If considering the exemplory case of Skoda, it offers the large results for such illustration. Skoda has generated the community of about 2000 people through social marketing. This community was started when a feminine customer has published its comment about the after sales services of Skoda and a person has chosen this comment and published it on interpersonal networking site (Muncaster, 2007). It isn't only the organization biggies who've used social networking sites as a medium to promote their brand but also a phenomena of retailing the designers label to raise the brand understanding among the target customers. Looking at the importance of interpersonal networking, this research aspires to examining the impact of public networking sites on brand advertising. This chapter supplies the brief introduction about the research study, like the aims and objectives of the study, significance of the research and rationale behind performing this study.
Aims and Targets of the Research:
The goal of this research is to investigate the impact of cultural networking sites on brand advertising. In order to fulfill the aim of the study, researcher has laid down following research objectives which includes been achieved in this research as part of research target.
To understand the importance of networks in branding strategy
To determine the good thing about using social press in marketing and branding
To understand the current and future scope & viability of public media
To identify the strategies of companies using social mass media as a medium for promoting their brand
In order to attain the above research goals, the research has addressed the following research questions in this research.
RQ1: What is the value of social networking sites in branding and marketing?
RQ2: What exactly are the advantages for a marketer in using cultural media because of its marketing and branding strategy?
RQ3: What is the current and future scope & viability of cultural media?
RQ4: What are the strategies utilized by companies for using public media in promoting their brands among the prospective customers?
Significance of the Research:
This research study is adding significantly in the studies of marketing and brand management where in fact the researcher has provided some key facts about the existing usage of public networking sites in brand promotion and marketing. The study findings will help the marketers to understand the advantage of using social mass media as a medium for promoting their brands and they can assimilate these studies in preparing their brand strategy. Furthermore, the research work provided the base for future educational researchers to conduct the study in the interpersonal networking space in relation to the marketing and branding management.
Rationale behind the study:
Reason for performing this research is to have the deeper insight about how exactly the companies are employing social networking websites for promoting their brand and in what ways they are really so that it is effective among the mark customers. In this manner researcher can get higher learning in the field of marketing and brand management and can integrate these results into its professional career.
Chapter Program of the study:
It is vital to divide the complete research into sub portions or chapters to get the sequential understanding of every step taken by the study for completing the research. Therefore researcher has segregated the entire research into fiver chapters. First chapter of the study provide the quick introduction about the study. Second section provided the literature of the research. Third chapter includes the research methodology. Fourth chapter provided the talk, analysis and findings of the research. Last and fifth chapter includes the conclusion drawn by the study from the key conclusions and provided the suggestion to marketers.
Summary:
There is a latest craze of using communal networking sites for brand campaign however the companies are realizing slowly and gradually of using sociable networking sites for brand advertising. The purpose of this research is to analyze the impact of communal networking sites on brand promotion. Social network have an impact on the purchase decision making procedure for consumers which will make the difference in the branding and marketing strategies. However social networking websites are of help for the marketers to improve the brand awareness and product awareness. Reason for doing this research is to receive the deeper insight about how exactly the companies are using networks for promoting their brand. This section provided the simple intro of the researcher to the audience.
Chapter 2: Books Review
2. 1 Benefits:
Social marketing sites such as Facebook (400 million users worldwide) and Orkut (100 million), or the micro-blogging site Twitter (which crossed 10 billion tweets lately) may offer interesting distractions to the average user. However the numbers add up to a dizzying truth for brands: communal networking sites (SNS) and sites like Twitter are prodigiously fertile spots to harvest advertisement business. Adgully speaks to India's leading brand nurturers and digital firms to understand how they are leveraging the networking trend. SOCIAL MEDIA soon became a means for brand Marketing and promotion on communal sphere, whereby, the enterprises began using these social network or websites for developing contacts and generating traffic to their particular websites. Today, these social networking websites form the main tool of social media marketing. The most commonly used websites that have become considerably popular over last year or two are Twitter and Facebook. Following both of these are some other sites such as LinkedIn, My Space, Digg and StumbleUpon (Adler & Kwon, 2002). Facebook is a Social Networking Site which helps friends and colleagues to share dialogues with the other person through Wall Posts, Messages and Feedback. Today, Facebook has more than 350 million users and still keeping track of. This site experience more than two million clicks each day. Statistics declare that users spend typically 20 minutes per day in Facebook. The advanced functionalities of Facebook allow the users a longer shelf life. A individual can view your data files which are more than five years old. With such wonderful features, Facebook soon became one of the lethal tools of SMM and SMO. Businesses, especially small range business houses started out using the medium of Facebook to promote their brands and services. Setting up a business site and initiating and regulating interactions with the tourists are a few of the strategies that business properties stick to, in Facebook (Alba, 2003).
2. 2 Attractiveness of SOCIAL MEDIA Sites in Growing Countries:
The online penetration is merely 3-4 per cent, and significantly less than 1 per cent of the total population has a Facebook bank account. And the ratio of men and women using Twitter is even smaller. " Mehra said that regardless of the percentages, expanding countries like India were already the 5th largest consumer of Twitter in the world, owing typically to Bollywood's enthusiasm for this. "And we are in the most notable 10 list of consumers of Facebook. Rahul Mehta, the business enterprise head of Ching's Secret, said, "There are around 5 crore Indians and 1 crore NRIs online. Facebook only has 1. 2 crore Indians and 40 lakh NRIs. " Mehta said the RoI on social media was substantially higher than what was provided by traditional press (Albrecht & Adelman, 2007). "These amounts are comparable to most national newspaper publishers, " Mehta said. "Facebook is most beneficial spot to reach Sec A+, A and B+. With internet penetration deepening, the quantities will rise within the next three to four years, " he said. Ching's Secret has 98, 826 (and counting) supporters on Facebook.
Khushboo Maheshwari, the top (digital) of OMD, said, "Today, 5% of Indian people has an online presence and it is growing at a rate of 35% CAGR. Quite simply, 50 million users have a existence on social multimedia. " Along with the numbers were growing, Maheshwari said. "With the government planning to spend Rs18, 000 crore over another 3 years to place a 5 lakh km optic fibre cable television network to reach every gram panchayat, the development rate will touch 100% CAGR, " Maheshwari said. Mobile, web, and broadband will be critical to the development in the returning years, Maheshwari said.
Mihir Ferrao, who checks Social Media Marketing and ORM at Starcom IP feels that Internet in India must grow by at least 20 to 25% season on yr, to get rid of the constant evaluations with Television set and Printing (Alkire, Collum, Kaswan, & Love, 2008). He said, "The sole reason we do not get a fare talk about of advertising budgets is because, next to the reach & penetration of TV or Print, we are very small. But if we go through the focus of brand TGs on Television & Internet, then surely the web will have higher traction force. " Sagar Dhoke, the founder of Fun Factor said that the e-revolution possessed helped to bridge the gap between your product and the end consumer, whether it is for a movie or an FMCG product. As for the group being targeted online by marketers, Ritesh Patel, the brand manager of CEAT, said, "Social websites has indeed became a very useful medium for a brandname like CEAT. " He said that CEAT aspired to be always a vibrant brand and it discovers complete match of TG in this medium (Arabie, 2004).
2. 3 The Strategy:
Sandeep Singh, the business enterprise brain of Quasar, said that promotional activities designed for online platforms is actually a campaign lead where the market is engaged for a particular purpose and then for a short duration. Or, brands could choose a more strategic and long-term effort. "In a campaign lead, the idea is to use social media platforms to create a hype and receive feedback from the city represented by the mark audience, " Singh said. "Strategic initiatives entail the management of sociable existence from brands' online-reputation standpoint, and the use of social programs as a medium of extended dialogue with the leads and customers. " Singh said experience suggested that the one-size-fits-all way did not work. "Every product and advertising campaign needs a different methodology and activation strategy, " he said (Bainbridge, Brent, Carley, Heise, Macy, Markovsky, & Skvoretz, 1994).
Maheshwari of OMD referred to one of the agency's typical advertising activities. "Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited has been quite energetic on the social advertising, " Maheshwari said. "We have uploaded Wealth Creation Study (WCS) Videos on You Tube and also created a Linked In event site for the WCS prizes ceremony. Besides, we likewise have a scribed site where we've uploaded different twelve-monthly WC Studies. " The creation of Wikipedia pages on the Motilal Oswal Group, on Motilal Oswal and Raamdeo Agrawal have been completed, Maheshwari said. "Due to these activities, seven out of 10 results on Google are managed and managed by Brand Motilal Oswal for the search Wealth Creation Research, " Maheshwari said (Baker & Hubert, 2001).
Zapak has carried out several similar promotions; Axe, Ponds, and Mahindra campaigns - that used a mix of available choices - are being among the most successful Zapak works. Mehra posted the concentrate areas: "Supporter pages and groupings, games and other fun applications on programs like Orkut and Facebook, an active handle on Tweets. " Mehra said it was necessary to link the APIs (software programming user interface) like OpenID and Facebook Hook up to one's site to market easy communication and conversations (Barabasi, 2002). Ching's Key advertises regularly on Facebook and YouTube, the brand's Mehta said. "But a great deal of traffic has been made virally due to content, quizzes, contests on Facebook. " He said that in the long run, social marketing was a long-term proper investment. "It is not brand building but genuine romantic relationship creation and maintenance, " he said. "And like any romantic relationship, it takes time for you to build. "
Describing the two aspects of advertising - public applications and pay for traffic -they use both options evenly well. For 'Emotional Attyachar', communal advertising was put on Facebook and other sites. "And we also released a credit card applicatoin on Facebook, " Mistry said. "Applications turn on proposal to high levels, users get to talk to the brand, plus they understand the values of the shows. On the other hand, advertising draws folks who are unexposed to the brand. Therefore the two options serve different purposes and we use as much of both as they can (Barnlund & Harland, 2005). Patel of CEAT said that anybody people-engagement tactic wouldn't normally work in isolation. If indeed they create an excellent social application and do not promote it, it'll die an all natural death owing to having less critical mass required to give it a viral effect. "Similarly, only paid advertising will neglect to generate brand connection with consumers which is the fact of social mass media. Such a technique would evoke the sensation of the one-night stand and customer may possibly not build relationships the brand in question in the foreseeable future. Starcom IP's Ferrao, also said a large number of their clients are little by little getting up to the fact that social marketing is a growing phenomena in India. A few of their clients whom they may have brought onto the communal space are Himalaya Organic and natural Tea and Foster, while they may be enhancing the interpersonal existence of brands like Tata Teleservices and Pantaloons. The results they have, in terms of followers on Facebook and supporters on Tweets etc. have given the client reasons to be thrilled. And has initiated thoughts of how do they leverage these teams further (Bernard & Killworth, 2003).
2. 4 Benefits and drawbacks:
Every program has certain advantages and disadvantages, so it's a question any longer of them wanting to be onto it or not. Advantages are varied: from being able to monetize certain things to having the ability to put your content out there; to finding opinions from users. In the past, people cannot connect to a brand over a one-on-one basis, but interpersonal multimedia allowed that to happen. Most brands believe that heading to SNS will put their brands up for public scrutiny, which is known as a disadvantage. But it is due to the fact to be an advantage because it gives them a good truth check to improve your product or service. But on this channel, Singh warned, one wrong step could snowball into something highly detrimental to one's brand, in few minutes. So they should learn to get it done well than not doing it at all, as you can't try to escape from such websites if their consumers are flocking them (Bonacich, 2002). They have to accept them today or tomorrow. SNS can definitely donate to making or breaking the brand image. Brands should be very cautious in venturing into SNS. While producing video games for the brands, Dhoke suggests subtle branding techniques to his clients. "Constant hammering of the product is a total turn-off to the gamer and customer, " he said. "Same applies to communal applications and games. The application should highlight the main top features of the app in a very exciting way alternatively than in the brochure style. "
Maheshwari endorsed Dhoke's assertion about treading carefully. "Yes, a single bad comment or rumor can seriously affect the reputation a brand like MOFSL has considered great pains to determine over the years, " Maheshwari said. "Also since SNS connect users from various areas of the world, it requires little to virtually no time for bad news to pass on. "
Patel strongly feels a consumer's negative reviews could be used to set-up customer joy. Today, more and more brands are participating immediately with consumers through various discourse forums, network sites and message boards to comprehend their prospects (Borgatti & Everett, 1999)
Ferrao of Starcom IP considers the clear benefit of interpersonal networking sites in the whole brand experience which one can bring to the consumer. He said, "With Facebook and Tweets, you can connect so many brand properties to those people who wish to hear!" he believes that in so doing, you know your time and effort is not going to waste which your initiatives could actually lead to sales (Burt, 2008).
2. 5 The Future:
Patel also outlined the actual fact that only a select age group was effective in social press. While Youngistan is spending additional time online, the more aged generation is not very lively yet. Also, online options are popular in metro and tier-II metropolitan areas. Internet penetration continues to be an issue in rural India. But Dhoke recognizes things in different ways. "Things changes in the next five to six years. When 3G is functional, the number of internet users will increase by about 25-35%. It is estimated that by 2013, India will have the 3rd largest Internet consumer base. Singh will go a step further and says that such as the West, the audience is currently online. After you make reference to the audience, these are the people with high throw-away earnings and spending electric power. This business are online for sure. And most brands are eying their wallets. If you talk about numbers, we still have some strategy to use to prior to the medium extends to the public. The Indian audience was enjoying the internet and its offerings. Gaming is an offering that has now become a love among the children (Carley & Krackhardt, 1996). The online gaming industry keeps growing and exactly how! Year-on-year, they may be recording a growth in the number of gamers in the country. Zapak, which was started just 3 years ago, already possessed 7 million unique new users, and continues to grow. Soon, there will be a day when the online Indian farmers on 'Farmville' will outnumber all the true farmers of our country come up with. Other than Tweets and Facebook, there are lovers of other websites which have gained immense attractiveness. LinkdIn is a specialist social advertising website in which a stream of professional gets the opportunity to review and connect to their counterparts. With more than 50 lacs people signed up with this site, LinkedIn offers a good platform for establishing new business connections. LinkdIn by facilitating more of an individual communication between your business pros can help the business all together. MySpace likewise have an enormous impact in the sociable networking world. Once listed with MySpace, a end user can not only inform the complete networking circle about their needs and wants but can also submit videos. A whole lot of personal things can be added to the site, and an active function of communication can be initiated. MySpace also helps in Social Media Marketing by enabling the businesses to generate their own profile page and neighborhoods and develop interactive dialogues with targeted mass of people. This enables in building brand recognition and can be of immense help to small business houses. Social networking and networking Sites havent only contributed to take inter-personal communication to a different level, but likewise have been a great marketing tool for the tiny businesses. Well prepared approach to social media via sociable networking sites can be of great help in promoting the business enterprise, create proper brand consciousness and in the end, meet up with the ultimate business ends. A business house must have proper skills and planning to tackle in the network to be able to experience the fruits of benefits to the most effective (Cartwright & Harary, 2007).
2. 6 Growing brand awareness:
We all know word-of-mouth propagation is a superb way of growing your brand consciousness. This is exactly what cultural network can do. When brand becomes recognizable to a huge range of customers, they start debate about the product. Maximum people who are satisfied with the product they often times post their responses through these interpersonal networking, which encourage other customer to buy the product. Big companies create a blog in connection with the interpersonal network to provide customer a broad area to discuss about product and present reviews. This way social network multiply your brand consciousness to millions of customer online (Cohen & Prusak, 2001).
2. 7 Engage customer interest:
A social marketing website is preferably fitted to product discussions, demonstrations, and showcasing of expertise and quality. Businesses can participate the eye of customers from a global market and create a powerful brand image. People can be fans of your website, product or business because they choose to; Make them feel comfortable with this decision by submitting quality information.
Talking about online business, social networking is a great opportunity to keep your site busy by attracting potential customer with well developed network strategies. Organizations already are utilizing new and creative way to make use of the massive reputation of various interpersonal media to promote their unique product. The excess gain is the long-term effect on business income through brand management. Social networking websites are just right for business marketers to identify prospects (Eveland & Bikson, 2007).
But to be able to get reap the benefits of social networking, business proprietor should study to handle their communal networking property carefully. Most well-known sociable networking sites like facebook, tweets and my space will be the great for hauling your concept to in foreign countries. But new businesses must always remember that benefits from social networking only include arduous work (Crane, 2009).
2. 8 Summary:
A public network is a cultural structure made up of individuals or organizations called "nodes", that happen to be connected by one or more specific types of mutuality, such as companionship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike associations of beliefs, knowledge or prestige. It was initially designed to make companionship and stay linked with colleagues, but now days every entrepreneur could have known how important social networking is for their business. Mainly online business has made cultural networking a priority as well. Top Websites have made it possible for businesses to develop their contact lists, cope with their interactions and created the ideas of viral marketing. It is because Shopping and sociable networking Internet sites gather a lot of information about internet surfers, and is becoming tremendously ideal for companies to keep track of and model consumer habit. Businesses are looking to companies like Tweets, MySpace and Facebook to help companies to market more products and services. Let's see how it makes an impact on your business in reality (Fararo & Skvoretz, 2004).
Chapter 3: Research Methodology
Introduction:
A research technique permits the researcher to get the right course in achieving the research aim and targets. Therefore it is very important to the researcher to understand the different research methods available and making the right collection of the correct research component to design the complete research methodology. This chapter provides the detailed justification of the research methodology that is used by the researcher because of this particular research. The aim of this research is to investigate the impact of cultural networking website on brand promotion which takes a robust research strategy.
Research Methodology:
Before moving further, a study first needs to understand the difference between exploratory and explanatory research and make the correct selection between them. Exploratory research is useful where the research wants to conclude the research through in-depth and detailed discussion about the study objectives and findings of the study. Alternatively explanatory research pays to where in fact the researcher conclude the research based on the key facts and using statistical measures with no in-depth conversations. Here the research wants to conduct the analyses to understand the impact of social networking websites on brand advertising so that it requires statistical procedures to perform the impact analyses. Hence researcher has used explanatory research in this research.
Research Design:
There will be the various authors who've provided the approach to design the best research methodology. However the most relevant research strategy design is distributed by Saunders et al (2003) by growing the study onion. Each layer of the research onion provided the study aspect and selecting the study components gives the complete design of the study. Research has used the research onion developed by Saunders et al (2003) for designing the research strategy. Information of selecting the study components by using research onion is provided in the next section.
Research Methodology:
Research strategy is chosen from the first covering of the research onion. A study can go for deductive, abductive or inductive research approach. On this research, researcher has used abductive research methodology which permits the researcher to receive the deeper understanding of research goal and need of correlating the books with key results of the study. Other research techniques such as inductive and deductive approach has been declined by the study since both approaches more focused towards the theoretical implications and less on the functional implication of the research.
Research Beliefs:
Research can choose the research philosophy by removing the second covering of the study onion. There are the two research philosophies such as positivism and interpretivism research school of thought. Interpretivism research idea is useful where in fact the researcher interpret the study results using literature and less targeted towards the functional implications of the research study. Since the research approach used by the researcher is abductive which requires the functional implication hence interpretivism research school of thought is irrelevant. In positivism research idea researcher only considers the functional implication along with the use of books to be associated with research results. Hence in this research, researcher has used the positivism research idea.
Research Strategy:
Research strategy can be chosen by removing third layer of the study onion. Research strategy enables the researcher to conduct the research and presenting the main element findings of the research. Furthermore research makes a decision on ways of data collection. A research can use survey questionnaire methods or face to face interview solution to collect the info. It is essential to capture the views of marketing managers about the impact of networks in brand promotion. Hence the study has used survey questionnaire way for collecting the data. Once the data is collected, a researcher needs to understand just how of performing the analysis and presenting the info. Within this research, research has used question by question evaluation and drawn the final outcome. Research has used both the secondary and principal data in this research and method for every of type of data is described below:
Data Collection Strategy:
Secondary data is the data which has already been existed in the posted format. Alternatively major data is the data which is unavailable and researcher acquire the info using questionnaire method from the relevant respondents. With this analysis, researcher has accumulated both the extra and primary data. The methodology explanation of collecting each type of data is provided below:
Secondary Data:
Secondary data in this research has been accumulated using various secondary resources such as academic journals which were procured from the university or college library, books, information articles, web articles, company websites and standard internet search. Secondary has been used to compile the books in this research.
Primary Data:
In order to fully capture the view items of marketing professionals to the impact of social networking websites, the info has been accumulated using major research. In primary research, researcher has ready the quantitative questionnaire and implemented the questionnaire using email. Others details of principal research is provided below.
Target Respondents:
Target respondents were marketing professionals who will need to have understanding of the social networking concepts and websites and accountable for preparing branding strategy for their companies.
Sample Size:
A total of 200 questionnaires were sent to the prospective respondents out of which 59 replies were received by the researcher. Therefore the total test size of the review is 59.
Sampling Technique:
Convenient sampling technique has been used by the researcher for designing the examples in this research. In such a research, the researcher already recognized to the testing and qualification criteria of the prospective respondents therefore the convenient sampling methodology is useful just for this research study.
Data Evaluation:
A researcher has used excel tool for studying the info. Each questionnaire responses are filled in Excel and developed a final data data file. Researcher has used some basic statistical procedures to analyze the data and key findings of the research has been offered using charts and graphs which were prepared using Excel.
There are certain moral issues which have been taken into consideration by the researcher. Researcher has followed the market research rules to meet up with the ethical difficulties in this research such as disclosing the respondents' names & contact information as per the respondents' consent, acknowledging the info resources, use of authenticated data resources and websites and getting together with the university rules to avoid plagiarism. Some limitations confronted by the researcher are access to the business information, coverage of test size and get in touch with the target respondents.
