Social Media Advertising And Market Performance Of Real Estate Companies In Nairobi

Abstract

Companies in every industry have realized the undeniable role played by social media in realizing their advertising goals. Social media has the potential to help organisations maintain competitive market performance by improving their brand equity, increasing brand awareness, affecting increased sales and overall improving profitability, for the benefit of all shareholders. Spek et al. (2015) define market performance as the ability of markets to adapt to external influences. This means that companies must strive to achieve their set results regardless of the external environment. The real estate industry in Kenya has been on a steady growth for the last two decades, owing to its attractiveness to investors, and the favourable policies governing the indistry. In Nairobi, there are about one hundred companies dealing in the sale, letting, management, development and construction of real estate companies. The retail real estate market has especially seen a marked improvement in the last decade, caused by an expanded middle class population and the political stability realized especially after the 2008 post-election violence. This study sought to establish the relationship between social media advertising and the market performance of real estate companies in Nairobi. A census model was employed, owing to the ease of access to the whole population, which rendered sampling unnecessary. Data collection was done through carefully crafted questionnaires and interviews with industry experts. The data was analysed using computer software and regression analysis was carried out to determine the relationship between social media advertising and market performance of real estate companies in Nairobi, using the pearson regression model. The study found that there is a significant correlation between social media advertising and market performance, and the analysis revealed a positive correlation of 0.276. This means that whenever real estate companies increased social media advertising by 1%, market performance improved by 0.276. The study concluded that there is a positive relationship between social media advertising and market performance of real estate companies in Nairobi. One of the recommendations of the study is that companies in Nairobi should use social media advertising to improve their market performance. In addition, they should allocate substantial budgets towards this, hire experts trained in the social media field and use