A

PROJECT REPORT ON

STUDY OF CONSUMER PERCEPTION TOWARDS DIGITAL MARKETING

A Project Submitted to

University of Mumbai for partial completion of degree of

Master in Commerce

Under faculty of Commerce

Submitted by

VIPUL KAILAS ADATE

Roll no.1

Under guidance of

PROF.SINDU NATUVETTY

Submitted to

UNIVERSITY OF MUMBAI

Academic year

2019-20

VPM’s

K.G Joshi College of Arts &

N.G Bedekar college of Commerce

Chendani Bunder Road, Thane 400605

I
 DECLARATION

I the undersigned Mr. VIPUL KAILAS ADATE here by, declare that the work embodied in this project
work titled “STUDY OF COMSUMERS PERCEPTION TOWARDS DIGITAL MARKETING”, forms my
own contribution to the research work carried out under the guidance of Prof. Sindu Natuvetty. is a result of
my own research work and has not been previously submitted to any other University for any other
Degree /Diploma to this or any other University.

Wherever reference has been made to previous works of others, it has been clearly indicated as such and
included in bibliography.

I, here by further declare that all information of this document has been obtained and presented in
accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct.

Name and Signature of the learner

Mr. VIPUL KAILAS ADATE

Certified by

PROF. SINDU NATUVETTY

II
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

To list who all have helped me is difficult because they are so numerous and the depth is so numerous.

I would like to acknowledge the following as being idealistic channels and fresh dimensions in the
completion of this project.

I take this opportunity to thank the University of Mumbai for giving me chance to do this project.

I would like to thank my Principal, Dr. Suchitra Naik mam for providing the necessary facilities required for
completion of this project.

I take this opportunity to thank our Co-ordinator Mrs. Rashmi Agnhotri, for moral support and guidance.

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude towards my project guide Prof. Sindu Natuvetty. whose
guidance and care made the project successful.

I would like to thank my college library, for having provided various reference books and magazines related
to my project.

Lastly, I would like to thank each and every person who directly or indirectly helped me in the completion of
the project especially my Parents and Peers who supported me throughout my project.

III
 TABLE OF CONTENT

Chapter Chapter title Page no

no
Declaration

Acknowledgement

Table of content

Table of figures

List of tables

Chapter 1 Introduction 1

1.1 Introduction 2-3

1.2 Definition 3-4

1.3 Orientation 4-6

1.4 Marketing mix (the 4 Ps) 6-7

1.5 Digital marketing 8

Chapter 2 Research methodology 9

2.1 Objectives of the study 10

2.2 Scope of studies 10-11

2.3 Limitation of study 11

2.4 Sample size 12

2.5 Data collection 12

2.6 Primary data 12

2.7 Secondary data 12

Chapter 3 Review of literature 13-19

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Chapter 4 Digital marketing 20

4.1 Introduction 21

4.2 Understanding marketing 21-22

4.3 What is digital marketing? 22-23

4.4 How digital marketing works 23-31

4.5 The impact of digital marketing on 31-32

consumer perception
4.6 Why an integrated approach to 33-34
marketing is important?
4.7 Digital marketing challenges 34-41

4.8 Digital marketing tactics and strategies 41-49

Chapter 5 Data analysis, interpretation and 50

presentation
5.1 Gender 50

5.2 Age of respondent 51

5.3 What is your occupation 52

5.4 Do you shop online 53

5.5 How often do you shop online 54

5.6 Why do you prefer online shopping 55

5.7 Do you feel online merchants are 56

providing competitive prices?

5.8 What do you buy on online shopping 57

websites
5.9 Select the sources which you use for 58
gathering information about various
products
5.10 Select the payment mode normally 59
adopted by you in online shopping
5.11 Do you feel online shopping is better 60
than traditional shopping
5.12 Which online shopping site you use 61
for online shopping
5.13 Have you ever faced problem while 62
shopping online
5.14 Is the quality of products that you 63
purchase online is as same as shown on the
online web advertisements
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 5.15 How much amount you spent on 64
online shopping
5.16 As a customer do you think your 65
rights are violated in online shopping
5.17 Is it true that internet offers a wide 66
range of products with comparison of
features which are not available in
traditional shopping
5.18 Do you think the business sector is 67
relying on online shopping and internet for
most of the business transactions and
functions in India
5.19 Does privacy concern stop you from 68
online shopping
5.20 How was your online shopping 69
experience
Chapter 6 Findings, conclusion and suggestions 70

6.1 Findings 71

6.2 Conclusion 71-72

6.3 Suggestions 72

Annexure 73-77

Bibliography 78

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 TABLE OF FIGURES

Serial no Particulars Page no

1 Figure 1.1 7
2 Figure 2.1 14
3 Figure 4.1 23
4 Figure 4.2 24
5 Figure 4.3 25
6 Figure 4.4 27
7 Figure 4.5 28
8 Figure 4.6 30
9 Figure 4.7 34
10 Figure 4.8 42
11 Figure 4.9 43
12 Figure 4.10 45
13 Figure 4.11 46
14 Figure 4.12 48
15 Figure 5.1 50
16 Figure 5.2 51
17 Figure 5.3 52
18 Figure 5.4 53
19 Figure 5.5 54
20 Figure 5.6 55
21 Figure 5.7 56
22 Figure 5.8 57
23 Figure 5.9 58
24 Figure 5.10 59
25 Figure 5.11 60
26 Figure 5.12 61
27 Figure 5.13 62
28 Figure 5.14 63
29 Figure 5.15 64
30 Figure 5.16 65
31 Figure 5.17 66
32 Figure 5.18 67
33 Figure 5.19 68
34 Figure 5.20 69

VII
 LIST OF TABLES

Serial No Particulars Page No

1 Table no 5.1 50
2 Table no 5.2 51
3 Table no 5.3 52
4 Table no 5.4 53
5 Table no 5.5 54
6 Table no 5.6 55
7 Table no 5.7 56
8 Table no 5.8 57

9 Table no 5.9 58
10 Table no 5.10 59
11 Table no 5.11 60
12 Table no 5.12 61
13 Table no 5.13 62
14 Table no 5.14 63
15 Table no 5.15 64
16 Table no 5.16 65
17 Table no 5.17 66
18 Table no 5.18 67
19 Table no 5.19 68
20 Table no 5.20 69

VIII
 CHAPTER NO. 1
INTRODUCTION

Contents: -
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Definition
1.3 Orientation
1.4 Marketing mix (the 4 Ps)
1.5 Digital marketing

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 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. Marketing is the business process of
creating relationships with and satisfying customers. With its focus on the customer, marketing is one of the
primary components of business management. The 'marketing concept' proposes that in order to complete
the organizational objectives, an organization should anticipate the needs and wants of potential consumers
and satisfy them more effectively than its competitors. This concept originated from Adam Smith's book The
Wealth of Nations but would not become widely used until nearly 200 years later. Marketing and Marketing
Concepts are directly related.

Given the centrality of customer needs and wants in marketing, a rich understanding of these concepts is
essential:

 Needs:
Something necessary for people to live a healthy, stable and safe life. When needs remain
unfulfilled, there is a clear adverse outcome: a dysfunction or death. Needs can be objective and
physical, such as the need for food, water, and shelter; or subjective and psychological, such as the
need to belong to a family or social group and the need for self-esteem.

 Wants:
Something that is desired, wished for or aspired to. Wants are not essential for basic survival and are
often shaped by culture or peer-groups.

 Demands:
When needs and wants are backed by the ability to pay, they have the potential to become economic
demands.

Marketing research, conducted for the purpose of new product development or product improvement, is
often concerned with identifying the consumer's unmet needs. Customer needs are central to market
segmentation which is concerned with dividing markets into distinct groups of buyers on the basis of

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"distinct needs, characteristics, or behaviours who might require separate products or marketing mixes."
Needs-based

segmentation (also known as benefit segmentation) "places the customers' desires at the forefront of how a
company designs and markets products or services." Although needs-based segmentation is difficult to do in
practice, it has been proved to be one of the most effective ways to segment a market. In addition, a great
deal of advertising and promotion is designed to show how a given product's benefits meet the customer's
needs, wants or expectations in a unique way.

1.2 Definition

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as "the activity, set of institutions, and
processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers,
clients, partners, and society at large". The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally
to going to market with goods for sale. From a sales process engineering perspective, marketing is "a set of
processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving
customer interest and satisfaction".

Philip Kotler defined marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process". and a decade
later defines it as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want
and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as "the management process responsible for
identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". A similar concept is the value-
based marketing which states the role of marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value. In this
context, marketing can be defined as "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to
shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".

Julie Barile – Vice President of eCommerce, Fairway Market “Marketing is traditionally the means by
which an organization communicates to, connects with, and engages its target audience to convey the value
of and ultimately sell its products and services. However, since the emergence of digital media, in particular
social media and technology innovations, it has increasingly become more about companies building deeper,
more meaningful and lasting relationships with the people that they want to buy their products and services.
The ever-increasingly fragmented world of media complicates marketers’ ability connect and, at the same,
time presents incredible opportunity to forge new territory”.

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 Heidi Cohen – President, Riverside Marketing Strategies “In line with the firm’s business goals,
marketing attracts consumers’ scarce resources, attention and disposable income, to drive profitable
revenues. Marketing is the process of getting a product or service from a company to its end customers from
product development through to the final sale and post purchase support. To this end, marketing strategy
consists of business goals, target customers, marketing strategies, marketing tactics and related metrics. As a
function, marketing extends across the customer’s entire purchase process including research, engagement,
purchase, post-purchase (including supplemental support and returns) and advocacy”.

In the past, marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry, which included advertising,
distribution and selling. However, because the academic study of marketing makes extensive use of social
sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is
now widely recognized as a science, allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc)
programs.

The process of marketing is that of bringing a product to market, which includes these steps: broad market
research; market targeting and market segmentation; determining distribution, pricing and promotion
strategies; developing a communications strategy; budgeting; and visioning long-term market development
goals. Many parts of the marketing process (e.g. product design, art director, brand management, advertising,
inbound marketing, copywriting etc.) involve use of the creative arts.

1.3 Orientations

A marketing orientation has been defined as a "philosophy of business management." or "a corporate
state of mind" or as an "organisational culture" Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of
specific orientations that inform marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:

 Product
A firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its product. A product
orientation is based on the assumption that all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of
superior quality. The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customers and their
needs and desires derived from research and (or) intuition and understands consumers' quality
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 expectations and the price they are willing to pay. For example, Sony Walkman and Apple iPod were
innovative product designs that addressed consumers' unmet needs. Although the product orientation has
largely been

supplanted by the marketing orientation, firms practicing a product orientation can still be found in haute
couture and arts marketing.

 Sales
A firm using a sales orientation focuses primarily on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing
products, rather than determining new or unmet consumer needs or desires. Consequently, this entails
simply selling existing products, using promotion and direct sales techniques to attain the highest sales
possible. The sales

orientation "is typically practiced with unsought goods." One study found that industrial companies are
more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies. The approach may also suit
scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little
likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.

 Production
A firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given
product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope. A production
orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty
that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation). The so-
called production era is thought to have dominated marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but
other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or
industries.

 Marketing
The marketing orientation is perhaps the most common orientation used in contemporary marketing. It is
a customer-centric approach that involves a firm basing its marketing program around products that suit
new consumer tastes. Firms adopting a marketing orientation typically engage in extensive market
research to gauge consumer desires, use R&D to develop a product attuned to the revealed information,
and then utilize promotion techniques to ensure consumers are aware of the product's existence and the

5
 benefits it can deliver. Scales designed to measure a firm's overall market orientation have been
developed and found to be relatively robust in a variety of contexts.

The marketing orientation often has three prime facets, which are:

 Customer orientation:
A firm in the market economy can survive by producing goods that persons are willing and able to
buy. Consequently, ascertaining consumer demand is vital for a firm's future viability and even
existence as a going concern.

 Organizational orientation:
In this sense, a firm's marketing department is often seen as of prime importance within the
functional level of an organization. Information from an organization's marketing department would
be used to guide the actions of other departments within the firm. As an example, a marketing
department could ascertain (via marketing research) that consumers desired a new type of product, or
a new usage for an

existing product. With this in mind, the marketing department would inform the R&D department to
create a prototype of a product/service based on consumers' new desires.

The production department would then start to manufacture the product, while the marketing department
would focus on the promotion, distribution, pricing, etc. of the product. Additionally, a firm's finance
department would be consulted, with respect to securing appropriate funding for the development,
production and promotion of the product. Finance may oppose the required capital expenditure, since it
could undermine a healthy cash flow for the organization.

Mutually beneficial exchange: In a transaction in the market economy, a firm gains revenue, which thus
leads to more profits/market share/sales. A consumer on the other hand gains the satisfaction of a need/want,
utility, reliability and value for money from the purchase of a product or service. As no-one has to buy goods

6
from any one supplier in the market economy, firms must entice consumers to buy goods with contemporary
marketing ideals.

The marketing mix (the 4 Ps)

During the 1940s, the discipline of marketing was in transition. Interest in the functional school of thought,
which was primarily concerned with mapping the functions of marketing, was waning while the managerial
school of thought, which focussed on the problems and challenges confronting marketers, was gaining
ground. The concept of marketers as "mixers of ingredients," was first introduced by James Culleton, a
Professor at

Harvard Business School. At this time, theorists began to develop checklists of the elements that made up
the marketing mix.

However, there was little agreement as to what should be included in the list. Many scholars and
practitioners relied on lengthy classifications of factors that needed to be considered to understand consumer
responses. Neil Borden developed a complicated model in the late 1940s, based upon at least twelve
different factors.

1.4 Marketing Mix

Figure 1.1

7
The marketing mix is based upon four controllable variables that a company manages in its effort to satisfy
the corporation's objectives as well as the needs and wants of a target market. Once there is an understanding
of the target market's interests, marketers develop tactics, using the 4Ps, to encourage buyers to purchase the
product. The successful use of the model is predicated upon the degree to which the target market's needs
and wants have been understood, and the extent to which marketers have developed and correctly deployed
the tactics. Today, the marketing mix or marketing program is understood to refer to the "set of marketing
tools that the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the target market."

1.5 Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet,
but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium. Digital marketing
channels are systems based on the internet that can create, accelerate, and transmit product value from
producer to the terminal consumer by digital networks.

Digital marketing's development since the 1990s and 2000s has changed the way brands and businesses use
technology for marketing. As digital platforms are increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and
everyday life, and as people use digital devices instead of visiting physical shops, digital marketing
campaigns are becoming more prevalent and efficient.

Digital marketing methods such as search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM),
content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-
commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, Display
advertising, e–books, and optical disks and games are becoming more common in our advancing technology.
In fact, digital marketing now extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as mobile
phones (SMS and MMS), call back, and on-hold mobile ring tones. In essence, this extension to non-Internet
channels helps to differentiate digital marketing from online marketing, another catch-all term for the
marketing methods mentioned above, which strictly occur online.

The main factor for development of E-shopping is due to change in lifestyle of the consumers and
enlargement of online activity. All most all consumers grab online opportunities since different products get
8
more discounts. Much above that, it saves time and gives total relief from the crowd. The prominent online
retailing companies in India are Flipkart, Amazon.com, Snap deal, Myntra and e-Bay etc. some important
factors which influence consumer perceptions for online shopping are information, easy to use, satisfaction,
security, proper utilization of available information to compare the different products and services.

CHAPTER NO. 2
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Contents: -
2.1 Objectives of study
2.2 Scope of studies
2.3 Limitation of study
2.4 Sample size
2.5 Data collection
2.6 Primary data
2.7 Secondary data

9
 CHAPTER 2

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Internet has changed the traditional way of customers shopping and buying goods and services. With a rapid
pace it evolved into a phenomenon which is globally accepted. This literature on customer mindset for
online purchasing decisions focused on identifying the factors which affect the willingness of consumers
to engage in online shopping .To counter the dynamic nature of the fast growing markets, companies started
using internet as a tool to cut down the various intermediary costs which further helped in reducing the
prices of their products and services while standing competitive in the market.

These business houses also use internet to communicate with the customers directly by direct selling
business to customer (B2C) and collect customer information and feedback which further helps in improving
the business strategies directly based on customer’s desire, need and feedback. Consumers use the internet
not only for online shopping, but also to compare prices, product features and after sales service facilities.

2.1 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

 To know the consumers perception towards online shopping.

 To know the type of products purchased by consumers through online shopping.
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  To know the stimuli which contributes for buying behaviour of consumers.
 To find out the various issues, if any, faced by the consumer in online shopping.
 To determine whether digital marketing will be beneficial and on what factors.

2.2 SCOPE OF STUDY

You can buy any product or service available at any place irrespective of geographical boundaries at any
time without your physical presence. You can surf and find products and see the catalogue virtually via
internet. It helps you to shop around the world while staying at and with comfort of home. Internet has some
special characteristics which no other medium has.

Only internet can provide you such special information even no salesman can help and explain as internet.
Countless people can see products at a time, as well as they can purchase the product at the same time. One
can directly purchase from original producer or merchant in online shopping without any mediator in
between buyer and seller this helps in reducing the intermediary costs and making the product/service
cheaper and easier to buy from this medium. The two main factors of online shopping are time and quality.
Selling on internet has a large potential due to the very large target population. The online selling industry is
taking interest in use of internet to reach customers for diversification and increasing sales volume. Hence a
better understanding of online shopping is requisite for the effective use of this channel of approach to the
customers. It is important to know what the consumer’s perception towards online shopping is and benefits
perceived by them and what factors attract them towards online shopping. This research study is for all those
who are new to e-commerce market and want to understand the various factors of purchasing online as well
as for the active users to understand the pros and cons of the e-market. To identify the customer perception,
it is important to test the virtual market to see if it’s a viable opportunity for the customers as well as the e-
commerce industry.

2.3 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

 The time limit for the research was small to collect information for an in-depth study
 Result of the study depends on respondent response
 The method of study was based on convenience random sampling. Therefore, the reliability and
accuracy of analysed results are to be further studied.

11
A structured questionnaire was used to collect the necessary data. It serves as primary data to answer the
research questions and objectives pertaining to consumer perception towards digital marketing. In view of
time and cost constraints as well as the large population of internet users in the country, convenience
sampling was used to collect data from the current internet users in India which has the highest concentration
of internet users.

Even though the sampling method was adopted has limitations in terms of generalisability compared to
others sampling methods, it is assumed that the sample respondents the whole population of internet users in
India.

The survey was conducted via online questionnaire. The survey questionnaire was only sent to internet users
who agreed to participate in the survey. This step was taken to avoid complaints from other internet users
and also to increase the responsiveness of respondents for the survey.

2.4 SAMPLE SIZE

I have targeted 100 people of various age groups for the purpose of research. The sample size is influenced
by the target population.

2.5 DATA COLLECTION

One of the important tools for conducting research availability of the necessary and useful data. Data
collection is in many ways more of an art that a find. Sometimes the data are available readily in one form or
other and sometimes they are to be collected a fresh. Mainly data can be collected by using two methods.

2.6 PRIMARY DATA

Primary data will be collected through questionnaire. The questionnaire has prepared to collect the data that
is useful to conduct this study. The questionnaire is filled by respondents and provides the information. In
this study, questionnaire is based on the objective of the study and the title of the study, and collected
information from customers, who visits online shopping sites. The questionnaires are containing the
questions, which are simple and understandable to the respondents. Primary data are obtained by a study
specifically designed to fulfil the data needed of problem.

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2.7 SECONDARY DATA

Secondary data is the data which is already collected and assembled. This data is available with the company
or firm and it can also be got from newspapers, periodicals, magazines etc.

The research has collected the required secondary data from the records of the organization as well as from
the journals, yellow pages, newspapers, text books, encyclopaedia, etc. Information is also obtained from the
staff and management of the organization.

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 CHAPTER NO. 3
REVIEW OF LITRATURE

Contents: -
1. W. S Weber, K. and Roehl, W. S. (1999)
2. Vellido et al. (2000)
3. Jarvenpaa et al, Tractinsky & Vitale (2000)
4. Soonyong Bae, Taesik Lee (2010)
5. Isaac J. Gabriel (2007)
6. Guda Van Noort, M.A., Peter Kerkhof, Ph.D. and Bob M. Fenni’s, Ph.D. (2007)
7. Bhavani and Prakash (2008)
8. Amar Cheema and Purushottam Papatla (2009)
9. A study has conducted by Feng Zhu (2010)
10. Sayed Rajab Neasham, Farzana Yasmin, Ehsanul Haque. (2011)
11. Yu-Je Lee, Ching-Lin Huang, Ching-Yaw Chen
12. Ramin Azadavar, Darush shahbazi and Mohammad Eghbali Teimouri. (2011)
13. Kanwal Gurleen (2012)
14. Pritam Kothari (2016)
15. Madhu & Sampath (2017)
16. Guo Jun (2017)

14
 CHAPTER 3

REIVIEW OF LITRATURE

Consumer decision process carries five stages, starting with Problem recognition and following Information
search, Evaluation of alternatives, Purchase decision and finally Post Purchase behaviour. Problem
recognition starts with the perception of need and moves towards information search where consumer uses
internal and external sources to analyse given information and use that information in the next step of
evaluation of alternatives. While evaluating alternatives one assessing values of the products by giving
weights. After evaluation of alternatives consumers move towards purchase decision where they may
encounter three possibilities, from whom to buy, when to buy and do not buy. Once they have actually made
the purchase now it comes to Post purchase behaviour, whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with the
purchase. (Kotler, 2012)

TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE MODEL

Figure 3.1

TAM is basically information system theory that covers how a user accepts and uses a technology. The
model deals with the acceptance of information technology. The external factors that influence users to make

15
a decision is- Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU). The degree to which a person
believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance is Perceived Usefulness

(PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) is the degree to which a person believes that using a particular
system would be free from effort.

A brief literature would be of immense help to the researcher in gaining insight into selected problem. The
researcher would gain good background knowledge of the problem by reviewing certain studies. A reference
to these entire studies will be related in the contest of the shaping the present study. There are very limited
studies, which are directly relevant to the study concerned. They have been taken from journals, articles,
PhD thesis and unpublished research work.

 Weber, K. and Roehl, W. S. (1999) conducted a study on those who search for or purchase travel
products through on-line with the age group of 26 to 55 years. Results on the basis of the study
concerns about credit card security, evaluation of product quality, and privacy issues are the main
problems faced while on-line purchase of travel products, were made.

 Vellido et al. (2000) pointed out in his research, that there are nine factors associated with user’s
perception of online shopping. Among those factors the risk perception of users was demonstrated to
be the main discriminator between people buying online and people not buying online. Other
discriminating factors were control over, and convenience of, the shopping process, affordability of
merchandise, customer service and ease of use of the shopping site.

 Jarvenpaa et al, Tractinsky & Vitale (2000) tested a model of consumer attitude towards specific
web base stores, in which perceptions of the store's reputation and size were assumed to affect
consumer trust of the retailer. The level of trust was positively related to the attitude toward the store,
and inversely related to the perception of the risks involved in buying from that store. The study
concluded that the attitude and the risk perception affected the consumer's intention to buy from the
store.

 Soonyong Bae, Taesik Lee (2010) they investigate the effect of online consumer reviews on
consumer’s purchase intention. In particular, they examine whether there are gender differences in
responding to online consumer reviews. The results show that the effect of online consumer reviews
16
on purchase intention is stronger for females than males. The negativity effect, that consumers are
influenced by a negative review more than by a positive review, is also found to be more evident for
females. These findings have practical implications for online sellers to guide them to effectively use
online consumer reviews to engage females in online shopping.

 Isaac J. Gabriel (2007) studied online consumers’ risk perceptions and will reveal a “cognitive
map” of their attitudes and perceptions to online risks. It was accomplished by composing a
master list of online hazards and activities, measuring current level of perceived risk, desired level of
risk, and desired level of regulation associated with them, composing a master list of online risk
characteristics, determining online risk dimensions, and revealing position of each online hazard or
activity in the factor space diagram. A factor space diagram captures a graphical representation of the
results of the factor analysis. This study is still in progress and results are not available yet.

 Guda Van Noort, M.A., Peter Kerkhof, Ph.D. and Bob M. Fenni’s, Ph.D. (2007) in two
experiments, the impact of shopping context on consumers’ risk perceptions and regulatory focus
was examined. They predicted that individuals perceive an online (vs. conventional) shopping
environment’s riskier and that an online shopping environment, by its risky nature, primes a
prevention focus. The findings in Study 1 demonstrate these effects by using self-report measures for
risk perception and prevention focus. In Study 2, replicated these findings and demonstrated that the
effect of an online shopping environment carries over to behaviour in a domain unrelated to
shopping.

 Bhavani and Prakash (2008) 56, in their article have explained the importance of online shopping,
its advantages and disadvantages and also the impact of doing business online. The internet has
become a preferred place for the shoppers to carry out their business. The number of shoppers and
volume of business continue to surge. They have given three main factors which mainly make online
shopping attractive, they are abundance (i.e.) the customers have a vast choice, vast selection (i.e.)
various products can be displayed reviewed and compared at no cost in time or funds and quick
comparison (i.e.) consumers can quickly compare products in terms of price, quality, shipping cost,
etc., before making a final choice.

17
 Amar Cheema and Purushottam Papatla (2009) 61, made an attempt to study the relative
importance of online information versus offline information for internet purchase. The study found
that relative importance of online information is higher for utilitarian products such as computer
hardware and software than for hedonic products such as books, music and movies, the relative
importance of online information decreases with increasing consumer internet experience and
consumers' trust of online search engine information decreases with increasing internet experience.

 A study has conducted by Feng Zhu (2010) 62, indicates that how product and consumer
characteristics moderate the influence of online consumer reviews on product sales using data from
the video game industry. The findings reveal that online reviews are more influential for less popular
games and games whose players have greater Internet experience.

 Sayed Rajab Neasham, Farzana Yasmin, Ehsanul Haque. (2011) Studied that investigated
peoples‟ perception of online buying tickets (e-ticketing) as well as why some people use this facility
while some who do not use it stick to the traditional way to fulfil their needs. In addition, factors such
as what inform peoples‟ eagerness and unwillingness to use internet facilities are also examined. The
outcome of this research showed a comprehensively integrated framework that can be utilized by
policy makers and business enterprises to understand the dynamic relationships among dimensions of
perceived risk, user trustworthiness, usefulness, familiarity and confidence. Also, this study
considered how price perception and internet security can be utilized to understand the consumers‟
perception.

 Yu-Je Lee, Ching-Lin Huang, Ching-Yaw Chen the purpose of this study is to use structural
equation modeling (SEM) to explore the influence of online bookstore consumers’ perception on
their purchase intention. Through literature review, four constructs were used to establish a causal
relationship between perception of online shopping and consumers’ purchase intention. Results of
this study show that product perception, shopping experience, and service quality have positive and
significant influence on consumers’ purchase intention, but perceived risk has negative influence on
consumers’ purchase intention, and shopping experience is most important.

18
 Ramin Azadavar, Darush shahbazi and Mohammad Eghbali Teimouri. (2011) examined the
factors influencing consumers’ perception of online shopping and developed a causal model that
explains how this perception affects their online-shopping behaviour. Research found that factors like
trust, customer service customers’ income, price of products or services and security are more
important to encourage people to purchase online the computer related products and services. In
other side factors like product customization and price of product were not much effective on
purchasing behaviour of the respondents. So high level of security in online marketing of computer
related products and services has this potential to growth more and more to encourage people to
reduce the time and cost of transaction. Most important concern regarding to online shopping is the
security of transactions. The study intends to explore the understanding of consumer behaviour
regarding to the direct and indirect influences of the perceptions of online shopping on consumer
behaviour. Based on our analysis first, a factor analysis was conducted on the student’s perception of
13 items, and three factors, “convenience, anxiety regarding security, and “poor navigation”, were
extracted. A model was created reflecting the direct influence of these three “perception”-related
factors on behaviour or their indirect influence through consumers’ attitudes.

 Kanwal Gurleen (2012) focuses on the understanding of demographic profiles of adopters and non-
adopters of online shopping. For this purpose, the data from 400 respondents was collected in the
form of questionnaires. The study has been conducted in 3 cities of Punjab, a sample of urban
respondents were selected from the Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Amritsar the paper also analyses the
various reasons for adoption and non-adoption of online shopping.

 Pritam Kothari (2016) this study states that the rising number of internet user in India provides a
bright prospect for e-commerce. This paper highlights on factors which influences consumer to shop
online. Indian consumers using e-commerce portal not only to purchase the product but also to avail
online services. This study finds that majority of customers perceived that online shopping is the best
way to buy goods and services and they were willing to continue this platform of purchasing.

 Madhu & Sampath (2017) in their study online shopping is now become a primary part of any
business. This study also stressed that the e-commerce portals have to educate and promote the
consumers towards online shopping by determine the factors influencing the consumers towards

19
 online shopping. This study concludes that the era of information providing new dimension to the
marketer and consumer as well by virtual shops in India.

 Guo Jun (2017) in their study, Online shopping is an innovative platform to do business in this
competitive world and it is a classic example of the business revolution. This study focused on online
shopping in china and the study states that consumer perceived positively with relate to factors such
as usability, safety, privacy, after sales service and quality of products. It also states that most of the
young population preferred to use online shopping to make purchase of their necessities.

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 CHAPTER NO. 4
DIGITAL MARKETING

Contents: -
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Understanding marketing
4.3 What is digital marketing?
4.4 How digital marketing works
 Website marketing
 Search engine marketing
 Content marketing
 Social media marketing
 PPC advertising
 Email marketing
4.5 The impact of digital marketing on consumer perception
4.6 Why an integrated approach to marketing is important?
4.7 Digital marketing challenges
4.8 Digital marketing tactics and strategies

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 CHAPTER 4

DIGITAL MARKETING

4.1 Introduction
Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships. Marketing is the business process of
creating relationships with and satisfying customers. Because marketing is used to attract customers, it is one
of the primary components of business management and commerce. Marketers can direct product to other
businesses (B2B marketing) or directly to consumers (B2C marketing).
Regardless of who is being marketed to, several factors, including the perspective the marketers will use.
These market orientations determine how marketers will approach the planning stage of marketing. This
leads into the marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold. This can in
turn, be affected by the environment surrounding the product, the results of marketing research and market
research, and the characteristics of the product's target market.
Once these factors are determined, marketers must then decide what methods will be used to market the
product. This decision is based on the factors analysed in the planning stage as well as where the product is
in the product life cycle.
Marketing refers to activities undertaken by a company to promote the buying or selling of a product or
service. Marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses.
Some marketing is done by affiliates on behalf of a company.
Professionals who work in a corporation's marketing and promotion departments seek to get the attention of
key potential audiences through advertising. Promotions are targeted to certain audiences and may involve
celebrity endorsements, catchy phrases or slogans, memorable packaging or graphic designs and overall
media exposure.

4.2 Understanding Marketing

Marketing as a discipline involves all the actions a company undertakes to draw in customers and maintain
relationships with them. Networking with potential or past clients is part of the work too, including writing
thank you emails, playing golf with a prospective client, returning calls and emails quickly, and meeting
with clients for coffee or a meal.
At its most basic, marketing seeks to match a company's products and services to customers who want
access to those products. The matching of product to customer ultimately ensures profitability.
Buying behaviour has drastically changed over the past decade, and now more consumers are starting (and
often ending) their buyer’s journey online, virtually showing the effectiveness of how digital marketing
works. This shift in the way that consumers make purchasing decisions and buy products and services has
made digital marketing a must for any business that’s trying to compete in the modern marketplace,
regardless of size or industry.

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It’s important for business owners to understand how digital marketing works so that they can strategically
use the right digital tools and campaign tactics to reach and engage their audience. That’s why we’ve put
together this handy guide to digital marketing and all of the elements involved in attracting, converting, and
delighting consumers online. In this post, we will cover everything you need to know about how digital
marketing works so that you can make more informed decisions about your digital marketing campaigns.

Digital marketing is the use of the internet, mobile devices, social media, search engines, and other channels
to reach consumers. Some marketing experts consider digital marketing to be an entirely new endeavour that
requires a new way of approaching customers and new ways of understanding how customers behave
compared to traditional marketing.
Digital marketing targets a specific segment of the customer base and is interactive. Digital marketing is on
the rise and includes search result ads, email ads and promoted tweets – anything that incorporates marketing
with customer feedback or a two-way interaction between the company and customer.
Internet (a.k.a. online) marketing differs from digital marketing. Internet marketing is advertising that is
solely on the Internet, whereas digital marketing can take place over the telephone, on a subway platform, in
a video game or via a smartphone app.
In the parlance of digital marketing, advertisers are commonly referred to as sources, while members of the
targeted ads are commonly called receivers. Sources frequently target highly specific, well-defined receivers.
For example, after extending the late-night hours of many of its locations, McDonald's needed to get the
word out. Its targeted shift workers and travellers with digital ads, because the company knew that these
people made up a large segment of its late-night business. McDonald's encouraged them to download a new
Restaurant Finder app, targeting them with ads placed at ATMs and gas stations, as well as on websites that
it new its customers frequented at night.

4.3 What is Digital Marketing?

Before we talk about how digital marketing works, let’s first answer the question – what is digital
marketing? Digital marketing is a way to promote brands and products online and through other digital
channels. Most businesses have a specific audience they are trying to reach, and digital marketing aims to
help businesses reach these target consumers through the internet and other digital avenues.
There are a number of different digital technologies that marketers and companies use to get their marketing
message to their target audience. In addition to their website, a company might also use PPC and display ads,
email marketing, mobile technology like smartphones, social media, and other mediums to attract and
engage their target consumers.
Digital marketing is vital for modern businesses because the internet plays a significant role in how today’s
consumer makes purchasing decisions. The internet also impacts how consumers actually purchase their
products and services. This makes it imperative for businesses to not only be present online but to boost
visibility as much as possible.

23
The days of browsing at a physical store location and asking sales associates for more information about
products are gone. Now, consumers use the internet to get the information they need to make an informed
purchasing decision, even if they still visit the physical store location to make their final purchase.
That’s where digital marketing comes in. It helps your business reach these consumers wherever they are in
their digital buyer’s journey.

Figure 4.1

4.4 How Digital Marketing Works: Each Tactic Explained

It’s important for business owners to understand how digital marketing works so that they can make smarter
decisions about their digital marketing campaigns. The key to understanding how it all works is getting to
know each element of digital marketing and recognizing how each can help you reach your marketing goals.
We’ll go through each digital marketing tactic below and explain how you can use each one for your own
business.

Website Marketing

In many ways, your company’s website is the cornerstone of your digital marketing strategy. This is where
many of your target customers first get an impression of your brand, and more often than not, this is where
your leads will eventually convert into paying customers. So, let’s talk more about how your website plays a
role in how digital marketing works.

24
The goal of digital marketing is to attract, engage, and convert your leads. Many of the tactics that you will
use to do this will ultimately lead your target customers back to your website to get more information or
make a purchase.

Figure 4.2

Your website is sometimes your brand’s only chance to make a good first impression with consumers in
your target market. For this reason, you should pay attention to the layout of your site as well as the colours
and graphics that you use in your site design. In fact, according to Adobe, 38% of people will stop engaging
with a website if they find the content or layout to be unattractive.

However, the appearance of your site is not the only thing that matters. Since your website is the centre of
many of your digital marketing campaigns, it’s important that it is designed and optimized for conversions.
This means creating a site that is easy to navigate and read with clear guidance for the next steps consumers

25
need to take to move further down the funnel. This also means creating a site that optimized for mobile
devices to improve the mobile user’s site experience.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization also plays a big role in how digital marketing works. If you want to reach and
convert consumers in the digital age, you’ll need to start with the search engines. A recent research study by
Forrester found that 71% of consumers start their buyer’s journey on search engines like Google. If you are
not taking the right steps to improve your site’s SEO then you may be missing out on a powerful opportunity
to reach a significant amount of leads. Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your site’s
content so that it appeals to the search engines. The end goal is to rank higher on the search engine results
page (SERP) to increase visibility in your target market. The higher you rank on the SERP, the more organic
traffic you can drive back to your website.

Figure 4.3

Search engine optimization not only brings more traffic to your website, but it also helps ensure that the
leads you are bringing in are of a higher quality. The goal of digital marketing is to attract those who are
right for your products or services, and SEO plays an important role in doing just that. By emphasizing

26
certain keywords and topics within your content, you can work to reach those online who are most likely to
be interested in your products or services.

Now that you know how important search engine optimization is to all of your digital marketing efforts, you
may be wondering how you can optimize your site and content for best results. Head on over to our search
engine optimization services page to learn more about the role that SEO plays in your digital campaigns and
how an SEO agency can help you achieve your goals.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is another important tactic that plays a significant role in how digital marketing works.
Content marketing is essentially when your business creates and promotes certain content assets that are
aimed at attracting and engaging your target customers. These content assets can be created for a number of
different purposes, including generating brand awareness, growing site traffic, boosting leads, or retaining
customers.

No matter which tactics that you use as part of your digital marketing strategy, you will need to create
content to support these tactics. This can be something as short and simple as a thank you email to someone
who has subscribed to your email list. Or it can be a longer, more detailed piece like an e-book, that
describes and provides information about one of the biggest challenges that your target customers face.

27
 Figure 4.4

Here are just a few types of content marketing that you might create to support your digital marketing
campaign goals:

 Website pages
 Blog posts
 Social media posts
 E-books
 White papers
 Case Studies
 Testimonials
 Videos
 Images
 Infographics
 Podcasts
 Ad Content

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 The key to creating great content assets that help support your digital marketing campaigns is
strategically choosing topics that appeal most to your audience. If you haven’t already, make sure
that you do some target audience research and even create customer personas to ensure that you
know your customers well and can identify what types of content will attract and engage them at
each step in the buyer’s journey.

Social Media Marketing

Most brands today are using social media marketing to support their digital marketing campaigns and drive
more traffic to their website. Social media marketing involves promoting your content and engaging with
your target consumers on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. This
tactic is used in digital marketing to help businesses increase brand awareness, generate more leads, and
improve customer engagement.

One of the biggest appeals of social media marketing is that it allows businesses to reach a wider audience
online. For example, 79% of Indian internet users are active on Facebook. If your business is not trying to
reach and engage these consumers on the social platform, then you are certainly missing out on an important
opportunity to reach new leads.

29
 Figure 4.5

Social media not only works as its own tactic, but it can also support all of your other digital marketing
efforts. For instance, if your brand develops an informative eBook that speaks to your target audience’s pain
points, you can use social media to promote the eBook and drive traffic to the landing page for the
download. You can then re-purpose pieces of the eBook for future social media posts as a way to generate
further interest for the content piece.

PPC Advertising

Though the goal of your digital marketing strategy may be to bring in as much organic traffic as possible,
your business should not ignore the value of pay-per-click (PPC) ads. PPC ads are a type of advertising that
involves paying the ad publisher every time a new lead clicks on your ad. Google Ads is one of the most
popular and effective types of PPC ads. Google Ads helps your business appear on the first page of the
search engine results.

You may be wondering, why should I pay for ads when I’m already working to improve my site’s SEO?
Though search engine optimization is important, it takes a long time to start working its magic. That’s where
PPC ads come in handy. PPC ads can help you see results more quickly by putting your site at the top of the
search engine results page for relevant search terms. By appearing on the first page of the SERP, your
business gains new visibility and searchers are more likely to find and click on your site.

You may be wondering, why should I pay for ads when I’m already working to improve my site’s SEO?
Though search engine optimization is important, it takes a long time to start working its magic. That’s where
PPC ads come in handy. PPC ads can help you see results more quickly by putting your site at the top of the
search engine results page for relevant search terms. By appearing on the first page of the SERP, your
business gains new visibility and searchers are more likely to find and click on your site.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is yet another piece of the puzzle that is how digital marketing works. Companies can use
branded emails to communicate with their target audience. Marketing emails are often used as a way to
increase brand awareness, establish industry leadership, promote events, and get the word out about special
promotions.

30
 Figure 4.6

The content of your marketing emails will ultimately depend on your campaign goals. Here are just a few
examples of the types of email marketing content you might develop to support your digital marketing
campaigns:

 Send a welcome email when new users subscribe to your marketing email list letting them know
what they can expect to see from your brand emails.
 Deliver promotional content about upcoming sales and discounts straight to the consumer’s inbox.
 Develop a newsletter that goes out to subscribers periodically to deliver the latest content and
company updates from your business.
 Email leads after they have downloaded content from your site to thank them for their interest and
even recommend additional relevant content pieces.
 Suggest additional products or content assets that your leads and customers may be interested based
on their browsing and buying behaviour.

31
It’s important to note that email marketing is mainly used not for generating new leads, but rather nurturing
leads once they have shown interest. Marketing emails can also be used as part of your customer retention
campaigns. In fact, according to eMarketer, 80% of retail professionals report that email marketing is one of
the best tactics for driving customer retention.

Like the other tactics mentioned above, email marketing is not used solely by itself. Sure, you might create a
monthly newsletter to engage your leads or promote certain sales or discounts through email. However, you
can also use email marketing to support some of your other campaign tactics like content marketing and
social media.

Let’s say that you want to hold a social media contest as a way to generate new leads and foster some
excitement for a new product that your business is launching soon. Email marketing can be used to support
this social media campaign. By letting your subscribers know that the contest is happening, you can work to
get more people entered into the contest. In addition, each email that you send to leads and customers can
include links to your social media pages as a way to drive more traffic to the platform and your contest.

4.5 The Impact of Digital Marketing on Consumer Perception

Exceptional and effective digital marketing is an integral part of creating strong brand awareness as well as
identifying and establishing a concrete customer-base for your business. The key to accomplishing all of this
is to not only find your target audience but to also define the specifications of your company’s offerings and
ensure those offerings (products and services) are in line with the needs and wants of your potential
customers. In many ways, the brand image your business projects serve as a guiding light to help your target
audience and preferred consumers find you rather than you having to find them. Ultimately, consumer
perceptions play a large role in determining whether your brand will flourish or fail. For better or worse,
consumer perceptions are highly impressionable and can change based on different creative marketing
strategies your company employs.

 Establishing Brand Awareness and Loyalty

As long as you’re offering a high-quality product or service, chances are that most people will be
more than willing to pay a little bit of extra money to support your business. A combination of
positive consumer perceptions, excellent customer service, and customer satisfaction can eventually
translate into greater financial success and continued consumer loyalty for your business. The best
way to work towards this is by paying attention to what people are saying about your company in

32
 varying capacities. This means hosting in-person focus groups, perusing online consumer reports and
forums, as well as posting online surveys for customers to complete after trying your product or

survey. While you should certainly take most negative reviews with a grain of salt and evaluate them
as circumstantial, you should also be willing to investigate their validity and respond with grace,
respect, and tact. This will show your current customer-base and prospective customers that you care
about their opinions and experiences. Having a successful business isn’t measured by how well you
can avoid adversity; rather, it’s measured by how you respond to it.

 Competitive Advantage
Knowing your audience intimately will help give you a strong competitive advantage over your
opponents. It allows you to both deliver on their current needs and desires while also being able to
predict what their future needs and wants will be as they mature over time. In tandem, you can also
stay on top of and ahead of digital marketing trends and use them to your advantage as much as
possible.

 Boosting Consumer Loyalty

By accurately picking up on all of the most important nuances of your consumers’ fundamental
expectations of your company, you can also help to boost their loyalty to your brand. Your customers
will be wildly impressed with how well you know them and can spike their interests by launching
new products and services and recommending them accordingly. In this way, you can use social

media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest to further your digital marketing agenda
and introduce or, in some cases, re-introduce your brand to online consumers and cleverly integrate it
into their daily interactions.

 Expand Your Brand Image

Nothing can help a company effectively expand its brand image more effectively and powerfully
than positive word-of-mouth. This is quite possibly the most valuable form of marketing because
people tend to cherish the opinions of their friends, family, and acquaintances who’ve already tried a
certain product of service. Offering a large variety of products and services will also help you appeal
to a much wider audience than you otherwise would’ve been able to reach. It’s important to start off
small and establish your niche, but then use the expertise and experience you gain along the way to
expand your horizons and, in turn, increase your return on investment exponentially.

33
4.6 Why an Integrated Approach to Marketing is Important?

Understanding how digital marketing works goes beyond just getting to know each digital marketing tactic
on its own. Now that you know what each element is and understand the roles that each tactic plays in your
campaigns, it’s time to discuss how these digital marketing tactics can work together to support your overall
campaign goals.

Integrated multi-channel marketing is an approach to marketing that combines all of the tactics in your
digital marketing toolbox to create a seamless experience for your target audience. By coordinating your
marketing messages across digital platforms and using a variety of tactics to support each centralized
campaign, you can create a more unified brand message and improve the success of every campaign – thus
mastering how digital marketing works.

To get started creating an integrated digital marketing strategy, you’ll want to consider how each of your
digital channels can work together toward a common goal. For instance, if your marketing goal is to increase
traffic to your website, you might consider just a few of the ways that different digital marketing tactics can
support your website marketing:

 The content marketing that you create on your site like your site pages and blog posts help improve
search engine optimization, thus helping you drive more organic traffic back to your website.
 When you share links to pieces of content on your social media channels, you can work to drive
further traffic back to your site. Strategic social messages can even help influence direct conversions
once the user arrives at your site.
 As you develop email marketing content, you can find new ways to lead readers back to the relevant
areas of your site. Include calls-to-action throughout the body text and links to specific landing pages
that will help guide the reader on to the next step in the buyer’s journey.

34
 Figure 4.7

4.7 Digital Marketing Challenges

Digital marketing poses special challenges for its purveyors. Digital channels are proliferating rapidly, and
digital marketers have to keep up with how these channels work, how they're used by receivers and how to
use these channels to effectively market things. In addition, it's becoming more difficult to capture receivers'
attention, because receivers are increasingly inundated with competing ads. Digital marketers also find it
challenging to analyse the vast troves of data they capture and then exploit this information in new
marketing efforts.

The challenge of capturing and using data effectively highlights that digital marketing requires a new
approach to marketing based on a new understanding of consumer behaviour. For example, it may require a
company to analyse new forms of consumer behaviour, such as likes on Facebook and tweets on Twitter.

1. Building an Awesome Website

This is an obvious place to start – when a business decides to go online, the first challenge they have is
building the best website possible.

35
Most small businesses start looking for professional web designers, who can make sites that both look
pleasing aesthetically and deliver a great user experience (UX).

The way your audience experiences your online presence is a huge factor in the success of your marketing
efforts.

2. Understanding Their Audiences

Speaking of attracting the right visitors, many small businesses don't fully know who their target audience is.
This is where buyer personas come in handy.

Buyer personas are essential in the digital marketing world. They are semi-fictional representations of your
ideal customers. You use real data about your existing customers and market research to fully develop and
build your buyer personas.

This is another common challenge for small businesses because most people assume this can take a good
amount of time, especially if you need to collect real data from your current customers.

But it doesn't have to cost you a fortune and weeks of work to gather this information. Simply use a free
survey tool and regularly conduct surveys to gauge their levels of satisfaction and gather feedback about
your products and services.

Then, once you have all the information you need, you can build your personas by answering simple
questions about your ideal customers. HubSpot's Make My Persona tool makes this process easy and fun.
But it doesn't have to cost you a fortune and weeks of work to gather this information. Simply use a free
survey tool and regularly conduct surveys to gauge their levels of satisfaction and gather feedback about
your products and services.

Then, once you have all the information you need, you can build your personas by answering simple
questions about your ideal customers. HubSpot's Make My Persona tool makes this process easy and fun.

3. Creating Valuable Content

Even if your small business has a good-looking website, without valuable, informative content, your
marketing won't deliver results.

36
Content that is targeted and relevant to your buyer personas can attract the right visitors to your site. Ideally,
you want to run a consistent publication schedule for your blog, record and edit video content, and create
sharable content for your social media channels.

That's a lot of content to create. That also requires a hefty investment of time and resources. Not all small
business owners have the capability to invest in doing so.

Overcoming this challenge usually involves hiring professionals to create content for you. Outsourcing
content creation can take a lot of the burden off a small business team. Many small businesses hire agencies
to take care of their content creation needs.

Other small businesses hire an in-house content creator to oversee all content creation, including video, blog
articles, and social media shares.

4. Promoting Content

Even if you're creating awesome content that delivers value to your ideal readers, there's another component
that often gets overlooked – promoting the content.

There are several ways you can fuel your content distribution, all of which can take up a substantial amount
of time to do.

 Social Media

One of the best ways to promote content is through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,
and YouTube. You want to build a strong following of relevant users who align with your buyer personas.

The best way to build and maintain this following is by hooking their attention by sharing insightful content
that addresses their pain points and helps them pursue their goals.

Many small businesses drop the ball on social media because they assume it takes a lot of time every day to
send a tweet or write a post on their Facebook page.

And that is the case if you're not using the right tools. There are several free social media management tools
that simplify promoting your content.

37
You can schedule shares in advance and adjust messaging for each platform within tools like Buffer. These
tools often include analytics reporting as well, so you can adjust your strategy based on what's working and
what's not.

 Email

Creating an email newsletter can deliver many awesome benefits for small businesses. First of all, by sharing
snippets of content, you are able to drive more traffic to that piece content, like a blog article or whitepaper.

But you're also keeping your audience engaged on a regular basis. For example, if you're sending weekly
newsletters, your brand is going to stay top of mind, especially when those newsletters help them solve an
issue.

But small businesses tend to drag their feet on promoting content via email. They might assume it won't help
their marketing efforts much, but that is a costly oversight.

In fact, three of four companies say that email delivers "excellent" to "good" ROI. With the help of
automation tools, you can make your email strategy efficient and easy to manage.

 Outreach

The term outreach marketing refers to the practice of connecting with people or companies that share an
interest in what you and your organization has to offer. Your outreach strategy can consist of a few parts,
like public relations or guest blogging.

One of the most popular approaches is connecting with influencers. Small businesses might be contending
with bigger brands, so while they might not have the budget for big advertising campaigns, they likely can
afford working with influencers.

Another great way to promote content through your outreach strategy is to engage in online discussions with
people in your industry. For example, join relevant groups on LinkedIn or answer questions on sites like
Quora.

This ongoing engagement in online communities can attract more readers to your site. It also gives you
another space to showcase your authority and promote your content.

38
5. Generating New Leads

The overall goal of content marketing is to earn the trust of your readers. When they trust you and seek out
more information from you, they are willing to share some personal information in exchange for gated
content, known as a content offer.

This is how small businesses generate leads. A visitor who reads your blog articles finds a call to action
(CTA) at the bottom of one of your posts. The CTA is promoting a free eBook.

Once they click that CTA, they are sent to a landing page, where they fill out a form, giving their name and
email address. After the form is submitted, they receive an email with the eBook attached.

The visitor becomes a lead as you add their contact information into your customer relationship management
(CRM) system. They enjoy the free eBook, and you have a way of sharing more value with them and
keeping them engaged with your brand.

But this is much easier said than done.

In fact, HubSpot's State of Inbound 2018 report found that 61 percent of marketers say generating traffic and
leads is their top challenge.

Small businesses especially struggle with generating leads because creating lead generation campaigns and
developing the content for the campaign is time intensive.

But if you invest in outsourcing digital marketing to an agency or invest in a marketing automation program
that makes the process of running a campaign easier, you're better prepared to capture leads.

And as you know, many leads are just sales waiting to be closed.

6. Driving Sales

When you're developing your online presence for your small business and executing digital marketing
strategies, you're hopefully seeing a spike in your website traffic.

This traffic can create leads, but those leads are not guaranteed to close to become customers.

So why is it so hard for small businesses to close deals and drive sales?

Because you're likely competing with bigger names that have much more brand recognition than you. Even
in the smallest industries, you're bound to encounter bigger competitors with deeper pockets.

39
The best way to drive more sales – commit to being helpful at every customer touchpoint and stay human in
every interaction you have with your audience.

If people in your niche consistently believe they are learning from you and feel connected to you in an
authentic, human way, they will eventually look up to you as an authority within your industry, trust you,
and value your business enough to invest money in your products and services.

7. Funding

It’s a common challenge for small businesses to have trouble finding money to invest in their marketing
strategies. It’s a real Catch-22, since you need marketing in order to get attention drawn to your business, but
you need funds in order to bolster your marketing.

Thankfully, there are a lot of free or low-cost methods available to businesses of all sizes today.

By promoting your brand through content through social media channels and blogging, you can at least get
an email list started.

If your budget allows, you can also look into paid marketing tactics such as pay-per-click, mobile marketing,
or ads in your local print publications. Most importantly, budgeting is the key to keeping your business
afloat. Be wise and attentive with your funds so that, while you might have trouble with the amount of
money coming into your business, you can always work on managing the amount of money you do have.

8. Building Brand Consistency and Trust

For many small businesses, especially those just getting on their feet, establishing a reputation can be a
pretty sizable hurdle. Entering an industry that's already pretty saturated with other businesses means
fighting to stand out from the rest.

Often times, the best way to earn brand recognition and awareness is through some of the practices listed
above. Providing valuable content and building an online presence in an effort to generate leads has a
complimentary consequence of generating familiarity as well.

The people you attract to your business, the more people actually become aware of your business.

And, assuming you are actually following through on your promise to provide value, word of mouth comes
into play and makes it a little easier. As you start earning customers, you can begin incorporating social
proof and leveraging campaigns that highlight your brand, like user-generated content.

40
9. Mobile Optimization

Little known fact: mobile marketing and desktop marketing operate on very different levels. And until you
understand exactly how to leverage both equally, your small business won't reach its full potential.

Neglecting one platform in favour of another is a mistake that many businesses make. But the truth is that
both are equally important in reaching your marketing goals. To start, keep a close eye on who is using your
site and for what purpose.

We've already established that building a UX-centric website is important, but is it optimized for mobile
viewing too? How efficiently can customers find the information they're looking for from their phones?

And being mobile-friendly isn't just about how your website looks on a smartphone or tablet. According to
Outer Box, 79 percent of consumers have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last six
months. With rates like that, it's imperative that your leads are actually able to convert through mobile if they
should so choose.

The mobile experience is too important to ignore, so make sure that during your design and optimization,
you key into mobile best practices as well.

10. Burnout

Running a small business is a large endeavour and practical management requires a lot of energy, time, and
attention.

Add in the long list of marketing best practices, focus on lead generation, and all the other strategies required
to make your business profitable and you've got a recipe for fast burnout.

When faced with this challenge, the first thing is to remember you're only human. If you lose sight of that,
you'll forget to monitor your exhaustion and adjust any bad habits you may be developing.

Be conscious of what contributes to burnout for you and create a list of actions you can perform to remedy it
if you reach that point.

Keep Marketing In-House or Outsource with a Marketing Agency?

41
This is probably the biggest decision every small business owner has to make once the need for a marketing
strategy is addressed.

There's definitely pros and cons to both avenues and the right choice largely depends on your company's
capacity.

There's a lot of appeal to keeping your marketing efforts close to home and it's understandable. But there are
certain obstacles that come with trying to defend your territory on your own.

It can be difficult to keep your marketing efforts diverse. Predictability can be a good thing and a bad thing.

On the one hand, consistency in your brand will keep customers loyal and satisfied once they've invested in
you. But there's a fine line between consistent and redundant.

A marketing agency will have a much wider range of skills and perspectives working toward creating the
best campaigns for your business.

Also, hiring in-house can be a strain on what may already be a small budget. That's not to say you can't find
a fantastic strategist or even build a small marketing team, but you'll need to be conscious of employee
turnover and HR management.

Often times, the agency route actually saves more because you can hire for your specific needs and have
your plan executed immediately.

It’s important to never half-heartedly pursue digital marketing, especially as a small business looking to
stand out and build a customer base.

Being aware of the more common challenges can help a business owner plan well and crush their marketing
goals.

4.8 Digital Marketing Tactics and Strategies

1. SEO

There isn’t anything more important to digital marketing than SEO, something that might still mystify you in
its ongoing complexity. While it’s true Google’s algorithms can still become confusing, you can better grasp
how it works when you work more with the concept.

It’s always better to have an expert to manage SEO for you if you want to truly succeed. While you can learn
some basics, you’ll want someone who’s worked in it a while to fully help you realize the best strategies.

42
One recent strategy involves new HTTPS requirements already impacting SEO results. If you’re used to
using HTTP pages, Google now suggests you to switch to a HTTPS format. The reasoning behind this is
many contact forms using HTTP pages aren’t deemed secure enough.

Figure 4.8

Now that Google is going to label these “non-secure”, it’s essential to update your website with the HTTPS
designation. Otherwise, having a “non-secure” stamp on your site could become a new scarlet letter for your
placement on search engines.

An expert SEO and digital marketing specialist help you make this change.

43
2. Search Engine Marketing

If you’re new to search engine marketing, you’ll usually see it abbreviated as SEM. It’s a form of Internet
marketing where you increase your SERPs through paid advertising methods.

You’ll want an expert to help you in this field as well, especially one who’s worked with Google Ads and
search/display ads. In the case of Google Ads, you’ll want to educate yourself first on how the process
works.

What you’ll appreciate the most is Google makes their Google Ads easy to use through their attention to
customization. They let you choose whether you want graphic display ads, YouTube video ads, text-based

search ads, or in-app mobile ads. All of these are going to depend on your business style and the targeted
customers you need to reach.

3. Local Search Marketing

You’re seeing a lot more attention on local search marketing the last few years. It’ll continue being
important far into the coming decade as local businesses realize the value in being found by local consumers.

Google makes it even easier with localized ad capability, plus superior metrics to track how well your ads
work.

Don’t forget about other paid ad opportunities, especially Facebook Ads. The latter gives you ample
opportunity to customize to multiple ad formats.

44
 Figure 4.9

To get started with local search marketing, you can again utilize more gifts from Google. Through Google
My Business, you’ll be able to have your listing turn up the second someone does a Google search based on
the user’s keywords. This includes your business appearing on Google Maps.

Google makes it easy to update your listing as well so nothing becomes out of date.

Don’t forget about how important online reviews are, as well as your social reputation. You’ll want to
inspire customers to write positive reviews on places like Yelp. On social media, starting conversations and
posting targeted content helps you utilize inbound marketing. Inbound techniques attract customers to you
rather than you seeking them.

4. Content Marketing

As a connective string to inbound marketing above, content marketing is a big part of attracting a targeted
audience. What’s essential about content marketing is that you need to make your content valuable, relevant,
and consistent to make it worth the time of those consuming it.

45
In today’s time, you need to focus on creating content that can solve pain points and stay evergreen. Using
shortcuts or black hat SEO tactics just to move to the top of search engines won’t work thanks to Google’s
all-seeing eye.

So always keep “content as king”, as many like to put it. To make content marketing work well, you need to
focus on mobile content, native advertising, influencer marketing, and marketing automation.

Think seriously about mobile content because smartphones are already making up 50% of all global devices.
This is going to affect digital advertising, and how influencers promote your brand.

Automation tools send content to prospects on their mobile devices at just the right times.

5. Remarketing

Another critical aspect to digital marketing is going after prospects again with marketing content if they
didn’t respond to your site’s banner ads the first time. This works by tracking these visitors through cookies
and creating new ads on related sites.

Figure 4.10
46
You can also create new ads on your site to better target your prospects. The information you get from your
site visitors gives you valuable data to tweak your ads to their pain points.

Ultimately, remarketing helps you stay more engaged with prospects, aids in brand awareness, and increases
conversions. You can also gain the customers of your competitors, helping pay back any investment you
place in creating new ads.

6. Responsive Web Design

Reaching customers by mobile is more or less the standard now, and that’s going to go on into the coming
decade. Making your website conform to mobile screens is one of the most essential parts of digital
marketing. The only way you can make this work successfully is through responsive web design.

With responsive programming, you can make your website automatically conform to all mobile screens.
This is going to mean more than one format, including tablets and increasing use of smartwatches.

47
 Figure 4.11

While you’ll have to work with a web designer to make this work, you’ll want an SEO expert for another
aspect of RWD. AMP (or Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a new open-source code helping to make mobile
web pages load faster.

Google gives precedence to websites using this, so take it seriously. It’s especially useful if you have a
publishing site or post content to your website on a regular basis.

7. Email Marketing

No doubt you’ve done some email marketing, but how effective is it in reaching your intended targets at the
right times? Email marketing is already a great tool for generating more leads than possible through any
other marketing method. You can also increase your sales and conversion rates.

If you’re already suffering from overspending on other digital marketing, email marketing is one of the most
affordable methods out there. In some cases, it’s free, unless using outsourced services.

Since you can combine it with other media, it’s also one of the most integrated marketing methods. You can
add social share icons, plus referral reward systems. Email marketing ultimately helps you shorten your sales
cycles when using compelling content.

8. Social Media Marketing

No doubt you’ve posted content to social media already. Yet, what can you do to make it more effective this
year and the next?

To capture today’s audiences, Forbes notes various things, including automation to post your content when
you know your audience is reading. Using tools like Hootsuite for post scheduling helps immensely when
reaching users in other time zones.

You’ll also want to curate some content if possible, to prove your clout. Don’t be too proud to do this since it
adds lustre to your expertise and brand. When you curate content from others, they’ll likely reciprocate.

Plus, don’t forget about hiring influencers to post content for you on popular social media channels.
48
9. Marketing Automation

As you can see, marketing automation is an important element in a lot of digital marketing techniques.
Knowing more about it in general should become a top priority as it becomes a standard for businesses
around the globe.

With 91% of successful businesses now saying automation is very important to their success, you can get a
vision of what the present and future of marketing is.

To become successful with this, try looking for a CRM platform with marketing automation built in. These
can work together well because your CRM already has contact information. Automating marketing content
directly to your contact list helps you integrate your marketing all in one place rather than using disparate
sources.

What’s most important with automation is to keep your content consistent across all channels to avoid brand
confusion.

49
 Figure 4.12

10. Influencer Marketing

Have you thought about how you can take on a digital marketing campaign without having to spend a
fortune? While you can save money doing email marketing and inbound techniques, hiring influencers does
the same.

If you think hiring influencers to promote your brand online is all about hiring celebrities, think again. An
influential person on social media doesn’t always have to mean being a celebrity. It can simply be someone
with a lot of followers and a good track record of promoting products.

Forbes notes you need to identify top influencers first, which is going to involve a little research. You can do
this doing hashtag searches on places like Twitter to see what people are saying about topics related to your
industry.

Reach out to these influencers on social media and ask them if they’d be willing to promote your brand.
Some may offer to do it in exchange for free products. However, most are going to demand a fee.

Be sure to track your results to assure your ROI. Keep in mind those with fewer followers can have just as
much influence as those with ten times the number of followers.

50
11. Video

Over the last decade, we became a more visual culture attracted to imagery in the digital realms. A lot of this
comes in various forms, but there isn’t any question video rose to the top.

We’re at the point now where more consumers of content prefer video above any other visual medium.
Recent statistics show 87% of all online marketers now use video content of some sort.

A lot of this comes from massive viewership on places like YouTube. Regardless, where you post videos
isn’t going to matter without compelling content.

More personalized video has become a norm lately, or at least ones directly addressing pain points of
targeted viewers. The same goes with making your business look more human.

Successful video marketing can mean behind-the-scenes tours of your business, or testimonials to show the
human side of your brand. This means paying attention to one major trend in video marketing: Storytelling.

When you can tell a compelling story about your business and prove you can solve pain points of customers,
you have a can’t-miss formula. It’s also smart to keep your videos as short as possible, if not in a series.
Attention spans are as short as ever, and you’ll need to tell your story in a compact way with a compelling
hook.

12. Revisiting Your Landing Pages

If you’ve already created a landing page as part of your digital marketing campaign, are you sure prospects
who visited before are going to come back?

This is a question that should become the central core of your digital marketing efforts. All marketing
experts reiterate how landing page traffic is the nucleus of successful inbound marketing.

The problem is your landing page perhaps isn’t very enticing at the moment. Solving this (in part) comes
down to web design, including where you place your Call to Action and advertising. It goes beyond what
you place on your website, though. You’ll want to invest in PPC advertising (pay-per-click) to place ads for
your site on related digital channels.

Other options include buying sponsorships with other companies, or just simple email marketing. In the
latter case, placing a link that takes the reader to your landing page for further content is a common strategy.

For CTA’s, be sure to include one on your homepage to avoid complication. Even a CTA at the end of your
blog gives a connective string to your content to entice another visitation

51
 CHAPTER NO 5

DATA ANLYSIS, INTERPRETATION AND PRESENTATION

5.1) Gender

Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Female 43 43%

2 Male 57 57%

3 Prefer not to say Nil Nil

Table no 5.1

Figure 5.1

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 57% respondents are male

 And 43% respondents are female

52
5.2) Age of respondents

Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 18-20 44 44%

2 21-30 44 44%

3 31 & above 12 12%

Table no 5.2

Figure 5.2

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 44% respondents are of the age group of 18 to 20

 44% respondents are of the age group of 21 to 30 years
 And 12% of the respondents are of thee age group of 31 and above

53
5.3) What is your occupation

Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Working 42 42%

2 Student 50 50%

3 Businessman 5 5%

4 Other 3 3%

Table no 5.3

Figure 5.3

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 42% of the respondents are working

 50% of the respondents are students
 Only 5% of the respondents are businessman
 And 3% of the respondents are in different occupation

54
5.4) Do you shop online

Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Yes 96 96%

2 No 4 4%

Table no 5.4

Figure 5.4

In the table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 96% of the respondents said yes

 And only 4% of the respondents do not shop online

55
5.5) how often do you shop online?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Frequently 16 16%

2 Regularly 22 22%

3 Rarely 11 11%

4 According to the need 46 46%

5 Occasionally 5 5%

Table no 5.5

Figure 5.5

In above table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 16% of the respondents said they shop frequently

 22% of the respondents said they shop regularly
 11% of the respondents said they shop rarely
 46% of the respondents said they shop whenever need arises
 And only 5% of the respondents said that they shop occasionally

56
5.6) Why do you prefer online shopping?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Easy payment 18 18%

2 Wide range of products 34 34%

3 Time saving 26 26%

4 Discounts 22 22%

Table no 5.6

Figure 5.6

In the table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 18% of the respondents prefer online shopping because of easy payment option
 34% of the respondents prefer online shopping because of availability of the wide range of the
products
 26% of the respondents prefer online shopping because its time saving
 And 22% of the respondents prefer online shopping because of discounts available on online
shopping

57
5.7) Do you feel online shopping merchants are providing competitive prices?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Yes 75 75%

2 No 6 6%

3 Maybe 19 19%

Table no 5.7

Figure 5.7

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 75% of the respondents feel that online merchants are providing competitive prices
 6% of the respondents feel that online merchants do not provide competitive prices as compared to
traditional shopping
 And 19% of the respondents are not confirm about online merchants providing competitive prices

58
5.8) What do you buy on online shopping?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage
1 Books 7 7%
2 Clothing 44 44%
3 Gifts 3 3%
4 Electronic goods 36 36%
5 e-recharge 7 7%
6 Grocery items 3 3%
Table no 5.8

Figure 5.8

In the table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 7% of the respondents buys books from online shopping websites

 44% of the respondents buys clothing from online shopping websites
 3% of the respondents buys gifts from online shopping websites
 36% of the respondents buys electronic goods from online shopping websites
 7% of the respondents buys e- recharge from online shopping websites
 And only 3% of the respondents buys grocery items from online shopping

59
5.9) Select the sources which you use for gathering information about various products?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage
1 Search engines 25 25.3%
2 Advertisements 36 36.4%
3 Promotional emails 10 10.1%
4 Online advertisements 46 46.5%
Table no 5.9

Figure 5.9

In table and diagram, we can observe that: -

Only 99 respondents out of 100 respondents responded to this question

 25 respondents collect the information from search engines

 36 respondents collect the information from advertisements
 Only 10 respondents collect the information about the product via promotional mails
 And 46 respondents collect the information about the product from online advertisements

60
5.10) Select the payment mode normally adopted by you in online shopping?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage
1 Credit card 12 12%
2 Debit card 55 55%
3 Net banking 5 5%
4 Cash on delivery 28 28%
Table no 5.10

Figure 5.10

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 12% of the respondents uses credit card for making payment in online shopping
 55% of the respondents uses debit card for making payment in online shopping
 Only 5% of the respondents uses net banking as a payment mode for online shopping
 And 28% of the respondents prefer cash on delivery for making payment of products purchased
through online shopping

61
5.11) Do you feel online shopping is better than traditional shopping?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Yes 66 66%

2 No 16 16%

3 Maybe 18 18%

Table no 5.11

Figure 5.11

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 66% of the respondents feel that online shopping is better than traditional shopping
 16% of the respondents feel that online shopping is not better than traditional shopping
 And 18% of the respondents are not convinced with both traditional shopping and online shopping

62
5.12) Which online shopping site you use for online shopping?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Amazon 47 47%

2 Flipkart 34 34%

3 Myntra 14 14%

4 Other 5 5%

Table no 5.12

Figure 5.12

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 47% of the respondents prefer online shopping through amazon website

 34% of the respondents prefer flipkart for buying products through online shopping
 14% of the respondents uses myntra for online shopping
 And only 5% of the respondents uses other online shopping websites for purchasing products through
online shopping

63
5.13) Have you ever faced problem while shopping online?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Yes 73 73%

2 No 23 23%

3 Maybe 4 4%

Table no 5.13

Figure 5.13

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 73% of the respondents said yes that they have faced problem while shopping online
 23% of the respondents said no that they haven’t faced any problem while shopping online
 And only 4% of the respondents are not confirm about the facing problem while shopping online

64
5.14) Is the quality of products that you purchase online is same as shown om the online web
advertisements?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Yes 66 66%

2 No 16 16%

3 Maybe 16 16%

Table no 5.14

Figure 5.14

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 68% of the respondents said yes about authenticity of the product

 16% of the respondents does not think that the products are same as shown in the online web
advertisement
 And 16% of the respondents are not aware about this

65
5.15) How much amount you spent on online shopping?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 5% 21 21%

2 8% 17 17%

3 10% 40 40%

4 More than 10% 22 22%

Table no 5.15

Figure 5.15

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

 21% of the respondents spent 5% of their earnings on the online shopping

 17% of the respondents spent 8% of there earnings on the online shopping
 40% of the respondents spent 10% of there earnings on the online shopping
 And 22% of the respondents spent more than 10% of there earnings on the online shopping

66
5.16) As a customer do you think your rights are violated in online shopping?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Yes 60 60.2%

2 No 39 39.8%

Table no 5.16

Figure 5.16

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

Only 98 respondents out of 100 respondents have responded to this question
 39 respondents said yes that their customer rights are violated by using online shopping
 And 59 respondents said no that their customer rights are not violated by using online shopping

67
5.17) Is it true that internet offers a wide range of products with comparison of features
which are not available in traditional market?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Yes 93 93.9%

2 No 6 6.1%

Table no 5.17

Figure 5.17

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

Only 98 respondents out of 100 respondents have responded to this question
 93 respondents said yes that internet offers a wide range of products and more features than
traditional shopping
 And only 5 respondents said no that internet does not offers a wide range of products and features
than traditional shopping

68
5.18) Do you think the business sector is relying on online shopping and internet for most of
the business transactions and functions in India?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Yes 80 80.4%

2 No 7 7.2%

3 Maybe 12 12.4%

Table no 5.18

Figure 5.18

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

Only 97 respondents out of 100 respondents have responded to this question

 78 respondents said yes that business sector is relying on online shopping and on internet for the
most of the business transactions and functions
 7 respondents said no that the business sector is not relying on online shopping and on internet for its
functions and business transactions
 And 12 respondents are not sure about it

69
5.19) Does privacy concern stop you from online shopping?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Yes 29 29.6%

2 No 55 55.1%

3 Maybe 15 15.3%

Table no 5.19

Figure 5.19

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

Only 98 respondents out of 100 respondents have responded to this question

 29 respondents said yes that privacy concern stops them from online shopping
 54 respondents said no that privacy concern does not stops them from continuing online shopping
 And only 15 respondents are not sure about this

70
5.20) How was your online shopping experience?
Serial no Response No of respondents Percentage

1 Good 67 67.7%

2 Average 32 32.3%

3 Bad Nil Nil

4 Worse Nil Nil

Table no 5.20

Figure 5.20

In table and pie diagram we can observe that: -

Only 99 respondents out of 100 respondents have responded to this question
 67 respondents are satisfied with their online shopping experience
 32 respondents given average response to their online shopping experience
 And no one had bad or worse shopping experience about online shopping

71
 CHAPTER NO.6

FINDINGS, CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

Contents: -

6.1 Findings

6.2 Conclusion

6.3 Suggestions

72
 CHAPTER NO.6

FINDINGS, CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

6.1 FINDINGS

 There is not much difference in gender for using online shopping.

 Students and salaried persons are most frequent users of online shopping websites.
 Frequency of purchase for electronics, clothing and apparels and accessories are more.
 Digital marketing techniques like search engine marketing, links providing other website and
advertisement also functioned well for promotion of this website.
 Fast delivery is one of best service that online shopping websites are providing.
 Different payment options available in Flipkart and amazon made customers more satisfied and
comfort for paying while purchasing product.
 Advertising is an important way to have the brand and products familiar to consumers.
 Convenience and time saving are two important factors that customer looking for while purchasing
through online.

6.2 CONCLUSION

Online shopping is becoming common in today’s life. The study indicates that most of customer having
experience of online shopping. Customer believed that online shopping is better option than manual
shopping still they have belief that online shopping is expensive, delayed in delivery of products and service.
Most of the customers are facing problems like return of bad / wrong product, confusing sites and ineffective
customer service. According to, customers most alarming barrier for online shopping are unable to verify
product personally, online payment security.

 The thorough study is based on the consumer behaviour analysis which serves a great idea regarding
consumer perception when they go for online shopping. In order to satisfy themselves consumer
73
 perceive many things before buying products and they will be satisfied if the company meet their
expectation.

 The Overall Brand Value of Flipkart is good, but it is facing some tough competition from its global
competitors like eBay and Amazon. Talking about domestic market i.e. India, it is the most superior
E-business portal which is aggressively expanding & planting its roots deep into the Indian market &
at the same time shifting the mind-set of the people from going & shopping from physical store to
online stores, which is magnificent!

 Be very focused on consumers and build amazing experiences for the customers.

6.3 SUGGESTIONS

 Delivery services can be improved mainly in rural areas by selecting appropriate courier service
which has services in customer area for dispatching an item.
 Can make free delivery to all priced products.
 Can include more coupon codes and gift vouchers for increasing the traffic of the customers.
 Out of stock items can made available as soon as possible and intimate the needed customers.
 Should comprehensively invest into E-CRM & online reputation management.
 Logistics & Supply Chain: can continuously aim to reduce the delivery time cycle.
 Price will still be a factor as amazon being a huge company will use its economies of scale to remove
their competitors from the market; therefore, they need to be more competitive on that aspect.

74
 ANNEXURE

Questionnaire

 Gender
a) Female
b) Male
c) Prefer not to say

 Age of respondent
a) 18-20
b) 21-30
c) 31 & above

 What is your occupation

a) Working
b) Student
c) Businessman
d) Other

 Do you shop online

a) Yes
b) No

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 How often do you shop online?
a) Frequently
b) Regularly
c) Rarely
d) According to the need
e) Occasionally

 Why do you prefer online shopping?

a) Easy payment
b) Wide range of products
c) Time saving
d) Discounts

 Do you feel online merchants are providing competitive prices?

a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe

 What do you buy on online shopping websites?

a) Books
b) Clothing
c) Gifts
d) Electronic goods
e) E-recharge
f) Grocery items

 Select the sources which you use for gathering information about various products
a) Search engines
b) Advertisements
c) Promotional mails
d) Online advertisements

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 Select the payment mode normally adopted by you in online shopping
a) Credit card
b) Debit card
c) Net banking
d) Cash on delivery

 Do you feel online shopping is better than traditional shopping?

a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe

 Which online shopping site you use for online shopping

a) Amazon
b) Flipkart
c) Myntra
d) Other

 Have you ever faced problem while shopping online?

a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe

 Is the quality of the products that you purchase online is as same as shown on the online web
advertisements?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe

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 How much amount you spent on online shopping?
a) 5%
b) 8%
c) 10%
d) More than 10%

 As a customer do you think your rights are violated in online shopping

a) Yes
b) No

 Is it true that internet offers a wide range of products with comparison of features which are
not available in traditional shopping?
a) Yes
b) No

 Do you think the business sector is relying on online shopping and internet for most of the
business transactions and functions in India?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe

 Does privacy concern stop you from online shopping?

a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe

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  How was your shopping experience?
a) Good
b) Average
c) Bad
d) Worse

Google forms questionnaire link

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1T7IYQGr-5-hKbVZ3q-0mNdBt2Nzhh0xWKC8AWZrGTYA/edit

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 BIBLOGRAPHY

BOOKS

 Singh Meera, marketing mix of 4p’s for competitive advantage, journal of business and
management,2012, page-40-45.
 Michal vaz and aurora vaz, social media marketing, email marketing from books of marketing
strategies and practices page 200 and 211

WEBSITES

 www.Wikipedia.com
 http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in
 https://www.researchgate.net
 https://www.slideshare.net
 http://www.ijlemr.com
 https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au
 http://www.allresearchjournal.com
 http://www.ijsdr.org
 https://www.bluleadz.com/blog/5

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