The impact of social media on banking industry and banking consumer: Case in Vietnam

In the era of Internet and social network, consumers tend to in to increasingly manage their daily lives digitally. They believe that social network supports them to engage in social interaction as well as being a tool to seeking products and services. Therefore, in the aspect of business, social media has been become a very convenient network which significantly contribute for the purpose of trading and promotion activities. Finance and banking industry did not stay beyond the social media trend. Applying of social media in banking industry indicates a movement in customer behaviour towards the mode of accessing banking products and services. This movement created valuable opportunities to obtain insight from customers by leveraging social media data. In order to approach their consumers, the majority of banks are investing in social media marketing that can effectively support them in satisfying consumers and also raising the brand awareness. In the fact, there was not many research focus on the impact of social media in specific industry as banking, especially in developing countries, particularly in Vietnam. Therefore, this research is conducted to identify and examine the impact of social media on banking industry and consumer behavior including key elements to create the viral contents as well as those factors to gather customers and banking services through applying social media. Base on the literature review and conceptual framework, the study will also evaluate a significant role of social media which the traditional marketing such as magazines and advertising campaigns do not have the influence that they did in the past. This research illustrates how the financial firms and banks use the social media as the tool to promote their products and raise the brand awareness. Based on that, this study deepens how results of social media interaction affect to consumer perception in relation with choosing the appropriate banking services. Based on the research aim, the research will follow a pragmatism philosophy when conducting the methodology in the research. Because pragmatism in epistemology provides a practical meaning of knowledge in the particular contexts. On the other hand, it alsoemphasizes practical solutions and outcomes. The mixed method search will be applied in this research. This is combination of quantitative and qualitative methods which provides a deeper understanding of complex phenomena. Qualitative method will be conducted by interviews with managerial level in Vietnamese commercial banks. They provide comments towards social media and social media marketing strategy related to business growth. Through the interview, it has supported the researcher an insight towards how banks generate contents on social media which effortlessly build a loyal customer base. Moreover, the interview has provided in-depth about the development of brand awareness and building strategy for social media channels in banking industry. In another aspect, quantitative method has been conducted as taking a sample of 152 questionnaires. Selfselection sampling is used as the sampling method, the questionnaire has been distributed to customers and bank employees in Vietnam. As the result, interviews and questionnairs has been conducted to collect data which will illustrate the application of social media in banking industry. In conclusion, based on the statistical results, the research also will be proved that by applying social media to enhance the engagement between consumers and banks has a positive and significant role in building banking brand awareness. Further discussion and recommendation were conducted for future research on investigating impacting factors that can potentially lead to higher level consumer satisfaction with banking services via social media.