International Journal of Research in Management Sciences

Volume 1, Issue 1, July-September, 2013, pp. 102-107

© IASTER 2013, www.iaster.com

Usage and Buying behaviour of Consumer towards Social

Networks in Marketing - an Exploratory Research
V. Sakthirama*, R.Venkatram**and S.D.Sivakumar**
* Research Associate, ** Professors,
Dept. of Agricultural and Rural Management, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India
ABSTRACT

Globally the social networks get an enormous growth and create an evolution in the internet
applications. Advertising through social networks in marketing was getting momentum as one of the
main applications. The primary objective of this study is to analyze the usage of social networks with
social techno graphics ladder and buying behaviour towards social network was discussed with
structure equation model. Through snow-ball sampling method, 280 sample data of online social
networks customers were collected. As per the result of this study, consumer are having positive
attitude towards social networks and it influence the purchase. The social networks markets would get
importance in near future.

Keywords: Social Networks, Marketing, Social Techno Graphics Ladder, Structure Equation Model
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Emergence of Social Networks

In human life, the internet is becoming an elixer and its usage and applications are increasing day by
day. Particularly the Internet is used as a medium and gets popular because of its strong potential for
interaction with the people from multiple cultural backgrounds (Hoffman and Novak, 1996). Though
initial period of internet, there were arising different voices worldwide about the negative sides of
intense use of internet i.e. example, depression, anxiety, and loneliness (Kroker and Weinstein 1994;
Kraut et al. 2002; Nie 2001), the growth of internet was not stopped by any one and it becomes an
essential part of every one’s life in latter stages.

The internet acts a great potential medium to allow people to socialize and interact easily with the
people from different parts of globe (Katz and Rice 2002 & Stafford, et al., 2004). Further, it may be
get popular by the potential for quick communication with the internet facilities like e‑mail, MSN
Messenger, and Skype) and especially the current social web applications as social networks like
Facebook, Twitter, orkut and YouTube. Especially, the social networks get a massive growth and
create an evolution in the internet applications as allowing continuous intercultural communications
with people during the past decade. Among different countries, Asian countries had maximum users
around 35 per cent of the world users of social networks in 2010 followed by Europe; the Middle East
and Africa countries had 28 per cent of users. Besides, North America and Caribbean and Latin
America had 25 per cent and 12 per cent respectively. Similar trend was reflected in India during past
five years. Among the social network sites, Facebook become a king with theirs additional features
with the consumers 400 mm users globally (Bhat, 2012). Thus it attained enormous growth during the
year of 2009 -2010 and attain the weekly market share of visitors of 7.03% which almost nearing to
International Journal of Research in Management Sciences
Volume 1, Issue 1, July-September, 2013, www.iaster.com

Google market share of 7.07%. The other networks also had the response from the social network
users. Linkedin had 60mm users and Twitter users have climbed to a lofty 75 million. YouTube is
another largest social network.

1.2. Role of Social networks in marketing

The traditional marketing is normally called as “Outbound Marketing” which has one-way
conversation from marketer to buyer, where advertiser is the hammer; customer the nail. Besides, in
Social Network Marketing there are for a two-way conversation among advertisers and customers. The
consumers who feel more connected to the company and they tell their friend, through this it act as
viral marketing also. Thus Social network marketing is called as “Inbound Marketing” and “wordof-
mouth marketing”, and can take place between any two or more connected people, that is, via a social
network and consult a friend prior to making a decision about a certain purchase.

Conversely, companies invest millions of pounds annually in an attempt to market their products,
although most of them neglect to consider the influence of word-of-mouth. Moreover, even the
companies who have already taken notice of this matter are usually doing so based on a gut feeling,
rather than a statistically based analysis.

By using social media platforms and online communities like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, YouTube,
StumbleUpon, etc., the marketer builds ways for people to promote a company or brand as grassroots
marketing. The marketer/advertiser using social networks as a excellent media by creating ads content
that is remarkable, unique, and newsworthy (link bait), and creating “viral” content like videos and
widgets. The ads were displayed based on the profile segregation of the respondent, hence it target the
right consumer with specific message. Because of this, the worldwide online social network
advertisement spending was shown in increasing trend (Table 1).

The eMarketer stated that, 37 per cent of the adult population of world currently uses social networks,
while 70 per cent teen age group people do the same, with both numbers projected to rise significantly
in near future. Meanwhile, it was also shown from the Table 1 that $1.2 billion was spent on social
network advertisement in 2007. By 2011, ad spend in the social network was attained $4 billion due to
the enormous growth of social network sites like Facebook.

Though the aims of social networks create a contact between the people, in marketing aspect, one of
the main applications of social networks was advertising. As the organization does not, however,
properly map the social network itself, it is very difficult for it to track and measure the results of such
campaigns, and recognize its successes and its problems. Consequently, as an initial step in the road to
an optimal solution, map the social network should be finding accurately. But we must first understand
what a social network is.

In this study the usage of social networks, applications in marketing and empirical study on consumer
usage and behaviour towards social network were analyzed with the specific objectives.

to study the consumer usage of social network marketing

to measure the consumer’s attitude towards social networks and its effect on behaviour
International Journal of Research in Management Sciences
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The study was helpful to know the attitude and usage pattern of social network marketing and how the
consumers behave towards the ads. This would lead to give an idea for creating ads in social network
sites.

2. MATERIALS AND METHODS

The primary data were collected through a structured interview schedule to the customers of social
networks (facebook and orkut) and the snow-ball sampling method was followed for online survey.
Initially, the questionnaire link was sent to 100 members through the email with the request for
response and forwards to the link to the others.There were untrained 280 filled questionnaires.

The items of attitude construct was included in the questionnaire to measure the attitude and five point
Likert’s scale was used to measure like Strongly Agree – 5, Agree - 4, Neutral -3, Disagree -2,
Strongly disagree -1. Social Techno Graphics Ladder is used to usage of consumers. The Conceptual
model was framed among constructs like attitude, familiarity and product/service purchase behaviour.
The model was analyzed with structure equation model with SPSS 20 and Amos 20 software.

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The socio demographic characteristics were considered as one of the main aspects to know the
behaviour. Besides, among the age group the respondents were observed that from age group from12
years to 52. The maximum respondents (46 per cent) were coming under the age group of under 20
years. Meanwhile, 38 per cent of the respondents were from age group 21 to 30 years. Consequently,
the average annual family incomes of the respondents were coming under “Strivers” category with
annual family income Rs. 5 lakhs to Rs. 10 lakhs. In addition, observed that 55 per cent of female and
45 per cent of male were responded. In considering occupation the major respondents were students or
unemployed category (48 per cent) and employed were 41 per cent followed by 11 per cent were
business.

3.1. Usage of social network marketing tools with the social techno graphics ladder

The social techno graphics ladder was developed by forrester research, Inc. to analyze the consumer
awareness and their usage of social network marketing tools In social techno graphics ladder
consumers are categorised into six groups namely creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and
inactives.

It inferred from the table 2 that, all the respondents were act as joiner and spectators. It means that all
the respondents were having the social network account and do read blogs, read customer rating and
review etc. In addition 75 per cent were collectors who use RSS feeds and add tags etc. In addition
72.86 per cent were coming under critics who post rating / reviews of products or services. These
should be considered very much by the marketer to formulate their marketing policies. Almost 34.64
per cent were act as creator and publish a blog, web page etc.
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3.2. Relationship of attitude and familiarity towards purchase behaviour

The Consumer attitude towards the social network was measured with 6 items and the familiarity of
social network tools were measured with 8 items. Exploratory factor analysis was done for grouping
the factors and factor loading of the used items were depicted as follows in the table 3. The factor
loadings were more than 0.5. hence the items were well explained the particular scale. Cronbach alpha
value for the attitude scale and familiarity were calculated 0.910 and 0.902 respectively. The values
were higher than the 0.7. Hence the reliability of the scales was good.

The result of structure equation model was depicted in Fig 2. which explain the relationship of attitude
and familiarity towards purchase behaviour. The Chi-square ( 2 ) of the model is 132.86, at
significant at one per cent level. The Adjusted Goodness-of-Fit Index (AGFI) is a measure of the
relative amount of variance and covariance of sample and is jointly explained by hypothesized model
and the index. The index ranges from zero to 1.00 and values closer to 1.00 is indicative of good fit
(Joreskog and Sorbom, 1993). The Comparative Fit Index (CFI) value ranges from zero to 1.00. The
CFI value of greater than 0.90 considered a well-fitted model. In this study, AGFI (0.923) and CFI
(0.965) indicated that the model fitted the data well in the sense that the hypothesized model
adequately described the sample data.

Steiger and Lind in 1980 first proposed The Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) as
model fit statistics and was only recently been recognized as one of the most informative criteria in
covariance structure modeling. RMSEA value less than 0.05 indicated a good fit and values as high as
0.08 represented reasonable errors of approximation in the population (Browne, 1984). In this study
the RMSEA value for the model was 0.023 and it was indicative of good fit between the hypothesized
model and the observed data. Attitude towards social network and ads affect the purchase with the
path coefficient of 0.908 and familiarity affect the purchase with the path coefficient of 0.901. Hence
the conceptual model was proved the purchase was influenced by attitude and familiarity of social
network.

4. CONCLUSION
Social network analysis is a starting to be applied with rigor to solve the marketing problems. As
discussed in this study that the emergence of new marketing disciplines that focus on marketing to the
social networks would get importance in near future (Doyle, 2007). Similarly, from the foregoing
discussion the social network sites were one of the main media for advertisement to attract vast
people. More respondents (72.86 per cent) were coming under critics who post rating / reviews of
products or services in the social techno graphics ladder. Hence the marketers can formulate their
marketing policies based on the social network media for timely and effective communication to the
consumers. Moreover, the attitude of consumer towards social ads is positive. The purchase through
online was influenced by attitude and familiarity of social network. The word-of mouth marketing
tactics such as viral campaigns is easy way in social networks. Also the ads were displayed in social
network sites based on the profile segregation of the respondent. Hence it targets the right consumer
with specific message in social networks.
International Journal of Research in Management Sciences
Volume 1, Issue 1, July-September, 2013, www.iaster.com

5. FIGURES AND TABLES

Fig 1. Social Techno Graphics Ladder Source: Forrester research, Inc, 2007.

Attitude towards
social network and 0.90
ads 8
Product / Service
Purchase Behaviour
Familiarity 0.90
1
Fig.2 Relationship of attitude and familiarity towards purchase behaviour

Table 1 Worldwide Online Social Network Advertisement Spending, 2006-2013

Social Network advertising
Year Growth rate (%) #
Spending ($ billion)
2006 0.48 -
2007 1.23 155
2008 2.15 75
2009 2.88 34
2010 3.56 23
2011 4.14 16
2012 4.7 11.91
2013 6.1 22.95
2017 11.0* 44.55*
Note: *expected to grow. # estimated. Includes general social network sites where social networking is
the primary activity; social network offerings from portals such as Google, internet and marketer-
sponsored social networks; in all cases, figures development costs; figures exclude user-generated
content sites with social networking features. (Source: www.eMarketer.com and
www.socialmediatoday.com)
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Table 2. Usage of social network marketing tools with the social techno graphics ladder (n=280)
S.No Consumer at social techno graphics ladder No. of consumer Percentage to total
1 Creators 97 34.64
2 Critics 204 72.86
3 Collectors 210 75.00
4 Joiners 280 100.00
5 Spectators 280 100.00
6 Inactives 0 0.00
Table 3. Factor loadings of attitude and familiarity
Factor Cronbach’s
S.No Statements
loadings alpha
Attitude
1. Using SN marketing ads are very useful and informative 0.933
2. SN sites provide adequate service option to avoid the uninterested options 0.842
3. Users can secure personal info in SN sites 0.908 0.910
4. Social network sites are insecure ® 0.708
5. Social network sites are really useful to create awareness about the products 0.867
6. I trust the information come through ads in SN sites 0.658
Familiarity of social tools
1. I frequently read blogs 0.867
2. I publish own blog frequently 0.983
3. I often tell my friends in SN site about products 0.982
4. I used social network sites to know about my interested product or services 0.800 0.902
5. I like to show of my taste and style 0.508
7. I can create links of my interested site with social network sites 0.893
8. I like to see the promotions of a product in social site – ads, vedio 0.792

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