1. INTRODUCTION:

The 21^st century is the era of social marketing where promotional strategies are designed to reach prospects through social networking sites and web applications. In social media, users are increasingly engaged in two-way communication on different digital platforms. The desire for uniqueness and innovativeness is growing among modern users. In response to this, businesses are required to take on experiential marketing efforts and are assigning larger parts of their marketing resources towards more creative strategies in order to provide sensation-rich experiences.

Ephemeral Marketing is the latest marketing practice which is changing the face of social marketing.

It is epitomized by the phrase “Now you see it, now you don’t” (Metz, 2013). The literal meaning of the term ‘ephemeral’ means lasting for a very short time (Collins dictionary, 2016). It is temporary social marketing that is done intentionally, quickly, for maximum effect. Top MNC’s like McDonalds, Taco Bell, and NBA are practicing this new paradigm in marketing to target millennial generation.

In today’s digitally centric world, Snapchat has become world’s leading ephemeral marketing platform. It has proved to be a marketer’s best friend to develop brand awareness and to capture undivided attention of their customers especially Gen Z audience. The app’s fleeting photos and videos give users a brief “insider” glimpse or sneak preview of a new product or service. This mainly generates excitement around a new product or service. This temporary social media where content do not live for long attract marketers who are constantly finding out new ways to reach their audience. In this context, Frasier has aptly highlighted that “When companies are creating content for ephemeral applications, they should try to create that content which actually the users want to see” (Frasier, 2015). In summary, Ephemeral marketing practices helps to:

· Increase brand awareness

· Drives marketing actions

· Market live events.

In the light of the above discussion, this study aims to provide a clear picture of the concept of ephemeral marketing and to study the effectiveness of Ephemeral Marketing.

2. Snapchat: Web Based Application That Helps In Ephemeral Marketing:

Snapchat is a mobile application created in 2011 by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown when they were students at Stanford University. Snapchat users can convey their messages to a controlled list of recipients: by taking photos (Snaps), recording videos, adding text and drawings. Users set a time limit (ranging from 1 second to 10 second) for which recipients can view their Snaps and the expired time it will be deleted from the company's servers.

Snapchat in 2012 focused on its "Stories" functionality, which allows users to compile snaps into a "story" which users can view in chronological order and these are available for only 24 hours after its posting. Alongside users' stories, Snapchat also have "live stories", where various users post contents on a specific theme or event, as well as channels of short-form content from major publishers. Snapchat has an estimated 200 million monthly active users and 100 million daily active users. Records also show that Snapchat has the most engaged audience, which take more than 400 million snaps per day (Morrison, 2015).

Hubspot blog remarks: “Snapchat is the ultimate platform for making consumers feel connected and at the same time, unique. Users are flocking to Snapchat in order to digest social media in real time.” It gives users a way to cover a lot of materials in a short amount of time.” For brands, apps like Snapchat, presents a unique opportunity for marketing professionals to capture the user’s full attention (Moraes, 2015).

Figure1: Snapchat Icon

Ben Thompson, founder and author of Stratechery.com, devised a map named the Social/Communication Map: in 2013 that has two axis- vertical axis which shows the nature of content of various social media, and horizontal axis that shows the type of communication from one to many to one to one. Further, the map shows the privacy that the users get.

Figure 2 The Social/ Communication Map:

In this Snapchat is in the fourth quadrant that shows its content is “Ephemeral” and communication is “one to one” and at the same the “privacy” is there. It helps in sharing of pictures and videos (Thompson, 2013).

3. Ephemeral Marketing in Restaurant Industry:

The Restaurant industry in India is mainly driven by youth and has witnessed a steady growth over past years. The eating out experience of consumers, income level, changes in lifestyle and rising number of working women have made restaurants one of the profitable sectors.

Figure 3: Extracted from Sahgal, 2014

Statistics show that many global players like Mc Donald’s, Taco Bell, and Dominos have emerged on the maps of Indian restaurant industry and have dominated the market. All these international chains practice ephemeral marketing as a way to connect to their prospective customers.

For Instance, Taco Bell –The fast food company has not only used Snapchat to promote new product launches, but has also developed stories of customer experience who are visiting the restaurant. One of the most creative snaps have come from food delivery guide Grubhub, who has developed exclusive promotion codes and contest stories in an effort to drive sales. McDonald's is using the apps stories feature to connect a series of individual snaps into an overarching storyline, which at the end uncover their new product line. On top of developing a creative story, they also heavily promoted their new account by announcing their profile addition throughout social platforms.

The success stories of these international chains have made marketers in India to redefine their marketing strategy by aligning their strategy with ephemeral content to get their key messages to consumers.

4. METHODOLOGY:

4.1 Need of the Study:

As per reports of IAMAI and KPMG from 200 million internet users in 2013 to over 500 million internet users by 2017 — including 314 million mobile internet users: — the growth story of mobile internet in India is on the upsurge (Bercovici, 2013).

Every company is incurring a considerable amount of expenses on marketing their products and services online. The users of web applications like Snapchat in India are 0.5million which is a considerable number and can be easily tapped for using Ephemeral marketing strategies. The advertisers have to pay the web application companies on the basis of number of clicks of the following advertisements posted by them on specific social networking web application where the users can come to know about the specific product, service, offer, schemes, rebates, discount etc. and become a prospective buyer or consumer. Countries in the West where the number of smartphone users are huge like USA are using these ephemeral marketing practices to the fullest but in India it is the upcoming trend. So will these Ephemeral Practices in India become successful or a bust? Is the considerable amount of marketing expenditure on such short duration advertisements profitably justified for the companies? This creates a research gap as what is the effectiveness and retention span in the mind of the consumers of these ephemeral marketing practices.

4.2 Hypothesis;

Hypothesis 1

H1: There is significant relationship between Snapchat users and users availing any ephemeral offers.

Hypothesis 2:

H1: There is significant relationship between Snapchat users and short duration of any advertisement.

4.3 Sampling:

This study was targeted to 100 respondents who were smart phone users (mainly students who were pursuing graduation and post graduation). Data was collected through self-administered questionnaire to collect information about respondent’s profile and the effectiveness of ephemeral marketing. 62 completed questionnaires were analyzed using descriptive statistics on respondents’ profile. Chi Square test was used to test the research hypotheses regarding relationship between Snapchat users and of them in availing any ephemeral offers. The demographic profile of respondents is summarized in table 1:

Table 1: Basic information about respondents characteristics

Profile	Number of Respondents	Category	Count
Age	62	Below 19	10
		20-25	46
		26-30	4
		Above 30	2
Gender	62	Male	29
		Female	33

Table 1 shows that maximum respondents were of 20 to 25 years. Out of 62 respondents 29 were male and 33 were female participants.

5. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS:

5.1 Various Social Applications Used by the Respondents.

The approach of this study was more indirect. This question was asked indirectly to know the percentage of Snapchat users in the responses that were received. Out of 62 responses only 24 were Snapchat users, which accounted for only 38.70%.

5.2 Responses regarding viewing of same online ad again

A dichotomous question “If you see an online ad ONCE, do you wish to see it again?” was asked to the prospective respondents. 73.1 % of the responses were No which reveals that majority of respondents do not wish to see the same online ad again. The purpose of this question was to check that any viewer who sees an ad for once may skip it, or doesn’t show interest for the second time. This reflects a positive sign for the success of Ephemeral ads on Snapchat. As ads are made from the applications itself and a duplicate ad is not easy to make.

5.3 Responses regarding parameters prevalent in Ephemeral Advertisements

A question of rating few parameters that are prevalent in Ephemeral Advertisements were asked to the respondents. Likert Scale was employed ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree with the provided statement. The parameters were- novelty in advertisement, creative content and of the duration of advertisements.

Table 2 depicts that 54.8% people want something new in the ad when they are seeing it for the second time. Nearly 96% people wishes advertisements to be creative. And around 48% wants advertisements to be of a short duration. Findings reveal that when respondents come across the same online ad again, he/she doesn’t want to see it. This reflects that Snapchat can do wonders in sense of advertisements as here the advertisements are made without pre- rolls and from the application itself. So, duplicacy or repetition of an ad is not possible. Every second ad that comes out of Snapchat will be having something new for the users.

5.4 Responses of the Hypothetical Situation given

To see the effectiveness and acceptance of the Ephemeral concept, a hypothetical situation was given to the respondents-

Suppose, a pop up of "Get Rs. 200 off on Mc Donalds for next 2 hours. Click here to avail offer." comes up during an ad, what will you do?

The options for the same where also given as- click to avail the offer, ignore, call and authenticate the offer or others. The responses of the same are summarized in the table given below.

Table 3: Responses of Situation Given

Options Given	Responses
Click to Avail it	15
Call Mc D to authenticate it	8
Ignore	39
Others	0
Total	62

5.5 Statistical Analysis and Results:

Snapchat User and users availing Ephemeral offers:

Table 4 depicts that overall users are from two categories (33.8 per cent Snapchat users; 66.2 per cent non Snapchat users). In addition, hypothetical situation was given to respondents who wish to avail Mc Donalds Ephemeral offer of discount (Snapchat users 68 per cent and non Snapchat users 32 per cent). During the analysis, it was observed that majority of Snapchat users wanted to avail the discount of Ephemeral offers. When the results from the χ ²test were considered, statistically the value of significance (p) was found to be significant at the 0.027 level (0.05). It shows that there is significant relationship between Snapchat users and users availing any ephemeral offers. This was done with an intension to know how users and non-users respond to the ephemeral offers given to them. Users of Snapchat as are aware of the concept and they see brands doing the ephemeral things, showed interest towards the offer by clicking on avail the offer. It was found that 27.41 per cent of Snapchat users and 12.90 per cent of non Snapchat users wish to click in availing any ephemeral offers. Against this, 6.47 per cent Snapchat users and 53.22 per cent non Snapchat users wish to click other options (call Mc. Donalds to authenticate and ignore the offer). As the χ ² analysis shows, statistically there is a significant relationship among the user categories for availing ephemeral offers.

Table 4 Snapchat user and users availing Ephemeral offers

Snapchat User	Click to Avail	Others	χ ²Results
YES	17	4	χ ² value =19.35
NO	8	33	df =1( 3.84)
Total	25	37	p= 0.027
Note: n=62

Snapchat users and duration of advertisements:

Table 5 depicts that, regardless of Snapchat users and non Snapchat users, respondents wish to see short duration advertisements. A five point likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree was employed to see the preference of users regarding short duration advertisements. Majority of the responses lied in the category of strongly agree and agree. The results from the χ ²test showed the χ ² value of 4.35, df 4 (14.86) and significant at 0.032 level (0.05). It shows that there is no significant relationship between Snapchat users and duration of advertisements. This shows that Short duration advertisements are not only a requirement from Snapchat users but also from the non- users. If viewers are watching an ad they want it to be of short duration.

6. CONCLUSION:

As Indian consumers are price sensitive, marketers can use Snapchat as a tool to attract customers by providing discounts and offers. Trend for selfies and pictures are in these days from which marketers can exploit opportunities by asking customers to share their experience of the service they have availed. Snapchat is perfect for real-time social media marketing as it can give the audience direct access to live events. Companies can use it for product launches, trade shows or one-of-a-kind events like the 1,000th customer to shop in your store will get a voucher. Snapchat can help marketers to increase community engagement and brand awareness through innovative marketing campaigns.

Just like with Instagram and other social channels, social media influencers on Snapchat can help spread brand awareness and reach. By partnering with influencers, marketers can spread awareness to a demographic that’s hard to reach through traditional media. The influencers should be skilled with the Snapchat platform and can create spectacular video content that can further enhance campanies brand voice and personality. Industries can use Snapchat as a tool by involving customers as a part of a process. With Snapchat, companies can provide behind-the-scenes content to the community, which helps create and engage a strong following.

7. Direction for future research:

The concept of Ephemeral Marketing is new to most of the people, so it requires a bit of promotion so as to make people aware. The marketers should use this application to attract new crowd as cost of reaching them is very low. This application cannot be used independently as a platform to advertise. In future an experiment can be conducted that can help more closely to check the effectiveness of Ephemeral Marketing based on AIDA model of advertising.

8. REFERENCES:

1. (2016): Retrieved May 22, 2016, from collinsdictionary: http://www.collinsdictionary.com/ dictionary/ English/ ephemeral

2. Metz, R. (2013, April 4). Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Disappearing Messages Are Everywhere. MIT Technology Review.

3. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/snapchat-is-the-fastest-growing-social-network-infographic/624116

4. Retrieved from http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/7-game-changing-marketing-trends-to-tackle-in-2016

5. Retrieved from Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/11/13/facebook-wouldve-bought-snapchat-for-3-billion-in-cash-heres-why/#395a7cbf79ed

6. Frasier, B. (2015, july 21). The rise of Ephemeral Content and what it means for Marketers. Sprinklr.

7. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/chandnisahgal/opportunities-in-the-indian-food-service-market.

Received on 23.07.2017 Modified on 05.09.2017

Asian Journal of Management. 2018; 9(1):87-91.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2018.00013.6

Statements	Strongly Disagree	Disagree	Neutral	Agree	Strongly Agree	Total
You wish an ad to have something new when you are watching it for the second time	5	4	9	34	10	62
You like ads that have creative content	0	0	2	30	30	62
You wish to see short duration ads	0	1	5	26	30	62

Users	Strongly Agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly Disagree	χ ²Results
Snapchap Users	14	6	1	0	0	χ ² value =4.35
Non Snapchat users	16	20	4	1	0	df =4(14.86)
Total	30	26	5	1	0	p= 0.032
Note: n= 62