DISSERTATION PROJECT SYNOPSIS

ON

“THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON ONLINE PURCHASING

BEHAVIOUR OF CONSUMERS”

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Two Year Full Time

POST GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN MANAGEMENT

(BATCH-2018-20)

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF

PROF. KARAN SABHARWAL

IMS GHAZIABAD

SUBMITTED BY:
PRAGYA SAXENA
BM-018202

INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES,

GHAZIABAD

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 INDEX

SERIAL TITLE PAGE NO.

NO.

A INTRODUCTION 3

B PURPOSE OF THE STUDY 4

C LITERATURE REVIEW 5-6

D RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 7

E REFERENCES 8

INTRODUCTION
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 Buying behavior is a process of identifying relationship between products offered in the market and
targeted behavioral groups. It includes segmenting the market on the basis of buying behavior
dimensions, positioning the products, interest and opinions of the targeted audience. Buying
behavior of an individual plays a major role in the consumer behavior.
Social media refers to websites and applications that are designed to allow people to share content
quickly, efficiently, and in real-time. Social media is computer-based technology that facilitates the
sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through the building of virtual networks and
communities. By design, social media is internet-based and gives users quick electronic
communication of content. Content includes personal information, documents, videos, and photos.
Users engage with social media via computer, tablet or smartphone via web-based software or web
application, often utilizing it for messaging.

The Social media has changed the marketing strategies and consumer buying behavior. The social
media is one of the most major e-marketing instruments which attract the wide range of consumers.
It is very difficult task for the companies or marketing/advertising agencies to make a website that
will elaborate company information, products, services and other factors which are linked with
marketing. Making a web is a significant and difficult task for making a web designing it requires to
first make online web, writing online articles regarding products and services, establishing a social
media page and also emails etc. it helps you to connect with your audience online through search
engine, advertising channels, social media networks etc. Social media helps the companies or
organizations to build up the information through globe. The popularity of online shopping in India
is at great level because it’s big size of population. The government is also investing a lot in internet
infrastructure day by day. The developed retailing cannot be able to reach to the rural areas of India
easily whereas online retailing is able to find their buyers in cities including urban areas and
villages of across India.

Social media scenario in India

According to the Pew Research Center, social media users tend to be younger. Nearly 90 percent of
people between the ages of 18 and 29 used at least one form of social media. Further, these users tend
to be better educated and relatively wealthy, or earning over $75,000 per year.

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 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
Today millions of people use social media sites, which can be accessed by interest in any place
around the world. We know that social media is the best way to advertise the products for the
companies. Also we know that internet is mainly used for business people or other educational
people so the advertisement done on those webs are sophisticated and not loud. The audience of
social media is unlimited and it can be male/female, youth, elders, young adults etc. The buying
behavior of an individual is influenced by many factors and these factors affect the marketer to
match the needs of the consumer. So, the purpose of this study is to identify how online
purchasing behaviour of consumer is influenced by social media and this study will provide the
emphasis of social media on the total population. It will tell that how many people do actually go
through advertisement broadcasted on social media platform. And it will also let us know which
platform people generally do prefer.

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 LITERATURE REVIEW
1. Andrew T. Stephen in his paper reviews recently published papers about importance of
consumer in digital and social media settings. Consumer digital culture and responses and
attitude towards digital advertising are major themes in this paper.

2. M. Nick Hajli in his paper how today’s consumers use social media to generate network
with others but it also helps in running a business. This paper tries to bring out the role of
social media in development of e-commerce or social commerce.

3. Alok Mishra in his paper talks about the acceptance of social media has brought rise to
concept of e-commerce. Progressive development of technology have brought a change in
context of e-commerce and e-marketing; so this paper tries to bring out the factors that
influence consumer behaviour towards s-commerce (social-commerce).

4. Nima Barhemmati and Azhar Ahmad in his paper emphasis on how social marketing
plays an important role in boasting profitability of company sustainability. The purpose of
this research is to examine how social network marketing impacts on interaction of brand
with customer directly or indirectly.

5. Susan Rose, Neil Hair and Moira Clark in his paper focus on providing a review of the
consequences of online customers, experience in purchase scenario. This paper brings out
major important contributions:

 To bring out understanding of online customer experience in purchase context

 To propose consequences and result of online customer experience and to prepare
proper framework for testing

6. Rimantas Gatautis and Asta Kazakeviciute in his paper talks about how online users
grows very fast; as social media network platform represent new phenomena, few attempts
have been made about approaching consumer behaviour in online social network. This paper
focuses on providing a systematic view of consumer behaviour in social media research.

7. Bianchi, Constanza & Andrew, Lynda in his paper talk about the focus on online purchase
behaviour with specific focus on risk and trust.

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8. Rodney Graeme Duffett in his research aims to bring out the impact of social media
marketing on teenagers cognitive and behavioural attitude. Various factors like demographic
(age, gender, etc) and usage (access) and also create an impact on consumer’s attitude
towards “social media selling concept”.

9. Madhavan Parthasarathy and Anol Bhattacherjee in his paper tries to bring out the
impact of online services on adoption behaviour of consumers. In this research hypothesis
was tested with the help of data collection from field survey of online service users. The
result they found from the research was about “late adopters” being influenced by
interpersonal sources.

10. Tulin Durukan, Ibrahim Bozaci and A. Bugra Hamsioglu in his paper talks about how
social media allows people to communicate and usage of social media has increased
recently. In his study, previous research are scrutinized and three main titles are considered
for investigation of consumer behaviour in social media.

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 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The main goal of the research methodology is to design the research procedure. This involves the
overall structure, the sample procedure, the data collection and analysis procedure. A Research
design determines the strategies and methods for directing a specific report. It is a blue print to
which the study is to be done.

This study is research oriented study and it is descriptive in nature with survey method will be used
to know the insights of social media as a medium to influence consumer buying behavior. In this
study the consumer is divided into 2 age group segments that is between 20 to 30 and 30 to 40.

Data collection Sources:

Both primary and secondary data will be used for this study. Primary data will be collected as the
main source of information. And secondary data will be utilize for supporting the primary data. The
Secondary data will be gathered from, published articles, research articles, published general
reports, sources through related websites, etc. The primary data will be collected from the users of
social media by doing a questionnaire survey.

Data Analysis

The research would be conducted by collecting the data and using both qualitative and quantitative
approach to analyse it. Ms-excel and SPSS version 22 would be used to analyse the data. Under
which Statistical tools like Crosstabs and One-Way Anova would be used for analysing survey data
results.

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 REFERENCES
1. Andrew T. Stephen (12 October, 2015). The role of digital and social media marketing in

consumer behaviour.
2. M. Nick Hajli (25 January, 2013). A study of the impact of social media on consumers.
3. Alok Mishra (24 November, 2017). Factors influencing consumer intention in social commerce
adoption
4. Nima Barhemmati and Azhar Ahmad (13 August, 2014). Effects of social network marketing
(SNM) on consumer purchase behaviour through customer engagement.
5. Susan Rose, Neil Hair and Moira Clark (2011). Online customer experience: A review of the
business-to-consumer online purchase context.
6. Rimantas Gatautis and Asta Kazakeviciute (2012). Consumer behaviour in online social
networks: Review and future research directions.
7. Bianchi, Constanza & Andrew, Lynda (2012). Risk, Trust and consumer online purchasing
behaviour: A Latin American perspective.s
8. Rodney Graeme Duffett (16 November, 2016). Influence of social media marketing
communications on young consumers’ attitudes.
9. Madhavan Parthasarathy and Anol Bhattacherjee (December 1998). Understanding post-
adoption behaviour in the context of online services.
10. Tulin Durukan, Ibrahim Bozaci and A. Bugra Hamsioglu (January 2012). An investigation of
customer behaviour in social media.

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