TOPIC:

A STUDY ABOUT THE INFLUENCE OF VIDEO ADVERTISING IN TIKTOK ON GEN Z

1. Background

The Covid-19 Pandemic which has destroyed the complete world since March 2020
has changed the habits of individuals in both personal and social ways. The government had
published policies about restricting outdoor activities, and this makes people change their
patterns. Many entrepreneurs and content creators are motivated to stay being creative with
especially limited space, especially teenagers when their exploration and freedom of
expression can only be done at home. This is not easy for some people. So social networks
could be a crucial element to all people to continue doing and maintaining activities just like
their usual life before the Covid-19.

According to a survey by Statista, about 61.3 million smartphones are in use in Vietnam.
The country is among the highest 10 countries with the very best number of smartphones.
65% of individuals who have smartphones use them to go to or update social networking
sites and most of them are the young generations (Euromonitor International Lifestyles
Survey 2020).

Companies must change to stay up with the new marketing opportunities this presents. In
2020, Tiktok of ByteDance has become the most download number, overcoming the former
king- Facebook which has dominated this place for several years. Tiktok has just appeared
in 2017, but many brands not only in the world but also in Vietnam want to achieve success
during this platform. Over 800 million potential consumers are often reached through the
social media app, Tiktok (We Are Social 2020). As Tiktok’s active user count continues to
grow, so do the marketing opportunities.

This thesis aims to see how Gen Z customers’ engagement can come from a brief video that
is only 15 to 60 seconds long on the Tiktok platform. The research included analysis of
information that was imbibed by active Gen Z Tiktok users.

2. Statement of the problem

Since I am study Marketing and planning to work in Communication Marketing, I

feel doing a paper about this topic may be a great way for me to gain a deeper knowledge
about this field. Furthermore, to pass the subject named Project in my university, all students
need to do a research paper. Moreover, doing this at the first year can help they use to do
this type of assignment. Typically, a student will accompany by their Project teacher who is
additionally their supervisor to try to do it right and in time.
3. Purpose of the research

Being an energetic Gen Z Tiktok user myself, I had seen numerous daily videos
containing advertising, which also called “brand deal” video. In these videos, the Influencers
will normally show the viewer’s products they has just bought. However, these products
were not bought by them, they were provided to the Influencers to allow them to advertise
these products with their personal code. Then the Influencers will get paid if someone use
their code and buy the products. Therefore, this thesis was created so as to see how viewers
interact with those videos. This thesis will target the viewers who are Gen Z since this is
often the group that creates up most of the Tiktok users.

4. Research Questions

The study aims to explore the definition and benefits of social media on Marketing
and understand how “brand deal” video on Tiktok can reach potential Gen Z customers
through the subsequent research questions:

RQ1: Are advertisements on Tiktok effective in targeted audiences?

RQ2: How could be a successful campaign on Tiktok which had to success in their targeted
Gen Z customers?

5. Literature review

A new social marketing platform- Tiktok

In many years, Marketing on social media platform such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube is
known for a long time. However, Tiktok, a new platform which is focus on short-video, has
become the most popular social media application for Marketing in 2019, just 3 years after
being created.( Như Phúc, 2021). The following review of literature confirms that Tiktok is a
great app for companies to approach their potential customers and educate them about their
products.
Tiktok Application
Tiktok is a music creative short video social software which was created by an Chinese digital
platform company named ByteDance in 2016 (Geyser, 2021). According to Yang, Zhao and Ma
(2019), in Chinese, Tiktok is called Douyin and used as a video music application. Basing on
personality and life tastes of users who mostly are contemporary young people, Tiktok
recommends videos that they will like and gives them chances to express themselves, helping
them realize their personal values and enrich their creativity.
Tiktok spreads fast all over the world because of several reasons .Omar and Dequan (2020)
highlight that it is its sophisticated production level, trendy content, hot Tiktokers and creative
advertising ideas and last but not least, Tiktok gives users changes to satisfy their desire to
interact with others even when they have limited time. Besides, this app has the duet feature
which let people collaborate with each other, making this unique.
Marketing on Tiktok
Janell A. (2021) claimed that this social media platform- Tiktok can help companies bring their
products closer to the potential customers. Since the marketing is develop faster than ever, as
audiences and technology develop, entrepreneurs must adapt their campaign strategies in
order to get along with their targeted customers. This study also mentioned that Influencers on
Tiktok plays an important role in the customer engagement and customer value ( which means
do the products or services customers choose equivalent to the opportunity cost they had given
up to have that). After watching marketing content of their favorite Influencers on Tiktok,
viewers may visit the website or pages of that products as many as the content is quality and
attractive. Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising report shows that 83% people out of 30k
respondents believe recommendation from people who they had known before, 70% people
who joined the survey answer that they believe brand messages on the brand websites
attached in the comment below the brand deals of their favorite Influencers.
Under every advertising video on Tiktok, viewers are free to leave comments and these
comment can helps Influencers rase trust of among viewers to the product. Tang, Fang and
Wang (2014) illustrates that products that have both negative and positive reviews can sale
much more than one which is full of positive reviews. The mainly reason behind this is when
reading these mixed comments, customers usually compare their personal judgement with
these such comments, which make them pay more attention to the products while the one-side
reviews tend to not attract the viewers.
Tiktok, a potential platform for business.
In summation, Tiktok can helps business to reach their target customers through KOLs if they
know how to use it effectively. An effective content marketing is a content where customers
feel free to discuss about it (Janell, 2021). Also, as social media is continually changing,
companies must keep up with these changes to not be lose their target customers.

6. Methodology

This research uses a quantitative approach and a web survey which was created by
Google form to interview Gen Z Tiktok users in Vietnam and collect data from them. The
questions had been sequenced systematically to help the respondents more easy to answer.

The population collected by the purposive sampling technique is the millennial generation-
Gen Z who are active students from Vietnamese universities and have already got a Tiktok
 account. The quantity of university students who had done the reviews is 50. The results are
going to be measured numerically so as to see a conclusion.

7. Conclusion

Both the research study and theory mentioned during this paper indicate that the
social media platform Tiktok holds the possibilities for businesses to develop considerably
through Communication Marketing. The marketing mentioned in this thesis has technology
participation, so businesses must change their marketing strategies so as to keep up the pace
of new marketing and attract more potential customers

This paper explored that the relationship between a business and a customer can be built
through social media. Collaborating with Influencers is an effective way for companies to
connect with the customers.

8. Discussion
8.1. Basic information about the Tiktok users who do this survey.

This questionnaire was asked because point of view of male and female will be different.
This means that what they pay attention and want to buy will be different too. Looking at
the chart, we can tell that the majority of the participants were female, with 75,8%, while
24.2% is the percentage of the male participants. The reason of this result may come from
female are more interested in doing the questionnaires which are about Tiktok than the
make or most of author’s friends are female.
The reason why the minimum age in the question above is 13 years old is because
Tiktok company require the users to be at least 13 years old to have an account
Tiktok. It is clear that the proportion of participants who are from 18 to 22 years
old are much larger than the 13-17 years old sector, with 88.7% and 11.3%
respectively. This can tell that most of Tiktok Gen Z users are university students,
who are in the age range from 18 to 22 years old.

Participants were asked do they open Tiktok application frequently. There are 5
different choices for them to choose, and the “multiple times a day” was the most
famous choice, with 41.9%. This means, the Gen Z (who are now from 13 to 22
years old) are very addicted to Tiktok app. The second reason of this is that
because Gen Z watch a lot of videos on Tiktok in a day, they will a higher rate of
promotional videos, leading to the situation that they will find this questionnaire
interesting and do this. The following questions will answer whether they will buy
products after seeing a lot of the marketing videos of them or not.

This questionnaire was asked to know whether Tiktok user who are in 13-22 years
old sorely make videos, watch videos or both of them. In this figure, there is a
majority in watch videos sector, with 72.6%. We can tell Gen Z Tiktok users are
likely to watch videos rather than make them. Only 24.2% of participants are
creators in Tiktok and also watch Tiktok videos. These content creators may be a
potential influencers in the present or in the future. Videos they make can affect
the purchase decision of Tiktok watchers. Marketers from brands may have an
chance to create marketing campaigns to promote their products through content
creators on Tiktok, so they should encourage users to make videos by create some
viral trends, hashtags on Tiktok or other effective ways.
Question five was designed as checkboxes, participants can choose multiple
choices, unlimited and they also can create their own choice by picking at the
“other” choice. The results of this questions is diverse, however, Cooking,
Fashion, Comedy and Beauty were the most popular choices, with 39, 38, 35, 40
people respectively. The categories like “music” and “study” could have been
added rather than including in the “other” categories since quite people choice
“other” and write those words in. Despite this, the number of people who choose
Cooking, Fashion, Comedy and Beauty still heavily outweigh the other categories,
making this data still relevant.
Cac cau hoi ve income.

The next set of questionnaire aims to understand the spending habits of people
who joined this survey. First, they were asked whether they have income or not.
This question is very important since if they do not have income, the products they
want to buy will depend on their parents’ allowance , which may litmit what they
can purchase. They can only purchase what their families allow to buy, can not
feel free to buy what ever they want. This figure illustrates that the number of
people who do not have income is as twice as the people who have income. This
can easy understand since the participants here are studying fulltime at university
or high school. Some of them may have a part-time job even in this COVID-19
situation, but this is not many.
The question asking about participants’ disposable income but not income is
because people will have to pay more important things to survival first such as
paying their electric bills, water bills, the rent of their apartment. Then, they will
pay the rest of their income in less important things. In this survey, the majority of
participants who are Gen Z Tiktok users, spend their disposable income on two
categories which are Clothes and Makeup/Skincare. These two categories are
usually bought by female, maybe this result came from the fact that most of
participants are female. This question is very crucial for marketers since they will
know which products they should not waste money to make marketing strategy for
them since not many Gen Z Tiktok users be are willing to buy that products. In
summary, the data shows that marketers have opportunities to reach potential
customers in Clothes and Makeup/skincare sectors when it comes to KOL Tiktok
platform marketing.
The following set of questions are the main part of this thesis, answering whether
Tiktok social media marketing campaigns is effective on reaching their target
customers or not. This figure indicates that most of participants have seen at least
one promoting video on Tiktok application. This means that marketing on Tiktok
is successful reaching Tiktok users.