| Summary: | 碩士 === 南華大學 === 資訊管理學系 === 105 === It is the age of the low-investment business. The low entry-point of small-scale entrepreneurship attracts many people to undertake small-business ventures, causing a yearly increase in the number of business owners. In the early phases of business, to most micro-entrepreneurs, social media is an indispensable contemporary tool for dissemination of product information, replacing the traditional methods of merchandise sales. However, can the application of social media completely replace traditional sales channels for marketing of goods in various industries? Pertaining to this question, a further probe was conducted in this study on using social media for sales purposes.
This paper begins by adopting the case study method to analyze the situation of popular social media and trading platforms over recent years. Interviews with micro-entrepreneurs in three different industries were employed to understand the case subjects' selection criteria for using social media and trading platforms by comparing their differences and advantages with traditional sales methods.
From the field interviews, it was concluded that the social media can be used as a convenient and efficient framework for promoting product information and sales by small entrepreneurs of different industries, in order to draw the attention of internet users to their products. But for physical goods, due to the lack of initial popularity, sales volume through social media has not been not high, due to consumers' tendency to take a ‘wait and see’ attitude and comparison shop. The risks of returned goods also increased for Internet sales due to customer dissatisfaction. Therefore, as social media sales were undertaken, interviews were conducted with three different industry cases while traditional sales methods were maintained, for the purposes of letting the consumers have physical contact with the merchandise, in order to assure them of purchase quality and increase the popularity of products through the word of mouth.
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