SUMMER TRAINING PROJECT REPORT

ON

“A STUDY OF CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS SOCIAL MEDIA

MARKETING”

SUBMITTED IN THE PARTIAL FULFILLMENT FOR THE AWARD OF

THE DEGREE OF MASTER IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF:

Ms. Komal Jain
Assistant Professor, RDIAS

SUBMITTED BY:
KRITIKA KAUSHAL
Enrollment No. 03980303918
MBA, Semester 3A
Batch 2018 – 2020

RUKMINI DEVI INSTITUTE OF ADVANCED STUDIES

An ISO 9001:2015 Certified Institute

NAAC Accredited: A+ Grade (2nd Cycle), Category A+ Institution (by SFRC, Govt of NCT
of Delhi)
(Approved by AICTE, HRD Ministry, Govt. of India)
Affiliated to Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi
2A & 2B, MadhubanChowk, Outer Ring Road, Phase-1, Delhi-110085

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Student Declaration……………………………………………………………………………iii

Certificate from Company.……………………………………....…..........................iv

Certificate from Faculty Guide..…………………………………....…....................v

Acknowledgement.........................................................................................................vi

Executive Summary…………………………………………………………………………...vii

Table of charts………………………………………………………………………………..ix

INTRODUCTION

1.1 About the Topic

1.2 About the Industry or About the Company
1.3 Literature Review

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

2.1 Purpose of the study

2.2 Research Objectives of the study
2.3 Research Methodology of the study
2. 3.1 Research Design
2.3.2 Method of Data Collection
2.3.3 Sample Design
2.3.3.1 Sample Unit
2.3.3.2 Sample Size
2.3.3.3 Sampling Method
2.4 Limitations

ANALYSIS& INTERPRETATION

3.1 Analysis & Interpretation

FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS

4.1 Findings
4.2 Suggestions

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CONCLUSION

5.1 Conclusion
5.2 Scope for future research

REFERENCES

ANNEXURES

iii
 Student’s Declaration

This is to certify that I have completed the Project titled “STUDY OF CUSTOMER
BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING” under the guidance of
“Ms. Komal Jain” in the partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree
of “Masters in Business Administration” from “Rukmini Devi Institute of Advanced
Studies, New Delhi.”

It is also certified that the project of mine is an original work and the same has not been
submitted earlier elsewhere.

Kritika Kaushal
Enrollment No. 03980303918
MBA, Semester 3A

iv
v
 Certificate from Faculty Guide

This is to certify that the project titled “STUDY OF CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR

TOWARDS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING” is an academic work done by “Kritika
Kaushal” submitted in the partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the
degree of “Masters in Business Administration” from “Rukmini Devi Institute of
Advanced Studies, New Delhi.” under my guidance and direction.

To the best of my knowledge and belief the data and information presented by him / her
in the project has not been submitted earlier elsewhere.

Ms. Komal Jain

Assistant Professor,
RDIAS

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

No task can be achieved alone, particularly while attempting to finish a project of such
magnitude. It took many very special people to facilitate it and support it. Hence, I would like
to acknowledge all of their valuable support and convey my humble gratitude to them. I
would like to thank Ms. Komal Jain my faculty mentor in RDIAS who has always been open
to discussion and frequently enquired about the project and any problems faced etc.
I am highly indebted to Ms. Neha Khurana for her guidance and constant supervision as well
as for providing necessary information regarding the project & also for her support in
completing the project.
They have also given me valuable guidance as to how about the project. I have put my best
effort to make this project as informative & understandable as possible I have done the best I
could do & have been honest to the company. Thank you for supporting me in making this
project a reality.

Kritika Kaushal
Enrollment No. 03980303918
MBA, Semester 3A

vii
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Social media marketing or online marketing refers to the process of gaining website traffic
or attention through social media sites. Indian marketers are moving at a very fast pace to
tap the new normal opportunity. Social media has become main stream now. And for
businesses it represents an unprecedented marketing opportunity that transcends traditional
middlemen and connects companies directly with their customers. Customer acquisitions
remain to be their prime goal for Indian marketers. According to many leading marketers
of India, the top three online investment channels for 2011 were Social media, Email
marketing and Search marketing. 52% of the top marketers said that it is extremely
essential to integrate email marketing and social media. This is why nearly every business
on that exists in any country is exploring social media marketing initiatives. The focus of
marketers is shifting from ‘sending the message out to start engaging with customers‘.
Therefore in this context, the role of a marketer is changing from batch and blast
processing to creating listening posts and dialogue hubs in customer communities. A shift
from isolated pure play traditional techniques of marketing to an integrated multi-channel
approach is helping the marketers to address the challenge of new consumers‘expectations
across many devices and channels. Indian marketers are leveraging the power of various
communication channels, be it Email, SMS or Social Media in their portfolio. Here we can
see the main trend of Social media marketing in India and the scope of it. The future and
will undergo a research to follow the Customer perception about Social media for Brand
management.
This study tries to analyze the behavior of consumer in the market towards social media
marketing and emerging trend of digital marketing. It shows the actual role of social media
marketing in digital marketing and how it can be most effectively applied for targeting the
prospective customers and gaining their attention to meet objectives of organizations that
promote and market their products and services on social media with the help of digital
marketing firms. This is a descriptive study with large amount of previous research and
findings done prior to my research. After the construction of the questionnaire, it was
distributed to university students and responses were collected from the customers in several
areas. The data obtained was later analyzed and certain inferences were drawn based on the
findings.

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It is evident from the report that social media marketing ensures more interactions with
customers & also focuses on the tangible aspects like environment, wider reach, cost
minimization etc.

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 TABLE OF CHARTS

Title page no.

Chart1 25
Chart2 26
Chart3 27
Chart4 28
Chart5 29
Chart6 30
Chart7 31
Chart8 32
Chart9 33
Chart10 34

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Chapter-1
INTRODUCTION

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1.1 About social media marketing

Social media marketing:

Social media marketing usually focuses on efforts to create content that attracts attention and
encourages readers to share it with their whole social networks. A commercial message
spreads from user to user and presumably repeats because it appears to come from a trusted,
third-party source, as opposed to the brand or company itself. Hence, this form of marketing
is majorly driven by word-of-mouth, which means it results in earned media rather than paid
media.
Social media has become a platform which is easily accessible to anyone with internet access.
Increased communication for organizations fosters brand awareness and often results in
improved customer service. Additionally, social media sites serves as a relatively inexpensive
platform for all big or small organizations to implement marketing campaigns.

Social media marketing tools:

Besides research tools, various companies provide specialized platforms and tools for social
media marketing like:
 Social media optimization
 Social media measurement
 Social network aggregation
 Social bookmarking
 Social analytics
 Automation
 Social media
 Blog marketing
 Validation

Different Methods of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is popularly called as Internet marketing or online marketing. Today
one can find infinite number of ways for internet marketing. Many people who enter online
marketing are less worried because of its guaranteed success. If you see on Internet, all types

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of products and services are marketed online without much effort. Internet attracts many
business people to promote their businesses online irrespective of its size, capital, product,
etc. Social media marketing is very trending because it is a platform where organizations can
grow a lot and expand their reach without spending a fortune on marketing, advertisement
and promotions of their products and services. Social network marketing has grown to such a
height that today many people can't even earn without it.
Some of the most recognized network marketing tools are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
Snapchat and LinkedIn. Instagram became regular place for people who have newly entered
the field of social network marketing.

1. Blogging:
When a person starts Blogging or posting their data about any product, you can see
less response from clients. Later it will become big business via blog. Websites and
blogs are most powerful tools for social media marketing when matched with other
networking tools. Blog is an amazing tool which also provides many other facilities in
addition to just marketing the business. It also helps in communicating with other
clients in case if a person has any problems.

2. Vlogging:
A video blogging or video log, is usually known as vlogs. It is a form of blog for
which the medium is videotaping and is a form of web television. Vlog entries are
often combination of embedded video with supporting text, images, etc. Vlogging is
an affordable platform to use to help your small business grow. It is the new buzz
activity in the market. There are very limited entry costs when starting a vlog and one
can maximize the ROI of the video content by recycling the content from social
media, email marketing, and other amplification platforms.

3. Personal website/ social media business acccount:

It is important to have private website or a business account on social media if you are
a freelancer. Your website/page will help your clients to know about you and it will
make them clear that you are a reliable freelance marketer and help to make huge
revenue via online marketing. It makes you reach your target audience and they can
easily see your work history or other products/services you provide.

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4. Article selling:
It is also best and cheap internet marketing method. It is a mode of advertising your
trade just by writing articles and attracting endless number of users across world.
They usually sell our articles to different article database websites and article
directories. Today it provided free business to many advertisers and publishers and
they are really benefited through their articles or content writing.

5. Email marketing:
Electronic mail sending is very easy way of marketing. Collect list of email addresses
through portfolio websites and email about products or services to all internet users.
Email marketing is also done by sending various promotional mails including
attractive coupons and offers. Email should be attractive in such a way that the
recipient will get impressed to get back to your page.

6. Use social networking websites:

Social networking websites like Twitter, facebook, instagram and snapchat can be
used to promote your sales. These provide best platform for all those who are thinking
of e-marketing. They have a wide audience from all over the world. It takes less cost
of investment and yield high returns. It is most used method nowadays.

7. Video promotion:
People use several video distribution websites for their marketing. These websites
showcases your services or products to the whole world. All that you need to do is
film a video about marketing and send it to video uploading sites like YouTube,
Instagram, etc. It seems to be the easiest way of marketing than any other modes since
many people will be interested in watching videos rather than word form of
advertisement.

8. Press Release or media release:

It attracts many public clients and increases relationship among them. Any news or
article about new launch can be done on the websites or official social media handles
as an official statement for the world.

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 9. Search Engine Optimization:
This improves the traffic to a website by providing good quality web content. It also
uses RSS feeds and many SEO techniques.

Social media websites, pages and blogs allow individuals to interact with one another and
build relationships. When companies join those sites with their products to market, people
can interact with these companies on their business/commercial pages. That interaction feels
personal to users because of their previous experiences with social networking site interaction
Social media sites and blogs allow individual followers to: retweet or repost comments made
by the product being promoted. By circulating the message, all of the medial user‘s
connections are able to see the message/post, therefore reaching more people. Social
networking websites act by word of mouth. Because the information about the product or
services is being put out there on their social media business pages and is getting repeated or
reposted, more traffic is brought to the product/company. Through social media networking
sites, companies can have chats and interactions with individual followers. Through this
personal interaction a feeling of loyalty can be instilled into followers and potential
customers.

Engagement
In the context of the social networking websites, engagement means that customers and
stakeholders are participants in marketing rather than viewers. Social media in business
allows each and everyone to express and share their opinion or idea somewhere along the
business path to market. Each participating customer becomes part of the marketing
department of the product, as other customers read their comments or reviews. The
engagement process is then fundamental to successful online marketing.

Benefits of social media marketing:

 Lead generation
 quick response
 Increase awareness
 Visibility
 brand building
 Drive traffic

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  Wide reach
 engage people
 easily accessible
 Cost effective
 Effective to target youth

OVERALL AIM
Marketing is of very soul of any kind of business. It can range from promotions and
advertisements on a large scale to one to one word of mouth marketing. Marketing forms the
essence of a business by which the brand name is reached to the intended audience. The cost
related with traditional marketing techniques for instance print and visual media is increasing
at a fast pace. The cost of a full page color advertisement in ‘Time of India’ is around
₹200,000, if not more. Thus it is very important to look out for new and more creative
methods of marketing. Internet marketing especially social media marketing is a sensible
alternative.
This report tries to analyze how effective is marketing through social media networking. The
report also compares and contrasts the advantages and disadvantages of social media
marketing with traditional advertising like print and visual media. Today’s youngsters are
aspirers. They dream big and want to be their own boss. Most of them tries to be
entrepreneurs and the success stories of entrepreneurs are a huge encouragement for them.

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One of the most major problem that these entrepreneurs face while starting a new business is
the cost associated with the brand building and marketing. In this era, though the young
population is all set to take over the world with extended technological advancements, many
of them fail due to lack of financial resources for brand building. It is in this era that this
report analyses how well social media marketing can help new businesses.

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1.2 About the company

BING VIRAL MEDIA

Bing Viral Media is New Delhi based startup for online marketing & web development firm
focused on providing business-centric strategic solutions to give the competitive edge on
social media platforms. Bing Viral Media is positioned at innovation, creativity, knowledge
and technology to achieve your business goals.

Bing Viral Media (BVM) is a Google certified Digital Marketing Agency. They make brands
Go Viral. BVM have the ability to notch up marketing game digitally.
Creating an online brand image for every company.

What BVM does?

BVM help companies/brands to improve their brand presence on social media which helps
them to attract targeted audience.
BVM handles from making strategy to engaging with their customers, from building their
audience to providing clients with social media audits, from creating creatives to posting
them wisely.

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How BVM can help their clients to grow:

Social media optimization

Competitor Analysis
Posting company Related updates
Promotion and social campaigns
Integrating social media marketing into other marketing-related plans
Monitoring
Analytics
Social media strategy
Social media audit
Social posting
Build your audience
Engage with customers

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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Bing Viral Media

Company Logo:

LIG Flats, C-348, E of Loni Rd, Shahdara, Delhi

Address

City Delhi

State/Province Delhi

Zip/Postal Code 110093

Country
India

Phone +91 9717171663

Website
www.bingviralmedia.com

Instagram
bingviralmedia
support@bingviralmedia.com
Email

KEY MANAGEMANT

Founder: Mr. Ashish Thakaral

Co-founder: Ms. Neha Khurana

Graphic Designer: Mr. Aditya

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1.3. Literature Review

Scott (2009) states the reasons for brand promoters preferring online web for marketing is
that the tools, techniques and content are constantly evolving. The buyers reward creativity
by responding to the online efforts.
If you are open to trying out new things, you can be first in your industry to use something
new to communicate to your buyers.
Marketing in some social networking websites are still the most popular in their niche. Shih
(2009) says that there are hundreds of millions of active users across sites like Face book,
Hi5, Orkut and MySpace. 2.6 billion min are spent on Face book each day. These websites
are enabling brands to engage the right people in the right conversation at right time.
Marketing the brands through social media is becoming precise, personal, interesting,
interactive and social.

Weber (2009) says promoting a community is just like as promoting a new brand product or
service to the consumers. Social media is used to communicate people in the promotional
aspect and inclined to involve the people. Traditional advertising and direct marketing in
social media is to send people to the digital community to be informed, entertained and heard.
Users find appealing, a value high enough to encourage them to participate.

Borges (2009) finds that today's buyers want to be engaged differently than in years past and
many traditional marketing tactics simply do not work anymore. Social media marketing is a
revolutionary way to build solid relationships with buyers. Low cost, brand building, staffing
advantages, loyalty and level playing field are key benefits of social networking sites as a
successful marketing media.

Zarrella (2010) says the roots of online social networking can be traced to the 1980s bulletin
board systems (BBS). These systems allowed the users to create personal profiles, helps to
share information by sending private messages, public messages and post events at low speed
connectivity. After emanation of social networking technology in the internet world, it grew
higher and popular among the internet user.
Lacy and Hernandez (2009) says Twitter gives the ability to share nearly 140- characters
thoughts in a split second, where user can easily share links to press releases and stories about

22
their business, service or product. Making tweets interesting and diverse, there is a more
possibility of increasing the followers, by consider with news sharing and stories about the
industry that they serve.

The rules of marketing had to change and the web has proved a catalyst in bringing the
changes forward and amplifying their scale. The sudden emergence of the Web 2.0 marketing
techniques demand additional approaches, while most marketers are still wrestling with the
first generation, savvy brands are exploring the landscape that social media and social
networks create for marketers. These techniques are allowing much deeper drivers in social
change to be unleashed, with a profound impact on planning customer connections. The new
generation of relationship marketing responds to the additional challenges of digital media
literacy and in the right hands can trigger a rebuild of the entire marketing mix through
different strategies. Relationship marketing for the Face book generation demands both
thinking and acting differently (Chaffey 2003).

Stroud (2007) says that the ability of social networking sites to generate these huge volumes
of web traffic is proof of their huge popularity. Google, Yahoo and News International have
bought themselves a presence in the social networking arena. The detailed rationale for these
acquisitions differs but all have a common theme of wanting access to the enormous
audiences.

Ricadela (2007) says, Coca-Cola has been running promotions on MySpace for the past two
years for brandsincluding Cherry Coke and Fanta and has promoted Diet Coke and other
drinks on Google's YouTube.

Smith (2010) says that Face book is becoming one of the great internet communications of
people time now days. Whereas many companies have tried to emulate Face book‘s success
or challenge it in one geography or another, Face book has proven that the core asset on
which all of its services are built - the social graph - is much more defensible and powerful
than many others once anticipated.

Visitors to social networking sites are significantly more likely than average to visit leisure-
oriented retail site categories, such as music, jewelry/luxury goods/ accessories, consumer
electronics and apparel. Heavy social networking visitors are defined as the top 20% of
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visitors based on time spent on social networking sites. People typically enjoy sharing their
experiences with these products, whether it is to talk about their new iPhone or the pair of
designer jeans they just bought. Social networking sites offer the venue for those
conversations to occur. Social media advertising is ideal for promoting brand recognition,
although click-through rates are not so strong. Still, there is no doubt that advertising via
social media sites is an effective way to increase your overall revenue stream (Brinlee, 2007).

Social media has taken over the world in every sense. In the field of marketing, advertising,
brand building, promotions social media is the most sought after method adopted by
entrepreneurs’ young and old. The word social media brings to mind the most used
networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linked In though there are other social media
websites such as MySpace, Flicker and YouTube. Social media is widely used in various
businesses like small business, banking, retail marketing, B2B marketing, travel and tourism
marketing, financial institutions marketing and so on. This chapter aims to throw light on the
way in which social marketing can be used effectively for business development. The initial
part of this chapter will give an overview of how social media as a whole can help promote
businesses and further down the report, specific cases pertaining to a particular social
networking website used for developing a particular business unit will be examined.

IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN TODAY’S WORLD

Marie Swift (2006) suggests that placing an advertisement in the print media is not the best
solution for brand promotion. The problem with traditional mass advertising according to
Marie is that, these media appeal to a wide range of people who may not even be interested to
know who we are. On the other hand, promotions and brand building must be done with
people whom we think are potential customers for our business. This can be achieved by
channelizing a greater part of promotion and advertising budget for activities such as
networking, volunteering, hosting events and so on. Out of these methods, networking is the
best that suits the need of the time (Marie Swift, 2006). With the technological advancements
in today’s world, it is fairly easy to be connected with the outside world with the help of
social networking sites. Peer networking is an important way of advertising and this is all set
to take over the world of marketing in the near future. The biggest advantage of social media

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marketing is that it can be used for any kind of business regardless of whether it is B2B or
B2C. Also the relative cost is much lesser as compared with traditional advertising.

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS TO BUSINESS MARKETING

Michael Rodriguez et al (2012) conducted a study on the effectiveness of social media

marketing by analysing 1699 business to business clients from around 25 industries. The
study proves that social media is indeed helpful for B2B firms in generating new sales. Social
media is the best tool for finding new clients and deepening the relationship with existing
customers. The study assumed five hypotheses as follows: Social media usage creates
opportunity, social media usage helps in understanding customers, social media usage helps
in relationship management, social media usage aids in relationship sales performance and
social media usage helps in outcome based sales performance. Based on the social capital
theory, these hypotheses were tested and data obtained was analysed using the standard
protocol (Churchill 1979; Churchill and Peter 1984). The result of this analysis supported the
hypotheses that social media usage creates opportunities, social media usage helps in
relationship management and social media usage helps in relationship sales performance.
However, the hypotheses that social media usage helps increase outcome based sales
performance and social media usage helps in understanding customers were not supported.
Thus taking all these into consideration, it can be concluded that social media usage helps in
developing B2B sales. With over 955 million active users, Facebook tops the social media in
terms of usage and number of active users (Mashable website, 2013). Thus it is important to
know how Facebook can be used for B2B marketing.

Content marketing communication strategies

Pulizzi (2008) highlights a good content marketing strategy is ways in which to understand
problems and concerns of customers and offering best solutions and to transferring trusted
knowledge. Marketing communication strategies are very important nowadays than before.
An optimized informative content can connect with customers and enabling them to interact
with. Therefore, effective and efficient content marketing strategies will influence customer’s
positive interaction with a product and service even it will increase investment of returns.

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 Chapter 2

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

2.1 Research Objectives of the study

The marketing strategies of any company determine the profitability and success of the
company. In this project an effort was made to study the customer behavior towards online
marketing & advertisements & it’s effect. Marketing strategies of Bing Viral Media were also
studied to make suggestions for improvement in the same if required. Understanding of the
loopholes in its advertising strategies and making an improvement therein. This will help in
increase its market share as well as profitability which are-
1. To know if the customers are prospected through online marketing and the impact of
social media marketing on their buying behavior.

2. To understand the advertising tools of the company and what makes social media
marketing better than traditional marketing styles.

2.2 Research Methodology of the study

The study is an exercise involving estimation of parameters as regard to organizational
requirements- Research was designed so as to get the relevant information that can be used
for various organizational purposes. Some very important factors in research methodology
include validity of research data, Ethics and the reliability of measures most of your work is
finished by the time you finish the analysis of your data.

26
The research methodologies are not only the research methods but also consider the logic
behind the method. They are in the contest of our research studies and explain why we are
using a particular method or techniques and not the other.

2. 2.1 Research Design

The research design is exploratory till identification of sites popularity. Later it becomes
descriptive when it comes to evaluating customer perception of service quality of the site and
what it should improve.

Exploratory research is the research conducted for a problem that has not been studied more
clearly, intended to establish priorities, develop operational definitions and improve the final
research design. Exploratory research helps in determining the best research design, data-
collection method and selection of subjects.

Descriptive research is the study designed to depict the participants in an accurate way i.e.
Descriptive research is about describing the people who take part in the study. The
description is used for the frequencies, averages and all other statistical calculations. Often
the best approach, which is prior to writing descriptive research, is to conduct a survey
investigation. Qualitative research often has an aim of description and researchers may
follow-up with examinations of why the observations actually exist and what are the
implications of the findings.

There are three ways in which a researcher can go about doing a descriptive research project,
and they are:

Observational, defined as the method of viewing and recording the participants

Case study, defined as an in-depth study of the individual or group of individuals
Survey, defined as brief interview or discussion with an individual about a specific topic

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2.2.2 Method of Data Collection

Data Sources:
Research included collecting both primary and secondary data.

Primary Data: -

It is a firsthand data which is collected by the surveyor. Different ways of collecting primary
data is personal interview, questionnaire, survey etc. In my project report I collected data
based on a questionnaire through which I could get information about people’s behavior
towards online marketing.

Secondary Data:-

Secondary data is the data collected from already existing sources in various organization
broachers & records. Secondary data for this study was collected from many books,
magazines, websites & other previous studies.

DATA COLLECTION:

The data collection method used in this report was none other than survey method which is
usually incorporated for collection of raw information. The survey method is beneficial
because it helps to collect a great deal of information about an individual respondent. It
provides the first hand information of the users.
SURVEY:
The type of survey undertaken was that of sample type keeping in consideration the time
constraint and project guidelines by the institute, besides the viability of census survey. The
sample survey thus being taken to the right path to reach the desired destination was carefully
planned to convert of the operation by using selected samples and their responses.

STATISTICAL TOOL:

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The tool for obtaining the information was questionnaire. A structured questionnaire was
administered. The questionnaire was designed by keeping in mind the objectives of study. A
questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts
for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. They are often designed for a
statistical analysis of the responses; but this is not always the case.

Following is the link of questionnaire used in this study:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScXp4MeDYKhVVzhz89ZuN-
JkSnk7d1P92wh_Z5u1EkyRHGSqg/viewform?usp=sf_link

2.3.3 Sample Design

Sample design is made up of two elements.

 Sampling method. Sampling method refers to rules and procedures by which some
elements of the population are included in the sample. Some common sampling
methods are simple random sampling, convenience sampling, and cluster sampling.

 Estimator. The estimation process for calculating sample statistics is called the
estimator. Different sampling methods may use different estimators.

The samples collected on behavior towards the social media marketing from a representative
sample of people who are aware and active on various social media platforms. Survey
methods included online questionnaire to collect customers’ behavior towards the social
media marketing. All data collection activities conformed to standard procedures for
conducting online marketing surveys. The sampling, survey design, and reporting
methodologies were used given the time and resource constraint samples were obtained from
different people on the basis of convenience sampling.

2.3.3.1 Sample Unit:

University students who are aware and active on various social media platforms and are
familiar with various marketing techniques including online marketing were chosen for the
survey.

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 2.3.3.2 Sample Size:

The sample size of a statistical sample study is the total number of observations that
constitute it. The sample size is typically denoted by n and is always a positive integer. No
exact sample size can be mentioned here and it can vary in different research studies.
However, large sized sample leads to increased precision in estimates of various properties of
the population.
The sample size for collecting primary data was 70 respondents for this study.

2.3.3.3 Sampling Method

A sampling method is a procedure for selecting sample members from a population as
respondents.
The sampling method chosen for this study report was contacting personally according to
convenience and respondent’s willingness to respond. i.e. using convenience sampling.

2.4 Limitations

“Always acknowledge a study's limitations”

Acknowledgement of a study's limitations is an opportunity to make suggestions for the further
research. Sincere efforts have been made to eliminate discrepancies as far as possible but few
loopholes would have been remained due to limitations of study.
Although this project has been the worked out at its best yet there are certain limitation which
cannot be overlooked. If these limitations been overcome, the findings would be accurate.

Out of them some major limitations of this survey are listed below:-

 The sample was collected by using convenience sampling techniques. Therefore, the
result may not give an exact representation of the population.

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 Secondary data can be biased, inaccurate, obsolete towards the organization and the
study.
 Shortage of time is also a reason for incomprehensiveness.
 Lack of respondent’s willingness towards filling questionnaire can result in half-
hearted therefore untrue responses.
 Knowledge constraints of respondents were also an issue faced and this project was
an attempt to gather as much of relevant data as possible through various sources, but
this can cause reliability issues.
 Market research is conducted on basis of survey filled by various respondents, which
could be depended on their mood, feelings or perceptions which can act as research
drawback.
 The responses from these respondents could be biased which ultimately affects the
results shown by marketing research.
 Standardized answers of a questionnaire may frustrate the respondents.
Questionnaires are strictly limited by the fact that respondents must be able to read the
questions and respond to them.
 Social media marketing is a vast platform; our study may have failed to cover all of
those areas.
 The sampling unit consisted of university students; other people except this unit could
have given different answers depending on various age groups or localities.

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Chapter 3

Analysis and Interpretation

32
3.1 Analysis & Interpretation

As analyzed, various brand communication factors are involved in the social media
marketing and advertising, day by day competition among the brands is increasing. So, to
survive the brand communicators come up with more and more innovative, interactive and
interesting advertisements and ways to approach customers in order to gain traffic on their
page and promote their goods and services.

Following is the analysis and interpretation of the survey conducted using a questionnaire
with 70 respondents.

1. Age

Chart1-age

INTERPRETATION

The questionnaire includes a majority of 95.7% young respondents from age group of 18-25.

33
 2. Gender

Chart 2-gender

INTERPRETATION

There were 42.9% male respondents and 57.1% female respondents who took part in the
survey.

34
 3. Which one do you think is better media for marketing?

Chart3-type of media better for marketing

INTERPRETATION

The majority respondents of 91.4% among the 70 respondents thought that social media is
better platform as compared to print media for marketing of the products and services.

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 4. Do you think social media marketing is easy and efficient method of marketing,
advertising and promotions for an organization?

Chart4-efficiency of social media marketing

INTERPRETATION

95.7% respondents thought that social media marketing is easy and efficient method of
marketing, advertising and promotions for an organization as compared to other marketing
options.

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 5. How often do you come across an advertisement of a product on social media?

Chart5-times people come across ads on social media

INTERPRETATION

According to the survey, 44.3% people said they come across an advertisement on social
media very frequently, 18.6% said somewhat frequently and others said otherwise.

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 6. Do you think social media marketing will help the firms to find their potential
customers?

Chart6- if the social media helps the firms

INTERPRETATION

According to the study, 80% people think that social media helps the firms to find their
potential customers, and 15.7% people were doubtful for the same.

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 7. On which social media site do you find ads communicate well?

Chart7-social media site where ads communicate well

INTERPRETATION

According to survey, 51.4% people thought Instagram is best site where the ads communicate
well, 38.6% respondents preferred Facebook and 8.6 thought otherwise.

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 8. Have you ever accessed these ads coming your way?

Chart8- accessibility of ads

INTERPRETATION

Majority of 45.7% people sometimes access the ads that pops up on their wall, and 25.7%
people access them often or depending on ads.

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 9. What kind of brand communication attracts you on social media?

Chart9- kind of ads that attracts people

INTERPRETATION

There is a tie between people who finds video ads attractive and people who like interactive
flash ads attractive on 35.7%

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 10. Did these ads made an impact on you?

Chart10-impact of the ads

INTERPRETATION

50% people agreed that these ads made an impact on them on social media, where as 30%
respondents thought maybe it made an impact.

42
Chapter-4
Findings and suggestions

43
4.1 Findings

As seen earlier, the various brand communication factors involve in these kinds of social
media advertising and day by day competition among the brands increase. So, to survive the
brand communicators come up with more and more innovative, interactive and interesting
brand communication messages which make the users to access them and develop
relationship with these brands. These different brand communication strategies with attractive
name and its services are used online for business.

1. The finding of the study states that people prefer social media marketing over
traditional print media marketing now a days as they think it is more easy and
efficient way of advertising, promoting etc.

2. The audiences respond more to interactive flash marketing ads and video ads than the
traditional ads followed in internet advertising.

3. Almost everyone is very frequently communicated through social media sites to

advertisements and promotions.

4. Nearly everyone thinks that digital marketing can help a firm more in reaching out to
their customers with more impactful ads.

5. Users remember the brand by the way they advertise. They respond to any new form
of advertising which attracts them.

6. Social networking sites will become the primary platform for highly targeted
marketing and advertising. Social networking sites present a huge and vital
opportunity to build brand for small to big businesses.

7. Respondents said that the users of Facebook and Instagram are more exposed to
promotional advertisements.

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 8. Interaction is more on the display banners advertisements on Facebook and Instagram
and people most often access the attractive advertisements here.

4.2Suggestions

Communication should be more preferred than advertisement: People do not prefer

buying products through social networking sites. So, if the brand is communicated well and
remembered by the audience, then it is a greatest success to the company for their promotion
through social media.

The promotional way of advertising is best: Usual banner ads and pop-up ads make people
to ignore them. Therefore, advertising must be interactive, promotional and in innovative
form to hold the audience.

It should be targeting the individuals than the mass: If an ad is hosted for a group of
people then that would be of no advantage in delivering specified information. Adding more
multimedia to posts or advertisements to have more interactive factors in fan pages and group
would benefit the brand user.

Implementation and timely updation of social media page: “Usage of social media helps
to create a feeling for the customers that they have a direct and immediate access to the
company” (Rodriguez et al, 2012). Merely setting up a page on any social media site such as
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn is not enough to generate sales. The most
important part of implementation is that it should be frequently be updated.

Staying aware of the content uploaded: There are some downsides to social media
marketing such as privacy concern, legal concern and over exposure towards public. These
drawbacks can be overcome if social media is used promptly, wisely and effectively. It’s said
once it is on internet, it is never off it. That means everyone has access to information we
upload on social media, therefore organizations should be aware of what they upload to
protect their image.

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CHAPTER-5
CONCLUSION

46
5.1 Conclusions

Social networking platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have become a
personal, product and corporate branding hub in this digital era in India. All brands that exist
on social networking sites have the same core features and benefits, such as the ability to
create a page, share resources, add multimedia and much more. Social networking sites are
filled with potential users. They spend more time on these social networking sites due to vast
commercial contents, entertainment and social gathering. So, product or service
communicators place their product/services advertisements in these areas with more and
more interactive and with fascinating post so that their brand identity is developed among the
right choice of focused audience. Advertisers and brands uses social networking sites as the
major source for their promotion and developing brand identity among focused market group.
This also reduces their cost of promotion and increases their reach to prospective buyers if
they know how to market their product properly online.

5.2Scope for future study

Social Media is the current enormous popular expression in the realm of Internet Marketing,
and all things considered. It is now such a major piece of the Internet culture. It is setting
down deep roots and ought to be over looked by advertisers, or without a doubt anyone, at
their hazard. It is essential to comprehend WHY individuals utilize these sites, as there is an
expansive statistic on these destinations. A few people use them for business purposes, to
network and discover new bargains. Then there are people who use online networking sites
for purely personal reasons and are completely oblivious to the fact that there is a business
presence in the social networking environment at all.
It is interesting to see that there are such a significant number of various things going on in
one spot, and considerably progressively extraordinary that they appear to all work in
harmony.

Scope for further study could be to know:

• How differing person to person communication network could be?

47
• Are we contacting the correct crowd, and in the event that we are, at that point would we
say we are contacting them successfully?

• To know the viability of marking and conveying through internet based life.

• To know how advertisements can be made progressively appealing and intuitive.

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49
Annexure

Following is the questionnaire used for the survey of this study:

Customer behaviour towards social media marketing

This is a small survey on customer's behavior towards social media marketing and its impact.

Email address *
____________

Name *

1.Age *
below 18
18-25
25-35
above 35

2.Gender *
Female
Male
Other:

3.Which one do you think is better media for marketing? *

print media
social media

4.Do you think social media marketing is easy and efficient method of marketing,
advertising and promotions for an organisation? *
Yes
No
Maybe

5. How often do you come across an advertisement of a product on social media? *

very infrequently
somewhat infrequently
occasionally

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 somewhat frequently
very frequently

6.Do you think social media marketing will help the firms to find their potential
customers? *
Yes
No
Maybe

7.On which social medial site do you find ads communicate well? *
facebook
twitter
instagram
linkedin
other

8.Have you ever accessed these ads coming your way? *

often
sometimes
never
depending on ads

9.What kind of brand communication attracts you on social media? *

interactive flash ads
banner ads
games,quiz,updates
video ads
other

10. Did these ads made an impact on you?

strongly agree
agree
Maybe
disagree
strongly disagree

51