Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Master’s Thesis
Supervisor: Author:
Brno, 2019
MASARYK UNIVERSITY
Faculty of Economics and Administration
Student:
Ishtiaq Ahmad Danish
Field of Study:
Business Management
Title of the thesis/dissertation:
(Eng.) Social Media
Title of the thesis in English:
Marketing Social Media
Thesis objective, procedure and methods used:
Marketing
Social media metrics secrets do what /ou never thought possible wilh
social media metrics. Edited by John Lovett. Indianapolis, Ind.:
Wiley Pub., Inc., 201 4 . xix, 3 64 p. ISBN 9781118149034.
The social media MBA ia practice .en essen tie1 collection of inspi-
rational case studies to influence your social medic strste gy . Edited by
Christe r Holloman. 1 online r. ISBN 9781118524527.
The social media management handbookeverythiny you need to
know to yet social media working in your business. Edited by
Nick Smith - Robert Wollan - Catherine Zhou. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley,
2010. xv, 328 p. ISBN 0470651245.
Thesis supervisor:
Ing. Du san Mladenovic
Thesis supervisor's department:
Department of Corporate Economy
The deadline for the submission of Master‘s thesis and uploading it into IS can be found in the academic year calendar.
The goal of the submitted thesis: “Social Media Marketing” is to analyse how the
social media marketing strategies focused specifically on the Pinterest platform works
for a real e-commerce website. The first part is concentrated on reviewing the
existing literature of social media for marketing strategies. The second part of the
thesis focuses on the practical part of the social media marketing, analysing the
metrics and results of real social media campaigns on Pinterest and their impact on a
real e-commerce business.
Keywords
Brno,
Author’ s signature
Acknowledgement
I hereby would like to offer sincere thanks to my supervisor , Ing. Dušan Mladenović,
for his supervision and suggestions on how to make the thesis better. I want to thank
my family for their support. I would also like to thank my classmates for agreeing to
read drafts of the document and offering comments and suggestions.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents..............................................................................................................10
INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................................8
The objective of the Thesis............................................................................................................8
Methodology................................................................................................................................9
1. SOCIAL MEDIA...........................................................................................................11
1.1 Web 2.0 and social media......................................................................................................11
1.2 Social-networking sites..........................................................................................................14
1.3 Pinterest:...............................................................................................................................18
1.4 Pinterest for business............................................................................................................20
1.5 Buyable Pins..........................................................................................................................21
1.6 Promoted Pins.......................................................................................................................21
1.7 Pinterest Analytics for business accounts..............................................................................22
2. MARKETING:.............................................................................................................25
2.1 Marketing Definition.............................................................................................................25
2.2 Marketing Process.................................................................................................................26
2.3 Digital Marketing...................................................................................................................28
2.4 Social Media Marketing.........................................................................................................32
2.5 Advantages of social media marketing..................................................................................38
3. E-COMMERCE:..............................................................................................................39
3.1 Categories of e-commerce.....................................................................................................42
3.2 Business-to-Business (B2B)....................................................................................................42
3.3 Business-to-Consumer (B2C).................................................................................................42
3.4 Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C)...............................................................................................42
3.5 Benefits of e-commerce........................................................................................................43
3.6 Limitations of e-commerce....................................................................................................43
3.7 Drop shipping........................................................................................................................43
3.8 Advantages of drop shipping.................................................................................................45
3.9 Disadvantages of drop shipping............................................................................................46
4. INTRODUCTION OF THE COMPANY............................................................................47
4.1 GonChas.com........................................................................................................................47
4.2 Situation analysis..................................................................................................................47
4.3 Business................................................................................................................................47
4.4 Competitors..........................................................................................................................49
4.5 Customers.............................................................................................................................50
4.6 Goals.....................................................................................................................................53
4.7 Key Performance Indicators..................................................................................................53
4.8 Working of the website.........................................................................................................54
4.9 Using google image search....................................................................................................55
4.10 Using AliExpress image search option.................................................................................57
4.11 Contacting the Seller...........................................................................................................59
4.12 Deciding the Price................................................................................................................60
4.13 Putting the item for sale......................................................................................................61
5. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.....................................................................................62
5.1 Planning Marketing Strategy.................................................................................................62
5.2 Performance Measurement..................................................................................................63
5.3 Google Analytics Metrics.......................................................................................................63
5.4 Pinterest Ad Metrics..............................................................................................................65
5.5 Pinterest Advertising strategy...............................................................................................66
5.6 Pinterest Business account:...................................................................................................66
5.7 Pinterest ad account..............................................................................................................68
5.8 Pinterest Tag.........................................................................................................................69
5.9 Pinterest Advertising Plan.....................................................................................................73
5.10 Campaign objectives............................................................................................................74
5.11 Audiences............................................................................................................................74
5.12 Optimization and delivery...................................................................................................75
5.13 Ad Formats and Placements................................................................................................76
5.14 Promoted Pins.....................................................................................................................76
5.15 Promoted Carousels............................................................................................................76
5.16 Promoted video Pins...........................................................................................................77
5.17 Campaign Launch and Evaluation........................................................................................77
5.18 Traffic Campaign..................................................................................................................78
5.19 Overall evaluation of the Traffic campaign..........................................................................80
5.20 Influencer Marketing Campaign..........................................................................................81
5.21 Campaign launch and Evaluation.........................................................................................81
5.22 Overall Evaluation of Influencer marketing.........................................................................83
5.23 Comparison of Pinterest ads and Influencer Marketing.......................................................83
CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES................................................84
REFERENCES.....................................................................................................................87
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES.........................................................................................101
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.................................................................................................103
INTRODUCTION
In the old days, advertising was done by conventional, non-targeted, and
traditional ways through magazines, television, radio, and direct email. These
methods were not very effective as it was hard to target specific buyers (Scott, 2010).
The advent of the internet and social media has changed the conventional marketing
for good. Social media has changed the strategies and tools for communicating with
customers. It has become one of the essential factors in influencing consumer
behavior. Companies have always fought for seeking consumer attention, and the
advent of social media has provided a new ground for it. The high competition has
forced both companies and marketers to explore new ways to reach their customers
leading to the development of social media marketing. Social media has become an
integral part of our lives, and it has a significant factor in influencing different aspects
of our behaviors regarding purchases, opinions, evaluation, etc. Also, the ease and
low cost of internet marketing, as compared to the conventional ones, has enabled
businesses of all kinds to reach their target audiences more efficiently.
Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. have
changed the course of internet marketing. The number of active monthly users on
just Pinterest is over 250 million (Pinterest, 2018). This number tells us how useful
Pinterest and other social media platforms can be for companies to promote their
brand, products, and services. Social media also gives its users the freedom and
ability to review products and services that they use. This thing helps in influencing
other potential customers and also helps the company in getting useful feedback
about their product or service. It ultimately leads to improvement of products/services
and better customer experience.
8
One of the major reasons for selecting Pinterest is its interesting and novice concept
(Kohler, 2019). While there is a large amount of writing about Pinterest in the popular
trade and marketing press, there has been little scholarly work so far. So, there is a
need for more scholarly work and research on Pinterest, as it is one of the fastest
growing social media with a lot of potential (Pew Research Center, 2012). This work
will help marketers in planning and implementing Pinterest marketing campaigns
successfully. We will discuss Pinterest in more detail in the first section of our thesis.
Methodology
Both primary and secondary data has been used in this thesis. The main
difference between a primary and secondary data is how, where and when it was
collected. Secondary data is the data that already exists and can be used in the
investigation process to get more knowledge about the study. The primary data is
collected by the person doing the investigation. This data is used for answering any
research questions and to resolve any problems related to the study.
The first part of our thesis is comprised of data collected through secondary
sources including scientific articles, research papers, books, journals and the
Pinterest website.
The second part of the thesis comprises of both primary and secondary data.
Primary data is collected from the ad campaigns, performance of the website,
customer base, etc. The primary data includes number of saves, clicks, account
follows, page views, conversion rate, etc. These data will be collected directly from
the e-commerce website used for this study. These data are acquired by using
different target audience that were separated according the demographics, interests,
etc.
The origin of the term “Web 2.0” goes to „O‟Reilly Media Web 2.0‟ conference
of 2004, during this conference Tim O‟Reilly described the Web 2.0 phenomenon as
business embracing the Web as a platform and using its strengths for global
audience (John R. Graham, 2005). Tim O„Reilly (2007), states that a website need to
fulfill 3 conditions in order to be seen as a part of web 2.0.
Constantinides and Fountain (2008) took a different point of view and defined
Web 2.0 as: “a collection of open-source, interactive and user-controlled online
applications expanding the experiences, knowledge and market power of the users
as participants in business and social processes. Web 2.0 applications support the
creation of informal users’ networks, facilitating the ow of ideas and knowledge by
allowing efficient generation, dissemination, sharing and editing of the informational
content.”
Web 2.0 gives businesses new opportunities to reach and stay in touch with
their consumers, learning their needs and opinions and also interacting with them
directly in a personalized way. According to another definition Web 2.0 is a platform
whereby content and application are no longer created by individual users, rather
continuously modified by all the users in a participatory and collaborative fashion
(Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Some of the most important technical functionalities like
Adobe Flash, RSS and AJAX allowed this change to happen. So, it can easily be said
that Web 2.0 is all about cooperation. Also, to some extent, Web 2.0 technologies
are the platforms on which the social media and user-generated content have
developed into a mass- market phenomenon (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).
„Web 2.0‟ and „social media‟ are closely related and interdependent. As
a consequence, they are often used imprecisely and interchangeably however they
are still different because of their different meanings and different strategic
implications (Berthon, 2012). An overview of Web 2.0, social media and consumers
can be seen in the following figure. It uses two delineating dimensions of focus. The
figure shows that Web 2.0 can be thought of as a technical infrastructure that enables
the social phenomenon of collective media and facilitates user-generated content.
Figure 1: Web 2.0, Social media and Creative consumers
Facebook – Facebook is the largest social-networking site. It has over 2.32 billion
monthly active users worldwide (Statista, 2019). It was initially created by Mark
Zuckerberg in 2004 for the purpose of staying in touch with his fellow students at
Harvard University. Facebook is a free social-networking site that allows registered
users to create profiles, upload photos and videos, send messages and keep in touch
with friends, family and colleagues (Spencer S., 2014). The average Facebook user
spends almost one hour per day and the potential of having successful
marketing campaign is immense. Facebook has developed an advertising platform
that enables very accurate targeting. Depending on the personal information of the
user, marketers can choose which users that will see the ad on Facebook. It can be
divided by gender, geographic area, age, interests, education, birthday, workplace,
relationship status, language and connections (i.e. to specific pages and groups).
From a marketing perspective, Facebook offers a wide range of benefits for
marketers. Few of the most prominent benefits includes; Massive exposure on global
scale, Low marketing costs, sophisticated targeting tools, etc. (Spencer S., 2014).
Instagram – Instagram is a social networking site used for photo sharing from mobile
devices (Scott, 2013). There were approximately more than 77.6 million active
Instagram users in the United States in 2015. This number is projected to cross 111
million in 2019. It is most popular among teens and young millennials. Globally
speaking, 41 percent of the users are 24 years or younger. Because of the visual
nature of Instagram, it is a very valuable social media marketing tool. 98 percent of
fashion brands had an Instagram profile as of March 2016 (Statista, 2019). All these
numbers show that Instagram is a great tool for marketing, and it offers a wide range
of benefits to companies, in terms of marketing. Some of these benefits include:
better targeting of audience, as Instagram also uses the data from Facebook,
Instagram ads are non-intrusive and less likely to annoy the targeted audience,
Instagram has a higher engagement rate than most of the other social media
platform, etc. (Safko, 2012)
The number of social media users has shown a rapid growth in the last few
years and is projected to increase steadily. There are 3.175 billion active internet
users in the world, out of which, 2.206 billion are active social media users (Statista,
2019). In 2017, 71% of the total internet users were social network users and this
percentage is projected to increase. The most popular activity among internet users
is social networking and it has a high user engagement rate. With social media
penetration of over 66%, North America ranks first among regions where social
media is most popular (Statista, 2019). More than 81% of US population had a social
media profile in 2016.
Figure 2: Number of social media users from 2010 to 2021
1.3 Pinterest:
The rise of visual content sharing sites has brought many changes in the
social-media landscape (Pew Research Center, 2012). The importance of visual
content sharing in social media can be realized from the explosive growth of the
latest visual-content sharing sites such as Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat –
especially in an industry like fashion where the main focus in on aesthetics and visual
representations (Workman, 2007). In the current landscape of social-media, many
fashion brands are experimenting with the power of visual content, using images and
videos to build brand awareness and engaging consumers (Wasserman T, 2012).
Pinterest has some unique terms that needs to be defined for a full
understanding of the platform and its working. The most common and important
terms used are: Pin, Re-pin, and Board. The Pin is the basic unit of Pinterest. It
consists of an image or video with some information about the source (either
uploaded or taken from a website) and an indication who saved it. The act of saving
a „Pin‟ is called Pinning. Pinning can be done by clicking the “+” button on the top
right menu bar of Pinterest account. Clicking the “+” button will give you options for
adding a pin from a website, uploading a pin or creating a new board. Pinning can
also be done directly from a website by using the “Pin it” (or bookmarklet) button. The
“Pin it" button can be installed on a browser‟s bookmarks or favorites bar. The term
“Re-pin” is very easy to understand once you grasp what a pin is. Repining is done
by clicking the save button that appears when hovering over a pin. For organizing
pins, a user can make “Boards” in their account. Boards are defined by a title and a
category. A user can have either a public or a secret board. A public board allows
any user on Pinterest to access the pins inside it while a secret board is visible only
to the creator. Boards are by default public to all users on Pinterest. Secret boards
can be made public at any time; however, public boards cannot be changed to secret
boards once they have been made visible. There is also the option to make
collaborative boards. This can be done by inviting other users to contribute to a board
from the edit board menu (Wishpond, 2019).
As a part of this visual content sharing trend, Pinterest is growing faster than
any other website reaching 100 million users in September 2015 (Pew Research
Center, 2012). Pinterest is basically a bookmarking site that was launched in 2009,
allowing users to „pin‟ sites and content and „repin‟ it to their boards (Pinterest.com,
2019). or Users can either upload content from their personal computer or other
devices or save something directly from a website. Women make the majority of the
site with more than 81 percent registered female users (Omnicoreagency, 2019). For
marketers, Pinterest can be a destination for users to discover and evaluate different
brands.
Pinterest can be defined as “a social networking site where any web image or
personal digital image can be posted („pinned‟) to a digital scrapbook, where it can
then be viewed by the public” (Phillips, 2014). During the initial phase of its launch,
Pinterest was invitation-only, and it became the fastest site in history to reach high
user engagement with 10 million unique monthly visitors (Pinterest - Statistics &
Facts, 2019). It has since become the third most visited social network after
Facebook and Twitter. Within a few years of its launch, it became the third most
visited social network with approximately 53 million users. Pinterest is ranked higher
than most of other social network sites in terms of user engagement (Pinterest -
Statistics & Facts, 2019). The average time a visitor spends per month on Pinterest is
approximately 97.8 minutes (Pinterest - Statistics & Facts, 2019). Pinterest is most
popular among women who make 81 percent of the total users (Omnicoreagency,
2019). These figures highlight the intense engagement likely to be experienced by
female users. Also, the highest share of Pinterest users was observed to be between
18 to 34 years (Pinterest - Statistics & Facts, 2019).
Pinterest is primarily a visual content sharing platform unlike most of the other
social media networks where people typically share text-based content. Pinterest
views itself as a virtual pin board where people can share visual things of interest like
photos, bookmark images, comment on photos and generate conversations around a
visual centerpiece (Jacques A, 2012). “Repining” is the action taken to repost some
image you like on Pinterest, it is compared to the action of someone re-tweeting on
Twitter or sharing a post on Facebook. A lot of brand advertisers, online retailers,
bloggers and website owners have embraced Pinterest because the images or
content posted on Pinterest tend to have a longer shelf-life. This means that the
products or the posts shared on Pinterest steer consumers to the product or website
for a longer time than any other social media. Pictures pinned on Pinterest stays
there driving traffic to the website until it is removed by the owner (Phillips, 2014).
Pinterest can be called the leader in the area of social and E-commerce due to
its high user engagement and high conversion rates (Phillips, 2014). Some of the
famous topics on Pinterest are Fashion, Home, Garden and do-it-yourself segment
(DIY).
The below figure shows the audience insights. It is a new feature added by
Pinterest recently. The first part of the figure shows the location of the audience. It is
showing the percentage of users residing in a specific country, for instance, 49% of
the users interacting with the author‟s account resides in the USA. This information
can be used for deciding what products should be promoted depending on the user‟s
location. The second part of this figure shows the devices used by this audience. For
the given audience mobile devices are being used more than desktops. This is also
very useful information for the marketer as it helps in deciding what type of website or
content should be promoted to suit this audience, for instance, if a website has to be
promoted on this account it should be responsive, to make it more mobile friendly.
The below figure shows the age and gender distribution of the audience. The
chart shows that more than 80 percent of the audience is female. So, this information
can also be used by the account holder to focus more on content related to women,
women products and services.
Figure 6: Age and Gender of GonChas‟s audience
The below figure gives information about the most popular categories and
related interests of the audience. This is one of the most important information as it
tells what your audience is interested in or what content do, they like or share.
In 1960, Jerome McCarthy introduced the world his unique idea of marketing
mix – widely known as the 4 Ps; Product, Price, Place and Promotion. This idea is
still valid and plays an important role in formulating and implementing marketing
strategies. The idea of 4 Ps was later extended and developed into 7 Ps with the
addition of People, Process and Physical evidence (Booms and Bitner, 1981).
The needs and demands of people are satisfied by products or services. The
products or services comes as a combination of goods, experiences and services
that can be offered to satisfy the need or want of a market. The word product usually
suggests a physical object such as a house, car, iPhone, soap or a chocolate bar.
But the concept of product is not limited to only physical goods; anything that can
satisfy any need of a person can be called a product. So, the ultimate goal of buying
a product does not lie in just owning them rather it lies in the benefit and value they
provide. People buy food to satisfy their hunger. We buy a car not to admire its utility,
but because it transports us from one place to another (Gary Armstrong, 2015).
2.3 :
Digital Marketing The concept of Digital marketing has expanded and brought
more opportunities for companies to reach their current and potential customers.
Digital marketing shouldn‟t be mixed up with internet marketing. Digital
marketing is a broader term as it is beyond internet marketing. In addition to
channels like social media, search engines, display, etc. it also includes other digital
media like mobile phones, television and radio (Lexicon, 2017). Digital marketing has
been defined as marketing that is done through platforms such as websites, email,
apps, and social networks, that are accessible with electronic devices such as
computers, smartphones, tablets, etc. (Singh O, 2017). (Smith K, 2012) defines
digital marketing as a way of promoting products and services through digital
channels by computers, smartphones, mobiles and digital devices. The aim of these
platforms is to reach e- commerce transactions and to build a strong customer
relationship while retaining current customers and acquiring new ones (Smith K,
2012). Digital marketing is very essential for any company these days as it‟s the
fastest way to spread any message to any corner of the world with internet access.
It‟s a two-way communication between a company and its customers, as you not only
convey a message or product to your customer, you also can get a direct feedback
from them (Leeflang P., 2014). Moreover, the digital channels used frequently by
companies are their website, email and social media account (Leeflang P., 2014).
Online websites
Social Media platforms
E-mails
Search Engine Marketing – including pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine
optimization (SEO)
Display Advertising
Online Public Relations
Affiliate Marketing
Inside the field of Internet Marketing there are several other terms that are used
as synonyms to describe related concepts. For instance, E-commerce involves the
concept of sales and purchase taking place using the internet or through electronic
means (Abhijit Chaudhury, 2002). It means the term E-commerce describes more the
transactional technical aspect of the business while internet marketing focuses on all
managerial and technical activities that leads to the transaction. Internet marketing
mostly focuses on the paid, public and non-personal representation or announcement
of a message by a firm or sponsor to the existing or potential future customers (Dreze
X. & Hussherr, 2003). Internet has provided a lot of possibilities for the marketers,
before the arrival of internet, companies had to spend a lot on advertising to attract
potential customers (Scott, 2009). Internet has a very high influence on the lives of
people, it has shaped the way people make decisions, the way they interact with
each other and the way they do business (Sharma, 2011). The
traditional rules of marketing do not comply anymore. Customers have moved online,
so the marketers have to do the same in order to reach them (Scott, 2009). This shift
from traditional marketing to internet marketing can be understood in the perspective
of old media and new media because the traditional marketing in done mostly
through old media and internet marketing uses the new media. Old media are the
form of ways people tried to communicate, advertise, and influence each other,
mostly during the 19th and 20th century e.g. newspapers, radio and television
(Saltzman, 1999). While the new media includes internet websites, videogames,
virtual reality and other (Manovich, 2003). (Shama & Brogan, 2012) has mentioned
three main difference that separates old media from the new media:
The old media channels were one-way: The advertisements in the old media were
one way. It was not possible to react or share opinion about them.
Dominance of main stream media: It was not easy to access information for
general public, so the main source of information was the mainstream media and
people trusted mainstream media outlets.
The shift to digital marketing from traditional marketing is very significant and it
changes the focus of entire advertising industry. In the graphs below, a visible
downwards trend can be seen in consumer media consumption share of old media
(Television, Radio and Print).
These rapid changes in terms of the media usage and the new technology in
the industry, puts pressure on the marketing professionals. 76% of the marketers
believe that the industry has changed more in the past two years as compared to the
past 50 years. The traditional marketing methods does not work as it used to before,
therefore the marketers need to adapt and broaden their portfolio of skills by
including digital marketing (JURAN, 2017). In short, digital marketing is the 21 st
century tool of marketing. It has many benefits over the traditional marketing, for
instance, it is more interactive for reaching both local and global audience, the data is
available immediately and results are much easier to measure, social media enable
companies to communicate directly with consumers and build a good relationship
with them, it allows 24/7 marketing and captures the most energetic crowd, etc.
(Santanu & Dr. Gouri, 2016). So, all these benefits make digital marketing a very
attractive and important part of marketing for any company.
Social media marketing is one of the most powerful type of marketing on the
internet at the moment (Gruber, 2014). One of the many reasons for a business to be
marketing through social media is that your customers are spending time on these
channels. According to Statista, 77% of US population has at least one social media
profile (Statista, 2019). With so many consumers using social media every day, this
presents a great opportunity for small businesses who want to reach their online
audience. Another reason why consumers may be more receptive to your brand
message on social media is because social media allows a two-way communication
and show a different side of your brand. On social media, you are able to make
authentic connections with your leads and customers, rather than just delivering
direct marketing messages. (Gruber, 2014). Social media is a great tool to influence,
attract and engage customers efficiently. Engagement is the most important part of
social media marketing as it turns strangers into friends (Eid and El-Gohary, 2013).
The term “engagement” is very beneficial for marketing as the customers do not just
click to read a message, rather they react by commenting, sharing and liking those
messages (Agresta, 2010). Marketers should understand that it is very important to
make a virtual community where the consumers have freedom to give feedback,
spread our information, marketing messages and promotional advertisements rather
than just reading and listening passively without the ability to give some input
(Agresta, 2010). Social media is based on the modern concept of “social
interactions”, that means the community is built on multiway conversations; between
brand and customers and significantly between customers and customers. This
“social interaction” concept has proved to be more productive than the traditional
concept of “word of mouth” (Bock, 2016). Mass communication has also been
replaced by “person-to-person” communication as people tend to hear and believe
whom they know well (Agresta, 2010). Some of most important components of social
media marketing as mentioned above are the use of social media platforms for
encouraging users to spread social media marketing content via social media
marketing activities such as interaction, personalization, sharing, etc. (Rahman,
2017). Social media marketing is an effective process by which companies build a
strong relationship with customers, communicate with them and deliver online
marketing offering via social media platforms (Rahman, 2017). Another unique thing
about social media marketing is that it focuses on people, not product (Diamond,
2008). Products or services can be presented with many qualitative features and
promotional tools but what really matters are the comments and appreciations left by
the customers about the product or service, and this is the reason social media
marketing is so different and challenging for marketers. It is not the marketers or the
company that controls the marketing, it‟s the customers and users who do it through
social media. Both negative and positive word of mouth can be spread across the
globe in just a matter of minutes through social media. That is why marketers needs
to recognize the power of the critical nature of the conversations being hold by
consumers using social media. As a consequence, the ability of influencing the crowd
effectively is what is required from the marketers in the current era (Evans, 2008).
Many studies show that the purchase decisions of people are more affected
by their closest surroundings and their living environment than by any classic
marketing approach (Kempe, et al., 2003). People trust their friends and their
recommendations for making a purchase. The Word-of-Mouth marketing association
revealed that „13 percent of all consumer sales are the result of word-of-mouth
sharing‟. Influencers have got the same power of persuasion as they are followed by
a huge audience and trusted by them. In terms of the social media, Social media
influencers are known as individuals that others view as a valid source to what to
purchase (Tuten & Solomon, 2015). Influencer marketing has become essential
within brands marketing strategies as customers are relying more on the opinion of
others when it comes to purchase something (Veirman, et al., 2017). Also, influencer
marketing, enables brands to reach a wider and targeted audience in a faster and
less expensive way as compared to other forms of advertising (Evans, et al., 2017).
85 percent of the U.S. companies are implementing influencer marketing in their
marketing strategy (Roy. A, 2016). According to eMarketer the most effective
marketing strategy is sponsored social messages transmitted through a person with
a great online audience: an influencer (Inc. C.em. and Reserved, 2015).
With the rise in the number of influencers, it is very crucial for brands to find
the right influencer. De Veriman (2017) mentions how identifying influencers is a
matter of reachability through the number of followers, while Araujo (2017) believes
it‟s the impact and diffusion of the communicated message that matters. In De
Veriman‟s views opinion leaders as the de facto influencer. Araujo (2017) considered
celebrities and public figures as the high reach influencers. Khamis (2016) refers to
influencers as micro-celebrities.
In the view of the earlier theories and concepts, two different types of
influencers can be determined, depending on their characteristics. The below table
gives an overview of how two types of influencers have been separated.
The major difference between the two is not only their characteristics but also
the way through which their fame is created (De Veirman, et al., 2017). A micro-
celebrity is actively seeking fame by promoting their own personal brand to create a
following (Kapitan & Silvera, 2016). While, an opinion leader gets famous as a result
of their actions rather due to the need of being famous (De Veirman, et al., 2017).
The difference can also be seen in the type of content they choose to share. A micro
celebrity will post a lot of content focused on themselves, their lifestyle, their hobbies
(Khamis, et al., 2017). On the other hand, the majority of the content share by an
opinion leader is not focused on themselves rather on their specific interest and
knowledge (De Veirman, et al., 2017). In short, opinion leader is detached from the
content, whereas for micro-celebrity, their personality is their content. So, these
characters are helpful for brands in selecting the appropriate influencer.
The brands searching for influencers on Pinterest will need to remember that
Pinterest has a different nature as compared to other social media platforms. It is not
a place where you simply search for people who have many followers or short-term
engagement. Pinterest is different in terms of the engagement and the user
response. When a content is posted on Pinterest, it continues to be visited, looked at,
repined well into the future and the traffic keep on coming for a long time unlike any
other social media platform. On Pinterest, content lives forever. According to
wisemetrics, the half-life of a tweet – that is, the time in which you get 50 percent of
all the clicks and views – is approximately 24 minutes. While on Facebook, a post
has only 90 minutes of half-life at best (wisemetrics, 2019). The half-life of Pinterest
is 3.5 months. This means a single pin lasts approximately 1,680 times longer than a
Facebook post (Kohler, 2019). As a result, for doing successful influencer marketing
on Pinterest, brands should focus on somebody who is skillful in amplifying pins
through their Pinterest and should not focus on short term engagement.
Like any other social media platform, Pinterest relies heavily on its micro-
influencers. For Pinterest, micro-influencers are those users who have established a
solid reputation for pinning relevant, eye-catching, interesting content to a board
about a particular niche. They usually have small number of followers (500 – 5000)
but have a strong loyalty with these followers. Other important part of Pinterest is its
macro-influencer. Macro-influencers are those who have as many as 10,000 to
1,00,000 followers. They are often content producers, who have larger followings
brought over from where they originate their content.
3. E-COMMERCE:
The history of E-commerce is closely related with the history of internet.
Online shopping became possible when the internet was opened to public. The first
web page in the world was published in August 1991 (Brügger, 2009). It was
a simple, text-based web page. It had a few links and the main goal of the page was
to introduce World Wide Web to the people. Three years later, in 1994, the World
Wide Web Consortium was established, and HTML was defined as the standard
language for web pages. Since then the internet has been developing. The latest
websites are more colorful, sophisticated and more interactive unlike the older ones.
The World Wide Web has transformed the way business is conducted. It has opened
new way of communication for individuals and business, enabling global reach and
easy access. According to (Hoffman, et al., 1995), the web has become popular than
other internet services because of its ability to facilitate sharing of resources and
information globally. Prior to web, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) was used in the
electronic marketplace by owners and buyers to interact electronically. EDI allowed
companies to perform varies business functions electronically. Since its arrival, the
Web has gradually replaced those (linked with EDI) proprietary networks making it
possible for all business, regardless of their size, to access the global market and
reach their customers and other businesses. The web is becoming more important as
an infrastructure and a tool that has enabled business to conduct commercial
functions (Wen, et al., 2000). In short, Web is providing a medium that facilitates two-
way communication between different actors. It has the technology that allows
businesses to use it for various purposes: as a sales tool, as a distribution channel,
as a customer support portal and as an informational retrieval source. It has
established a global commercial marketplace for both suppliers and consumers that
can operate internationally without time restrictions. It has revolutionized the whole
commerce and business industry.
All these definitions are based on the same concept, yet they employ different
definitional approaches. Laudon & Traver (2003) limit e-commerce to transactional
business online whereas Schneider‟s (2006) defines it in a broader term and includes
business activities. The present study will take the view that e-commerce is a means
of selling goods/services through a website.
Figure 12: E-Business versus e-commerce
In conclusion, the rapid growth of the internet and the advent of Web have led
to many changes in the way business is done, resulting in the e-commerce
phenomenon.
3.5 Benefits of e-commerce
Doing business online has tremendous advantages. Companies can broaden
the scope of sales from local to global, increase sale opportunities, decrease
transaction costs, operate 24/7, access narrow market segments, exchange
information swiftly and accurately, enhance brand image, and improve the ability to
keep a strong customer relationship (Chaffey, 2011); (Turban, et al., 2006). Online
businesses will also have better information management, improved understanding of
the market, increase integration of the suppliers and vendors, and extended global
reach. Information regarding the behavior and preferences of individual and potential
customer can also be accessed and used through e-commerce. Consumers can also
have access to a larger market with more choices to select from. This helps in finding
more affordable goods and services, more choices, time saving and ability to shop
24/7 (Chaffey, 2011).
Ricker and Kalakota (1999) have defined drop shipping as consumer direct
fulfilment (Ricker & Kalakota, 1999). According to another definition it is outsourcing
inventory to another party (Chen, et al., 2011). A more thorough definition of drop
shipping is; “...an arrangement whereby the retailer forwards customers’ orders to the
wholesaler, distributor, or manufacturer, that fills customer orders directly from its
own inventory”. (Randall, et al., 2006). (Ayanso, et al., 2006) further refers to drop
shipping as a virtually joined supply chain of multiple actors, that has become a
method to achieve efficient e-fulfillment. One of the many benefits of drop shipping, is
the removal of large investments in warehousing and inventory. This enables the e-
tailer to focus more on actual sales and not worry about the operational tasks
(Ayanso, et al., 2006). All the operational tasks related to drop shipping are
performed by the drop shipper (Ayanso, et al., 2006).
Figure 13: Traditional order fulfilment versus Drop shipping
The above figure shows the difference between a traditional setting and a drop
shipping setting. In drop shipping, the products are forwarded directly from the
distributor to the customer. In this way, the e-tailer disclaims their responsibility of the
inventory. But all the information passes through the e-tailer (Netessine & Rudi,
2001). An integrated information system is required between the e-tailer and the
distributor to manage the e-fulfilment efficiently (Khouja, 2001).
4.1 GonChas.com
The website selected for the thesis is called GonChas.com. The word
“GonChas” is basically a Balti word that means clothing. Balti is a language spoken in
the Northern part of Pakistan. The company was launched in 2016 as a drop-
shipping website. GonChas has generated over $270,000 in revenue since its
launch. It also has over 10,000 customers from all over the world with the majority of
them from the United States of America. It mainly deals with cheap women clothing
and accessories but there are also clothing for men and children. The items for
women include bags, dresses, jewelry, shoes, swimwear, tops and bottoms. While
for men the e-shop has bags, shoes, tops and bottoms. It also has a small collection
of clothing and outwears for children. There are no employees of the company, the
author is the sole worker and owner. The website is built on WordPress and uses a
plugin called “woo-commerce” that enables online purchases on the site. In addition
to that, there are many other plugins that help in the smooth running of the website.
The theme used for designing the website is called Flatsome. It has been
personalized by the author. The aim of the website is to outsource cheap clothing
items from Chinese ecommerce site aliexpress.com and to sell them on
gonchas.com for a profit. The working of the website is discussed in the following
sections.
4.3 Business
The first part of situation analysis deals with the business itself. In this part the
business needs to evaluate its objectives, strategy, capabilities and target audience.
Also, the business needs to decide what products to promote and whether or not
those products are suitable for online promotion. In the case of GonChas, the target
audience is present online and also the products are suitable for online promotion.
Hence the most suitable way to reach the target audience is through online
promotion. Also, the site has been running for a few years and has presence on most
of the major social networking platforms. This thing is helpful in reaching new
potential customers and staying in touch with the current ones. The shop has been
running and is generating some revenue since its launch. An overview of the sales
and orders for a selected period has been shown in the figure below.
Source: (gonchas.com)
The figure shows the gross sale made during the period of nine months. The
left column shows the number of orders placed, while the right column shows the
total amount of cash collected for the orders. Other things worth mentioning are the
shipping costs, refunds and average monthly sales. All this information has been
displayed with different colors on the graph. The marketing done during this period
was mostly influencer marketing. The details of the strategy are discussed in the
influencer marketing strategy section.
4.4 Competitors
There are so many similar websites to GonChas, on Pinterest, that have very
similar products and method of business. For the sake of this thesis, a few of those
competitors have been selected based on similar products and marketing strategy.
The author has done marketing for some of these websites and has knowledge about
the strategies used and the method of business. Most of these competitors have a
large budget so they are doing marketing on most of the major social media sites
and, they are using AdWords. This information has been acquired using Chrome
extensions called Facebook Pixel Helper and BuiltWith. Facebook Pixel helper
detects whether Facebook Pixel (JavaScript code for tracking website activity) is
implemented or not while BuiltWith provides information about tracking codes of other
similar websites like Google Analytics, AdWords, etc. The traffic data has been
acquired from third-party website worthofaweb.com. They use Alexa rank to estimate
traffic figures.
Source: (worthofaweb.com)
The analysis done by the author has shown that most probably these websites
are using paid advertising (AdWords, Media.net) and all of them have website
analytics in place. By doing a general google search it can be found that most of
these websites have a bad customer review and most of the customers have
complains about the quality of the items received and delivery times. Regardless of
all negative reviews, these sites are maintaining a good traffic and social media
presence.
4.5 Customers
For doing the customer analysis demographics (age, education, gender) and
psychographics (interests, lifestyle and habits) are used. The data is acquired from
google analytics and Pinterest analytics. Pinterest analytics gives very valuable
information about the users that interact with the business. This information is of both
the people who have done a purchase through Pinterest and other people who have
followed, liked, shared or commented on the products from the domain gonchas.com.
As can be seen in the graph below, above 80 percent of the people that interact with
GonChas are female. The age group also is diverse as GonChas is popular among
both young and middle age women.
Source: (Pinterest.com)
GonChas has its biggest audience in the USA. As can be seen in the figure
below USA makes more than 57 percent of the total audience GonChas get. The rest
of the audience is split in different countries with all having less than 5 percent of the
audience per country. This information is very useful while making the marketing
strategy. The countries where GonChas is not famous can be targeted for new
customers while in the country where it already has a good audience can boosted
more and the number of customers from that country can be increased by targeting
people having similar interests.
Figure 16: Top location of the audience of GonChas
Source: (Pinterest.com)
The psychographic data has been acquired from google analytics. According
to the data acquired there are three major categories of people who interact with
GonChas. The first one is “Affinity Category (reach)”. Affinity Categories are interest
of people that can be used to reach potential customers to make them aware of the
brand. The second category is “In-Market Segment”. The users in these segments
are more likely to buy products and services in the respective category. The final one
is “other category”. This category contains the interest of users who are outside the
main categories and can be used as a source of additional information for targeting
new potential customers (Hines, 2014). The figure below shows the interest of users
in the three main categories.
Figure 17: Interest overview of the audience of GonChas
These categories of interests match most of the interest data from Pinterest
analytics. These data will be used in the Pinterest ads section for targeting the
audience. The data from Pinterest analytics for interest of audience is shown below.
According to all the data the first buying persona is a female in her 20s, 30s,
and 40s, living in the USA. She is a student or a job holder having interest in fashion
and shopping online. She is a user of Pinterest and uses it for getting inspiration. The
second persona is in the same age group that includes women that are interested in
DIY and crafts, home décor, fashion, beauty and wellness living in the USA. DIY
stands for “Do it yourself” and means activities for which there is a choice between
doing it oneself of hiring someone else (Hill, 1979).
4.6 Goals
Having a well-defined and well formulated goal is important for every
business. The method of goal setting used for GonChas is called SMART. Smart is
an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound
(Macleod, 2013). The first part of this goal setting method is “Specific”. GonChas is
aiming to double its sales by the end of this year. The measurable part aims at
increasing the monthly traffic to 50,000. Keeping in mind the past performance of the
site, the attainable part of the goal is to achieve $30,000 in revenue per month.
Relevant part of the goal aims at reaching more customers through Pinterest, as it‟s
the main source of traffic for GonChas. Time-bound part of SMART method is very
important as all these goals have to be within a timescale. So, by using the current
marketing strategy and improving it further GonChas‟s main goal is to achieve all
these goals within 1 year. All these goals will help in achieving the final goal, that is to
get maximum customer satisfaction and making good profit. The marketing strategy
is discussed in detail in the Findings and Discussion section.
The second set of metrics will show the return on investment. It will tell how
much of the resources were invested and how much is the acquired benefit. This
metrics includes Spending, Revenue, Conversions Rate, etc.
The final set of metrics will use the data acquired from the second set
(Spending, Revenue) and evaluate the overall financial viability of the marketing
campaign. The metrics that include in this set are Gross margin, Profit, Return on Ad
Spend, and return on investment (ROI). All these terms will be explained in the
marketing section.
4.8 Working of the website
Source: (Author)
Source: (Pinterest.com)
Once the image URL is searched on google, the option “search by image”
should be clicked as shown in the figure below. Once it has been done, google will
show all the websites that have this item. These websites don‟t necessarily have to
have the item on sale. Some of the website are blogs where people use the image
for informational purposes but most of the results will have the item for sale.
Figure 21: How to search an image on google.com
Source: (google.com)
In our case the first page gave two results and their links to sellers on
AliExpress.com, as can be seen in the below figure. Although it is not the case every
time. Sometimes it does not give any results related to AliExpress and in some other
cases tens of pages have to be gone through for finding the desired results. In such a
case, different images of the same item are used in the search box until the desired
results have been achieved. The search results can also give you valuable
information about your competitors, as it also lists other websites that are selling the
item and most of the time, they are also drop shipping website. So, it can give some
idea about the price of the item and also these websites can be used as a source for
finding new best-selling items. In general, this is an easy method and most of the
time the items are easily outsourced.
Figure 22: Image search results on google
Source: (google.com)
The below figure shows the results for the viral item selected earlier for
research. This list shows all the sellers that have the item for sale. One of the most
crucial part is selecting the right seller from this list. One of the methods employed by
the author for making a selection is to check the ratings and reviews of the sellers
and the listed item. The price of the item and shipping cost are also important factors
in deciding the seller as the main aim of GonChas is to make a profit. One of the
major issues, the author faced, with deciding the seller according to the price of items
was that the items listed for lower prices were mostly of very low quality. This thing
impacts the whole customer experience and gets a negative feedback to the
company. So, for making the right choice of the seller, all the mentioned factors,
sellers rating, years the seller is on AliExpress, ratings the item has got, total number
of sales the item has got, delivery time, sizes/stocks available, price, etc. should be
kept in mind. Other important factors for making the right choice of the seller are
shipping time, buyer protection and positive feedback percentage.
Figure 24: Image search results on AliExpress mobile App
Shipping time is the time duration taken by an item from its point of origin to
the point of delivery. This time varies depending on the country a customer resides. It
is also very crucial as all the customers are International. So, it has to be made sure
that the seller can deliver the items within a reasonable time frame. On GonChas, the
average delivery time for USA and EU is 15-35 business days. This is just an
average time period decided by the author from his personal experience. Another
important thing to remember is the buyer protection. Buyer protection ensures that
the customer will receive their order on time and as described. In case, the shipping
is delayed, or the item is not as described, the customer gets a compensation
(Aliexpress, 2019). Most of the sellers on AliExpress offer buyer protection.
Some of items are special, in high demand and of very good quality. These
items can be sold for a profit margin. They can bring good profit and can help in
improving the overall sale targets. But in general, the final price should be covering
all the expenses related to the running of the website, its marketing, etc. and leave a
margin of profit according to the markup pricing mentioned in the last paragraph.
After the pricing is decided, the item can now be added to the drop shipping website.
4.13 Putting the item for sale:
After finding the right seller and deciding the price of the item, the item is now put
on the website for sale. There are two methods for importing the items from
AliExpress to the target website. Firstly, it can be done manually by copying the
images and other information from AliExpress and pasting it on the target website.
Second method is by using some plugin to do it automatically. There are few free and
paid plugins in market that can help in importing the desired products from AliExpress
with ease. In both the cases, it should be made sure that the images used do not
have any watermarks, the images are high quality, the size of images is not very big
or small, etc. All these things can have an impact on the overall user experience, so it
has to be made sure that the user gets the best experience possible, whether it is
about the display of the item, navigation on the website or product details like the
sizing and material details.
Once the item is published on the website, it can now be promoted on Pinterest.
Two major marketing methods will be discussed in the following section. The first one
is Pinterest ads and the second one is influencer marketing. The author has used
both the methods for promoting items from GonChas.com on Pinterest. All the results
and findings will be discussed, along with recommendations for the best practices to
get the desired results.
5. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS:
In order to create the right campaign and stay up to date on social media,
Tuten (2008) has formed a list of questions for social media marketers that will help
them in understanding what they really need, in order to find the right tools for their
campaigns. Few important questions are: “Does the culture of social media fit your
brand‟s positioning or fit with how your brand wishes to be percevied? Do you know
where your customers and prospects are? Are the relevant communities open and
welcoming to brand participation? What opportunities exisit within each community
for brand promotion? Do you have resources of time and money to commit to the
campaign? Do you have a hook, a conversation starter, a point of engagement –
something that will inspire interaction with your brand? Are you willing to take risks?”
(Tuten, 2008).
Once you have answered these questions and selected the right social media
platform, it is time to carefully make the communication plan. Kaplan and Haenlein
(2010) provide some good principles about being social. First principle is to be active,
taking part in discussions and sharing with the community something of value or
interest. Secondly you should also understand the nature of the channel and by
being interesting with your content, humble with your position and behaving
“informally” you should aim to blend in. However, in social media network like
LinkedIn, it may still be wise to keep the communication professional. Last principle is
to be honest (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).
Users
Sessions
Session duration
Bounce Rate
Conversion Rate
Figure 25: Google analytics homepage showing common metrics
The above figure shows the Google analytics home page for GonChas. The
first two metrics; Users and Sessions are the crucial ones, as they are closely
related, and their difference has to be understood good. A Session is defined as the
time range between a user‟s first request on the website to the last one. It is basically
a single visit, consisting of one or more pageviews, along with other events, for
example, ecommerce transactions, etc. While the metric Users gives figure of unique
visitors who have visited the website during the selected time range (Kaushik, 2009).
These metrics give valuable information for evaluating the ad campaign. Although
these metrics are very useful, it should not be used as a final resource for deciding
the performance of a campaign rather more weightage should be given to the
conversion and return on investment.
Figure 26: Pinterest ad manager and metrics overview
Click through rate (CTR) gives the percentage of people who click on an ad
after seeing it. It is generally calculated by dividing the number of people who clicked,
after seeing an ad by the total number of impressions the ad received. Cost per click
(CPC) means the amount of money an advertiser pays, every time when their ad gets
clicked. Cost per mille (CPM) tells the amount of money spent for getting one
thousand impressions of the ad (Louisa, 2008). Impressions means the number of
times the ad appeared. Engagement is the total number of engagements on the ad.
It includes saves, closeups and clicks. Spend means the total amount of money that
has been spent for any given ad or campaign (Pinterest, 2019).
Source: (Pinterest.com)
Once the business account has been created it is advisable to take the
following steps to optimize it.
The next step is adding a profile picture. It can be done by hovering over to the
profile icon on the top right and clicking settings. The optimal size of is 165 x 165
pixels. Choose an image that best represents the business. It can be the business
logo. Complete the about section with some information about the business. If the
business has a physical location, fill it in the location option. Claiming website helps
in getting access to analytics and information about the users that interact with the
business.(Newberry, 2018)
Source: (Pinterest.com)
The process of creating an ad account is very easy. From the top right of the
home page of normal business account the ad account can be accessed. Once the
option Ads is selected, the screen below will pop-up. The name of the account and
the country is selected depending on the location of business and the billing address.
Figure 29: Pinterest ad account page
Source: (Pinterest.com)
The next step is setting up the billing. The billing page looks like the screen
below. Here the name of the business, address, city, postal code, phone number,
etc. are filled. Once the information is filled, the next step is filling the payment
method. Pinterest accepts Visa, MasterCard and American Express for payments
(Pinterest, 2019). After filling the payment method, the ad account is ready to get
started.
Source: (Pinterest.com)
As can be seen in the figure below, the Pinterest tag, consists of two parts: the
base code and the event code. The base code is needed to track measurable events.
This code has to be implemented in the domain. The event code tracks specific
actions that occurs on the advertiser‟s website. This code should be placed on the
pages where specific events can occur, for example, the product pages where a
visitor can add something to cart, checkout, etc. (Pinterest, 2019).
Source: (Pinterest.com)
The Pinterest ads are also called Promoted Pins. Once the ad account is
ready, ad campaigns can be made from the top left corner of home feed. Setting up
and ad campaign has three steps. The first step has been shown in the figure below.
The important thing to consider here is selecting the right type of campaign. Pinterest
has categorized the campaign into three depending on the objective. The first one is
Build awareness campaign. Under this category is the Brand awareness. This
option helps new brands in reaching targeted audience for promoting their brand,
products or a service. Another option under the Build awareness campaign is Video
views. This one is straight forward as this campaign brings view on a video that is on
Pinterest. The second category is Drive consideration. Under this category the first
option is Traffic. As the name suggests, this campaign is specifically designed for
marketers who want to drive traffic to their websites. The next one under Drive
consideration is App install. This is for advertisers who want to promote their Apps.
The last category of campaigns is Get conversions. This option is suitable for e-
commerce website as all the conversions can be tracked using the Pinterest tag.
After selecting the desired campaign a few more details are required in the
campaign details section, as can be seen in the below figure. These details include:
Campaign name, Daily spend limit and Lifetime spend limit. As the name suggests,
the Daily spend limit is the maximum amount the campaign can spend in one day
while the Lifetime spend limit is the amount the campaign is approved to spend in
total (Pinterest, 2019). Once these details are filled, the use can go on to next page
by clicking the continue button.
Figure 32: Setting up ad campaign step number 1
Source: (Pinterest.com)
This step is very important as the target audience is selected on this page. As
can be seen in the figure below, the available targeting options include Genders,
Ages, Locations, Languages, Devices, Interests and Keywords. All these features are
selected according to the metrics data from both Google and Pinterest analytics. It
also gives information about the potential audience for the selected targeting options.
Figure 33: Setting up ad campaign step number 2
Source: (Pinterest.com)
Once the right audience has been selected, the user can move on to next
step. This is the final step and here the user needs to select the product for
promotion. After selecting the product and making sure the destination URL is
working, the campaign can be launched.
The main idea of Traffic is to drive cheap click-through to the website. The
downside of these clicks is that most of the visitors will leave the site without
purchase. These visitors are ideal for retargeting. The best way to motivate these
potential customers to complete a purchase is by offering some benefits (Kim, et al.,
2011). GonChas is usually getting a CTR of around 1.2% that is considered low in
comparison to the average CTR of 2.69% for an e-commerce website (Irvine, 2019).
So, the CTR for GonChas can be improved by improving the targeting and interests
of the targeted audience. Also, the products selected for advertising play a vital role
in deciding the CTR that the site receives.
CTR is vital as it brings potential customers to the website, but the more
important part is the conversion. The primary benefit of Pinterest Tag is the tracking
of Conversions. It can track various actions like Checkout, AddToCart, Signup, etc.
Besides, it can also track if people do searches on the website for any products
(Pinterest, 2019). The main objectives of the campaign for GonChas are to increase
the CTR and get more conversions/sales.
5.11 Audiences
Four types of audiences can be selected for an ad campaign, namely:
Site visitors
Engaged audience
Actalike audience
Custom audience
Site visitors are the group of users that visits a site. They can be the visitors going to
the site through the products shared on Pinterest or the ones visiting the site through
Pinterest ads. There is also an option of including or excluding traffic sources for this
audience (Pinterest, 2019). The site visitors on GonChas were 15000 per month
during the launch of the marketing campaigns and above 95% of the site visitors
were coming from Pinterest.
Engaged audience is the group of users that engaged with Pins from the domain of
the website. These users can be the ones that have saved, liked, commented or
shared any of the products or pins from the domain of the website (Pinterest, 2019).
According to the Pinterest analytics data GonChas has 40800 engaged audience per
month. This number keeps on changing and depends on the number of products
shared, clicked, liked, or saved every month.
The advertiser can either put the bid manually or accept the recommended bid
from Pinterest. Manual bidding and CPC model are used for the advertising
campaign of GonChas. The main reason for selecting the manual bidding is the
expensive recommended bid. For the buying persona selected for GonChas the
recommended bid was $2.1 per click.
5.13 Ad Formats and Placements
Currently Pinterest offers three ad formats, namely: Promoted Pins, Promoted
Carousels, and Promoted video pins. All of these formats have been discussed
below.
Source: (Pinterest.com)
5.15 Promoted Carousels
Promoted carousels feature two to five images that pinners can swipe through.
These multi-image ads can appear like a normal pin, except for the dots beneath that
shows the images can be swiped. Each image in a carousel ad be different with a
different title and description. This format is great if the advertiser wants to use
different images in the same ad (Pinterest, 2019). Below is an example of a
promoted carousel.
Figure 35: Promoted carousel ad
Source: (Pinterest.com)
5.16 Promoted video Pins
Promoted video pins are the same as Promoted pins except the normal pin is
replaced with a video. Just like a Promoted pin, it also appears in the home feed and
search results. Promoted Pins has been used in the campaign for the study.
Women‟s Fashion
Dresses
Summer dresses
Women‟s apparel
Only USA
The ad format selected was Promoted Pins. These ads had one image per
product. The images selected were taken from the seller‟s page on AliExpress.com.
The reason for selection of Promoted pins instead of Carousel ad was because
Promoted Pins performed significantly better than Carousel ads in a test campaign.
Carousel ads had 0.95% CTR with $0.18 CPC while Promoted Pins had an average
of 1.80% CTR with $0.18 CPC. The CPC is the same for both because it was
selected manually.
One campaign was selected with the goals of Traffic and Product sales. The
campaign targeted audience with the below interest:
Source: (Pinterest.com)
The traffic results for one-week campaign is shown in the figure below. All the
metrics are acquired from Pinterest Ads report. The ROI and conversion rate are
calculated separately as they needed data from both Pinterest ads and GonChas
site. The number of clicks has been taken from the Pinterest ads report while the
number of sales has been taken from the GonChas site. The total amount of sales is
taken from the GonChas site while the Pinterest ad gave the total amount spend on
the campaigns:
A total of 4 orders were placed during this time and the total gross sales
achieved by the two items was $160.85, as seen in the figure below. This amount
also includes the shipping charges. Both the items had free shipping on AliExpress,
so the shipping costs is also included in the total amount of sale. The below data has
been taken from the GonChas website.
Figure 38: Sales overview for the traffic campaign 04.05.2019 up until 11.05.2019
The campaign was not able to reach the set goals. The overall CTR was
around 1.66% which is lower than the industry standards of 2.69% (Irvine, 2019). The
conversion rate was also very less as only 4 people placed orders out of 744 people
who went on the site. It was calculated by dividing total purchases by the total link
clicks. The items promoted were two summer dresses for women. Both of them were
selected from the viral dresses on Pinterest so a higher conversion was expected
from them. The bounce rate was around 63% during the period of Pinterest ad
campaign. That‟s higher than the standard bounce rate for e-commerce sites. The
optimal bounce rate for e-commerce and retail websites is 20%-40% (Pawel, 2018).
There are various reasons for a high bounce rate. Few of them are:
Slow load time of the page
Poor site navigation
Not enough product information
Poor product photos/description
Not enough trust signals
In case of GonChas the page loading time is 3 seconds that is a lot faster than the
average loading time of a landing page found by google as 22 seconds (Googleapis,
2017). The navigation and product information are also clear. The possible reasons
for the high bounce rate can be poor product photos/description and not enough trust
signals. In the future campaigns, these two issues will be addressed, and the
outcome will be compared.
Women‟s Dresses
Women‟s Jewelry
Women‟s bottoms
Women‟s tops
Every influencer posted 2 pictures of the same or different products every day for
three months. The total traffic received during this period was over 65,000 unique
visitors and pageviews of over 231,000. The following figure from Google analytics
show the stats of GonChas for the selected period of time.
Figure 39: Traffic received during first three months of 2019
A total of 456 orders were placed and 648 items were purchased during these
three months. The gross sale amount was $16,423.
Source: (GonChas.com)
5.22 Overall Evaluation of Influencer marketing
The overall influencer marketing campaign was a success. The total amount
paid to two influencers for three months was $3000. The total revenue acquired
during this period was $16,423. Out of this amount, $9000 was spent on fulfilling
orders, $3000 was paid to the influencers, and $500 was paid as the site running
expenses. The remaining amount was $3923. After deducting income tax, $3334.55
was left as profit. So, by using the influencer marketing on GonChas a total of
$3334.55 was made as profit with ROI of positive 111.13%.
After the careful examination of both the types of Marketing, the results
acquired through Influencer marketing were a lot better than the results acquired
through Pinterest promoted ads. One of the main reasons for this huge difference is
the greater reach of Influencer marketing as compared to Promoted pins, in terms of
the amount spent. In Promoted pins, every click the ad gets has to be paid, while in
influencer marketing, a fixed amount is paid upfront to the influencer and the
clicks/traffic keeps on coming for a long time without any extra payment. In the case
of Pinterest ads, the reach stops once the amount has been used. The second
reason for the difference in results was the limited budget and the short time
allocated to Pinterest ads. The results could have been different if a higher budget
and a long period of time was selected.
CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE
PERSPECTIVES
Social media is becoming an integral part of our everyday life. People are
spending tens of hours every week on social media, either through their smartphones
or computers. This thing has led many companies to spend a significant amount of
money on doing social media marketing. But without a proper strategy and
understanding, these marketing campaigns do not bring any fruits.
The first step in making any marketing campaign is understanding the target
audience. All the visitors to a business are not necessarily the same. These visitors
fall in different categories. Some of them are there to buy, others are just considering
buying while few others are not sure if they want something. So, for targeting the
right customers a strong and targeted marketing plan is inevitable. The second step
involves creating the marketing strategy. It involves a careful analysis of the
business. This analysis includes finding the interest and demographics of the current
customers. Because without knowing these traits of current customers, the business
cannot find the potential customers. Setting goals is also an important part of the
strategy. These goals have to be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-
bound. All these points are very important to remember while creating a marketing
campaign.
Promoted pins/ Pinterest ads are quite new as compared to advertising on
other social networking sites like Facebook and twitter. For setting up a successful
advertising plan on Pinterest a good marketing strategy has to be made. All the
essential parts of advertising like the interests, demographics, etc. of the target
audience has to be selected very carefully. Another important type of marketing that
works on Pinterest is influencer marketing. By finding the right type of influencers and
following the right strategy, brands can make more profit than other types of online
marketing. As in the case of GonChas, influencer marketing was able to bring in a
good amount of profit and brand awareness. Brand awareness can be measured by
a number of KPI‟s. The monthly engaged users are the users that have clicked, liked,
shared, commented, or followed the Pinterest account of GonChas. Before the
launch of the Influencer marketing campaigns, the number of people getting engaged
per month was around 14,400, but after launching the influencer marketing
campaigns, the monthly engagement rose to 30,021. Also, the monthly impressions
for GonChas on Pinterest increased from 300,000 to 938,000.
One of the most important results achieved through this study was the
optimization of influencer marketing. GonChas has been doing influencer marketing
since the starting days but those campaigns were not optimized. All the research
done during the course of this study, has helped in optimizing the marketing
campaigns. During the planning phase of these campaigns a research was done to
find the most suitable influencer for the type of products to be promoted. Proper
goals were set, and the metrics were analyzed every day to check the performance
of the campaign. The type of products used, and the timing of post share were also
noted. This optimization proved to be very helpful and the results achieved by these
optimized campaigns have improved the overall performance of GonChas, in terms
of number of sales, user engagement and brand awareness. The influencer
marketing campaigns has also helped GonChas in increasing the number of
followers on Pinterest that went from 11,300 to 12,086.
Although limited by amount of resources and time, this work tried to grasp the
topic of Pinterest advertising and Pinterest Influencer marketing comprehensively.
The research contributed to furthering knowledge about Pinterest, as it is a fairly new
and does not have much research work done on it. This study also gathered valuable
knowledge on how to plan, launch and evaluate marketing campaigns on Pinterest.
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LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 3: Number of mobile phone users worldwide from 2015 to 2020 (in billions) .
Figure 40: Sales on GonChas during the first three months of 2019.........................82
VK - Vkontakte
DIY - Do it yourself