CHAPTER

3
The Consumer for
Digital Marketing

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, you will be able to:
• Explain the evolution of consumer behavior models, key attributes of online buying
behavior and the impact of digital technology on buying patterns
• Understand consumer demand patterns and the ways these can be analyzed online
through web-tracking audits and forecasting
• Describe integrated marketing communications, the channels, and basic constructs of
such communication

CASE STUDY google india: from keyword to alphabet

A company which started on the premise that each individual has very specific tastes and
that every long-tail search can be monetized, has grown in the past 17 years to become
the most influential digital marketing behemoth globally. With Google’s inclusion as a verb
in the Oxford dictionary, it has become an integral part of our lives and paved the way to
show all digital entrepreneurs that consumer-behavior-oriented businesses, built around clean
design, simplicity, and machine algorithms, can do wonders. Google (now a part of Alphabet)
being one of the icons of multinational corporations has also showed impressive growth in
India with reported revenues of ` 4,108 crore for the 12-month period ending 31 March 2015,
with a 35 percent year over year (YoY) growth. The same figures for 2013–14 were ` 3050
crore with a growth of 47 percent.
Being operational across multiple online business categories including search, online dis-
play, video, and social networking, Google India is eyeing growth through its Android plat-
form and Google apps-related services, attributing it to higher mobile adoption rates in India

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than other comparable markets. Google’s focus on mobile services and Small and Medium
Business (SMB) targeting has helped penetrate not only large accounts but also improve
presence in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. India is the fastest growing SMB market for Google
Adwords since it has one of the largest local shop owners in the world who are slowly but
surely enhancing their presence online to increase client base and establish branding across
multiple digital channels.
One area where Google India has recently started focusing and is looking to (at least) dou-
ble its business in India every year is the enterprise services, especially in the cloud computing
area. With its ‘Google for Work’ suite of cloud offerings, Google India plans to subsidize
Indian enterprises and start-ups by covering the fees of Google Apps businesses locked into
an enterprise agreement with its rivals—Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, etc.—until their
contracts run out. Also, if prospects plan to move over competitor’s software, Google India
plans to give its software package (which costs $5 to $10 per user per month) for free. Google
India also plans to offer up to $20,000 as free credits for Google Cloud services to 1,000
Indian start-ups from 2016 onwards. Through these cloud offers, it plans to move into the
very lucrative cloud services category by breaking prior lock-ins which showcases how Google
sees aggressive growth in this sector with growing internet penetration in India.
Several factors have been responsible for Google’s growth in India, the key among them
being India having the third largest internet users which is increasing by five million each
month. According to Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Google India, the count would be
500 million by 2018–19. Also, with India having a substantial English-speaking population
and a rising middle-class segment with increasing access to mobile services, Google is bank-
ing on its multi-lingual bouquet of products and services to target the Indian market. The best
example here is of Android One through which the company is marketing its services to the
rural segment to promote the use of smartphones. One of the biggest areas in which Google
has been able to earn revenue in India is through hosting ads of e-commerce websites, a seg-
ment which of late has been pumping a lot of money into digital marketing.
With such fast growth comes its own challenges. Globally, since its inception, Google
has faced a backlash both in terms of its business model execution and consumer privacy
concerns. Another challenge which Google faced in India was around government con-
cerns on privacy when it started collecting data for its ‘Street View’ project in Bangalore.
Although Google India maintained that this data was being collected to help people, busi-
nesses, and eventually the government itself was viewed with healthy skepticism from mul-
tiple quarters. Earlier, in 2005, India’s former president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam had criticized
Google Earth and other online satellite mapping services for exposing sensitive installa-
tions in developing countries to terrorists. There have also been some debatable content-
related lawsuits against Google (and the entire ecosystem of online websites) wherein their
name came for allegedly hosting offensive content. This heated debate was against 21 other
websites including Google which argued on its case stating that blocking websites is not a
solution as it relates to a constitutional issue of freedom of speech and expression.

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 Chapter 3 • The Consumer for Digital Marketing | 83

The future looks quite bright with a lot of opportunities at hand in the Indian market.
Google announced in May 2015 that it would be investing ` 1,000 crore in Hyderabad,
(Telengana), to build a 2-million sq. feet campus (which will be its biggest facility outside the
US). It has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Culture and
the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to digitize heritage monuments. In another first,
Google Business Groups (GBGs) will be set up in about 30 Indian cities to help small and
medium enterprises go online with their business. Google also plans to bring free Wi-fi to
400 train stations across India in the next several years and has partnered with India’s largest
railway network and a major fiber internet company to connect 100 stations. Google’s recent
CEO Sundar Pichai (who is also of Indian origin) has been right in mentioning, “We think this
is an important part of making the internet both accessible and useful for the more than 300
million Indians already online, and the nearly one billion more who are not.”
With initiatives like streamlined search, which serves up fast-loading results on mobile
devices with slow connections; YouTube Offline, which lets users download videos to enjoy
when they are not connected; and Map Maker, which lets people mark roads, landmarks
and disaster-stricken areas on Google Maps, India is definitely emerging as one of the top
markets for Google worldwide both in terms of reach and influence.

Consumer Behavior on the Internet

Consumer behavior and related studies have formed an integral part of marketing as it is crucial
to understand the motivations and factors which lead to a consumer buying any specific brand
over another and choosing certain websites, platforms, and channels over and over again for
purchases. In this chapter, we shall go through the impact and influence of digital technology to
understand how consumer demand can be anticipated and managed with available online data,
how traces of consumer footprint can be tracked, and a fully customized marketing program can
be developed.
First, it is important to understand the difference between two terms which are often con-
fused and substituted for each other—the consumer and customer. In marketing parlance, the
term customer refers to the purchaser of the product whereas consumer refers to the end user
of the product or service. The simplest example relates to baby products wherein a mother is
the customer while the actual consumer is the baby for whom the product has been bought.
In several cases, the consumer can also act as a customer, when he/she is singularly involved in
searching, evaluating, and buying the product, and finally consuming it.
Why is this distinction between the two definitions important? It is because of the different
strategies which need be applied by brands to know whom to exactly market and who is the
influencer (also termed as advocate) to buy the product on behalf of the consumer. In a lot of

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