Minor Project Report

ON
“Analysing consumer behaviour towards usage of Social Media
Platforms”

Submitted in Partial Fulfilment for the Award of the

Degree of BBA 2021-2024

Under the Guidance of: Submitted By:

Dr. Monica Sharma Shambhavi Sandilya
Associate Professor,MAIMS University Enrolment No.-13314701721

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 CERTIFICATE FROM THE INSTITUTE GUIDE

This is to certify that the minor project titled “Analysing consumer behaviour towards usage
of Social Media Platforms” is an academic work done by “Shambhavi Sandilya” submitted in
the partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of the degree of BBA at Maharaja
Agrasen Institute of Management Studies, Delhi, under my guidance & direction.

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

Signature :
Name of the Guide: Dr. Monica Sharma
Designation : Associate Professor, MAIMS

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 STUDENT DECLARATION

This is to certify that I have completed the Minor Project report titled “Analysing consumer
behaviour towards usage of Social Media Platforms” under the guidance of “DR. Monica
Sharma” in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of Degree of BBA at Maharaja
Agrasen Institute of Management Studies, Delhi. This is an original piece of work & I have
not submitted it earlier elsewhere.

Date: June 10, 2023 Signature:

Place: Maharaja Agrasen Name: Shambhavi Sandilya

Institute of Management Studies

Enrolment No.: 13314701721

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The present work is an effort to throw some light on “Analysing consumer behaviour towards
usage of Social Media Platforms”. The work would not have been possible to come to an end
without the able guidance, supervision and help to me by number of people.

With deep sense of gratitude, I acknowledge the encouragement and guidance received by my
guide Dr. Monica Sharma ma’am and other staff members.

I convey my heartfelt affection to all those people who helped and supported me during the
course for completion of my Minor Project.

-Shambhavi Sandilya

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

S.NO TITLE PAGE NO.

I. Certificate 2.
II. Student Declaration 3.
III. Acknowledgement 4.
1. Chapter 1-Introduction to the company 5-13
and industry
 Uses of social media in different
sectors
 Advantages of social media
 Disadvantages of social media
 Impact of covid-19 on the usage
of social media
2. Chapter 2-Introduction to the topic 14-24
Company Background and Industry
Profile
 Facebook
 Snapchat
 Twitter
 Instagram
3. Chapter 3- Review of Literature 25-29
4. Chapter 4- Research Methodology 30-34
• Meaning of research methodology
• Objectives of Study
• Scope of Study
• Meaning and types of Research Design
• Sample Design
• Sample Size
• Sampling Technique
• Data Collection/Data sources
• Analytical Tools
• Limitations of the Study
5. Chapter 5- Data Analysis and 35-53
Interpretation
6. Chapter 6-Findings and Observations 54-55
7. Chapter 7-Conclusion and Suggestions 56-58
IV. References and Bibliography 59
V. Annexure :Questionnaire enclosed 60-63

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 CHAPTER – 1
INTRODUCTION TO THE INDUSTRY AND THE
COMPANIES

6
INTRODUCTION OF THE STUDY

In little more than a decade, the impact of social media has gone from being an
entertaining extra to a fully integrated part of nearly every aspect of daily life for
many. In little more than a decade, the impact of social media has gone from being an
entertaining extra to a fully integrated part of nearly every aspect of daily life for
many. As quickly as social media has insinuated itself into politics, the workplace,
home life and elsewhere, it continues to evolve at lightning speed, making it tricky to
predict which way it will morph next. “Social media isn’t a utility. It’s not like power
or water where all people care about is whether it works. Young people care about
what using one platform or another says about them. It’s not cool to use the same site
as your parents and grandparents, so they’re always looking for the hot new thing.”.
After Covid-19, many of the people have switched to the increasing use of social
media websites and other apps to pass on their spare time. It is no longer a hidden fact
that the usage of social media websites such as Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, and
WhatsApp have unnecessarily surged high than routine. Physical activities such as
running, walking, jogging, etc. have now been replaced by social media activities such
as virtual fitness classes, continuous newsfeed browsing, and video chats. Changes in
the social connecting patterns have adversely affected people’s lifestyle and in turn,
their mental health. Most of the individuals have a tendency to be socially active and
interact with their fellows to avoid internal conflicts. Researches highlight the rising
number of mental challenges people face in the wake of the crisis and social
distancing measures. Health anxiety, depressive disorders, somatic complaints,
anxiety, insomnia, agitation, etc. are distress calls associated with the compulsive use
of social media and/or the internet. Furthermore, social media has become a common
mean which might lead to marginalization, associated stigmas, communalism, hatred,
violence, etc. Yet, in such times, social media has benefitted individuals with myriads
of advantages. Firstly, it has allowed people to stay in touch with each other and share
information about physical and emotional well-being. It has enabled us to spare time
and re-connect with our lost contacts right from the comfort of our homes.

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INTRODUCTION OF THE TOPIC

Social media refers to user-created content (audio, text, video, multimedia) that is published
and shared online. It is also the online technology that allows users to share content and
communicate with one another. Social media has changed how we live our lives and affected
how nearly every industry does business. People use social media to stay informed, compare
and buy products, and keep in touch with family and friends. Companies also use social media
to reach customers. They have in-house social media departments or hire consulting firms to
help them develop a social media strategy, market their products, and manage their profile
across various types of social media. Nonprofits and government agencies use them to spread
information about their programs and services. In a general sense, social media has been
around since the beginning of the Internet, but Six Degrees, the first social-networking site,
launched in 1997. Social media are generally defined as forms of electronic communication
where users can create communities to share information, ideas, pictures, videos and other
content. Social networking is a subcategory of social media, which generally entails the
creation and maintenance of online relationships both personal and professional via various
platforms Social media are generally defined as “Internet-based, disentranced, and persistent
channels of mass personal communication facilitating perceptions of interactions among
users, deriving value primarily from user generated content”. In other words, social media can
be any form of computer-mediated communication where individuals not only set up profiles
to present who they but also generate content of their own, see, and interact with content of
their friends or other users online.
Social networking sites (SNSs), a subdomain of social media, have been defined as a
networked communication platform in which participants
1) have uniquely identifiable profiles that consist of user-supplied content, content provided
by other users, and/or system-provided data
2) can publicly articulate connections that can be viewed and traversed by others
3) can consume, produce, and/or interact with streams of user-generated content provided by
their connections on the site.

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USES OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN DIIFERENT SECTORS:

Use of social media for small businesses:

One of the more prominent users of social media is small businesses and small business
owners. It’s because small business owners are the customers of social media websites. Social
Media websites are used by small business owners to market their business to the targeted
demographic by type of audience, location, age group etc. Today, social media websites are in
existence due to the advertising potential and higher conversion rate offered by them for
business owners. Almost all kind of businesses can be promoted and you will see how these
products and services are being hawked by social media platforms. Some social media
websites such as Facebook are even providing an option to blog, promote and boost sales.
Everything that is important for a business to grow their business, is the business of Facebook
now.

Use of social media for digital marketing companies:

The use of social media for digital marketing companies is similar to small businesses. Even
digital marketing companies provide social media marketing services for small business
owners. In this process, digital media marketing companies create viral content. Viral content
on current causes that engages the entire community and people. Sometimes they create funny
content, another day they create inspirational content and so on. And in middle of all this
content bombardment, they promote the business content to them. Many digital marketer and
companies create spam groups and communities to collect user’s information to target for
cold calling. It’s just another way for them to exploit the large number of gullible social media
users who don’t mind giving out their phone number and email address for a free pen drive
‘lucky draw’ contest. Use of social media for teachers: Teachers and educators can be the
most impactful users of social media websites, they can use it to explore educational content,
create multimedia presentations, 3D animations etc to explain 10 concepts of science and
mathematics in a better way. They can create and write a meaningful post that able people to
think and act generously.

Use of social media for data analysis expert:

Social media is a top platform for market research and decision-making process. Billions of
people use social media for learning, marketing, shopping and decision making. Now when
they use social media, they create and generate data that enables data analysts to do the

9
analysis on the related subject. Such as data about latest marketing campaigns and shared
content. When this data is processed along certain parameters it gives birth valuable
information that helps companies and corporations take key decisions regarding their business
interests for the future.

Use of social media for government:

There are thousands of government departments in any country such as forest department,
income tax and sales tax department, EPF department, transportation department, consumers,
RTI and many others. These units of Government can use social media to make users aware
and educated about their and own rights and the facilities provided by these units.

Use of social media by politicians:

Everyone knows that politicians use social media to test the waters of public opinion on
certain topic and causes. They use it to connect with people. They use to make people aware
and educated about the services and importance of the campaign. They hire digital marketing
companies and marketers or ghost bloggers. While many uses to troll the opposition party.
One way or another, social media has become the nerve center around which election and
poll-related strategies are formed and executed. Use of social media for news media The role
of news media in the development of the country is bigger than others. News media gets
almost 70% users attention on social media. There are 1000 of news websites you can see on
social media and everyone is trying to get the attention. Everyone is trying to educate and
drivingtraffic to their websites on even cheap and lowest quality post. But that’s how they do
it and this how this business works. We should aim for honest and meaningful content that is
meant to educate the masses not divide them.

Advantages of Social Media for the Society

1. Connectivity: The first and main advantage of the social media is connectivity. People
from anywhere can connect with anyone. Regardless of the location and religion. The beauty
of social media is that you can connect with anyone to learn and share your thoughts.
2. Education: Social media has a lot of benefits for the students and teachers. It is very easy to
educate from others who are experts and professionals via the social media. You can follow
anyone tolearn from him/her and enhance your knowledge about any field. Regardless of your
location and education background you can educate yourself, without paying for it.
3. Help: You can share your issues with the community to get help and giddiness. Whether it
is helping in term of money or in term of advice, you can get it from the community you are
connected with.
4. Information and Updates: The main advantage of the social media is that you update
yourself from the latest happenings around in the world. Most of the time, Television and
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print media these days are biased and does not convey the true message. With the help of
social media, you can get the facts and true information by doing some research. 5.
Promotion: Whether you have an offline business or online, you can promote your business to
the largest audience. The whole world is open for you, and can promote to them. This makes
the businesses profitable and less expensive, because most of the expenses made over a
business are for advertising and promotion. This can be decreased by constantly and regularly
involving on the social media to connect with the right audience.
6. Noble Cause: Social media can also be used for the noble causes. For example, to promote
an NGO, social welfare activities and donations for the needy people. People are using social
media for donation for needy people and it can be a quick way to help such people.
7. Awareness: Social media also create awareness and innovate the way people live. It is the
social media which has helped people discover new and innovative stuffs that can enhance
personal lives. From farmers to teachers, students to lawyers every individual of the society
can benefit from the social media and its awareness factor.
8. Helps Government and Agencies Fight Crime: It is also one of the advantages of the social
media that it helps Governments and Security Agencies to spy and catch criminals to fight
crime.
9. Improves Business Reputation: Just like it can ruin any business reputation, it can also
improve business sales and reputation. Positive comments and sharing about a company can
help them with sales and goodwill. Since people are free to share whatever they want on the
social media, it can impact positively when good words are shared.
10. Helps in Building Communities: Since our world has different religions and beliefs. Social
media helps in building and participating in the community of own religion and believes to
discuss and learn about it. Similarly, people of different communities can connect to discuss
and share related stuffs. For example, Game lover can join games related communities, car
lover can join communities related to cars and so on.

Disadvantages of Social Media

1. Cyberbullying: According to a report published by PewCenter.org most of the children
have become victims of the cyberbullying over the past. Since anyone can create a fake
account and do anything without being traced, it has become quite easy for anyone to bully on
the Internet. Threats, intimidation messages and rumors can be sent to the masses to create
discomfort and chaos in the society. This research shows that approximately 1 in 20 students
commits suicide in cyberbullying cases.
2. Hacking: Personal data and privacy can easily be hacked and shared on the Internet. Which
can make financial losses and loss to personal life. Similarly, identity theft is another issue
that can give financial losses to anyone by hacking their personal accounts. Several personal
twitter and Facebook accounts have been hacked in the past and the hacker had posted
materials that have affected the individual’s personal lives. This is one of the dangerous
disadvantages of the social media and every user is advised to keep their personal data and
accounts safe to avoid such accidents.

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3. Addiction: The addictive part of the social media is very bad and can disturb personal lives
as well. The teenagers are the most affected by the addiction of the social media. They get
involved very extensively and are eventually cut off from the society. It can also waste
individual time that could have been utilized by productive tasks and activities.
4. Fraud and Scams: Several examples are available where individuals have scammed and
commit fraud through the social media. For example, this list contains the social media scams
that are done all the time.
5. Security Issues: Now a day’s security agencies have access to people personal accounts
which makes the privacy almost compromised. You never know when you are visited by any
investigation officer regarding any issue that you mistakenly or unknowingly discussed over
the internet.
6. Reputation: Social media can easily ruin someone’s reputation just by creating a false story
and spreading across the social media. Similarly, businesses can also suffer losses due to bad
reputation being conveyed over the social media.
7. Cheating and Relationship Issues: Most of the people have used the social media platform
to propose and marry each other. However, after some time they turn to be wrong in their
decision and part ways. Similarly, couples have cheated each other by showing the fake
feelings and incorrect information.
8. Health Issues: The excess usage of social media can also have a negative impact on the
health. Since exercise is the key to lose weight, most of the people get lazy because of the
excessive use of social networking sites. Which in result brings disorder in the routine life.
This research by seeker will shock you by showing how bad your health can be affected by
the use of the social media. “The question is, are we at a point where the social media
organizations and their activities should be regulated for the benefit of the consumer?” –Pinar
Yildirim
9. Social Media causes death: Not just by using it, but by following the stunts and other crazy
stuffs that are shared on the internet. For example, bikers doing the unnecessary stunts, people
doing the jump over the trains and other life threatening stuffs. For example in a video 14 year
old from Mumbai was doing stunts on a running train which caused his death. These types of
stunts are performed by the teenagers because of the successful stunts made and shared over
the social media.
10. Glamorizes Drugs and Alcohol: One of the disadvantages of the social media is that
people start to follow others who are wealthy or drug addicted and share their views and
videos on the web. Which eventually inspires others to follow the same and get addicted to
the drugs and alcohol

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Impact of Covid-19 on the usage of social media
COVID-19 and the resulting stay-at-home orders have changed just about everything,
including our relationship with the internet, how often we use it and how we use it. We are
online more than ever, working from home, attending school from home, catching up with
friends via video calls. And as stores and restaurants around the globe shuttered their doors for
months on end, we all headed to the internet to order essential items online, causing
unprecedented online order numbers. During a time of social distance and limited contact
with others, social media became an important place to interact. Social media platforms are
meant to connect people and helped the world remain connected, largely increasing usage
during the pandemic. Since many people were asked to remain home, they had turned to
social media to maintain their relationships and to access entertainment to pass the time.
“Social media isn’t a utility. It’s not like power or water where all people care about is
whether it works. Young people care about what using one platform or another says about
them.” –Jonah Berger.
The COVID-19 pandemic had affected the usage of social media by the world's general
population, celebrities, world leaders, and professionals alike. Social networking services
were used to spread information, and to find humor and distraction from the pandemic via
Internet memes. However, social distancing has forced lifestyle changes for many people,
which put a strain on mental health. Many online counselling services that use social media
were created and began to rise in popularity, as they could safely connect mental health
workers with those who need them. As consumers become more concerned about wellbeing
for themselves and others, their worry over digital wellbeing has dropped. People don’t
monitor screen time as they did a year ago, especially among those who stay online most.
parents are also getting in on it. Baby Boomers are implementing social media into their daily
habits. Brands should realize that an older audience is also within reach. Those trends are
more compelling than the expected trajectory among younger consumers, especially in
business. Gen Z has lost a bit of its exuberance, when the pandemic took hold. More than
other generations, they’ve regressed to old patterns.

Some facts:
• After The pandemic, it has shifted users away from worry about self-image in their social
media presence, with 42% saying there’s less pressure to represent themselves unrealistically.
• More men (46%) than women (31%) say they’re more open about personal struggles on
social platforms.

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• Escapism and humor still rank highly for most-shared kinds of posts. Inspiration comes from
friends and family (74% chose this as the top priority of social media), and local communities
(52%). Online groups bring self-isolating users together and to share advice and knowledge.

CHAPTER-2
INTREODUCTION TO THE TOPIC

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Industry Profile
Social media has become extremely popular (and a lucrative industry) in recent years. Social
media accounted for 19 percent of all online minutes at the end of 2015, according to Cross-
Platform Future in Focus U.S.: 2016, from ComScore. Revenue in the social media industry is
increasing rapidly. In 2015, worldwide social networking advertising revenue reached $23.68
billion, according to eMarketer. This is a 33.5 percent increase from 2014.
The social media industry provides another great benefit: jobs for people with a variety of
educational backgrounds and skill sets. There are many rewarding careers in the industry.
Social media managers, software engineers and designers, computer programmers, and other
computer scientists are in demand, but so are workers with creative backgrounds such as
writers, graphic designers, and marketing professionals. Workers with no technical or creative
background may find jobs in administration, finance, law, and other areas. Several types of
companies create and/or utilize social media. Some companies, such as Google offer both
social networking products (Google+), other types of software (such as the search engine
Chrome), and hardware (Pixel, Chromecast, etc.). Others, such as Pinterest, specialize in
social media. There are also thousands of start-ups that are still seeking to capture the public’s
interest or find venture capital funding to build their brands.

BACKGROUND OF THE INDUSTRY

The Internet began as a project of the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1960s to create a
comprehensive, indestructible computer network that could communicate even when under
enemy attack. An internetwork (a network of networks) called ARPANET was created to meet
this goal, although the networks were still not linked worldwide. Eventually military and
defense contractors, universities, science agencies, and other organizations were allowed to
connect to this internetwork. In 1983 a new protocol called Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was integrated into ARPANET, making the internetwork
widely accessible. Many Internet historians cite ARPANET’s switching over to TCP/IP as the
event that marked the birth of the Internet. 18 In the early 1980s breakthroughs in integrated
circuit technology made personal computers more affordable, and commercial Internet
services and applications became popular. But online information was difficult to access
because of poor computer interfaces. In 1989 a physicist named Tim Berners-Lee developed a
way to organize information in a more logical fashion by using hypertext to link portions of
documents to one another. He called it the World Wide Web.
Today social media sites are extremely popular, and they are expected to remain so for years
to come. In the future, artificial intelligence, natural language search, augmented reality,

15
virtual reality, and other technologies (which are often cited as features of Web 3.0) will
change the way people use and interact on social media. The Internet and social media have
so quickly become an essential part of the fabric of daily life for so many people that it’s
difficult to imagine a world without them. The Internet and social media are inextricably
linked. Many important events in the history of the Internet that have made it what is today: a
key tool for business, commerce, communication, and entertainment. Social media is often
used to meet these goals. Here are some of the major events in the history of the Internet and
social media. Social networking sites have been around since 1997 when Six Degrees, the
first social networking site, was launched. But in the past five years or so, social networking
has moved beyond a hobby and become an obsession for many people. With every year, a
record number of people are using social networking sites, and more companies are using
social media to interact with customers and to market and sell their products and services.
In 2010, 970 million people worldwide used social media, according to Statista.com. In 2015,
a record-breaking 2.14 billion people worldwide used social media. By 2021, this number is
expected to increase to 2.20 trillion. Facebook remains the most popular social media
platform, according to the Pew Research Center (PRC). In 2019, 79 percent of online adults
used Facebook. While young people continue to use Facebook in large numbers, many older
adults are joining. In 2016, 62 percent of online adults age 65 and older reported that they
used Facebook—14 percent higher than in 2015.

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FACEBOOK
About Facebook, Inc.
Facebook is the face of social media, for good and bad. The social networking juggernaut,
which continues to grow quickly even as it struggles with public relations and other issues,
lets users share information, post photos and videos, play games, and otherwise connect with
one another through online profiles. The site, which allows outside developers to build apps
that integrate with Facebook, boasts more than two billion monthly active users. In addition to
its namesake platform, Facebook owns Instagram (photo/video sharing), Messenger and
WhatsApp (instant messaging and payments services), and Oculus (virtual reality technology
and content). The company generates revenue through advertising; the US accounts for about
45% of total sales.

Operations
In addition to the more than 2 billion monthly Facebook users, WhatsApp and Messenger
together claim nearly 3 billion monthly users and Instagram counts about 800 million monthly
users. Beyond these offerings, the company has investments in longer-term technology
initiatives such as artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, and connectivity
efforts.

Geographic Reach
Global in its reach, Facebook generates about 55% of its revenue from outside of the US. The
majority of its international business comes from customers located in western Europe,
Australia, Brazil, Canada, and China. The company has offices and data center facilities
located all over the world.

Sales and Marketing

Facebook uses a global sales force in more than 40 offices worldwide to attract and retain
advertisers (advertising accounts for nearly all of revenue). It also serves advertising
customers through a self-service ad platform. 20 Users have generally found the site through
word-of-mouth, as well as internal marketing efforts. Facebook spent $324 million on its own
advertising and promotional expenses during 2017, compared to $310 million and $281
million in 2016 and 2015, respectively.

Company Background
The firm was launched in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg as an online version of
the Harvard Facebook. (The name comes from books of freshmen's faces, majors, and
hometowns that are distributed to students.) In 2012 Facebook began publicly trading after
filing one of the largest IPOs in US history. Facebook, Inc., incorporated on July 29, 2004, is
17
focused on building products that enable people to connect and share through mobile devices,
personal computers and other surfaces. The Company also enables people to discover and
learn about what is going on in the world around them, enables people to share their opinions,
ideas, photos and videos, and other activities with audiences ranging from their friends to the
public, and stay connected by accessing its products. The Company's products include
Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus. The Company also engages in
selling advertising placements to marketers. Its advertisements let marketers reach people
based on a range of factors, including age, gender, location, interests and behaviors. Marketers
purchase advertisements that can appear in multiple places, including on Facebook,
Instagram, and third-party applications and Websites. Facebook enables people to connect,
share, discover and communicate with each other on mobile devices and personal computers.
There are various ways to engage with people on Facebook, including News Feed, which
displays an algorithmically-ranked series of stories and advertisements individualized for each
person. Instagram enables people to take photos orvideos, customize them with filter effects,
and share them with friends and followers in a photo feed or send them directly to friends.
Messenger allows communicating with people and businesses alike across a range of
platforms and devices. WhatsApp Messenger is a messaging application that is used by people
around the world and is available on a range of mobile platforms. Its Oculus virtual reality
technology and content platform offers products that allow people to enter an interactive
environment to play games, consume content and connect with others. The Company
competes with Google.

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SNAPCHAT
Snap Inc., incorporated on May 24, 2012, is a camera company. The Company’s flagship
product, Snapchat, is a camera application that helps people to communicate through short
videos and images known as a Snap. The Company provides Camera, Friends Page, Discover,
Snap Map, Memories and Spectacles. Snapchat opens directly into the Camera, helping in
creating a Snap and sending it to friends. It offers a range of creative tools that enables people
to personalize and add content to their Snaps. Its chat services include creating and watching
stories, chatting with groups, making voice and video calls, and communicating through a
range of stickers and Bitmojis. Memories enable users to create Snaps and stories from their
saved snaps, as well as their camera roll. Snap Map allow users to share their location, view
nearby friends and stories. It also offers Spectacles, its sunglasses that make Snap. The
Company’s advertising products include Snap Ads and Sponsored Creative Tools, such as
Sponsored Lenses and Sponsored Geofilters. As of December 31, 2017, on an average, 187
million people used Snapchat every day to Snap with family, watch Stories from friends, see
events from around the world, and explore curated content from publishers.
The Company is engaged in advertising business. The Company’s customers can create Snaps
using Sponsored Creative Tools, such as Sponsored Lenses and Sponsored Geofilters. The
Company’s Snap advertisements are vertical full screen video advertisements in the Snap
format. Sponsored Lenses uses augmented reality platform to create visually engaging three-
dimensional (3D) experiences. Sponsored Geofilters help users to create and send contextual
Snaps with their friends. It offers a range of third party and in-house solutions to measure
advertising effectiveness. The Company works with partners to verify that an advertisement
was in fact deliveredto a given user. The Company works with third parties to measure the
reach and frequency of a campaign, and the demographics of the users that viewed the
campaign. The Company works with partners to measure statistical lifts in advertisement
recall, brand favorability, and purchase intent. The Company offers several solutions to
measure things, such as sales lift, in-store visitation, and application installations.
The Company competes with Google, LLC, Apple, Inc., Facebook, Inc., Twitter, Inc., Kakao
Corporation, Line Corporation, Naver Corporation and Tencent Holdings Limited.
The Snapchat phone app burst on the social media scene by allowing users to take photos and
videos, attach messages, and send them to other users. The twist: The messages disappeared
in a few seconds, unlessthe receiver captured them. Subsequent features allowed users to
enhance their images, including stylized representations of their locations, and offered the
capability to string their chats together into a story of their day. Snap, Snapchat's parent,
makes money by selling access to its users -- an average of about 160 million a day -- to
advertisers. Snap went public in early 2017.

Operations
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Snap serves two constituencies. There are the tens of millions of users who send photos and
messages across Snapchat every day, and then there are the advertisers who pay Snap to reach
those users. All of Snap's revenue comes from advertisers.
For users, there's Snapchat, the company's flagship product. It captures what the company
calls 'Snaps,' which are photos and videos. Snapchat provides several tools for adding special
effects to Snaps; they include Lenses, Geofilters, and Bitmojis. Its Chat Service Storytelling
Platform allows users to collect Snaps and play them in chronological order. They are
automatically deleted in 24 hours. The platform can be used by individual users, communities
of users, and publishers. The Memories tool allows users to save their Snaps in personal
collections. A messaging function also comes with a 24-hour limit on the messages.
Snapchat enables a good degree of privacy for its users. Accounts are private by default
andusers are required to manually approve each other as friends before they can
communicate.
Another user product is Spectacles, sunglasses equipped with a camera that automatically
uploads images to the user's Snapchat account. The company contracts with a third-party
manufacturer to make the glasses. Snap also offers users the ability to transfer money to each
other through Snapcash, which is run on software from a third party.
Snap offers advertisers’ similar tools, built on the same foundation as the user tools, for
engaging users. Under the Sponsored Creative Tools umbrella are tools like Sponsored Lenses
and 23 Sponsored Geofilters.
Another advertising tool is Snap Ads with Attachments. Snap Ads are vertical full screen
video advertisements in the Snap format. The company also offers a Stories tool for
publishers. With the tool, called Discover, publishers attach long-form content to each Snap in
their Story. Publishers using the tool include Vogue, NBC, BuzzFeed, the Wall Street Journal,
and the New York Times.

Snap has multiyear contracts to run its products and services on Google Cloud and Amazon
Web Services. The company is to pay Google about $2 billion over the course of their
contract and pay $1 billion to AWS. The AWS contract assures redundancy for Snap
operations.

Geographic Reach
Snap is based in Los Angeles and has other offices in the US and around the world. US
advertisers generate about 90% of its revenue. As for users, more than 40% of daily active
users are in North America (the US, Canada, and Mexico), about a third are in Europe, and the
rest are scattered throughout the world.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Snap bought Bitstrips Inc., a web and mobile application that allows users to create a personal
avatar, in 2016. In 2015 Snap acquired Looksery Inc., a mobile video communication
company that creates lenses for use within applications.

Competitors
• Apple Inc.
20
• Facebook, Inc.
• Google LLC

TWITTER
Twitter, Inc. (Twitter), incorporated on April 19, 2007, offers products and services for users,
advertisers, developers and data partners. The Company's products and services include
Twitter, Periscope, Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends.
The Company's Twitter is a platform for public self-expression and conversation in real time.
Twitter allows people to consume, create, distribute and discover content and has
democratized content creation and distribution. Periscope is a mobile application that lets
anyone broadcast and watch video live with others. Periscope broadcasts can also be viewed
through Twitter and on desktop or mobile Web browser.
The Company's Promoted Products enable its advertisers to promote their brands, products
and services, amplify their visibility and reach, and extend the conversation around their
advertising campaigns. The Company enables its advertisers to target an audience based on a
range of factors, including a user's Interest Graph. The Interest Graph maps, among other
things, interests based on users followed and actions taken on its platform, such as Tweets
created and engagement with Tweets. The Company's Promoted Tweets appear within a user's
timeline or search results just like an ordinary Tweet regardless of device. Using its algorithm
and understanding of each user's Interest Graph, it can deliver Promoted Tweets that are
intended to be relevant to a particular user. Promoted Accounts appear in the same format and
place as accounts suggested by its Who to Follow recommendation engine, or in some cases,
in Tweets in a user's timeline. Promoted Trends appear at the top of the list of trending topics
for an entire day in a particular country or on a global basis. When a user clicks on a
Promoted Trend, search results for that trend are shown in a timeline and a Promoted Tweet
created by its advertisers is displayed to the user at the top of those search results. Advertisers
can also run short video advertisements either before (also known as pre-roll advertisements)
or during (also known as mid-roll advertisements) video content, such as its live National
Football League (NFL) games, live election debate coverage or clips from a range of interest
categories.
The Company's technology platform and information database enable it to provide targeting
capabilities based on audience attributes, such as geography, interests, keyword, television
conversation, content, event and devices that make it possible for advertisers to promote their
25 brands, products and services, amplify their visibility and reach, and complement and
extend the conversation around their advertising campaigns. Its platform also allows
customers to advertise across the mobile ecosystem, both on Twitter's owned and operated
properties, as well as off Twitter on third-party publishers' Websites, applications and other
offerings, across the user lifecycle from acquiring new users to engaging existing users.
The Company's MoPub is a mobile-focused advertising exchange, which combines
advertisement serving, advertising network mediation and a real-time bidding exchange into a
monetization platform. Twitter Audience Platform is an advertising offering that enables
advertisers to extend their advertising campaigns with Twitter Promoted Products to
21
audiences off Twitter while retaining access to Twitter's measurement, targeting and creative
tools. The Company provides a set of tools, public application programing interfaces (APIs)
and embeddable widgets that developers can use to contribute their content to its platform,
syndicate and distribute Twitter content across their properties. It offers subscription access to
its public data feed for partners wishing to access data beyond its public API, which offers a
limited amount of its public data. Its data products and services offer data sets to allow
developers and businesses to utilize its public content to derive business insights and build
products using the content that is shared on Twitter.
The Company competes with Facebook, Google, Snap, Microsoft, Yahoo, Kakao, Line,
DoubleClick Ad Exchange and AOL.

Operations
Twitter generates more than 85% of its revenue from the sale of advertising (mostly from
mobile advertising), with the remaining 15% coming from data licensing arrangements.
The company's advertising revenue comes from three streams: promoted tweets, promoted
accounts, and promoted trends. Most advertising is sold on a pay-for performance basis,
which means advertisers are only charged when a user engages with their ad.
The data licensing business may be the company's secret sauce however, as marketers and
even investors clamor for data they can analyze for insight into news events and trends. The
company's data products and services offer sophisticated data sets and data enrichments that
give developers 26 and businesses deeper insight into the public content posted on Twitter.
Twitter also offers subscription access to public data feed for partners who wish to access data
beyond the public API, which offers a limited amount of public data for free.
The company's Periscope is a mobile application that lets anyone broadcast and watch video
live with others. MoPub is a mobile-focused advertising exchange, which combines ad
serving, ad network mediation and a real-time bidding exchange into one comprehensive
monetization platform. The Twitter Audience Platform is an advertising offering that enables
advertisers to extend their advertising campaigns with Twitter Promoted Products to
audiences off Twitter while retaining access to Twitter's measurement, targeting, and creative
tools.
For developers, the company provides a set of tools, public APIs, and embeddable widgets
that can be used to contribute their content to Twitter, as well as distribute Twitter content
across their properties.

Geographic Reach
Twitter's headquarters is in San Francisco, California. The US is the company's largest market,
accounting for more than 60% of revenue, while Japan supplies about 15%. The other some
30% is from other international markets.

Competitors
• Altaba Inc
. • Facebook, Inc.

22
• Google LLC
• LinkedIn Corporation

INSTAGRAM
Instagram is a social network that has taken the world by storm with huge growth over the
past few years.
Originally established as a photography app in October 2010, the site now has more than 700
million monthly active users. Facebook bought the app in 2012, and new features are released
regularly to keep in line with competitor social networks such as Snapchat.
Instagram is a hugely visual platform, allowing users to upload inspirational images and
videos. Many brands and businesses use Instagram to share product and inside company
photos and to build relationships with potential customers and influencers.

Business accounts
Business accounts on Instagram offer the opportunity for companies to pay for their content to
appear in the newsfeed of their ideal audience. Business Instagram is a social network that has
taken the world by storm with huge growth over the past few years.
Originally established as a photography app in October 2010, the site now has more than 700
million monthly active users. Facebook bought the app in 2012, and new features are released
regularly to keep in line with competitor social networks such as Snapchat.
Instagram is a hugely visual platform, allowing users to upload inspirational images and
videos. Many brands and businesses use Instagram to share product and inside company
photos and to build relationships with potential customers and influencers.
Business accounts offer basic analytical data on how content is performing. Business profiles
also have a contact button and a linkable location tag. You'll need to make sure your Facebook
page is connected to your Instagram account to get a business profile.

Inspiring your customers using Instagram

What makes Instagram unique is the vast range of filters and editing tools available to users to
make images look good and stand out. This is the social network's USP and what has made it
so popular. The social network rewards creativity and experimentation; attractive, unusual and
quirky images may attract more interest than straightforward and predictable ones.
Instagram users scroll through photo and video content from other users in the main
newsfeed, so it's important to stand out. Remember that Instagram is a creative, visual
medium. Try to do something out of the ordinary with your photos, while still bringing some
benefit to your company. For instance, you could show teaser photos of a new product, taken
from an unusual angle.

Instagram strategy
23
 It's tempting to post images of anything and everything, but Instagram will work better if
there are some themes running through your posts. For instance, you could focus on photos
relating to your products being used in the real world.
Some brands use similar filters, colors or perspectives for their Instagram content, so that the
images look consistent. This is visually appealing to users and can help to attract more
followers.
It is recommended that you use a specific strategy for your Instagram account and avoid
posting exactly the same content as your other social media networks.

Growing your Instagram presence

To have a real impact on Instagram, you need to do more than just post images and videos.
Following people in your niche or industry is a good idea, particularly if they are regularly
posting about similar interests.
For instance, if you run a café, you might start following people who use Instagram to
document their love of coffee. You should engage with other Instagram users, commenting on
their contributions and replying to people who comment on yours.
Hashtags are a must for anyone wanting to grow their followers. Unlike other platforms
where hashtag overuse can look unattractive, Instagram allows users to tag their content with
up to 30 hashtags. The majority of users now place these hashtagsin the comments underneath
their images, to avoid distracting customers from reading their captions. 29 Performing
regular hashtag research is recommended to understand what people within your niche are
using. You can always find out how many times a hashtag has been used by simply searching
for it in Instagram.

24
 CHAPTER-3
REVIEW OF LITERATURE

25
Saleem Alhabash and Mengyan Ma (2017)
Facebook. Facebook is the most popular SNS. Per the company’s website, “Facebook’s
mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”
(Facebook, 2016). Facebook allows people to connect with friends, family members, and
acquaintances and gives people the opportunity to post and share content such as photos and
status updates (Stec, 2015). Founded in 2004, the platform has over a billion active daily users
and over 1.65 billion monthly active users, with a majority of users accessing it via mobile
devices (Facebook, 2016). About three quarters of Internet users report having a Facebook
account, and 7 in 10 users report accessing the site daily, highlighting the habitual and
ritualized nature of Facebook use (Duggan, 2015b). The majority of young adults (18–29
years old) report using Facebook (87%), yet this age group experienced a 5% drop in usage
rates from 2013 to 2015, however, there was no significant change in Facebook usage rates
among Internet adult users (Duggan, 2015a; Duggan, Ellison, Lampe, Lenhart, & Madden,
2015).
Twitter. Founded in 2006, Twitter has been categorized as a microblogging site, where users
interact in “real time” using 1140-character tweets to their followers. Users can converse
using mentions, replies, and hashtags (Stec, 2015). Despite reports indicating declining
popularity and importance of Twitter amid diminishing investment (Fieger man, 2016;
Tsukayama, 2016), Duggan (2015b) reports no major changes in the percentage of Internet
adult users who have active Twitter accounts. One-third of online young adults between the
ages of 18 and 29 years reported using Twitter in 2013, compared to 37% who used it in 2014
and 32% in 2015 (Duggan, 2015a; Duggan et al., 2015). Over the past few years, data about
the number of Twitter users have faced critique over credibility, as Twitter overestimates the
number of users by including accounts that have not been active for long periods of time
(Bennett, 2011). Nonetheless, recently Twitter released that it has 320 million active users
with 1 billion unique monthly visits to sites from embedded tweets (Twitter, 2016).
Instagram: Instagram is a photo-sharing mobile application that allows users to take pictures,
apply filters to them, and share them on the platform itself, as well as other platforms like
Facebook and Twitter (Stec, 2015). Per the company’s website, Instagram has over 400
million active monthly users who shared over 40 billion pictures, with an average of 3.5
billion daily likes for >80 million photos shared daily on the site (Instagram, 2016). More
than half of young adults (18–29 years 32 old) report using Instagram, thus making them the
largest group of Instagram users (Duggan, 2015a; Duggan et al., 2015).
Snapchat. is a social media mobile application that lets users send and receive time-sensitive
photos and videos, which expire upon viewing (Stec, 2015). The number of Snapchat users
has grown significantly in recent years because of its recordability and modality affordances.
The recordability affordance allows users to post photos, videos, and text messages that
disappear after 24 hours. Regarding Snapchat’s modality affordance feature, users
communicate with others through photographs and video clips (up to 10 s long), while also
adding filters to their photos and videos (Waddell, 2016).
Specific to Snapchat—which has also been recently adopted by Instagram—is the ability for
individuals to select the audience viewing their content. Users can post their photo or video
26
snaps to their own stories, public stories, or privately send them to other users (much like
direct messaging on Facebook and Twitter). Recent estimates show that there are over 100
million Snapchat users worldwide (Piwek&Joinson, 2016). With roughly a quarter of young
adults (18– 29 years old) using Snapchat, this platform was rated as the third-most popular
social media platform after Facebook and Instagram (Duggan, 2013; Utz, Muscanell, &
Khalid, 2015).
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are the four leading social media platforms. Per
Lenhart (2015), young adults or millennials are the heaviest social media adopters and users.
They are born and have grown up with pervasive information communication technologies
(ICTs) and do not know life without them; something that has become a defining common
characteristic of this generational group (Cotten, McCullough, & Adams, 2011; Palfrey &
Gasser, 2008).
Millennials use social media for a variety of reasons, including communication with friends
and family members, information seeking, and social relationship maintenance, among others
(Ito et al., 2008; Ling, 2008; Palfrey & Gasser, 2008).
More recently, scholarly research has drawn upon UGT to examine audiences’ goal- directed
consumption behaviour in the computer-mediated communication context e.g., Gil de Zuniga
et al., 2012; Papacharissi and Mendelson, 2011; Raacke and Bonds.

Raacke, 2008; Sundar and Limperos, 2013).

In particular, two trends of SNS use have been identified: first, the majority of people use two
or more SNSs simultaneously because each has its unique features and purposes (Brandtzaeg,
2012); and second, people increasingly embrace SNSs as tools for both communication and
information, which help them fulfill their informational, emotional, and social desires when
used in tandem (Quan-Haase and Young, 2010). Additionally, SNS users, particularly
teenagers and young adults (collectively known as “millennials”), are accessing multiple
SNSs through their smartphones and mobile devices (Cho, 2015; Salehan and Negahban,
2013), connecting to multiple networks, and tapping into multiple social resources at any
point in time.

Joe Phua, Seunga Venus Jin, Jihoon Jay Kim (2012)

More recently, scholarly research has drawn upon UGT to examine audiences’ goal- directed
consumption behavior in the computer-mediated communication context (e.g., Gil de Zuniga
et al., 2012; Papacharissi and Mendelson, 2011; Raacke and BondsRaacke, 2008; Sundar and
Limperos, 2013). In particular, two trends of SNS use have been identified: first, the majority
of people use two or more SNSs simultaneously because each has its unique features and
purposes (Brandtzaeg, 2012); and second, people increasingly embrace SNSs as tools for both
communication and information, which help them fulfill their informational, emotional, and
social desires when used in tandem (Quan-Haase and Young, 2010). Additionally, SNS users,
particularly teenagers and young adults (collectively known as “millennials”), are accessing
multiple SNSs through their smartphones and mobile devices (Cho, 2015; Salehan and
Negahban, 2013), connecting to multiple networks, and tapping into multiple social resources
27
at any point in time. More recently, scholarly research has drawn upon UGT to examine
audiences’ goal directed consumption behavior in the computer-mediated communication
context (e.g., Gil de Zuniga et al., 2012; Papacharissi and Mendelson, 2011; Raacke and
BondsRaacke, 2008; Sundar and Limperos, 2013). In particular, two trends of SNS use have
been identified: first, the majority of people use two or more SNSs simultaneously because
each has its unique features and purposes (Brandtzaeg, 2012); and second, people increasingly
embrace SNSs as tools for both 34 communication and information, which help them fulfill
their informational, emotional, and social desires when used in tandem (Quan-Haase and
Young, 2010). Additionally, SNS users, particularly teenagers and young adults (collectively
known as “millennials”), are accessing multiple SNSs through their smartphones and mobile
devices (Cho, 2015; Salehan and Negahban, 2013), connecting to multiple networks, and
tapping into multiple social resources at any point in time.
To date, numerous researchers have analysed motives for using SNSs applying the UGT
framework. For instance, Krause et al. (2014) found that entertainment, communication, and
habitual diversion were three main motivations of using Facebook. Orchard et al. (2014)
found that motivations for SNS use included information exchange, conformity, freedom of
expression, social maintenance, and recreation, with the strongest predictor being making new
connections. Park et al. (2009) found four primary needs (socializing, entertainment, self-
status seeking, and information) fulfilled from participating in Facebook groups. Hunt et al.
(2012) also found that interpersonal communication, self-expression, and entertainment
motives are most predictive of frequent Facebook use. Quan-Haase and Johnson (2010) also
identified six gratifications(passing time, showing affection, following fashion, sharing
problems, demonstrating sociability, and improving social knowledge) derived from Facebook
use. Due to the different design and usability features of Facebook compared to other popular
SNSs like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, frequent users of each SNS may
differsignificantly on motivesfor using, and gratifications derived from, each of these four
SNSs. In turn, each SNS may differ on attendant bridging and bonding social capital
outcomes for frequent users, which rationalizes applying UGT to the current research. To
date, numerous researchers have analyzed motives for using SNSs applying the UGT
framework. For instance, Krause et al. (2014) found that entertainment, communication, and
habitual diversion were three main motivations of using Facebook. Orchard et al. (2014)
found that motivations for SNS use included information exchange, conformity, freedom of
expression, social maintenance, and recreation, , with the strongest predictor being making
new connections. Park et al. (2009) found four primary needs (socializing, entertainment, self-
status seeking, and information) fulfilled from participating in Facebook groups. Hunt et al.
(2012) also found that interpersonal communication, self-expression, and entertainment
motives are most predictive of frequent Facebook use. Quan-Haase and Johnson (2010) also
identified six gratifications(passing time, showing affection, following fashion, sharing
problems, demonstrating sociability, and 35 improving social knowledge) derived from
Facebook use. Due to the different design and usability features of Facebook compared to
other popular SNSs like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, frequent users of each SNS may
differsignificantly on motives for using, and gratifications derived from, each of these four
SNSs. In turn, each SNS may differ on attendant bridging and bonding social capital
outcomes for frequent users, which rationalizes applying UGT to the current research.
Online privacy concerns refer to SNS users’ desire to keep their personal information from
misuse, and have been found to be significantly related to individuals’ decisions to start and
continue SNS use (Taddicken, 2014). Introversion is a person’s preference for spending time
28
alone rather than in large groups (McCroskey et al., 2001). Previous studies have found SNS
use helping introverts to increase their online social capital (Zywica and Danowski, 2008).
Attention to social comparison refers to one’s sensitivity to others’ reactions with regards to
his or her own behavior (Lennox and Wolfe, 1984), and has been found to significantly
impact peer influence on SNSs (Chan and Prendergast, 2007; Mandel et al., 2006). Based on
this, it was hypothesized that SNS intensity, trust, tie strength, homophily, privacy concerns,
introversion, and attention to social comparison, would moderate between SNS use and social
capital.

Lukasz Piwek, Adam Joinson (2015)

Snapchat's rapidly increasing popularity among young age groups rises a number of questions
about how users utilize IM services with time-limited and self-destructing content, and how
this relates to the use of other popular SNS such as Facebook. The current study is amongst
the first that investigate a detail patterns of Snapchat use by surveying the very last incidence
of snap that participants send and receive. The study also examines the relationship between
intensity of Snapchat use and social capital. Results indicate that Snapchat is mainly used as a
playful mobile IM service to rapidly communicate and share content, especially selfies, with a
small group of close friends, partners and family. Such “strong ties” oriented use is further
reflected by a strong association between Snapchat intensity of use and bonding, rather than
bridging, of social capital. It seems that popularity and patterns of Snapchat use highlighted in
our study might be a sign of a new form of digital narrative rising amongst younger
population of social media user’s narrative 36 that is achieved by seamless and playful use of
smartphones to capture and share content-rich moments that cease to exist a second later. Our
study highlights how Snapchat become effortlessly embedded within its user’s daily
communication practices and is currently the most popular form of IM in par with SMS and
Facebook Communicator. Although our study shows that privacy risk for Snapchat users are
less profound than indicated in the popular media, parents and educational institutions should
be aware of risk associated with such services. Due to selfie-oriented use of Snapchat that
pose a potential risk of unintended disclosure of sensitive personal content, parents of the
youngest users should be especially aware of Snapchat use. However, the fact that Snapchat
offers such playful form of communication could be also utilised by educational institutions
as a new mean of engagement. In addition to helping young students’ populations, the use of
Snapchat could support variety of other populations, including community members, and
others who benefit from maintained ties. However, more research is needed to fully
understand how ubiquitous and disruptive such use of self-destructing messaging is in the
cultural and socio-psychological context of the digital media use.

29
 CHAPTER-3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

30
MEANING OF RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:
Research methodology is the specific procedures or techniques used to identify, select process
and analyze information about a topic. In a research paper the methodology section allows the
reader to critically evaluate a studies overall validity and reliability.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY

The focus of the study lies over to find the consumer usage of various social media platforms
and how has it been affected more after the Covid-19 pandemic.
The following is our major plan for the study;
1. Primary Data is required to make the study a unique one.
2. The population being sampled is friends, family, relatives & acquaintances.
3. The collection of data has been done using questionnaires made using google forms.
Sample size for the study will be 95. It would be a cross sectional research as it is conducted
at one point of time across different consumers of society. Graphs and tables would be used to
evaluate the results of the study and would further the impact of Covid-19 on the usage of
social media would be evaluated using regression analysis.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

• To explore the consumer usage objectives of various social media platforms in Delhi NCR
using Cross-sectional study.
• To analyze and compare the time spent by users daily on various social media platforms
under study using various graphs and charts.
• To study consumer usage of different features available on social media platforms using
excel tools like smart charts and frequency tables.
• To study the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the usage of social media among various age
groups of people using descriptive statistics.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of the study is confined towards exploring the Consumer Usage patterns for social
media platforms among people of different age groups in different parts of Delhi and Delhi
NCR. The study is confined to Consumer usage of these specified platforms and how do they
choose to use it since it is one of the biggest parts of our daily lives nowadays. The study also
explores the impact of covid-19 pandemic and lockdown on the usage of social media. The
limitations of the study are the time constraints and money constraints. Future studies should
replicate our survey with individuals from diverse demographic groups.

31
MEANING OF RESEARCH DESIGN:
A Research Design is a methodical, well-organized procedure utilized by a researcher, or a
scientist to carry out a scientific study. It is a comprehensive co-existence of already identified
elements and any other information or data leading to a reasonable end result. The research
design is required to follow a pre-planned, well-thought-out methodology, in agreement with
the pre-selected research type, in order to come up with an error-free, authentic conclusion.
Research designs are categorized broadly into two categories exploratory research design and
conclusive research design. Conclusive research design is further divided into descriptive and
causal/ experimental research design. The suitability of a research design for a specific
research depends on nature of the problem, method of data collection and analysis.
The project has been done using Descriptive Research Design as variables of the study
already exist and only needed to be observed.

Descriptive research design:

In a descriptive design, a researcher is solely interested in describing the situation or case
under their research study. It is a theory-based design method which is created by gathering,
analyzing, and presenting collected data. This allows a researcher to provide insights into the
why and how of research. Descriptive design helps others better understand the need for the
research. Descriptive research is “aimed at casting light on current issues or problems through
a process of data collection that enables them to describe the situation more completely than
was possible without employing this method.” In its popular format, descriptive research is
used to describe characteristics and/or behaviour of sample population.

Cross sectional research:

A cross-sectional study involves looking at data from a population at one specific point in
time. The participants in this type of study are selected based on particular variables of
interest. This type of research can be used to describe characteristics that exist in a
community, but not to 40 determine cause-and-effect relationships between different
variables. This method is often used to make inferences about possible relationships or to
gather preliminary data to support further research and experimentation. This type of research
is frequently used to determine theprevailing characteristics in a population at a certain point
in time.

SAMPLE DESIGN:
A sampling technique is the name or other identification of the specific process by which the
entities of the sample have been selected. My research project typically uses non-probability
sampling and uses a quantitative data collection method (survey through questionnaire).
32
SAMPLE SIZE:
Sample size is a count the of individual samples or observations in any statistical setting, such
as a scientific experiment or a public opinion survey. The sample size of my research was=95.

SAMPLING TECHNIQUE:
In order to address the research, the participants were selected using a non-probability
sampling method. There are many different types of non-probability sampling methods; two
types of sampling method are sufficiently used in this research; snowball sampling and
purposive sampling. Snowball sampling is used when it is difficult to identify members of the
desired population. This kind of sampling starts with small group of people who are
appropriate with the research topic and these small group identify further members and then
they identify further members and so the sample snowballs. However, the problem with
snowball sample is that it is very unlikely that the sample will represent the whole population.
it is because respondents are most likely to reach respondents who are similar to themselves.
Therefore, purposive sampling method is also used in this survey. Purposive sampling
provides us to use our judgement to select cases that will enable us to meet the objectives.

DATA COLLECTION/ DATA SOURCES:

There are two types of data – primary and secondary.
Primary data is a type of data which never existed before; hence it was not previously
published. For our study we have also collected primary data through questionnaires
circulated to family, teachers, relatives & peers.
This part of research describes the specifics of gathering the data. There are many methods for
collecting data- in some cases it will already be recorded (secondary data) and in other cases
such as our project, researcher needs to construct a test, survey or other instrument to obtain
information (Primary data). “Out of the available techniques of data collection questionnaire
method has been used to collect the data for conducting the research on the study of factors
influencing online shopping and buying behavior of consumers.”
Data collection was done by performing a survey through Google Forms.
• Approximately 200 people were sent the link to fill the survey.
• 115 responses were recorded.
• 85 members of the population didn’t use any one of the social networking platforms so
didn’t respond.
• 20 responses from the population were removed due to skewed responses in the filter
question.
• 95 responses from the population were used to analyze the data.

33
ANALYTICAL TOOLS:
This study is based on collecting data by using well-connected questionnaire for individuals
and also data is collected using secondary sources.
After collecting data, it is arranged in the form of tables from analysis and interpretation.
Graphs and percentage analysis are the main tools used for the purpose of interpretation.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY:

This survey although carried out with fullest possible efforts and devotion, the limitation of
the time, resources available and limited area chose may lead to limited representation of the
universe.
The major limitations from which the study suffers are as follows:
• Time Constraint: Time factor has been a very big limitation in the research/survey like this.
The individuals had limited time so they sometimes refuse to answer the questionnaire, also
me as a surveyor has less time to conduct the survey. So, the size of the sample was restricted
to Delhi/NCR
. • Biasness in Information: It was felt that respondents did not come up with true responses,
in several cases the respondents answered the questions with the help of other members and it
was mostly in case of less educated persons.
• Another limitation is generalization of the results is the nature of this study. It provides result
that are typically not generalizable as it does not include a true random sample due to
geographical constraints.
• Finally, the research findings of this study were limited by the inherent limitations of the
instruments, and the statistical treatment of data collected.

34
 CHAPTER-4
DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

35
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42
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45
46
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48
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52
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 CHAPTER – 5
FINDINGS AND OBSERVATIONS

55
Upon analysis of the data of the respondents it was found out that a huge population uses
social media nowadays. Despite the fact that young adults are the heaviest adopters and users
of social media and social networking platforms, our results cannot be generalized to the
entire population of social media users.
We received varied responses from everyone based on their preferences of social media
platforms. The project was focused on finding the usage objectives for various social media
platforms in the Delhi NCR region. It was also planned to study the time spent by users on
various social media platforms and to realise the preferred features on specific social media
platforms for users.

FINDINGS
• Majority users are youngsters between the age group of 15-25.
• Instagram is the highest used social media platform. Facebook is very closely 2nd. • People
spend the least time on Twitter and Snapchat comparatively.
• Apart from the 4 major platforms, the other three noticeable platforms used are LinkedIn,
Telegram and Clubhouse.
• Users visit their preferred social media platform more often than once daily and at least 10
times a day on an average.
• Later at night was the peak time for most social media platforms specially between 9pm -
11pm
. • Majority people feel that after Covid 19,usage of social media has rapidly increased.
• Mostly, respondents use social media platforms for general browsing and meme contents.
Birthdays, events and gossips are secondary priorities.
• The impact of Covid-19 has more of a negative impact on social media than a positive one.
• Most people access social media platforms as the last thing they do before going to bed.
• 37 of 95 accepted about being addicted to social media.
• 40 of 95 wanted a new platform apart from the 4 as a unified platform and they prefer
Instagram to be that. 63
• Covid-19 has had a both positive and negative impact on the social media environment.
Some are beneficial for consumers while some have a negative influence on them.

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 CHAPTER – 6
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

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 CONCLUSION
Social media is a really convenient way to communicate with a network of people nowadays.
We can use it to know about our friends and keep in touch with friends that belong to different
countries. Not only does social media help you communicate it also allows you to advertise
products at a large scale for a small cost. Social media has changed our life so much. If we are
aware enough and vigilant enough about our use of social media and are not addicted to it
then social media could be a huge benefit to all of us.
After carefully observing all our data and the existing literature on the topic it can be easily
said that the current generation is highly addicted to social media with majority people using
more than 1 social media platforms and spending hours of weeks just browsing through it.
Facebook may still have the highest number of active users but people nowadays prefer
Instagram over Facebook. Twitter is the social media platform that is highly disregarded by
the generation of millennials but is the most official media platform out of the 4. Snapchat
ranked 3rd in the used frequency of social media platforms.
Opening social media account is not what it used to be earlier. With the technological age
taking over the world by storm opening social media accounts every few hours for whatever
reason it may be is the new trend. Most people nowadays visit their social media platforms
approximately every few hours now even in the smallest spare time they might have.
My study also found that most people are highly active at social media platforms at night,
majorly after 9 pm upto 2 pm. This is a health risk as people might be losing up on precious
sleep time which is required by most of the current population nowadays. It is also indicative
that people are losing out on family time which is being spent on social media platforms.
The project focused on finding out individual time spent by users on social media platforms as
well. The most time spent was shared closely amongst Snapchat and Instagram. Facebook
came close to 3rd and twitter was the least used and time spent platforms amongst the 4 social
media platforms.
The study also found the comfort of people in posting content themselves on social media
platforms which displayed that people usually posted at least once or twice a month.
The study also explored what features were most liked by people on all 4 social media
platforms and also tried to find if people wished to have a single unified platform for all their
favored features and if so, which platform would they like as the base.
The study also implored the respondent to introspect about their social media addiction which
gave the results as positive showcasing that people are social media addicts.
The study also illustrates that during the 2020 global pandemic, social media had become an
ally but also a potential threat. It provides a new platform to people with a large number of
audience to encourage their potential, reach out to people, network with them, find
appropriate jobs. Simultaneously, High volumes of information compressed into a short
period can result in overwhelmed HCPs trying to discern fact from noise. A major limitation
of social media currently is the ability to quickly disseminate false information which can
confuse and distract. Society relies on educated scientists and physicians to be leaders in
delivering fact-based information to the public.

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 SUGGESTIONS
• Considering that the majority of our population using social media platforms is youngsters
we should focus on a platform that is more adult focused to increase usage.
• Facebook enjoyed the first position of social media platforms for a long time before being
replaced by Instagram as the new trending social media platform so Facebook should try
getting that edge back by introducing new features.
• Most people prefer browsing through their social media platforms at night and do so as the
last thing they do before sleeping. This is good as long as people are not losing sleep.
• Twitter is the least used social media platform out of the 4 under study. People nowadays
prefer meme content and not informative. Twitter is more informative and difficult use
considering all upload restraints and word limits. Hence it should work on the same to
increase its consumer base.
• Snapchat is doing well and is the new uprising social media platform and could soon take
Facebook and Instagram by storm.
• Upcoming platforms like LinkedIn, Telegram and Clubhouse are like to build a customer
base due to their beneficial features and extensive use in the market.
• A lot of people said they are addicted to social media. This is not a good thing. Social media
platforms have been created to connect to acquaintances and keep in touch with loved ones.
Not to spend hours on the platforms causing health and other issues.
• Considering people use different platforms for their distinguishing features and most people
want a unified platform for the 4 social media platforms someone should work on unifying the
most loved features into a single app to place a huge consumer base altogether.
• Covid-19 has had both negative and positive impact on the consumers. It’s better to look at
the positive side and not let anything negative have an influence on the minds of the
consumers.

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