Research Project To Attract People In Social Media

Barclays Plc, in conducting its operations, effectively applies corporate strategies and effective governance. Corporate Strategy refer to those actions and directions that companies take to achieve their short as well as long-term goals in an appropriate and effective manner. Corporate Governance, on the other end, refers to all those processes, mechanisms as well as relations that are required to control as well as direct an organisation (Marquis and Lee, 2013). The institution is using various strategies to effectively attract and retain customers. Social Media is one of those techniques that company is using to fulfil its objectives. The aim of the study is to determine the impact of Social Media in attraction and retention of customers in Barclays.

Background:

Barclays Plc is a multinational financial services organisation and investment bank which have its headquarters in London, United Kingdom. The company is considered to be one of the biggest financial companies in the UK and has a huge workforce and effective corporate structure. Established in 1690, the firm has strong roots in the past with multiple achievements and various agricultural, industrial and technological revolutions. Apart from its operation of investment banking, the company also provides services like corporate banking, personal banking, investment as well as health management to its customers in the UK.  The corporate governance rule of New York Stock Exchange allows Barclays to follow the governance structure of the UK rather than the US. Barclays effectively follow the code set by the UK government and focuses on setting standards for good practices where leadership, accountability, effectiveness and relation with shareholders is concerned. The corporate strategy of the organisation is to deliver favourable returns and reach their customers worldwide. Moreover, the organisation is adopting digitalisation in its practices and operations to effectively manage their organisation and to attract and retain their customers. The company is applying various digital strategies to attract and retain their customers with social media being one of them. The agenda of the firm in applying this method is to effectively expand their workforce and provide their services to maximum number of customers possible.

Social Media has various modes and forms which allow individuals to carry out their technologically enabled activities like blogging, social and business networks and so forth. Companies of almost all sectors use social media as an effective method to strengthen their customer base. Social media could help Barclays in acquiring effective feedbacks from customers regarding their strategies and it could also help them develop plan of action according to the preferences of their customers. Moreover, this method could be effective in case the company wants to effectively introduce any new strategies that provide immense benefits to people. In addition to this, social media could be an effective way in which institutions could track strategies of their competitive organisations which could help the firm stay a step ahead.

Research Aim:

To determine the role of social media and its impact on consumer attraction and retention in Barclays.

Research Objectives: 

• To determine the concept of Social Media
• To identify the indicators of customer attraction and retention
• To determine how customer retention improves competition?
• To determine the relationship between social media and customer attraction and retention in Barclays

Research Questions:

• What is the concept of social media?
• What are the indicators of customer attraction and retention
• How customer retention improves competition for organisations?
• What is the relationship between social media and customer attraction and retention of Barclays?

Rationale of the Study and Review of the Problem:

Employee attraction and retention is quite imperative and helpful for every organisation to effectively progress in the business and effectively sustain in such a dynamic and competitive business environment. Barclays aim to retain their buyers lately and and it is very complex to track the level of satisfaction of the customers. For this, the firm is opting for social media as an effective measure to retain their customers as well as attract new ones. It is also important for Barclays as this would allow the firm to spend their time and resources in developing strategies that would allow the company to provide effective services to its clients and achieve their organisational targets. This could be achieved by development of effective corporate strategies and governance (Amran, Lee and Devi, 2014). Social media would help the managers to manage internal as well as external stakeholders of the firm. The firm could develop effective strategies by establishing effective communication channels with their stakeholders as well as the board.

In addition to this, social media could be used by the company to formulate and make customers familiar with their internal regulations as well as policies. Social Media is being given extreme importance lately as without this, the bank would fail to attract customers outside its niche market effectively. In addition to this, without social media, the firm would have to spend a lot of money in marketing its services and attracting new customers towards the firm. This research would allow the firm to measure the accurate impact of social media on the firm and its agenda of attracting and retaining customers.

In addition to this, this research would also allow Barclays to effectively formulate their strategy through social media tools to attract and retain more customers in a healthy manner and for a long-term purpose. This study would also focus on various departments within Barclays that would be affected by this decision of the firm to use social media as a method of attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. It is imperative for Barclays to conduct this research in order to determine various methods and social media tools that would aid the purpose of the study in the best manner possible.

Literature Review

Literature review refers to those articles that cover published information about a specific subject area. It is a quite important part of the research and undertakes evaluation of sources and provide relevant information to the researcher.

Concept of Social Media

According to Driver Saige (2018), Social Media is imperative for businesses as it is considered to be one of the most effective and a cheap marketing tool. Its campaigns could help companies reach a lot of customers. Social media provide companies with effective targeting capabilities and a wide reach than other methods used by companies to approach and attract customers.  

There are various social media platforms that are used by individuals as well as organisation to exchange information and communicate and manage customers respectively. One such platform is Facebook. It is by far the most popular social media platform and majority of business organisation working at small as well as large scale uses this portal to conduct some of their business activities like marketing an promotion. Another social media platform is twitter that is widely used by companies to give short updates and share effective links for various important content.

YouTube is yet another social media network which solely works over sharing of videos. Business organisations could use this portal to make people familiar with their business processes, product and service specifications and techniques of customer and employee management. Specifically for business purposes and with 260 million monthly users, LinkedIn is designed to create professional networking. Firms use this portal to hire talented individuals for their companies to enhance their workforce. These platforms help companies to assure complete transparency with their targeted and potential customers.

There are various benefits if companies use so social media for their business operations. The first and foremost benefit of using it is that it helps organisations to make customers aware about what companies have to offer. In addition to this, companies could indulge in conversation with interested customers to address their doubts which could get them interested in organisations' offerings. Moreover, the biggest benefit of social media is that there are a lot of customers that use these portals for different purposes.

(Source: 23 Benefits of Social Media for Business, 2019)

As per the image, a large number of individuals use social media and this could be an advantage for companies to attract customers using effective techniques and customer engagement methods which will contribute in their sustainable growth and profitability. Social media could also be used by companies to promote content as well as involve customers in decision-making process. In this manner, customers will be engaged and would provide effective contribution to the firm's new product ideas and designs.

Indicators of customer attraction and retention

As per the views of Steiner, W.J., and et. al., (2014), customer attraction and retention depends upon the pricing as well as quality of the products. The agenda for each company is to earn profit, however, they must set such a price for their offerings that attract and retain a lots of customers. More companies are giving importance to customer retention lately rather than customer acquisitions in the market. To retain these customers and to ensure their loyalties, it is becoming quite important for them to set the prices in the most appropriate and effective manner that are favoured by customers and help organisations to attract and retain their buyers.

Alongside prices, firms could also gain customer loyalty overtime by providing effective value for money and superior quality products to its customer base. This would help them in increasing demands for their products as people want organisations that provide them comfort and quality both on a favourable price range. This pattern must also be quite consistent for companies to effectively retain their existing customers. Quality of products and services require companies to perform extensive market research to determine what modifications could the company perform in order to satisfy current demands of the marketplace.

According to Ngai, E.W., and et. al., (2015), it is essential that companies apply some effective corporate strategies to ensure long term customer retention. It also helps companies sustain in a highly competitive environment. There are various models that govern how companies could retain their customers. One such model gives a full circle approach as an effective method to retain buyers within a company's targeted environment.

(Source: Why a focus on the fundamentals of customer retention is essential to business growth, 2017)

Such a model could be effective for companies to gain a 360-degree overview on each customer and could develop strategies that could provide customer satisfaction. These strategies include inducing an emotional connection with the consumers. This makes it hard for them to shift onto another firm. Another strategy calls in for providing value for money, which could help a firm stand effective against their competitors. Then comes effective customer service that would allow the firms to encourage customers in buying their products repeatedly. The last stage of this model requires customers to recommend the offerings in their interest groups.

Role of customer retention in improvisation of competition

As per the viewpoints of Heinz Matt (2018),  loyal customers contribute in a firm's growth and success. These customers could effectively make a company achieve their corporate objectives and effectively enhance their competitive strengths. Customer retention in organisations really help in them gaining competitive edge. One way is that they effectively identify future trends and their anticipated preferences which could be beneficial for a company's strategy of developing new products and introducing innovation in existing ones. Higher customer retention denotes high customer experience that a firm offers.

This aids a company in establishing itself in the marketplace. Customer retention allows organisations to experiment with their products according to a large number of consumer preferences that is one effective strategy to beat competition. Customer retention also helps to gain insight in the experience gaps which enables the companies to modify strategies according to customer touchpoints. This aids in creation of new market opportunities for companies in the current as well as future market scenario.

Another role that customer retention plays in improvisation of competition is that higher retention restricts new companies to enter the marketplace as existing organisations with a huge customer base. This further helps companies in gaining a competitive advantage over other companies in the market.

Relationship between social media and customer attraction and retention in Barclays

According to the Saige Driver (2018), Social media is the platform which is designed and control to influence the various social idea and involving the consideration of product planning, pricing, communication, distribution and marketing research. It has played the necessary role in getting the customer attraction along with retaining their physical existence for beneficial of the business entity, especially for banking business like Barclays. When particular customer is looking for any products & services, social media is best suitable to target the pin-point of the customer related to that items.

Social media has put positive impact by building the effective relationship with the customer's or follower to be get influenced by the business of any firm. The best ways for the customer retention is building an effective relation with the prospective to get their response and attraction for the future period of time. In context with Barclays bank, social media is the major tool for this banking organisation to enhance their prospective customer attention towards the business activities or any new products.

It was noticed in various past research that business entities use this tool majorly for  customer service along with post-purchase actions and plans. Also, Barclays use social media for receiving any issues or queries about their products to convert it into the corrective actions. Along with this, social media has put reverse impact of its positives by decreasing the traditional work process  which has effected the current work accountability with loosing the past customers who has believe over the Barclays system.

Apart from this, the good response is that customer acquisition and retention has becoming convenient and profitable for an organisation. Hence, it is necessary for this organisation to engage social media platform on an optimized and productive manner. It is pecuniary for every organisation to make the strategic action plan with focal purpose of gaining the maximum customer attention along with strategic retention (Fernando, 2012).

Methodology

Research Methodology refers to the process which helps in effective collection of data as well as important information that helps a firm in appropriate decision-making. It helps companies to evaluate the study on the basis of their reliability and validity. It also helps organisations in choosing the best type of methodology that help them to gather and analyse the most relevant type of information of their research topic (Mackey and Gass, 2015).

Data collection is a process of collecting information from various sources regarding the research topic. It also assists in measuring the collected information on various targeted variables which helps in evaluation of the relevant information. The integrity of this research is dependant upon the accuracy of the data collected (Taylor, Bogdan and DeVault, 2015). In addition, this process is imperative to determine how well the information collected is accurate and defined. It also helps to identify validity of findings too.

Thus, it is imperative that the most appropriate instrument be used in order to ensure an appropriate way of data collection.

Barclays could use two types of techniques to gather information relevant to employee attraction and retention. These types are mentioned below:

Primary Research

This type of research enables the researcher gathering primary data effectively, i.e., information that has never been collected before. It is a new research where the researcher effectively collects raw data relevant to the research topic directly rather than depending on previously collected data. It is solely performed to address a specific issue which requires an effective in-depth analysis (Silverman, 2016). There are several methods by which primary research could be carried out. These methods are described below:

• Questionnaire:This is a research instrument which contains certain questions regarding the research topic. These questions are presented to the respondents to identify their responses which set up the base for analysis. The major benefit of questionnaire is that they are cost-efficient. Another benefit of questionnaire is that they provide faster result to the researcher.
• Interviews:These refer to direct interaction of the researcher with the respondent. These could be conducted in different ways like telephonic or face-to-face. Interviews allow customers to give descriptive and subjective answers which could help researchers to gain a deeper insight on the research topic. Moreover, face-to-face interviews help in getting more accurate responses as the respondents are interested in discussion of the research topic as well as the chances of accurate responses are highly likely.
• Focus Groups:This type of research enables researcher to gain data from a small number of individuals. These individuals are generally experts of the matter in question and allow them to discuss their viewpoints with the researcher which helps in gathering more valuable and diverse information.

Secondary Research

In this type of research, the researcher gathers data through existing sources and by synthesising existing researches. Unlike primary research, this research helps in gathering data which has already been gathered by previous researchers. This type of research includes materials that have been published in previous research report and other documents. Such documents could be accessed by researchers through websites, libraries, etc (Flick, 2015). There are various methods by which secondary data is collected. These are mentioned below:

• Internet:Most of the secondary data is available on the internet. It is a medium through which information could be accessed effectively by the researcher on any subject matter. The data is generally free of cost which increases the convenience of this method. However, it is imperative that research topic be authenticated to provide maximum accurate information for companies.
• Public Libraries:As one of the most effective methods of collecting information, libraries have various books, journals and magazines from where researcher could get a lot of information from various authors that have presented their viewpoints on the research topic.
• Government Agencies:Another method for gathering research data is with the government agencies. There are government institutions that provide ample amount of authentic information to the researcher. The best aspect of opting this method for companies is that firms could effectively use this data as it is accurate and reliable (Bresler and Stake, 2017).

For the given research, both the primary as well as secondary research is carried out which allows researcher to efficiently and timely gather relevant information on the impact of social media on customer retention as well as attraction in Barclays. For secondary research, various articles, journals from internet and books were used to gather effective data. Whereas, for primary research, questionnaires have been created which allows researcher to gather primary data from large number of respondents. A sample questionnaire is mentioned below:

Questionnaire Name: Age: Gender:   Q1)  Are you familiar with the concept of Social Media? a) Yes b) No   Q2)   Do you use social media tools in your personal and professional life? a) Yes b) No   Q3) Would Social Media be an effective strategy for Barclays Plc to attract new customers and retain existing ones? a) Yes b) No   Q4)  According to you, to what extent does social media help companies to attract and retain customers? a) To a huge extent b) To a medium extent  c) To a low extent    Q5) Are you aware about the products and services of Barclays Plc? a) Yes b) No c) Some of them   Q6)  What are the indicators of customer attraction and retention? a)  Cost of Barclay's services b) Quality of firm's products c) Number of positive feedbacks of customers   Q7) Does Corporate Governance play an important a role in effective business practices of a financial company like Barclays? a) Yes b) No c) Maybe   Q8) Which social media tools would you suggest Barclays use to attract and retain its customers? a) Facebook b) Twitter c) YouTube   Q9) What advantages would social media provide to Barclays? a) Better customer management b) Effective communication with customers c) Better customer relation and product information   Q10) What other recommendations would you like to give Barclays in order to effectively attract and retain their customers?

Critical Review

This part of the research project is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the research project. Under this, a detailed interpretation and analysis is performed of the research questions.

For secondary research, the researcher have used various sources of secondary data methods like books, journals as well as online articles to gain insight on the concept of social media and its relation with  customer attraction and retention.

According to Driver Saige (2018), social media is a huge concept and organisations could enhance the effectiveness of their business practices by using various platforms provided by social media. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn provide organisations to showcase their products and processes to effectively gather customer attention and stay ahead in the market. In addition to this, with so many as 3 Billion active Social Media users, a firm could reach out large target customer groups within limited time period.  

As per Steiner, W.J., and et. al., (2014), customer attraction and retention have various indicators that could assist companies develop corporate strategies to ensure their engagement with existing customers and acquisition of new ones. Price and quality are two of the most effective indicators of customer retention and attraction. Firms should work in a way where they effectively could set favourable prices for customers without reducing quality of their products. In addition to this, customer retention models could allow companies to gain an overall approach of how best to retain customers.

Each step of the model must be considered by the companies to ensure appropriate and effective customer retention. Failure to accomplish even one step could increase the threat of them to switch companies. Thus, it is imperative that companies pay attention to the indicators and these models to attract customers and better customer retention.

As per the viewpoints of Heinz Matt (2018), customer retention could aid companies in improving competition. It effectively helps firms in determining future trends effectively which is necessary for them to anticipate to stay ahead in the competition. It also ensures that companies manage customer gaps effectively to enhance the core strength of their customer base. Customer retention could assist firms in bringing in new ideas by involving them in decision-making process so that they could create their offerings as per the market needs. With strong customer retention,  new firms tend to cause less threat to the companies as they already have a loyal customer base.

According to Driver Saige (2018), social media is not merely a tool for managing customer experience, rather an effective measure for Barclays for customer retention and acquisition. It could help the firm in building effective relationships with customers overtime using social media by establishing effective communication channel. However social media has replaced the traditional work processes, for instance, query centres but it effectively helps customers to enquire about a firm's offerings and thus, helps in their retention.

To effectively serve the agenda of detailed analysis of the study, the researcher would adopt thematic analysis to effectively carry out the interpretation. For the primary research, 50 respondents were chosen by the researcher that would serve as the medium of gathering information about the impact of social media in attraction and retention of customers in Barclays. A number of these respondents belong to financial fields and have a keen insight where social media is concerned.

Theme 1: Concept of Social Media

Q1)  Are you familiar with the concept of Social Media?	Frequency
Yes	45
No	5

Interpretation: As per the viewpoint of 50 respondents, 45 were clearly aware of concept of social media, however, 5 were still unaware about it. Thus, it could be said that Social Media is a wide concept and is recognised by majority of respondents. This is because it is used at an individual as well as organisational levels to conduct various personal and professional activities respectively.

Theme 2: Usage of Social Media

Q2)   Do you use social media tools in your personal and professional life?	Frequency
Yes	38
No	12

Interpretation: Social Media is a wide term and is used worldwide as an effective method for individuals to conduct their online activities. 38 respondents use social media in both their personal as well as professional life. Social Media platforms provide customers communicate and form social groups and exchange various forms of media online which help them to establish various communication channels with their peers and friends. As for professional life, social media allows them to gain knowledge about different companies, their product and service specification as well as comparison with offerings of similar firms. Thus, Social Media is widely used by individuals in their personal and professional lives. 12 respondents, however still don't use social media as there are other sources available for them to communicate as well as conducting their professional activities.

Theme 3: Social Media as a strategy for customer attraction and retention

Q3) Would Social Media be an effective strategy for Barclays Plc to attract new customers and retain existing ones?	Frequency
Yes	32
No	18

Interpretation: It is imperative for Barclays to establish a long term and competent strategy to achieve its purpose of customer attraction and retention. 32 respondents favour social media as an effective strategy while 18 still finds it ineffective.  The data collected reflects that social media may help a firm in gaining attention of a lot of customers together by displaying benefits the firm has in store for them. By using same, organisation can also give personalised services to existing customers which would in turn help in retaining them. Few respondents are still against it. This reflects that social media is yet to ensure trust in individuals and organisations to be used effectively as a strategy to approach, attract and retain customers.

Theme 4: Extent of Social Media Effectiveness

Q4)  According to you, to what extent does social media help companies to attract and retain customers?	Frequency
To a huge extent	26
To a medium extentÂ	20
To a low extentÂ	4

Interpretation: Majority of customers feel that social media help companies to attract customers up to a huge extent. 26 respondents feel that social media could help companies acquire and retain customers to a huge extent while 20 feel that social media has a moderate effect on acquisition and retention of customers. 4 respondents feel that social media has low effect on customer attraction and retention. This shows that majority of customers are in favour of social media having a considerate effect in customer attraction and retention.

Theme 5: Awareness of Barclays Plc Offerings

Q5) Are you aware about the products and services of Barclays Plc?	Frequency
Yes	17
No	9
Some of them	24

Interpretation: There are various products and services that Barclays Plc deal in. While 17 people know all about the company offerings, 24 respondents still doesn’t know about some of the firm’s services like personal banking and health management. 9 respondents, however, were still unaware about what offerings does the bank provide. From this information, it could be analysed that Barclays must adopt ways to make customers aware about all of their offerings in an effective manner.

Theme 6: Indicators of Customers Attraction of Retention

Q6)  What are the indicators of customer attraction and retention?	Frequency
Cost of Barclay's services	18
Quality of firm's products	15
Number of positive feedbacks of customers	17

Interpretation: For any company, the main goal is to gain high retention of customers for getting sustainability in business. This would help in generating profitability and staying competitive at marketplace. Where Barclays is concerned, there are various factors present which indicates attraction and retention of customers. It includes cost of services, quality of products, positive responses of targeted audience after purchasing commodities etc. As per survey on 50 respondents as shown in above graph, it has been interpreted that 18 respondents treat cost of services as an effective indicator. While, other 15 respondents are in favour of quality of products. Other than this, remaining respondents that are near about 17 give votes to number of positive responses. This clearly reflects, that out of all the indicators, it is imperative that organisations focus on cost as an effective indicator for customer attraction and retention.

Theme 7: Role of Corporate Governance

Q7) Does Corporate Governance play an important a role in effective business practices of a financial company like Barclays?	Frequency
Yes	28
No	12
Maybe	10

Interpretation: Corporate governance plays a major role in an organisation in running its business more effectively. In relation to Barclays, as this company deals in financial sector, corporate strategy and governance help in setting ethical rules for the company. According to the mentioned graph, it has been interpreted that 28 participants out of 50 agree with the above statement that corporate governance play a major role in the company. While other 12 respondents think that corporate strategy and governance will not prove beneficial for Barclays in accomplishment of its business goals. This reflects that the bank needs to concern on other aspects like launching new product or service for getting sustainability in business. The rest 10 users state that corporate governance may aid this bank in attracting customers towards business.  

Theme 8: Social Media Tools

Q8) Which social media tools would you suggest Barclays use to attract and retain its customers?	Frequency
Facebook	25
Twitter	12
YouTube	13

Interpretation: With development of technology, individuals and organisations get opportunity to stay connected with each other for a longer period. For this purpose, companies can use various platforms of social media for promoting their businesses and developing interaction with target audience. In regard to this, it has been interpreted through survey on 50 participants that 25 users suggest Barclays to use Facebook for promoting its business. While 12 respondents are in favour of Twitter as it would provide information about new financial schemes to its customers. Similarly, remaining 13 respondents give support to YouTube for the same. According to them, YouTube is the biggest platform for any company for marketing its services and enhance its customer base. Since, majority of respondents have chosen Facebook to be the most effective tool for Barclays, it shows that the bank must focus its strategies to attract and retain customers using this tool.

Theme 9: Advantages of Social Media

Q9) What advantages would social media provide to Barclays?	Frequency
Better customer management	18
Effective communication with customers	14
Better customer relation and product information	18

Interpretation: Social media provide various advantages to a company in marketing its business, enhance customer base by developing effective interaction, making relationship with targeted audience etc. Through above mentioned graph, it has interpreted that out of 50 respondents, 18 think that better customer management is the most beneficial part of social media for Barclays. Other than this, 14 respondents think that social media would allow Barclays to establish an effective and consistent communication channel that would aid the firm in acquiring feedbacks and even resolving their issues, thus, retaining their customers. 18 respondents have given weightage to social media aiding the firm in giving better product information to its customers and developing better relations. Out of 50 respondents, almost equal importance has been given by respondents on two advantages that are customer management and relation.

Recommendation And Action Plan

As per the information mentioned above, it is recommended that social media is a viable strategy for Barclays Plc to retain and attract customers. To strengthen their customer base, the firm must adopt various social media platforms to engage with their customers and establish effective communication with them through social media.

The firm could use Facebook to interact with customers and create effective links that direct them to their new products and services. This would allow the bank to increase awareness about what all products they offer in the marketplace. Another social media platform that could be a strategy for Barclays is YouTube, where company could create and upload compelling videos about their business processes and services. Having multiple platforms could enhance the extent up to which social media could be used for customer acquisition and retention.

Social media could also aware customers about the cost and quality of Barclays offerings which effectively could help them in getting more customer perceptions and develop strategies to increase the number of their positive feedbacks. It is recommended that Barclays Plc use social media to also gain personal reviews of the customers. Personal interactions could help the firm gather the touchpoints on which it could develop its strategies and ensure customer retention. Social media could also help Barclays in tracking competitors' strategies and which in turn could help them come up with something more effective that could appeal to the customers and make them choose this company over others.

Social media could also assist the company in gaining insight to customer expectations from the company. This could be regarding their customer service or their offerings or even sector in which they should provide their services. It could be a major aspect on which Barclays could attract even more customers than their target market..

Action Plan

As an imperative part of the research, action plan is a document which describes the stages that a company should take to ensure their effectiveness towards achieving their corporate objectives and goals. The main agenda for which action plan is developed is to determine all the possible resources that a company would undertake to ensure appropriate approach towards addressing all the arising issues. It also helps the firm in framing possible steps for execution of research on a certain time-period. For the current project, the action plan is described below:

Steps	Description
Step 1: Identify the reason	The very first stage of an action plan is to identify the specific reason for which the research would be conducted. For Barclays Plc, the firm is adopting various new ways for customer attraction and retention and thus, the firm needs a long-term measure to effectively address this issue.
Step 2: Formulate the strategies	The next step of action plan is to formulate the strategy after determining the reason. For Barclays, it is imperative that it formulates specific strategies to effectively help achieve the purpose. For this, the firm could use social media as an effective strategy to retain and attract the customers.
Step 3: Improve infrastructure of company	The next step requires the company to improve its infrastructure and effectively modify its operations to use social media as a strategy. For this, the firm needs to hire an IT team which would guide the firm on how best it could use social media to conduct its business operations. Also, digital experts also could be approached by the firm to ensure effectiveness in this process.
Step 4: Offer various schemes through Social Media	This step would require Barclays to offer various schemes through social media and attract more customers. It could also be used to make customers aware about each sector the company deals in and make personalised offers to customers by using multiple platforms of social media like Facebook and YouTube.
Step 5: Implementation of corporate strategies and governance	After formulation of above strategies, for customer attraction and retention, the most important step for Barclays Plc is to implement effective corporate strategies and governance. This would aid in giving accurate roles and duties to employees as per organisational objectives. Through this process, organisation would effectively use social media as an appropriate measure to enhance customer attraction and retention.

Conclusion

Thus, it is concluded that the impact of social media on customer retention and governance is quite evident and could be an effective strategy for firms to acquire new customers and retain existing ones. Literature Review effectively helps to gain insight on several issues related to the research topics.

As for the methodologies, primary and secondary research helps in acquiring primary and secondary data from a pool of resources. Moreover, firms could effectively interpret the impact of social media through data analysis. Lastly, action plan and timescale could help in determining the stages and possible time frame in which the firm could adopt and implement the strategy effectively to ensure appropriate customer retention and acquisition.

References

• Amran, A., Lee, S. P. and Devi, S. S., 2014. The influence of governance structure and strategic corporate social responsibility toward sustainability reporting quality. Business Strategy and the Environment. 23(4). pp.217-235.
• Bresler, L. and Stake, R.E., 2017. Qualitative research methodology in music education. In Critical Essays in Music Education (pp. 113-128). Routledge.
• Fernando, A. C., 2012. Corporate Governance: Principles, Polices and Practices, 2/e. Pearson Education India.
• Flick, U., 2015. Introducing research methodology: A beginner's guide to doing a research project. Sage.
• Khan, A., Muttakin, M. B. and Siddiqui, J., 2013. Corporate governance and corporate social responsibility disclosures: Evidence from an emerging economy. Journal of business ethics. 114(2). pp.207-223.
• Mackey, A. and Gass, S.M., 2015. Second language research: Methodology and design. Routledge.

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