Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Group Project
On
The effect of
Social-Media Communication
On
Consumer Perceptions of Brands
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
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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.
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.
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INDEX
Page
Chapter No. Topic
No.
Introduction
1
Statement of Problem
3
Research Objectives
4
Literature review
7
Research Methodology
8
Questionnaires
9
References
11
3
4
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.
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.
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Chapter 2
Background of the Study
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-on-
year 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.
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.
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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.
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Chapter 4
Research Objectives
In the light of the foregoing, the objectives of this Project include the following;
vi. To examine their attitude towards messages received through Social Media
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
saying—and 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 saying—and build online
venues that encourage consumers to express themselves, they can
innovate faster and more intelligently.
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Chapter 6
Significance of the study
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 13
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 non-
contact 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
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Social Media platforms include Blogs, Social Networks, Newsgroups, Photo-
sharing, 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
Instant Messengers
i. Black BerryMessenger ii. Skype
iii. Whatsapp iv. Yahoo Messenger
v. Google Chat
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The top three social media platforms include the following;
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.
YouTube
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.
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Chapter 8
Research Methodology
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.
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Chapter 10
Conclusion and Recommendation
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
6. http://en.wikipedia.org
7. How Social Media Impacts Brand Marketing October 14, 2011, Nielsenwire
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