Comparison of social media and traditional media in terms of influence on brand awareness: A study on university students in Turkey

This thesis aims to compare social media and traditional media on the basis of their influence on brand awareness. The focus of the thesis is to answer the question that if social media marketing is dominating over traditional media marketing in terms of brand awareness or not. The research was conducted on the mobile phone industry of Turkey and Izmir city was taken as a sample population. Questionnaire was developed through different scales to collect data for analysis. The findings of the research demonstrated that one of the two types of social media marketing source i.e. user generated social media marketing is more effective than traditional media marketing tools. However, firm-created social media marketing is deemed not to be effective. The results of this thesis lead to the conclusion that social media is becoming an important tool for creating brand awareness. Although traditional media is losing its charm but marketers still cannot ignore the significant role of traditional media in marketing process. It is suggested to pursue an integrated marketing strategy which incorporates social media tools and traditional media tools of marketing in a suitable combination to generate an optimum level of positive impression and brand awareness among the consumers. Keywords: Firm Created Social Media, User Generated Social Media, Traditional Media, Brand Awareness.