Facebook from Socializing to Advertising. An Empirical Study on the Effect of Facebook as Advertising Tool in Egypt

Master's Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: Distinction, University Of Wales Institute, Cardiff, course: Master of Business Administration - Marketing Management, language: English, abstract: The focus of this research is in the area of the effect of Facebook as an advertising tool in Egypt. Such a study is important in order to maximize the benefits that marketers can get from the successful use of Facebook as a tool of advertising for their products or services, being of high popularity recently in Egypt among younger and older ages with no restrictions of use to a certain demographic class. The research methods consisted of a wide review of relevant literature coupled with collection and analysis of empirical data. The latter is based on a survey of 400 Facebook users from Cairo and Alexandria governorates. The research adopted the quantitative approach to examine the relationship between Facebook and advertising. To achieve the research objectives and verify the proposed hypothesis, descriptive analysis used to test the feel of data, Cronbach's alpha to ensure reliability of data, factor analysis for the reduction of variables and regression analysis for testing hypothesis. The research provided evidence that Facebook has a significant effect as a tool of advertising as it can stimulate consumption of products and services advertised through it. The main conclusion drawn from this study is that Facebook in Egypt has a significant effect as an advertising tool regarding the power it has to stimulate its users to consume the products or services advertised through it using the socialization and interaction features of Facebook. This dissertation recommends that Marketers in Egypt must concentrate on the powerful effect of Facebook as a consumption stimulation as a main aspect when planning for their advertising campaign, using different advertising models created especially for Facebook than those created for the traditional means of advertising to match the unique features of the Facebook that are already different from those of the mass media.