UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Nguyen Minh Thien THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING PROFESSIONAL GROUPS FOR SALESPERSONS: SOCIAL CAPITAL & SALESPERSONS PERFORMANCE MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY International School of Business ------------------------------ Nguyen Minh Thien THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING PROFESSIONAL GROUPS FOR SALESPERSONS: SOCIAL CAPITAL & SALESPERSONS PERFORMANCE ID: 22110058 MASTER OF BUSINESS (Honours) SUPERVISOR Dr. Le Nhat Hanh Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2014 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ABSTRACTS Recently social networking professional groups (SNPG) are increasing and becoming popular in various social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Forum, and Blog. Many people using them as tools to share information together, acquire existing & new connections, and maintain relationships. Typically, salesperson has demand to connect and maintain with customers every day, and the SNPG is a very useful tool for them to build up, develop, and nourish relationships with their business partners.
By drawing on the social capital theory, there are three kinds of benefits that salesperson can attain from SNPG, including SNPG bridging, SNPG bonding, and SNPG maintaining. This study attempts to investigate the effects of these SNPG benefits on salesperson’s self-efficacy, which in turn influence salespersons performance. The data were collected from 120 salespersons, and the result shows that among the social capital benefits of SNPG, only bringing is positively associated with self-efficacy of salespersons. Besides, self-efficacy of salespersons is found to significantly increase salespersons performance.
These findings implies that, in order to improve salesperson performance, salespersons need to enhance their self- efficacy, and two sub-dimensions of SNPG bridging can help salespersons enhance this factor is bridging involvement and bridging devotion. Keywords SNPG, Social Capital, Self- Efficacy of Salespersons, Salespersons Performance. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract List of tables Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………….4 Research Methodology and Scopes……………………………………………4 1.5 The Structure of Research…………………………………………………….5 Chapter 2: Literature Review and Hypothesis Development…………………7 2.1 Social Networking Professional Groups (SNPG)…………………………….2 Social Capital Benefits: Bridging, Bonding, and Maintaining…………….3 Self-Efficacy of Salespersons …………………………………………………9 2.4 Salespersons Performance……………………………………………………13 Chapter 3: Research Methodology………………………………………….1 Measures of Social Capital…………………………………………………17 3.2 Measures of Self-Efficacy of Salespersons……………………………….3 Measures of Salespersons Performance…………………………………….3 Data Collection Method………………………………………………………19 3.21 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.6 Data Analyzing Method………………………………………………….23 Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Results…………………………………….1 Characteristic of Sample …………………………………………………. Reliability Analysis: Cronbach’s Alpha Testing……………………….3 Exploratory Factor Analysis………………………………………………33 4.
Revised Research Model…………………………………………………40 4.5 Multiple Regression Analysis…………………………………………….41 Chapter 5: Conclusions, Implications and Limitations……………………54 5.3 Limitation and Future Research………………………………………….85 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1 Frequently of Salespersons using SNPG…………………………………….2 Characteristic of Sample…………………………………………………….3 Reliability Statistics for SNPG Bridging…………………………………….4 Item-Total Statistics for SNPG Bridging…………………………………….5 Reliability Statistics for SNPG Bonding…………………………………….6 Item-Total Statistics for SNPG Bonding…………………………………….7 Reliability Statistics after deleting Bonding3……………………………….8 Reliability Statistics for SNPG Maintaining…………………………………30 Table 4.9 Item-Total Statistics for SNPG Maintaining…………………………………30 Table 4.10 Reliability Statistics for Self-Efficacy………………………………………31 Table 4.11 Item-Total Statistics for Self-Efficacy………………………………………31 Table 4.12 Reliability Statistics for Salespersons Performance……………………….13 Item-Total Statistics for Salespersons Performance…………………………32 Table 4.14 KMO and Bartlett's Test …………………………………………………….15 Total Variance Explained.16 Rotated Component Matrix.17 Rotated Component Matrix …………………………………………………36 Table 4.21 Coefficients of multiple linear regression analysis in first running …………46 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.24 Coefficients of multiple linear regression analysis in second running…….48 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Research Background According to We Are Social, a new kind of globe agency combines an innate understanding of social media with digital, public relation, and marketing skills, entirely focused on innovative, creative and effective social media marketing and communications. Following this agency’s report of South East Asia (SEA) consist of Vietnam in January, 2014: SEA has nearly 196 million internet users with 31% Internet Penetration and nearly 162 active social networks users with 26% social networking penetration (Kemp, 2014) For further details, Internet Live Stats (2014) show a report: there are about 40 million internet users in Vietnam as of July 01st , 2014. Internet users grow 9% compare with 2013 in the same period. And internet penetration shares 1.28% country’s share of World Internet Users, and ranges at No.14 of Global rank.
And We Are Social has just updated the report of Vietnam in Jan , 2014 significant social indicators: social media penetration as of percentage of the total population is 38%, the average time that internet users spend using the internet each day through all devices: 6 hours and 20 minutes. While, the average time social media users spend on social media each day: 2hours and 23 minutes. Specially, report also represent Vietnam situation in social media use: 97% of Vietnam internet users have any social network’s account: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and 81% all of them use one of these social network in the TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 2 previous month. With the more detail in percentage of social media usage: 67% Facebook, 34% Google+, 16% Twitter, 8% LinkedIn, 5% Pinterest.
Kemp (2014) also state that: communities or social networking professional groups (SNPG): we can categorise audience in the common group by instead, look for the interests, motivations and attitudes that the people we want to engage have in common, and use these commonalities to define your audience. People are drawn to others whom they feel affinity for, and when it comes to the borderless internet, this affinity is far more dependent on passion than it is on place around their shared motivation. Currently, in Vietnam now there are many groups or e-communities in social networking. They are established everyday to invite the new members anytime whom have the common professional or interests or fan club.
So that, they can connect together, sharing experiences, new things or interesting topic. From this report, we observe Vietnam internet user, typically the benefits of social network is very large. The development of social networking in Vietnam very fast which make many organizations cannot overlook this opportunity. This is the big chance for salespersons whom need to connect people, customer engagement, building new customer, approach new prospect or maintain relationship with customer for building customer service or simply for product warranty or new product introduction.
However, in order to understand in-depth SNPG in Vietnam, salesperson need to know what people think and feel when joining these professional groups. Furthers detail, TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 3 salesperson need to understand what factor impact to salesperson when participate SNPG and from this salesperson can enhance their skill and improving their working performance when using SNPG.2 Research Problems SNPG in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest, Forum, Blog… are becoming an indispensable part of every societies, with many people using them as tools to share information together, acquire existing & new connections, maintain relationships online & offline. SNPG not only facilitate individuals to connect together but also allow business organizations to find-out more customers and help generate new customers, identify potential customers, build customer relationship effectively, and even solve customer complaints on time. As salespersons playing the role of boundary-spanners in business organizations, they can utilize SNPG for both personal and professional purposes which might improve the quality of their lives, and enhance their working capacity, thus leading to better performance in their job.
Besides, the reason of joining of salespersons in SNPG from different reasons, for instance, customer service for customer orientation, attracts and finding new customers, while company think about their business, do some marketing campaign and public relation activities to pose on SNPG. Depending on particular purposes and objectives, each subject will develop their account in right way. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 4 According to social capital theory, SNPG bring three kinds of benefits including SNPG bridging, SNPG bonding, and SNPG maintaining to the users within the networks (Ellison et al, 2007). The benefits or values of SNPG are perceived as supportive among salespersons upon their joining the groups (Madanka et al, 2013).
A comprehensive and intensive literature review on the application of social capital theory reveals that there is a lack of research that apply the theory in online environment, especially so far no research has been done on explaining the benefits and values that salesperson attain from SNPG to improve their working performance. Therefore, the purpose of the current research thesis is to investigate the relationships mechanism that three aforementioned benefits of social capital (i., SNPG Bridging , SNPG Bonding, and SNPG Maintaining) pertaining to Salespersons Performance and Self-Efficacy of Salespersons at work.3 Research Objectives The overall objective of this study is to examine SNPG benefits to Salespersons performance. Typically, it investigates: The relationship between SNPG Bridging and Self-Efficacy of Salespersons The relationship between SNPG Bonding and Self-Efficacy of Salespersons The relationship between SNPG Maintaining and Self-Efficacy of Salespersons The relationship between Self-Efficacy of Salespersons and Salespersons Performance 1.4 Research Methodology and Scopes TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 5 The research method that many researchers are using lately is the combination of qualitative and quantitative research. It helps increase the accuracy and sufficiency of the study.
Applying qualitative research to collect the ideas and opinions allows the adjustment of the study is made. While, the quantitative research guarantees many people take the survey and allows the researcher to carry out the data analysis with more reliable results. The researcher uses Statistical Package for the Social Science software (SPSS), an effective tool to analyze the data. The first step is to study the Descriptive Statistics.
The second one is to test the reliability of the scales (Cronbach’s Alpha), Factor Analysis. Finally, the Regression is used to examine the relationship between independents variables and dependent variables. This study is to research salespersons performance in SNPG in Vietnam, so, the scope of this research is restricted to all salespersons who mostly live in Hanoi City and Ho Chi Minh City. Because these cities are the two biggest city of Vietnam with the huge number of population, have modern technology and stable infrastructure, people who are living in these areas have better facilities to access social networking sites than other people in other areas.
Certainly, the respondents of this study must know about SNPG and have created an account on it; otherwise, their answers are not qualified and cannot be used in the data analysis. TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.5 The Structure of Research Structure of the research The structure of this study consists of five chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter presents research background of the study, as well as, research problems, research objectives, research scopes. Chapter 2: Literature Review and Hypotheses Development This chapter provides the literature review and previous studies. Still, the conceptual model of the study and the hypotheses are also presented.
Chapter 3: Methodology In this chapter, the researcher introduces the method used to design and implement the research base on the research objectives and scopes, the processes of doing the research are also reported. Chapter 4: Data Analysis All the data collected from the survey are analyzed and translated in this section. Depending on withdrawal results from the analyzing, each factor will be deeply discussed how it affects the attitude toward participating in SNPG. Chapter 5: Conclusions, Implications and Limitations TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 7 This chapter presents main conclusions and implications based on the results of the previous chapters, some suggestions for the improvement as well as the limitations of this study.
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW & HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT In this chapter, researcher presents the literature review, the research model and the hypotheses development of the study.1 Social Networking Professional Groups (SNPG) According Scoot & Johnson (2005) SNPG or e-communities are defined as groups of people with common interests that communicate regularly, and for some duration, in an organized way over the Internet, they are designed to provide users with a range of tools for learning, personal development, and collective action point, all embedded in a complex, continuing, and personally enriching network of social relations.