ANALYSING THE PURCHASE INTENTION OF

CONSUMER IN RELATION TO INTERNET MEMES

A BUSINESS RESEARCH REPORT

Submitted by

ANANDHU PS

M180245MS

in partial fulfillment of Business Research Project for the award of the degree
of

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CALICUT
KOZHIKODE, 673601
JUNE 2020
 CERTIFICATE

Certified that the business research project report “Analysing the Purchase
Intention of Consumer In Relation To Internet Memes” is the bonafide work of “
Anandhu PS, M180245MS” MBA in SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES,
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CALUCUT carried out under my
supervision during… to…………

Place: NIT Calicut

Date Dr. Nithya Murugan
SUPERVISOR
Assistant Professor

Dr. Radha Ramanan

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT
 DECLARATION

I certify that

a. The work contained in this business research project is original and has been done by
myself under the general supervision of my internal supervisor.
b. The work has not been submitted to any other Institute for any degree or diploma.
c. I have followed the guidelines provided by the Institute in writing the report.
d. I have conformed to the norms and guidelines given in the Ethical Code of Conduct of the
Institute.
e. Whenever I have used materials (data, theoretical analysis and text)(Kumar, 2013 #1)
from other sources, I have given due credit to them by citing them in the text of the thesis
and giving their details in the references.
f. Whenever I have quoted written materials from other sources, I have put them under
quotation marks and given due credit to the sources by citing them and giving required
details in the references.

Anandhu Ps
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I am greatly indebted to God Almighty for being the guiding light throughout with his abundant
grace and blessings that strengthened me to do this endeavor with confidence. I would like to
acknowledge to Dr T Radha Ramanan Head of the Department, School of Management Studies,
National Institute of Technology Calicut for his wise guidance and supportive attitude.

I am extremely grateful to Dr Nithya Murugan, Assistant Professor, School of Management

Studies, National Institute of Technology Calicut, for inspiring, providing valuable suggestions,
constant encouragements and providing sincere guidance throughout the project.

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to each member of the School of Management
Studies, National Institute of Technology Calicut for their kind co-operation and encouragement
that helped me in completing the Business Research Project. I would also like to extend my
gratitude to all the well-wishers and friends who supported me to present the BRP report.
ABSTRACT
 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1. INTRODUCTION
The proliferation of Internet has changes the way people live and it has become an important part
of their life. Advertisements helps the companies to create awareness among the customers and
shape the perception of the customers either in the positive or in a negative way. Kumar and Raju
acknowledged that advertising had a strong influence on the minds’ of customer (Kumar & Raju,
2013). Advertisement nowadays can be performed in various mediums and in various forms.
Regarding the medium, social media is becoming more popular for ads as it is evident by
increasing budget of social media ads (Hootsuite, 15 Dec 2017). Regarding form, humor is used
in advertising, as it is believed to attract more attention from the audiences because of its
persuasive effect. Moreover humor can reduce the resistance of audiences in accepting the
information and it is also claimed to increase preference and create positive impact on the
audience (Djambaska, Petrovska, & Bundalevska, 2016)
In the age of Internet, the form of humor is changing. Internet meme or meme is one form of
humor that develops and become popular due to Internet. Davison defined an internet meme as a
piece of culture, typically a joke, which obtain influence through online transmission. Meme was
first defined as a unit of conceptual replication which identifies topics, ideas that spread through
a culture (Davison, 2012).Nowadays Internet memes are used for advertising campaigns and the
reason behind is that when meme-marketing done correctly it can help in converting the
customers to purchase more easily. For instance, Gucci lately used memes for their campaign
with hashtag #TFWGucci on Instagram. Besides Gucci, Carousell has used memes to attract the
audience on Instagram (Delafrooz, Paim, & Khatibi, 2011). Even though meme has been used
for marketing, it has not been intensely researched as a marketing tool to show its effectiveness
empirically. So the effectiveness of the meme usage remains unobserved. Furthermore, the
meme itself has not been explored intensively and this leads to vagueness on how memes can be
used to increase the purchase intention in social media. Therefore, this study is conducted to
analyze the purchase intention of consumers while they are exposed to internet memes.
1.1 Problem Statement
Every company’s goal is to increase the sales and revenue of the organization, for that they may
use different techniques. Advertiser always want their advertisement to be persuasive and
effective so that consumer mind will develop an intention to purchase the product after watching
the ad As humorous elements gets more attention of the consumers towards ad and brand (Cheng
& Duo, 2004), meme marketing is getting more successful in these days. But the problem is how
to capture the consumer attention towards different types of memes and what are the factors that
stimulate the consumer’s intent to purchase so that companies can do their marketing activities at
low cost (Lee, Liang, Liao, & Chen, 2019).

1.2 .Research Objectives

 To analyse effectiveness Internet memes as marketing tool
 To find out the type of memes that have the potential impact on consumer purchase
 To find out the factors of Internet memes that have the potential impact on consumer
purchase(Lee, Liang, Liao, & Chen, 2019).

1.3 Significance of the study

This particular research focuses on analyzing the impact of internet meme on customers purchase
intention. It explores the factors and types which are affected by the internet memes and
ultimately influences the purchase intention of the consumers (Fatima & Lodhi, 2015). The study
will help the marketers to understand the consumer purchase intention while seeing internet
memes so that they can devise appropriate strategy to advertise their product in a best possible
way.

1.4 Scope of the study

The conclusions drawn from the study are based on the responses given by the consumers in a
specific area. This study will be helpful in getting an insight into the perception of consumers on
internet memes and its impacts on purchase intention of consumers (Fatima & Lodhi, 2015).
 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Internet memes

The quick spread of the internet has resulted in a cultural practice of creating and sharing internet
memes. The concept of meme was coined in 1976 by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his book
The Selfish Gene. He proposed the term meme as a Darwinian, gene-centered approach to
cultural evolution, defining it as “the unit of cultural transmission”. The researcher Carlos
Mauricio Castaño Díaz aims to create a formal definition for meme which can be used to
characterize and study memes in academic context. The concept of internet memes is analyzed
from different perspectives, which starts from the definition given by Dawkins and following by
other authors as Sperber, Blackmore, Dennet and Olesen. The aim behind this was to familiarize
the readers with different concepts of meme. According to the study conducted two different
types of meme were found in the contemporary definitions, the meme-gene, and the meme virus.
The meme-gene is a meme that has found out from the Darwinian Theory and can be defined in
the same parameters used by Dawkins whereas the meme-virus is defined according to Lamarck
Theory of evolution. The study conclude that the concept of meme is not a static concept and the
creation of a definition and characterization of the meme not only approach the academic
network to the phenomenon, but it can also work in the opposite direction, by letting the
academy characterize other phenomena in order to differentiate, so it is possible to predict its
behavior in the cyberspace (Castaño Díaz, 2013)

Beata Bury focuses on the creativity of Internet memes used as marketing tool in advertising
campaign. The reason advertisers use internet memes is that it helps to generate interest in their
products and catch the consumers’ attention. In order to analyze Internet memes a random
sample of a few memes from previous years were collected from two sites, memebase.com and
someecards.com to carry out the research. The semiotic approach was used in the research in
order to investigate Internet memes and to find out their role in advertising. Accordingly
semiotic method draws the attention to signs and texts and analyses how the images and text
connect with each other to form some messages. From the analysis the researcher concludes that
the companies
use of Internet memes to show that they are active members of the online culture and the
advertisers do their maximum effort to make the adverts memorable so that consumers could buy

the product. In short internet memes are one of the forms of advertising and entertainment in the
Internet world that can catch the customer’s attention (Bury, 2016)

2.2 Online Purchase Intention

Online purchase intention is defined as the situation where consumers are willing and intend to
make an online transaction (Pavlou, 2003). Purchase intention predicts the subsequent purchase
and makes the consumers in a position to think will they buy (Tirtiroglu & Elbeck, 2008). The
term is used when there is willingness to search, select and purchase products and service
through Internet. Since the Internet affects decision-making behavior of the customers in all three
stages of pre-purchase, purchase and post purchase. Therefore, customer online purchase
intention in the online shopping environment will determine the power of a consumer’s intention
to do a purchasing behavior through the Internet (Salisbury, Pearson, Pearson, & Miller, 2001)
The intention to purchase is determined by the individual’s attitude towards the attributes of the
products or service. With this motive Narges Delafrooz et.al examines the factors influencing
consumers’ attitude toward online purchasing and purchase intention from the Malaysian
perspectives. Result of the analysis showed that trust and attitude had direct effect on online
purchase intention, whereas utilitarian orientation, convenience, prices wider selection, and
income had indirect effect on online purchase intention through the attitude towards online
purchasing as mediation (Delafrooz, Paim, & Khatibi, 2011).
Jae-Il Kim et.al states that as long as a user intends to perform a given online behavior like
intention to search and intention to purchase, he or she will likely succeed in doing so that is
search or purchase to the extent that the person is provided with the required resources like time,
money, skills, cooperation of others. The research focuses on various factors that affect online
search intention which can be used as the predictor of online purchase intention. Data for the
analysis were mostly collected from young adults with familiarity of computer use and online
shopping experience and structural equation model was used for analysis. The results from the
study showed that the online search intention positively affects online purchase intention (Kim,
Lee, & Kim, 2004)

2.3 Internet memes and Purchase intention and related papers

Hsin-Hui Lee et.al in his research paper checks whether consumers generate purchase intention
after being exposed to an Internet meme. The basic idea behind the research was to discuss how
the values formed by the consumers due to internet meme influence the consumers purchasing
intention with help of their attitude. Here they used a model called value–attitude–behavior
model as its theoretical core. The data was collected from a sample comprised of 380
respondents who were active users of social media through questionnaire. Structural equation
modeling was used for the analysis. The research results reveal that values influence the
purchase intention through attitudes. In light of mentioned findings, it is suggested that marketers
should focus on value brought by an Internet meme and thereby design fun and witty memes to
attract consumers (Lee, Liang, Liao, & Chen, 2019)
The research paper by Elfira Fauziah et.al aims to assess the potential of internet memes to be
used in advertising to increase the brand awareness of an Indonesian ecommerce business,
Fabelio, an furniture shop in Indonesia. The method of study used is experimental – quantitative
and it is conducting using Instagram post. There are two respondents for the study to measure the
virality and the brand awareness of the respondent. The respondents are one who follow
Fabelio’s Instagram account (control group) and other are respondents who like the memes of
Fabelio’s but do not follow Instagram account (experimental group). T-test was used to compare
the brand awareness of the respondents and from the results it was found that brand awareness
level of the experimental group was almost similar to the control group which shows that internet
memes is as effective as traditional advertisements in improving the brand awareness (Fauziah et
al., 2018).
Humor in advertisement attract more attention from the customers because it has a persuasive
effect which thereby make an intention to purchase among the consumer. Hamid Mehmood et.al
found that humour in advertising has significant impact on consumer purchase intention. The
study is of descriptive and Correlation and regression were used as statistical test of data and
SPSS was used to analyze the data. The results shows that humor in advertising attract the
consumer purchase intentions on Ufone network in telecommunication sector of Pakistan.
Moreover the researchers

also found that humor can be very effective way for changing consumer’s mind for specific
product and humorous nature of ads can enhance attention against non-humorous ads (Mehmood
& Masood, 2016).
A research done by Muhammad Salman Arshad et.al states that advertisement related variables
have a significant impact on consumers purchase intention. The purpose of the research was to
focus on the kinds of advertisements and the factors which were probably most suitable for the
consumers of Pakistan to make their purchase decisions. Data were collected from 120
respondents and were analyzed using regression model. In order to find the impact of
advertising, the advertising related variables used includes attitude to advertising (general),
attitude towards television advertising, attitude towards print advertising, attitude towards
billboard advertising, message content in ad, advertisement time, advertising scrolling messages,
repetition of ad, celebrity endorsement and language of advertisement on the dependent variable
of consumer’s purchase intentions. The results of the analysis shows that most advertisement
related variables have significant impact on purchase intention of consumers (Arshad & Aslam,
2015).

2.4 TRA and Purchase intention

Zaidi Oussama Chihab in his paper studies the influence of brand image, social and functional
values as well as past behavior on the purchase intention of luxury perfumes in Algeria. The
researchers proposed a model based on theory of reasoned action (TRA) for the study. The
theory states that behavioral intentions are the immediate antecedents to behavior. The results
showed that social and functional values have a significant positive impact on attitude and the
variables
like price-quality, brand image, past behavior and attitude variables have a significant positive
impact on purchase intention of luxury perfumes 11.(Chihab & Abderrezzak, 2016)
The rapid growth of information technology (IT) in the economy has brought a big change in the
aspect of market structure worldwide. See Siew Sin et.al in their research paper examines the
factors that make an impact in the Malaysian young consumers online purchase intention via
social media. The technology acceptance model (TAM) and the theory of reasoned action (TRA)
formed

the theoretical base for the study. The theory posit that a person’s voluntary behavior is by his or
her attitude toward that behavior and his or her perception of others’ beliefs whether he or she
should or should not perform that behavior. The results showed that perceived usefulness was the
most important factor that have a strong impact on the young consumers online purchase
intention through social media, followed by perceived ease of use and subjective norm (Sin, Nor,
& Al-Agaga, 2012).
Yuanwen Zeng examines young consumer’s perceptions and purchase intentions towards mass-
designer lines within the attitude-intentions paradigm. The researcher used Theory of Reasoned
Action (TRA) as the theoretical framework to examine young consumer’s attitudes and purchase
intentions towards mass-designer line products. An attitude-intention model, based on the TRA,
was developed to examine the purchase intention. The results indicated that attitude is a strong
predictor to purchase intention for the young consumers. The finding confirmed that TRA is a
good theoretical framework to explain consumer purchase intention in various settings (Zeng,
2008)
Fatemeh Meskaran et.al in their research paper examines the antecedents of trust and security
and thereby proposes a broad model taking into consideration all the effect factors for online
purchase intention. Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) was the supporting theory involved in
investigating the factors that affect online purchase intention. TRA states that behavior is
preceded by intentions, thereby the intentions are determined by the attitude toward the behavior
and the subjective norms (Meskaran, Ismail, & Shanmugam, 2013).
Lackana Leelayouthayotin used the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) to explain and test the
behavioral intention of health food consumers when buying health foods online in Thailand. The
theory states that the normally customers form attitudes that influence purchase intention to buy
product or service online when they use Internet. Therefore, attitudes towards products online
and Internet usage are strong predictors of the intention to purchase online (Leelayouthayotin,
2004, Eagly & Chaiken, 1993).

CHAPTER 3: THEORECTICAL FRAMEWORK

Based on the literature review insights, a modified version of Fishbein and Ajzen’s (1975)
Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) is used as the theoretical framework to analyze the purchase
intention of consumers in relation to internet memes. As per the theory of reasoned action, the
factors of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavior largely posit as the determinants of
online consumers purchase intention (Limayem, Khalifa, & Frini, 2000). To gain a more detailed
understanding of factors that drive consumers’ attitudes towards internet memes and the resultant
purchase intentions, an attitude-intention model (Zeng, 2008), based on the TRA is made which
include six variables. These six variables are: Attitude towards Sarcastic Memes, Attitude
towards Comparison Memes, Attitude towards Personification Memes, Message content of
Internet Memes, Repetition of Internet Memes and Internet Memes language.

The attitude towards different type of meme is one of the factor that can influence the consumers
purchase intention. Sarcastic meme is a meme that uses a sarcastic statement to create humor.
These memes are used to express things in a pleasant way or the idea is to say something without
hurting others directly. Comparison meme is a meme which puts more than one element like
pictures, symbols, sign etc. together to produce humorous situation. Those elements are put
together to be compared and the comparison part form the humorous part. Personification meme
is a meme that includes things likes persons, animals and objects which are attributed by human
characteristics. Personification helps to connect the people with the objects that is personified
(Fauziaah et al., 2018) Message content of the memes is another important factor that can
influence the consumers purchase intention. The content of the meme communicates what the
meme is for and persuades the consumers to purchase the product or service (Arshad & Aslam,
2015) The repetition of internet memes reminds consumers about the product advertised which
may have impact on consumer’s purchase intentions (Anand & Sternthal, 1990) and finally
language used is another factor which makes the people to read the memes and thereby make an
impact on the intention to purchase.

3.1 Proposed conceptual model

Attitude towards
Sarcastic Memes

Attitude towards
Comparison
Memes

Attitude towards Purchase Intention

Personification
Memes

Message content
of Internet Memes

Internet Memes
Language
 Repetition of
Internet Memes

Figure1 : Proposed conceptual model

Based on the conceptual framework the following hypothesis were formulated:

H1: Attitude towards Sarcastic Memes has significant relationship with consumer’s purchase
intentions.

H2: Attitude towards Comparison Memes has significant relationship with consumer’s purchase
intentions.

H3: Attitude towards Personification Memes has a significant relationship with consumer’s
purchase intentions.

H4: Message content of Internet Memes has a significant relationship with consumer’s purchase
intentions.

H5: Repetition of Internet Memes has a significant relationship with consumer’s purchase
intentions.

H6: Internet Memes language has a significant relationship with consumer’s purchase intentions.
 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Literature insights helped to develop the questionnaire by carefully choosing items to assess the
variables. It was followed by pre-testing of the questionnaire by using SPSS in order to
determine reliability of content, which was carried out with a small sample size of 30.After
modifying and refining the questionnaire as per the requirements of pilot study, questionnaire
was finalized and data were collected.
The study intended to gather responses from around 200 respondents who were active users of
Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites. Convenience sampling method was used to
collect data from the respondents. Out of the questionnaires that were circulated to the
respondents 181 were received.

Figure 2: Gender of the respondents

 Figure 3: Age of the respondents

3.1 Design of the Questionnaire

The primary data was collected from the respondents through questionnaire. The first part of the
questionnaire consists of items for knowing whether the respondents have information of memes
and also shows photos different types of memes with small description for the purpose of
understanding who doesn’t have information about the types of memes. The second part of the
questionnaire consist of items which comes under eight construct i.e. seven dependent variable
and one independent variable. The study includes twenty six items under eight constructs. Each
of these items was evaluated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1: “Strongly disagree” to
5: “Strongly agree” (Arshad & Aslam, 2015).

Figure 4: Percentage respondents who knew about memes

 Figure 4: Platforms used for seeing memes

The present study used Multiple Regression Analysis using SPSS (Arshad & Aslam, 2015,
(Mehmood & Masood, 2016) to analyze the purchase intention of customers in relation to
Internet memes.

CHAPTER 5: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

A collection of validated methods and procedures were used to evaluate the data collected. A
crucial step involved in the formation of measurement scale was to assess the reliability of the
constructs. For this purpose, Cronbach’s alpha was calculated. Further, Multiple regression
analysis was used to analyze the purchase intention of customers in relation to Internet memes.
The results of those analysis are listed in the sub-sections below.

4.1 Assessment of Reliability

The reliability of the items was assessed by measuring the alpha coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha).
Cronbach’s alpha measures the internal consistency or reliability of items. Cronbach’s alpha
should be above 0.7 24 (Nunnally, 1978), to be appropriate for a calculation. In the present
study, the overall alpha coefficient of the constructs was 0.854 (Table 1) and alpha coefficients
calculated separately for seven dependent variable and one independent variable were above 0.8,
indicating good consistency among the items within each dimension. These alpha coefficients
are given in Table 2
Table 1: Overall reliability

Reliability Statistics
Cronbach's
Alpha Based on
Cronbach's Standardized
Alpha Items N of Items
.854 .865 7

Table 2: Individual reliability

SL NO Name of the Variable Cronbach's Alpha

1 Sarcastic memes .838
2 Comparison meme .854
3 Personification meme .816
4 Message content .824
5 Repetition .832
6 Language .838

Note:
Alpha Values of 70% or higher are considered acceptable (Nunnally, 1978)

4.2 Assessment of the Purchase intention of customers in relation to Internet

memes.

The multiple regression equation (Arshad & Aslam, 2015) used is discussed below:

P = f (Zi)
Where:
P = Purchase intention.
Zi = Internet Meme related attributes. i = 6

In more specific form equation can be further explained as;

P1 = λo + λ1Z1 + λ2Z2 + λ3Z3 + λ4Z4 + λ5Z5 + λ6Z6 + +e μ
Where:
P is the dependent variable (Purchase intention).

(Z) is the Independent Variable i.e,

The Internet Meme related attributes Zi are:
Z1 = Attitude towards Ssrcastic memes.
Z2 = Attitude towards comparison memes.
Z3 = Attitude towards personification memes.
Z4 = Message content.
Z5 = Repetition of Internet meme.
Z6 =Internet Meme language.
And λo is the intercept, λs are the coefficients, μ is the random error.

The results of the conducted research while taking under consideration the objective of finding
out which types and factors of Internet memes have the potential to stimulate consumers to
purchase are discussed below:

Table 3: Model summary

Model Summary
Std. Error Change Statistics
Mode R Adjusted of the R Square F Sig. F Durbin-
l R Square R Square Estimate Change Changedf1 df2 Change Watson
a
1 .771 .595 .581 .57979 .595 42.613 6 174 .000 1.396
a. Predictors: (Constant), Language, Personification_Memes, Comparison_Memes,
Message_Content, Sarcastic_Memes, Repetition
b. Dependent Variable: Purchase_Intention

The R2 is also known as coefficient of determination. It gives us information about proportion of

variation in dependent variable, explained by the independent variables jointly. R2 lies between
0 and 1; valve of R2 closer to 1, the better is model fit (Gujarati, 2003)
Here the value of R2 in the analysis was 0.595 which stated that all independent variables jointly
explained 59.5% change in dependent variable i.e. Purchase intentions. This value also explained
that rest of 40.5 % change in dependent variable was caused by some other variables, effect of
which could not be explained by given model. The value of adjusted R2 in the analysis was
0.581 which is significant. The value of adjusted R square means that all independent variables
explained 58.1% variation in the dependent variable, keeping all other factors constant (Arshad
& Aslam, 2015).

Table 4: Anova table

ANOVA
Sum of
Model Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
1 Regression 85.949 6 14.325 42.613 .000b
Residual 58.492 174 .336
Total 144.441 180
a. Dependent Variable: Purchase_Intention
b. Predictors: (Constant), Language, Personification_Memes,
Comparison_Memes, Message_Content, Sarcastic_Memes, Repetition
F-ratio implies that all independent variables are significant or non-significant factors for causing
variation in the dependent variable (Arshad & Aslam, 2015).
ANOVA table shows that F=42.613 and is statistically significant. This indicates that the internet
memes predictors combine together to predict purchase behavior. Also model is considered to be

good fit if significance value falls between0% to 5%. The value of .000 which means that
relationship between Independent and dependent variable is highly significant hence the model is
good fit (Ul Zia, 2016).

Table 5: Coefficient table

Coefficient
Standardize
Unstandardized d Collinearity
Coefficients Coefficients Correlations Statistics
Std. Zero-
Model B Error Beta t Sig. order PartialPart ToleranceVIF
1 (Constant) -.681 .270 -2.525 .012
Sarcastic_Memes .023 .113 .016 .203 .839 .523 .015 .010.395 2.534
Comparison_Memes .041 .093 .030 .442 .659 .434 .033 .021.495 2.020
Personification_Memes.082 .090 .056 .905 .367 .337 .068 .044.607 1.649
Message_Content .391 .083 .348 4.727 .000 .704 .337 .228.430 2.325
Repetition .479 .110 .372 4.374 .000 .720 .315 .211.322 3.108
Language .078 .078 .075 .994 .322 .565 .075 .048.408 2.452
a. Dependent Variable: Purchase_Intention
Attitude towards sarcastic meme is an important internet meme variable which may affect
consumer’s purchase intention. According to the findings from the estimated model, there is no
significant relationship between attitude towards sarcastic meme and purchase intention
(P>0.05).

The value of the coefficient explains that if there is 1 unit improvement in the response category
of attitude towards sarcastic meme, there may be 0.02 unit’s improvement in the response
category of purchase intention, keeping all other factors constant.

Attitude towards comparison memes and personification memes is another important type of
internet meme variable that may affect the consumers purchase intention. According to the
findings from the estimated model, there is no significant relationship between both the
independent variables and purchase intention since both the P value was greater than 0.05 (P
>0.05).

The message content of internet meme is another important variable in the study of internet
memes. It includes information which is required by the consumers (Arshad & Aslam, 2015).
According to the finding from the model, there is significant relationship between message
content of the internet memes and purchase memes at 5% level of significance (P < 0.05). The
value of the coefficient explains that if there is 1 unit improvement in the response category of
message content of ad, there may be 0.35 unit’s improvement in the response category of
purchase intentions, keeping all other factors constant.

In the study repetition of internet memes holds significant importance. The repetition of internet
memes reminds consumers about the product advertised which may have impact on consumer’s
purchase intentions (Anand & Sternthal, 1990). According to the findings from the estimated
model, the variable is found significant at 5% level of significance. The value of the coefficient
explains that if there is 1 unit improvement in the response category of repetition of internet
memes, there may be 0.37 unit’s improvement in the response category of purchase intentions,
keeping all other factors constant.
The language used in the memes is another factor which affects the consumer’s intention to see
the meme. According to the findings from the model, there is no significant relationship between
the language and purchase intention of the customers (P>0.05),

4.3 Findings

From the above extensive and thorough research we've come to the conclusion that

internet memes has a remarkable effect on the customers purchase intention. The following are
the major finding from the study:

 In general, people like internet meme as a marketing tool.

 Most of the people prefer social media site Instagram followed by Facebook , YouTube,
Twitter and so on to see Internet memes
 Different types of memes do not have much impact on the customers purchase intention.
 Mostly customers like to see the message content of internet memes which appeals their
interest.
 Customers always has a feeling of risk while purchase of a product, the quality of
message content which is shown in the internet memes reduces this risk and influences
the customers’ decision making process and thereby the purchase intention.
 Repetition of the internet meme helps to create a positive response in the minds of the
customers.

4.4 Implications in Business

The following are the implication of the research findings in the business:

 Companies can use internet memes in their social media strategy.

 While selecting the social media sites to showcase internet memes. Companies should
consider Instagram followed by Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and so on
 Companies should focus on the quality of the message content while making the internet
memes.
  While developing a meme marketing strategy, the companies should ensure that memes
are repeatedly shown to consumers so that it can increase virality and brand exposure.

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE OF STUDY

6.1 Conclusion

Marketing is very important communication tool for the companies to attract the consumers
towards their products and services. At this stance, advertisement plays a vital role in creating
the awareness of the products of the organization to the potential customers. The media used for
advertising is very important factor which make an impact in the minds of the customers (Arshad
& Aslam, 2015). In this modern era something special has to be placed in front of the customers.
Nowadays Internet meme or meme is one form of humor that emerges and popular due to
Internet (Fauziah et al., 2018). But there has been a problem of how to capture the consumer
attention towards different types of memes and what are the factors that stimulate the customers
to purchase intention (Lee, Lianng, Liao, & Chen, 2019). In this study we found that whatever
the type of internet meme it does not have much impact on the customers purchase intention
instead the look for the message content in the internet memes so that they Moreover the
repetition of internet memes has also an influential impact in creating positive response in the
minds of the customers.

6.2 Future Scope of Study

As meme marketing has become one of the powerful social media strategy today the scope future
study is high. The ability memes to go viral and increase brand exposure has been now utilized
by many brands as their core social media strategy. Although, not every brand that uses them has
been successful (Protect, 2020). Therefore research can be done for identifying the strategies that
can be adopted by the companies to increase their virality and brand exposure.
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