The effects of social media on the historical development of marketing

The social media marketing is the practices of marketing conducted via social media that enables the introduction of products/services, increase the recognition of brands and taking actions for businesses. Contrary to traditional marketing methods, social media marketing become an indispensable method for businesses thanks to presenting a convenience of use and access, opportunities for fast transfer of information, ability to share content about marketing and persistent and measurable features of the content presented. The aim of this study is to investigate the higher education thesis studies published independently on the Council of Higher Education (CHE) about the subject, social media marketing, in a compilation while systematically evaluating the research tendencies in this field. In the study, the master of art and philosophy of doctorate theses published on the CHE between 2011-2019, a total of 50 studies, were investigated. The method, sampling, data collection tools, year of research, subject of research and design of the content used in these studies were investigated by using the method of content analysis. As a result of the study, it was determined that the tendency to conduct studies on the subject of social media marketing in Turkey was increased. It was discovered that the first study conducted on the subject of social media marketing was conducted in 2011 while the highest number of theses on the subject was conducted in 2019. It was determined that most of the thesis studies conducted on the CHE thesis center were master of arts theses. It was further determined that the subject of social media marketing was mostly (20) studied in state universities the language used in these thesis studies was mostly (80%) Turkish. A major part of these theses (70%) was observed to be conducted on the department of business management, it was found out that 32 thesis studies (96%) were conducted by choosing the applied research method. A significant amount of the thesis studies, 19 thesis studies (38%), was observed to vary between 301 and 500 while 11 of the thesis studies (22%) were grouped within the interval of 201-300. When the research methods were evaluated, it was determined that the studies mostly adopted the quantitative research method. In terms of the data collection tools of the studies, it was determined that the most common technique used was the survey method while the most commonly used analysis conducted in the studies included factor analysis, independent samples t-test, and validity/reliability analyses (11%). In conclusion, it was determined that the number of the philosophy of doctorate studies conducted on social media marketing was low while the subject increasingly became a more important field of study. According to the data obtained in this study, it is suggested that the future studies on social media marketing should be conducted by diversifying the volume of samples, enabling the diversity in data collection tools, choosing high-level analyses as analysis methods and conducting studies by adopting qualitative and mixed-method techniques. Furthermore, it is believed that placing more importance on survey development studies will contribute to the literature. Keywords: Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Content Analysis