Planned Behavior and the study of Kim and Ko (2010) as main reference resources for the analysis the influence of social media marketing on purchase intention Next chapter would discuss and explain the methodology of the research

Social effects

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Introduction

After the literature review, in this chapter, the author would demonstrate and explain the choices in the methodology of the research This research used the research onion model of Saunders et al (2007) Each layer of the model gave detailed information about the stage of the methodology for the researcher Bell et al (2019) stated that the effective methodology had direct influence on the trustworthiness and rationality of the research Therefore, making decisions in each layer of the model not only made a systematic research that follows logical flow, but also increased the validity of the research to achieve the aim and objectives of the study

Figure 5: Research onion model (Saunders et al., 2007)

3.2 Branches of philosophy

Before going to the first layer of the model, it was very important to have some knowledge about the branches of philosophy that constituted the research philosophy There were many branches of philosophy They helped researcher design the research methodology and had influence on the interpretation of the results (Crotty, 1998) However, this research discussed two main branches, that are ontology and epistemology Ontology can be explained about the nature of the world and how researchers can investigate and understand it, while epistemology was about human knowledge that how knowledge can be gained and transferred (Burrell and Morgan, 1979)

Among the assumptions, the author chose epistemology With epistemological assumption, the knowledge can be numbers, texts, visual data… (Saunders et al., 2007) The research used qualitative data and the viewpoints, emotions, and experiences of participants were valuable and the source of knowledge So, epistemology was suitable for the research

3.3 Research philosophy

In the first layer of the research model, the decision of a specific philosophy that was used would affect the latter layer of the research onion Research philosophy helped researcher have valuable knowledge to find suitable methods, understand what to do and recognize the limitations when employing (Easterby-Smith et al., 2012) There were many research philosophies such as pragmatism, positivism, realism, interpretivism, etc Under the epistemology, there were two main positions, that were

positivism and anti-positivism, which can be known as interpretivism (Burrell and Morgan, 1979) The author chose epistemology in the previous part So, the author only discussed positivism and interpretivism

Positivism was scientific study to find knowledge that was outside of the world and viewed things objectively, that personal viewpoint of the researcher was not included (Park et al., 2020) There was no human interest in the research and the data was collected through observation with huge number of participants With positivism, the knowledge of the researcher was based on former theory, previous research and used quantitative method to conduct and analyze the results (Saunders et al., 2007) However, the result was descriptive and lacked theoretical insights in the study, since this research philosophy was about observation

On the other hand, interpretivism believed that knowledge was affected by subjective views, the contexts of culture, opinions and emotions of people With interpretivist philosophy, the researcher was more active than positivism that researcher interact with participants (Chen et al., 2011) So this philosophy was more subjective than positivism Interpretivism explored people’s feelings, perceptions and experiences to gain meanings and understand the motivation for their behaviors (Creswell et al., 2007) The knowledge generated from the results was meaningful and relative with time, culture and environment The limitation of this philosophy was subjective that can lead to bias of the researcher and time consuming However, with these subjective factors, the qualitative research was more valuable and in-depth (Alharahsheh and Pius, 2020)

This research was a qualitative research, with small samples, that investigated the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention, that opinions and ideas of participants can affect the research In this research, the subjective factors such as perceptions, motivations, and emotions of participants were meaningful, valuable and qualitative data was a source of knowledge Therefore, the research philosophy for this research was interpretivism

3.4 Research approach

Moving to the second layer of the research onion, the selected approach had influence on the decision of research design and methods (Babbie, 1995) There were two main approaches, including deductive approach and inductive approach

Deductive approach used previous theories and hypotheses to test the theory, while inductive approach was from themes of the research to build theory (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2007) Deductive approach began with general and ended with specific, whereas inductive approach was from specific to general at the end (Trochim and Donnelly, 2008) With deductive approach, data was collected to test the hypothesis to know whether the theory was verified or not Inductive research focused on ―why‖ questions and used data to find the patterns and themes to establish framework So, inductive approach was normally used with qualitative research However, qualitative method can still be used in deductive approach (Saunders et al., 2007) Also, with inductive approach, the findings of the research can be quite similar to previous theories

From chapter one and two, the purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention Also, based on the research gap, this study used qualitative method to explore the factors of social media marketing, affecting purchase intention, in the context of Viet Nam Due to the differences in cultural contexts, the behavior of people was different (Douglas and Craig, 1997) It was crucial to develop a model that was suitable for Viet Nam situation The framework of this study would be provided at the end of chapter four Therefore, the suitable approach for this research was inductive approach

3.5 Research strategy

In the third layer of the model, research strategy showed how the researcher conducted the study (Saunders et al., 2007) The research strategy included experiment, survey, case study, action research, grounded theory, ethnography, archival research In this study, the author chose case study research

Case study was an in-depth study about a subject to gain deep understanding It can be about people, topics, issues or programs (DeMarrais and Lapan, 2003) The objective of the case study was to gain detailed knowledge in the particular situation According to Bryman (2012), case study research was the evaluate a single subject to find main features and to generalize the findings The case study research helped organization understand more about its case (Blumberg et al., 2014) So, the implication of findings and results would bring more value and trustworthiness for specific subject, that was studied in the research Different from other historical research, case study evaluated contemporary case to explain and understand the issues of the organization

This research used interpretivist philosophy, inductive approach with qualitative method that looks for in-depth understanding of the case Also, the context of Viet Nam was essential to build a suitable framework The research had limited time and the issue was about the effectiveness of social media marketing on buying intention of Blueseed Digital company Therefore, case study research was a suitable research strategy for this study

3.6 Research choice

In this layer, the research choice was how the data (quantitative or qualitative) was used in the research In the research onion of Saunders et al (2007), there were three research choices, comprising mono method, mixed-method and multi-method Mono method was about using a quantitative or qualitative method, in the research According to Hesse-Biber (2010), mixed-method was when the study used both quantitative and qualitative in collecting and analyzing data, while multi-method was the combination of methods by using two or more methods in research

Before deciding the research choice, it was crucial to know what quantitative and qualitative approaches were According to Grove and Gray (2018), quantitative method was known as a systematic process that tested the relationships between variables as well as evaluates cause-effect relationship between them Creswell and Plano Clark (2007) stated that the quantitative data was used to test existing theory to support or against the hypothesis The limitations of quantitative methodology were needing a large population and huge statistical data to ensure reliability and validity to conduct the research

On the other hand, qualitative method was used to have a better understanding and deeper insight into the behaviors and motivations of people (Barnham, 2015) Qualitative approach focused more on ideas, opinions and perceptions of participants The research collected information from participants and analyzed themes to develop theories (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2007) The qualitative approach explored and understood what was behind the phenomena (D O'Gorman and MacIntosh, 2015) This was what quantitative approach did not have The population for quantitative approach was small, compared to quantitative approach However, qualitative approach was time-consuming, since it required researcher to record the responses of participants and identify patterns, themes from the records Also, due to the bias in the research through collecting to opinions of people, the validity was low

The author decided to choose mono method with qualitative methodology Firstly, the choices in previous layers of the research, including interpretivist philosophy, inductive approach and case study research, linked with qualitative approach All these decisions aimed to have more in-depth investigation and understand the impact of social media marketing on purchase intention of Blueseed Digital company Secondly, from the literature review, there was a gap, that many previous studies in this topic were quantitative studies (Kim and Ko, 2010; Balakrishnan et al., 2014; Gautam and Sharma, 2017; Laksamana, 2018; Almohaimmeed, 2019) and lack of qualitative research Thirdly, mono method for qualitative research was suitable for the study, since this research had limited time and resources

3.7 Time horizon

Time horizon was about the length of time to collect data to complete the research From the research onion model of Saunders et al (2007), there were two types of time horizon, including cross-sectional and longitudinal time horizon The author chose cross-sectional time horizon Cross-sectional study was when the data was collected at certain point in time (Levin, 2006) Because of conducting the study at a specific time, it was more affordable for the researcher than longitudinal However, cross-sectional was not effective, when evaluating the behaviors of subject in long run, because it focused on certain point at a time but not a whole period

This research used cross-sectional time horizon Firstly, the research had limited time and resources to conduct the study This research was carried out within about 5 months Cross-sectional time horizon was more suitable than longitudinal time horizon If conducting in a long time, the academic contribution of the research may be ensured, but was not supportive for the situation of Blueseed Digital company at the time

3.8 Techniques and procedures

Saunders et al (2007) stated the decisions in this layer have significant influence on the reliability and validity of the study In the final layer of the model, the author would discuss and explain the choices about the techniques and procedures for collecting data in this section

3.8.1 Data collection method

Interview was the process that researcher and participant participate in a conservation with questions related to the study (DeMarrais and Lapan, 2003) The interview can be conducted through face-to-face, telephone and online meetings, …

This research used semi-structured interview It had the features of both unstructured and structured interviews (Cachia and Millward, 2011) Semi-structured interview had plan for the core questions to ask the participants This helped researcher ensure that the interview was more systematic, comprehensive and not out of the topic (Jamshed, 2014) Kallio et al (2016) stated that this type of interview had flexibility that depended on the responses of participants, follow-up questions would be used to gain information However, because of open-ended questions, it had high risk of research bias, leading to low validity of the research The respondents could change their behaviors and answers to please the researcher due to Hawthorne effect According to Wickström and Bendix (2000), Hawthorne effect was known as the change in the behaviors of participants when being observed Also, this method required certain level knowledge of the researcher (Kallio et al., 2016)

The semi-structured interview focused on investigating the influence of social media marketing on purchase intention of Blueseed Digital company It took approximately 20 minutes for each participant with 7 questions about the research topic Before conducting the semi-structured interview, a small trial would be used to test and adjust the questions for the interview

3.8.2 Sampling technique

This study had a population of 6 respondents There was no specific sample size for qualitative research and small sample size does not mean ineffective It is more important to have sufficient data to make conclusion According to Boddy (2016), in qualitative research, the sample should be based on characteristics of the study with

The non-probability technique method was used to conduct the study To be more specific, purposive sampling was adopted With purposive sampling, the researcher decided the subject, involved in the study (D O'Gorman and MacIntosh, 2015) The sample was based on the knowledge and experience of researcher to achieve the goals of the study So, purposive sampling took less time and money With limited time and resources, this method was suitable for the study However, because the sample depends on the judgment of researcher, this could result in observer bias and low validity for the study (Andrade, 2021)

With purposive sampling, the researcher selected the participants, based on the working process of Blueseed Digital company Blueseed Digital company was a marketing agency that helped clients (brands) promote products/ services to attract their target customers Blueseed Digital company, clients and customers of clients played important roles in making a successful marketing campaign So, the data needed to have the viewpoints of social media marketing experts, mangers from clients of Blueseed Digital and customers Firstly, social media marketing experts were skillful in this field with many years of experience, that knew how to promote effectively Secondly, managers from brands knew the demands and needs of the customers and had valuable insights about their customer’s behaviors Finally, the target customers directly perceived the marketing campaign and were affected Therefore, it was crucial to have three perspectives in the sample of this study

3.8.3 Data collection approach

In this research, primary and secondary data were both utilized The primary data

be collected through surveys, interviews, … (Bryman, 2012) Although it was costly and time-consuming, it is more accurate and reliable Primary data was collected by own researcher, that understand well the issue of the study In this study, the primary data was collected from results of semi-structured interview It was then used as input data for thematic analysis

On the other hand, secondary data was available data that was conducted in the past with different purposes Secondary data can be collected through websites, newspapers, government reports, etc The advantage of this data was time-saving, cheap and easy to access (Cowton, 1998) However, this data was unreliable, since it is out-of-date, has different purposes with research topics and may have biased views of previous collectors In this study, secondary data was collected through existing academic literature, reports, journals and articles, related to the topic of the study The secondary data was used to help researcher have a comprehensive understanding of the concepts and opinions of scholars, related to the topic

3.8.4 Data analysis technique

With data analysis, thematic analysis was used in this research Thematic analysis focused on identifying and describing the insights in the qualitative data to find the themes (Guest et al., 2012) From thematic analysis, the researcher gained rich and detailed account of data (Braun and Clarke, 2006) This method analyzed qualitative data to create the code and themes to establish a theory However, the issue of reliability was the limitation of thematic analysis, due to the biases and errors during the analytic process (Guest et al., 2012) The thematic analysis was still suitable for this

of social media marketing on purchase intention The study followed 6 steps of Braun and Clarke (2006) to use thematic analysis They included familiarization data, coding, generating themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and writing up With the support of these steps, the researcher could conduct thematic analysis thoroughly

3.8.5 Reliability and validity

Qualitative research commonly was considered to have low reliability and validity due to lack of scientific rigor (Noble and Smith, 2015) Reliability referred to the consistency of the methodological procedures, while validity was about the accuracy of the findings that can reflect the data (Rose and Johnson, 2020) Rolfe (2006) stated that there was no universal way to judge the validity of qualitative research and instead, the research should appraise its own merits The author made justifications to increase the reliability and validity of the research

Firstly, the opinions, experiences and emotions of participants had value for this study Although they may be biased and change over time, from epistemology and interpretivism, their contributions to the research were considerable and they are sources of knowledge The subjective factors helped qualitative research to be more valuable and in-depth (Alharahsheh and Pius, 2020) Also, the study was to have in-depth understanding about the topic to solve Blueseed Digital’s problem

Secondly, the researcher selected the suitable time when the participants can freely express their opinions and stories Also, the author followed ethical guidelines

and ensured that during the interviews, the participants were not forced or under pressure of coworkers, friends, seniors, … to answer the questions

Thirdly, the research followed the steps of the research onion of Saunders et al (2007) In addition, the author used previous studies by researchers and scholars as reference resources to gain knowledge and reduce bias to conduct the study This created systematic research that followed logical flow, but also increased the validity of the research to achieve the aim and objectives of the study

Finally, the researcher used data triangulation in this research The participants included social media marketing experts, managers from brands and target customers Triangulation is used to improve the rigor of the research (Long and Johnson, 2000) The research needed the data from these three perspectives to have comprehensive understanding and establish the research framework

3.10 Research ethic

In the research, ethics needed to be considered and followed in every single step of the process (Johansen and Frederiksen, 2021) Zimmer (2010) stated that the privacy of participants in the research must be protected The respondents had the right to not share information that has impact on their normal life (Golder et al., 2017)

Therefore, this study collected data from participants and ensured that the given information was risk-free The personal information, including full names, company names and jobs, was confidential and anonymous Also, the goal of this research was shown at the start of the interview and the participants can view their interview reports

In addition, the research ethics checklist form of University of Bolton, which was shown in Appendix 1, was filled in to make sure the author follows the ethical guidelines

3.11 Conclusion

In this chapter, the researcher discussed the methodology and made justifications for the choices in the study First, the researcher explained why this study was epistemology, interpretivism, inductive approach, case study, mono method for qualitative methodology with cross-sectional time horizon Next, the author decided to choose non-probability purposive sampling with 6 participants through semi-structured interview and used thematic analysis At the end of the chapter, the reliability, the validity and the ethics of the research were presented Next chapter presented the findings from the thematic analysis of the data