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Marketing Research Group Project On

The effect of Social-Media Communication On Consumer Perceptions of Brands

Under the Guidance of Prof. Ritu Sinha

Submitted By: Mr. Prasad Bhat MM-12-02 Mr. Onkar Sawant MM-12-14 Mr. Amey Gangoli MM-12-05

IES MCRC Bandra Reclamation, Mumbai

AKNOWLEDGEMENT

Every Single moment where success or failure faced during this project work is shared among many people who helped us through this project work. We would thus like to express our sincere gratitude towards all those people. It gives us immense pleasure to submit the project report of The Impact of Social Media Marketing Communications on Consumers' Perception of Brands We as a group members take this opportunity to thank our lecturer, Prof. Ritu Sinha, who was a constant source of inspiration and also took keen interest in each and every step of the project development. We are grateful to our Director, Prof. (Dr.) Dinesh D. Harsolekar and HOD, Prof. Ms. Devaki Nadkarni for their encouragement in shaping the idea and valuable suggestions in making it a reality. We would also like to thank our all of IES Management Team, Staff members and assistants for their support.

INDEX Chapter No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Topic Introduction Background of the Study Statement of Problem Research Objectives Research Questions/ Hypothesis Significance of the study Literature review Research Methodology Questionnaires Conclusion and Recommendation References Page No.

Chapter 1 Introduction

Social media has been around since humans began to talk. One of the first signs of human social media was cave wall paintings. Some of the earliest forms of social media were not digital. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word social is "of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society. The word media means a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or expression. Media is also a plural form of medium and a medium is a particular form or system of communication. Social media refers to interaction among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. Social media depend on mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content. As marketers struggle to define the value of social media to their brands, new Knowledge Networks findings demonstrate that consumers are much more likely to discover new products and brands or refer to social media before making purchase decisions than they were just a year ago Consumers are also integrating social media usage with their mobile phone activity. In 2011, 40% of teens and adults who have ever used social media are accessing it through their mobile device up from 28% versus 6 months ago. This means that roughly 80 million people check social media from a mobile device. As a result, social media is now a 'wherever I am' option, integrated into the mobile-plus social media users' shopping experience and habits; 27% compare or check prices via SoMe, 24% refer to reviews for brands/places/services, and 16% (23% of Boomers) use social media to find coupons or other discounts for local
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businesses. What Is Customer Perception? Customer perception is defined as the way that customers usually view or feel about certain services and products. It can also be related to customer satisfaction which is the expectation of the customer towards the products.

Chapter 2 Background of the Study The convergence of technology and Social Media have changed the way people interact with one another and businesses can no more ignore these digital communities. The Internet has simplified business communication thereby improving the way companies sell, promote products and services. Product distribution has been made global and communication instantaneous; news travel within seconds making todays newspapers good only for yesterdays information. The effect on brands can be either extremely positive or negative depending on the perception of consumers. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of Social Media and how they have influenced consumer's perception of brands. Social Media C ommunications typically centres on efforts by an individual or organisation to create media content (music, article, video) that communicates marketing messages that attract attention and encourage its target audience to experience, interact and share information with their social networks (either online or offline) to meet a business objective. A corporate message on social media spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it appears to come from a trusted, thirdparty source, as opposed to the brand or company itself . This form of paid marketing is therefore an earned media rather than paid media because of the degree of trust earned by those who share it. Social Media Advertising is gaining the attention of businesses and brands because of basic advantages which include; it's relatively lower costs, targeted advertising, measurement, personalised messages, and a great opportunity to drive traffic from leading social networking sites to business and brand's personalised platforms (or business websites).
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Chapter 3 Statement of Problem As with other countries around the world; social networks and blogs continue to dominate times spent online by users. In the United States, social networking accounts for nearly a quarter of total time spent on the Internet with nearly 4 in 5 active Internet users visiting social networks than they do on any other U.S. website. With more and more people accessing the Web through mobile phones, the Internet user base in the country is projected to touch 243 million by June 2014, a year-onyear growth of 28 per cent. According to the Internet And Mobile Association of India(IAMAI), the Internet user base in the country stood at 190 million at the end of June, 2013. The growth of Internet users has also led to a substantial growth of other digital industries such as e-commerce and digital advertising, it added. Digital commerce market stood at Rs 8,146 crore in December 2007 and it grew to Rs 47,349 crore by the end of 2012. At the end of December 2013, digital commerce in India grew to Rs 62,967 crore. Digital Advertising has also been witnessing a steady growth. The study projects the online advertising market in India to touch Rs 2,938 crore by March 2014. While most businesses and top-level executives agree to the rise and rapid adoption of social media as a platform for communication and digital conversations in India, there's the usual reluctance of testing new ideas and understanding the impact of these platforms on brands. Some have adopted the basic online strategies of setting up adverts through mobile phones and major websites.
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But beyond the ideas of push advertising, the online environment includes several distinct factors that engender brand loyalty. As consumers become more savvy about the Internet, the impact of their behaviour, perception and interactions will influence brand loyalty. Social Media Marketing communication is beyond advertising on Facebook and Yahoo, it involves a lot more. People can instantaneously respond to businesses' offline tactics, online adverts, marketing policies and even rumors. The implications is not about when brands willl adopt online platforms, it is about how. The development, nurturing and maintenance of consumer brand trust on the internet needs to be integrated into companies marketing plans and promotion mix, Fournier, S. and Yao, J. (1997) proposes it will become very important especially in the face of highly competitive markets with increasing unpredictability and decreasing product differentiation.

Chapter 4 Research Objectives Because of the wide acceptance of Social Media platforms and its ability to enhance communication and interaction both between brands and consumers on one hand, and among consumers, it has become imperative that todays brands especially in India take advantage of the opportunities that exist for constant communication, targeted advertising, low cost per lead, customer engagement and interaction across these platforms. Constant and consistent two-way communication will help brands not only create superior products or services but build long-term relationships with consumers. This increases brand equity and loyalty, which ultimately positively impacts the bottom line and the competitive edge and sustainability of the brand. In the light of the foregoing, the objectives of this Project include the following; i. To ascertain the online social media habits of prospective media content consumers ii. To measure how their online activities influence brand perception iii. To measure the impact of their response to Social Media messages iv. To measure the effectiveness of Social Media and engagement campaigns on consumer perception v. To explore how Indian agencies are engaging their target audience vi. To examine their attitude towards messages received through Social Media vii. To measure the degree of reliability of Social Media
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Chapter 5 Research Questions/ Hypothesis

The research is designed to test the following hypothesis which tends to propose the following concepts; H1 People find social media advertising as a very useful channel in getting information about products and services. Social Media and online advertising is supported by strong analytic and targeted metrics such that adverts are seen by people who see the adverts as relevant to them. While it may be intrusive, it is expected that people who see online adverts should see them as relevant. H2 It is opined that social media is a real tool to nurture Brand Loyalty

With Social Media being unique through User-generated content (UGC) and two-way communication, it is a veritable tool for building Brand Loyalty. The 2012 Cone Business in Social Media Study found that of the 60 percent of Americans who use social media, 93 percent believe companies should have a presence in social media. 85 percent of this population also believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media and 56 percent of users feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment. Steve Outing in his own book, Enabling Social Company opines that when companies listen to what the audience is sayingand build online venues that encourage consumers to express themselves, they can innovate faster and more intelligently.
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when companies listen to what the audience is sayingand build online venues that encourage consumers to express themselves, they can innovate faster and more intelligently.

H3 - Conversations going on in social media platforms have a great influence on consumer perception and buying behaviour With technology is now aiding Word-of-Mouth Marketing, digital conversations, peer comments, tweets, blog posts, and product reviews will have a huge impact on consumer behaviour. According to Heinze and Hu and the theory of impression management, individuals can form impressions of organizations based on interactions with organizations websites. While examining customers attitudes toward company Web sites, Heinze and Hu evaluated the importance of competition and said that a company must maintain pace with its industry. It should incorporate features and technology that consumers deem important. Managers should focus on using the features that have the greatest effects on customer perceptions.

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Chapter 6 Significance of the study

The significance of the study has various implications for different fields, analytics and marketing communication strategy employed by organisations. The study aims to determine the effectiveness for organisations and businesses using social media tools in reaching their target audience and to increase their bottom-line. It will also examine the importance of online reputation and the need for organisations to develop innovative approaches in reaching their target audience. This study will also ultimately conclude if social media helps organisations differentiate themselves in the market place. The significance of the study will have implications in the following areas; 1. Spread The survey will assess the involvement of social media in the lives of different categories of the Indian populace. It will also affirm the rapid involvement of brands within the marketplace. The study will also highlight the disposition of people to social media marketing messages and the response of the sample population to advertising messages. 2. Traffic This is one of the more obvious ways of measuring social media benefits for brands. While social media evokes a community for conversations, it has tremendous potential for driving traffic for businesses with online portals, pages and website. Once businesses have official pages online, marketing helps drive traffic to their official website for further communication, marketing, they can also serve as platforms to promote sales and promotional campaigns. 3. Interaction
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The differentiating factor for social media platforms is the instantaneousness and the opportunity for brands to participate in social media two-way conversations. So many challenges can be solved through these means. It is also a valuable indicator of public perception and the impact of the product and marketing policies on the target market. Negative and de-marketing information can be corrected and influenced through these means. An engaged customer is a highly valuable one since interaction will reveal a lot more similitude of a market research. Interaction can be anything from leaving comments, to participating in support forums, to leaving customer reviews and ratings. 4. Sales As India gradually shifts toward e-commerce solutions, online payment and noncontact transactions, the study will reveal the perception of the population to online transactions, how the new cashless policy being proposed is affecting them and the prospects of whether the target audience can respond to marketing messages of products and services presented on social media platforms. 5. Lead Generation While most companies in India are not fully engaging in online transactions, marketing communication can be used to drive Leads/footprints for sales or events promotion. If peer-to-peer interaction on these platforms have a high degree of reliability or perceived to be respected, social media platforms serve as a potent platform to drive entry of new projects, advert campaigns with a resultant impact on the number of people eventually coming for the products, product sampling and event attendance. 6. Search Marketing As most search engines favour content from social media, the Search Engine Optimisation factor cannot be understated. Social media can be far more powerful in this regard than can be easily realised. With Google introducing new14

changes to its search algorithm to include social media and personalised history [14], Blog entries, product reviews and consumer experiences may outrank original company websites. A well written and optimised story / video / image on a site like Digg will generate a lot of traffic. 7. Brand metrics/Analytics One angle with which the significance of the study will bear on is the measurement of marketing efforts or marketing analytics. Unlike traditional media, social media and other digital media platforms are concise and precise on measurement. The direct measurement of digital marketing efforts is available on so many digital platforms and offer insight into consumers' response to social media marketing communication messages. 8. PR The nature of public relations and reputation has changed, forever with the advent of social media. With the advent of social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter e.t.c.) giving people and organisations the power to respond to branding and marketing propositions and the attendant impact of blogs and other user-generated media. Since Search Engines have a powerful control on influencing consumer perception and opinions about products and services, what Search Engines tell them has a lot of impact on the brands. This study will have important implications for the distinct worlds of PR, Customer Service, and Marketing.

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Chapter 7 Literature review Social media will include all web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of usergenerated content. Social media is media for social interaction as a super-set beyond social communication. Enabled by ubiquitously accessible and scalable communication techniques, social media has substantially changed the way organizations, communities, and individuals communicate. The strength of these platforms is owing to the fact that it enhances the consumers ability to communicate with one another and subsequently limits the amount of control companies have over the content and dissemination of information about their brands. Social Media Platforms Social Media platforms are online portals driven by technology and enhance the use, streaming and sharing of multimedia content (data, voice, and video). These platforms have become the fast growing 'virtual communities' in the emerging global village. The easy accessibility to anyone anywhere across the world with internet access makes it a potential marketplace where brands also come to promote their products and engage the target audience. Increased communication on social media platforms for organizations fosters brand awareness and often, improved customer service. Additionally, social media serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for organizations to implement marketing campaigns.

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Social Media platforms include Blogs, Social Networks, Newsgroups, Photosharing, Blog Aggregators, Micro-communities and Wikis. Some examples of these include; Blogs Perhaps the best known form of social media, blogs are web applications built as shared online journals where people can post daily entries of information: personal experiences, business, hobbies or pleasure. i. WordPress iii. Typepad ii. Blogger/BlogSpot iv. Movable Type

Social Networks These sites allow people to build personal web pages and then connect with friends to share content and communication. i. Facebook ii. Google Plus iii. MySpace iv. Hi5

Newsgroups/ Forums These are web applications built for online communities and promote discussion. They are built around specific topics, interests or location. Forums came about before the term social media and are a powerful and popular element of online communities. i. Times

Content communities (multimedia) These are online communities which organise and share particular kinds of content. Most of them allow for people to upload, download and share different kind of content; music, video and photos.
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i. iii.

Facebook Orkut

ii. Twitter iv. Linkedn

Instant Messengers i. Black BerryMessenger iii. Whatsapp v. Google Chat

ii. iv.

Skype Yahoo Messenger

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The top three social media platforms include the following; Facebook Facebook, an online social networking service is the world's largest and most used online community and website was launched in February 2004. The company is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. and was founded by Mark Zuckerberg alongside his college roommates and fellow students; Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The Web site's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening the platform up to high school students, and eventually anyone aged 13 and above. The Facebook online platform allows users to create personal profiles, own their own virtual spaces, invite and add others as friends, exchange messages, receive automatic notification of friends' activities. These boutiques of technical functionalities were expansive enough to attract a wide variety of early adopters which later extended into friends, acquaintances and associates regardless of race, colour and gender. This online community has resulted in creating the largest online community with more than 800 million active users making it; if it were a country, the third largest in the world. Social Media Marketing Communications is a major channel through which Facebook makes its money. This source of revenue for Facebook evolved when businesses and brands found a place within this online communities; creating pages, pushing messages, pictures and videos to pre-defined target audience. It also allowed individuals to offer their products and services to the online community through social media advertising campaigns to sell their offerings through display, word and banner advertising. Microsoft which owns 1.3 % of Facebook ownership structure is responsible for
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serving banner advertising, It is reported that Facebook makes over $9 million per day from advertising.

YouTube YouTube is a video-sharing website, founded by three former employees of PayPal (Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim) in February 2005[12]. It is built on a technology that allows users (individuals and organisations) to view, display and share a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos which users can upload, view and share videos. As a result of this explosive growth, media corporations now use the platform in sharing content through a partnership programme; CBS, the BBC, VEVO, Hulu including India's Channels TV. The site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. Google Inc. bought YouTube for US$1.65 billion the same year and started operations as a subsidiary of Google in November 2006. Social Media through YouTube can either make use of the user-generated videos or through YouTube's Advertising platform. This advertising platform is managed by Google through its AdSense. An example of user generated videos was used for building awareness for D'Banj's 'Oliver Twist' album. LinkedIn This is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003. It is mainly used for professional networking and extending into a recruitment platform. With LinkedIn reporting more than 135 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories.. The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish and Japanese and has over 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million globally. Users use it to connect with friends and 20

professional colleagues, to find jobs, business opportunities, employers now use it to find prospective employers and prospective employees can establish their profiles, Curriculum Vitae, experience and competence on the website. Web applications are increasingly being used to develop platforms that use LinkedIn for recruitment and selection for employment by organisations and are gaining wide adoption. The impacts of communication on these platforms have huge impact on brands and consumer perception. In Gillin's Book, The New Influencers, he opined that Conventional marketing wisdom has long held that a dis -satisfied customer tells ten people. But that is out of date. In the new age of social media, he or she has the tools to tell 10 million (p. 4) consumers virtually overnight. Social media is increasingly playing an important role in how consumers search, research, and share information about brands and products. In fact 60 percent of consumers researching products through multiple online sources learned about a specific brand or retailer through social networking sites. Active social media users are more likely to read product reviews online, and 3 out of 5 create their own reviews of products and services. Women are more likely than men to tell others about products that they like (81% of females vs. 72% of males). Overall, consumer- generated reviews and product ratings are the most preferred sources of product information among social media users. According to a research conducted by Nielsen, a global research firm, it gave empirical evidence that social media is increasingly a platform consumers use to express their loyalty to their favourite brands and products, and many seek to reap benefits from brands for helping promote their products. Among those who share their brand experiences through social media, at least 41 percent say they do so to receive discounts. It is not whether businesses and organisations will evolve to meet these challenges, it is how. This is because the primary customers of their businesses, the customers are already evolving in their habits and attitudes and it will affect businesses. In the United States, most people rely on various types of social media websites as much as company websites for product and brand information. Seven out of ten (70%) consumers have visited social media websites such as message boards, social networking sites, and blogs to get 21

information. Further, nearly half (49%) of these consumers made a purchase decision based on what they gathered.

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Chapter 8 Research Methodology A quantitative and qualitative research is designed to determine Indian consumer's perception towards organizations that use social media. Through this study a safe conclusion can be arrived at on the involvement of brands on social media. This research will also help organizations determine the potency of their social media campaigns and to anticipate the response of their target audience.

Sample Selection The research will be conducted using an online survey. The survey will be designed using an online survey platform, Google Docs. Promotion and Publicity for the survey will be through online influencers and other social media platforms. Everyone receiving the information will be asked to fill the survey and also broadcast the message. i.e. take the survey, pass it along and ask others to complete it. This will result in a non-random, convenient, self-selected sample population.

Data Collection Method The survey instrument itself will include 20 close-ended questions. The instrument will probe consumers awareness, behaviour, opinions and perception toward social media platforms and how they want organizations to interact with them.

The Questioners for this survey are available on Google https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qvmqoAoMbJBrmiGM_pqQTle8AuAIc5Re 1QSE1i2eqho/viewform
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Chapter 9 Questionnaires

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Chapter 10 Conclusion and Recommendation

Social Media has created a powerful platform for consumer engagement. It has become a platform to turn a prospective consumer into a volunteer marketing army. It is also however a nightmare for cognitive dissonace, an unsatisfied customer can do more harm to a brand in seconds than it was ever possible before. This report tells us how much more power the consumers have in influencing a brand/prduct perception. Businesses will need to stay at the top of their game and improve the quality of products and services or their consumers will fight back. The social media space also presents a basket of customer opinions, perceptions and customer feedback. Businesses can reap a lot of user opinions or preliminary research for products/services in order to find suggestions, core values and propositions that can satisfy the cutomers' needs. Some businesses are still hesitating and some others are not sure how to aproach the ever dnamic worls of social media. If your business isn't creating dedicated online experiences for mobile devices and social network integration, you might be looking over a tremendous opportunity to connect with consumers. Social Media as a form of marketing will present a whole new phase challenges. It will require businesses to develop their marketing strategy genuine relationship building. Some businesses have jumped into the uncharted world and they are raising ambassadors and advocates for brands through social media. They are increasingly recruiting their fans and followers to spread word-of-mouth recommendations about their products and services, and they are tapping into the large youth market. It wil be great to see how things pan out. The marriage between social media and technology is fundamentally shifting the way business is done and businesses that plan to stay for a long time need to move - very fast
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and strategically too. Twenty years ago, it was the age of mass media; one-way massive broadcast, massive budgets, and not so massive ROI analysis. If you happen to be dissatisfied with a company's product or business practices, you'd probably stop buying from them. You might write an angry letter. You might even tell your friends and family not to patronize that business. But that was then; the game has changed, media is becoming more personal and the ROI is noew a common requisition in advertising budgets. If you are angry with a company, product or personality, the tools are there an the world is waiting to listen. The only limit is our creativiy and how far we want to go.

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Chapter 11 References 1. http://www.google.com 2. "What is Social Media Marketing" http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-issocial-media-marketing 3. Fournier, S. and Yao, J. (1997), Reviving brand loyalty: a reconceptualization within the framework of consumer brand relationships, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 14, pp. 451-72. 4. Kaplan, Andreas M.; Michael Haenlein (2010). "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media". Business Horizons 53 (1): 5968. 5. http://www.thesocialmediatoday.com/how-much-revenue-does-facebook-makeper- day/ 6. http://en.wikipedia.org 7. How Social Media Impacts Brand Marketing October 14, 2011, Nielsenwire 8. The Impact of Social Media on Purchasing Behaviour, United States 2008 Volume One: Initial Findings, United States 2008 9. The End of Business as Usual, Brian Solis

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