Youth Knowledge and Perceptions towards Targeted Advertisement

 

Vaidik Guha, Dr. Esha Jain*

School of Management, The North Cap University, Gurugram – 122017, Haryana, India.

*Corresponding Author E-mail: dr.eshajain1985@gmail.com

 

ABSTRACT:

Purpose: The purpose of this research was to explore and map the knowledge gap of the urban youth from the ideal definitions of the processes of Social Media which are an integral part of their lives. It was important to analyse the gap before trying to fill it with knowledge of appropriate and safe practices of Social Media. Urban youth are frequent users of Social Media and if they gain a deeper understanding of it, it will certainly help them. Design/ methodology/approach: The present research used an exploratory research design. Data were collected using personal interviews administered to Indian urban youth from the age of 20-25 and through internet sources. Thematic analysis was used for research. Findings: Findings showed a high level of awareness about the terms used frequently while discussing Social Media, but a low level of understanding about the terms. Even without the correct definitions they have strong perceptions. It was further concluded from the study that data collection had an overwhelmingly negative perception, but Targeted Advertisement had mixed reviews. Many of the participants had acted on these advertisements and had bought products online. Further, misconceptions ranged from Social Media Platforms selling user’s private data, third parties accessing their data on the platforms itself to these platforms accessing Camera and Microphone of the mobile to collect private information. Practical implications: The present research develops insights into better conveying the concepts of Social Media. These will go a long way in developing trust between Social Media companies and their clients. Comprehensive yet understandable information drives must be conducted by these platforms to better inform their users and remove any misconceptions. Originality/value: The present research serves as a steppingstone towards future research on social media in the Indian Context.

 

KEYWORDS: Social Media, Cookies, Target Advertising, Urban Youth, India.

 

 


INTRODUCTION:

The new advertising ideas have changed the substance of 21st century promoting strategies. Presently advertising is significantly reliant over innovation, development of new component of showcasing is otherwise called computerized promoting. Advanced showcasing is significantly engaged over promoting through computerized media gadgets, for example, cell phones and PCs (Jain and Yadav, 2017).

 

One of the most convincing bits of proof for people apparently programmed social nature originates from Fritz Heider and Mary Simmel's renowned 1944 movement including a square shape being circled by two triangles and a circle. The liveliness delineates just shapes, yet individuals discover it about incomprehensible not to understand these items as human on-screen characters, and to develop a social dramatization around their developments. The marvel recommends that the impression of these shapes in social terms is not programmed however should be evoked by highlights of the upgrades and circumstance. Human Beings are a social animal. We love to connect with other human beings.

 

Through these connections, we learn about events in other people’s lives and tell them about the events in our life, the good and bad. These connections can be physical or virtual. Social media has been the platform for these virtual connections. These are a virtual persona which almost 2 billion of us on the planet have. As internet penetration increases, more and more people come join these social media networks. Social networking has become synonymous with the internet. We use them for leisure as well as work. While businesses have been built just on the Internet.

 

Social Media companies such as Facebook, Snap Inc., and ByteDance know this. They know their demand among consumers. They know how to leverage the data that the consumers give them voluntarily. But also, they know how to leverage the data they collect by tracking consumer behaviour on their platform. They have built personas of each of their consumer based on their preference and their actions. Up to an extent they know a person’s interest and disinterest. This puts them in a unique position to target consumers with products.

 

An example of this would be if a person spends a lot of time on Social media looking at football videos and follows the social media handles of famous footballers, this person is more likely to purchase football merchandise than a person who watches cooking shows and reads about recipes of various dishes online. This is a basic example of huge reserves of much more complex data with a lot more factors are available with Social Media Companies.

 

These companies not only collect data through their sites but also implant cookies on other partner websites. Cookies are a small text file (up to 4KB) made by a site that is put away in the client's PC either incidentally for that meeting just or for all time. Cookies give a path to the site to remember you and monitor your inclinations.

 

This vast amount of data makes them very attractive to companies looking to advertise their service and products. Companies approach them with a demographic description of their customers, which then the Social Media companies consider and target themselves. They at no point let go or sell off any personal data of their users in any advertising transaction.

 

The rise of Internet users has also given rise to cybercriminals. They are people with malicious intent who want to attack your virtual presence. They do this in many ways ranging from stealing financial information to isolating your location to physically harm you. Cybercrime is a problem that has been recognized by world governments.

 

After studying all these concepts in the Global Context, it was necessary to map the current understandings of the Indian Consumer when it comes to Social Media, its background processes, and its safety concerns.

 

INTRODUCTION TO CONCEPT:

The concepts used in this study. They have now been part of the mainstream discussion for some time. Some of them are easy to decipher due to their simple construct. Here given below are the technical definitions of those concepts.

 

Social Media:

It is a Computer-based development that supports the sharing of contemplations, contemplations, and information through the structure of virtual frameworks and systems. By plan, online networking is online and gives customers lively electronic correspondence of substance. Content consolidates singular information, reports, accounts, and photos. Clients attract with electronic life utilizing PC, tablet, or mobile phone utilizing internet programming or web application, as often as possible utilizing it for illuminating.

 

While web-based systems administration is inescapable in America and Europe, China and India at present lead the overview. Internet organizing started as a way to deal with a partner with friends and family anyway was later gotten by associations that expected to abuse a notable new particular method to interface with customers. The power of virtual life is the ability to interface and offer information with anyone on Earth, or with various people simultaneously.

 

All around, there is an abundance of 3 billion clients. The virtual world is an ever-changing and ever-creating electronic stage.

 

The Many Forms of Social Media:

It might show up as a combination of tech-engaged activities. These activities fuse photo sharing, blogging, social gaming, casual associations, video sharing, business frameworks, virtual universes, reviews, and significantly more. For sure, even governments and legislators utilize the stages to attract constituents and voters.

 

For individuals, internet-based life is used to remain in contact with partners and progressively removed family. A couple of individuals will use distinctive online long-range informal communication applications to orchestrate proficient openings, find people over the globe with like interests, and offer their thought, opinions, information, and sentiments. The people who participate in these activities are a bit of a virtual casual association. For associations, the stage is critical. Associations use the phase to find and interface with customers, drive bargains through publicizing and headway, check purchaser examples, and offering customer backing or support.

 

Web-based social networking's activity in helping associations is basic. It energizes correspondence with customers, enabling the converging of social interchanges on web business districts. Its ability to assemble information helps base on exhibiting tries and factual reviewing. It helps in propelling things and organizations, as it enables the apportionment of engaged, advantageous, and world-class arrangements and coupons to would-be customers. Further, internet systems administration can help in building customer associations through constancy programs.

 

Cookies:

A PC "cookie" is more formally known as HTTP treats, web cookies, Internet cookies, or program cookies. The name is a shorter adjustment of "enchantment cookies," which is a term for a heap of data that a PC gets, by then sends back without changing or altering it. Notwithstanding what it is called, a PC cookie contains information. Right when you visit a site, the site sends the cookies to your PC. Your PC stores it in an archive arranged inside your web program.

 

What Do Cookies Do?

The inspiration for driving the cookies is to empower the site to screen your visits and activity. This is not continually a horrible thing. For example, various online retailers use cookies to screen the things in a customer's shopping container as they research the site. Without cookies, your shopping bushel would reset to zero each time you clicked another association on the site. That would make it hard to buy anything on the web! A site may moreover use cookies to follow your most recent visit or to record your login information. Various people find this helpful so they can store passwords on ordinarily utilized locales, or essentially so they realize what they have visited or downloaded before. Various sorts of cookies monitor various exercises. Meeting cookies are utilized just when an individual is effectively exploring a site; when you leave the site, the meeting cookies vanishes. The following cookies might be utilized to make long haul records of numerous visits to a similar site. Validation cookies track whether a client is signed in, and if this is true, under what name.

 

Cybercrime:

The developing utilization of web-based life, presently assessed to be over three billion clients around the world, gives rich ground to programmers hoping to perpetrate cybercrime. Cybercrime is a simple method to target individuals since it requires just a PC, a web association, and criminal expectations. The proof of the fact that it is so easy to carry out cybercrimes is in the number of casualties assessed to have been focused in 2017: almost one billion individuals!

 

Basic Cybercrimes in Social Networking:

We should examine presumably the most notable sorts of cybercrimes influencing web-based life frameworks? The inescapability of online life use and the ability to interface anonymously are two of the primary inspirations why cybercrimes on long-range relational correspondence districts have gone wild. Here are two or three occasions of the most popular sorts of attacks executed by means of online systems administration media.

 

1.     Malware:

At the moment that you click on goes along with you don't see, or open associations sent by people on your buddy appear, you are letting loose yourself to the ability of malware defilement. Malware is malevolent programming planned to harm or accept authority over your PC system. On a very basic level, it presents a disease onto your machine. Constantly affirm that the wellspring of the report is certifiable before tapping on or downloading any records.

 

2.     Observation:

Observation is not just for cops; cybercriminals lead their sort of reconnaissance or surveillance to scan for people by means of online systems administration media to follow. This information is then changed into counterfeit internet-based life profiles, so they can mimic somebody, maybe a chief or a companion, to get you to uncover delicate data they can use to exploit a specific circumstance.

 

TARGETING ADVERTISEMENT:

The focused on promoting in advanced advertising is utilized to show advertisements to a crowd, which can be a specific segment or a gathering that has a place with the specific classification. For example, age gathering, sexual orientation, and area that advertisements are picked by pertinence to their site content by accepting that it will be reached to pertinent to the site crowd.

 

Types of Targeted Advertising:

1.     Segment Targeting:

To focus on the clients explicitly, utilizing the information about them gathered, as the qualities of the clients, for example, their age, sexual orientation, compensation, and nationality. For instance, a salon business needs to focus on the clients by their age gathering of 18-30. So, the social media life utilizes this data focusing by indicating promotions pertinent to the client's segment for them, this can appear in types of flag advertisements or business recordings.

 

 

2.     Social Targeting:

For the most part you have seen at the E-commerce shopping site consistently focus on the client's social, for example, buying and perusing propensities. For instance, on the off chance that you look for a dress, so you may see promotions for dresses appearing on different destinations that you view, for example, new locales.

 

3.     Logical Targeting:

Logical publicizing is accustomed to focusing on when the sponsors put promotions in a spot, considering the relative substance present. It tends to be utilized over the various modes. For instance, perusing the articles, buying things online that will utilize your area. This is typically accomplished through an advertisement coordinating framework. Furthermore, the conduct of the individuals, like their inquiry inquiries and site they generally visit. This data is treated as pointers for the person's advantages to guides the choices about the advertisements that will be served.

 

4.     Geo-Targeting:

It serves the advertisements to the specific crowd that is available to that showcasing land region or the area of potential purchasers. It gives the distinctive choice of the time, city, state, or nation that can regularly comprise the specialty showcase for specific items or administrations.

 

5.     Social Media based Targeting:

It serves to focuses on the number of ways to deal with choosing the crowd for the advertisements. For instance, On Facebook, a versatile organization may target explicit advertisements dependent on client information, for example, sexual orientation, age gathering, and their inclinations or they may target clients who like specific pages. Another methodology is to serve promotions to individuals dependent on pages and posts that their companions have preferred.

 

6.     Re-Targeting:

Retargeted publicizing includes focusing on the promotions for explicit items or administrations after individuals visit the site for the business. Retargeting is the innovation behind promotions that follow guests starting with one site then onto the next.

 

7.     Time Targeting:

Time focusing on is utilized to centers around fitting in around individuals' ordinary ways of life. It is utilized for showing advertisements into their applicable planned time. For instance, promotions happen from 4 pm to 8 pm, which is individuals ordinarily drive home from work.

 

8.     Gadget Targeting:

Has been unavoidable on the web and most as of late in the gadget set. Gadgets like mobiles that permit more data about their area and time. This permits publicists to create ads that could consider their calendar and an increasingly explicit evolving condition.

 

Target publicizing assists with arriving at your advertisements to the opportune individuals and tailor your crusades to your crowd inclinations, so your promotions perform better. Through this, you can spend less on your crusades and get more transformations. At that point you can utilize the experiences to improve your crusades.

 

REVIEW OF LITERATURE:

Carter-Harris et al. (2016) found that enrollment by Facebook was increasingly strong and savvy contrasted and a paper ad. Facebook offered another scene for enrollment into inquiring about investigations that offer the potential for a more extensive reach at a lower cost while giving protection and adaptability to potential examination members. The examination's discoveries broadened the late work of different scientists who have shown Facebook's utility with more youthful smokers, and Facebook as a powerful device to enroll more established smokers. Besides, Facebook is a savvy option in contrast to conventional paper commercial contributions another, reasonable scene to enlist huge quantities of more seasoned smokers productively.

 

Lin et al. (2016) demonstrated that protection concerns had a more grounded negative impact on apparent local-based advertising (LBA) esteem than apparent penance, while saw utility, use of relevant data, and trust emphatically anticipated apparent LBA esteem. Additionally, it was noticed that the LBA esteem expanded shoppers' reactions to buy publicized brands, trailed via scanning for brand data, and passing LBA to other people.

 

Shin and Lin (2016) indicated that the individuals who discovered area based versatile publicizing (LBA) hindered objectives, requires penance, and needs utility was bound to maintain a strategic distance from it. While looking at the distinctions of the substantial, medium, and light cell phone clients, the investigations uncovered that the impacts of apparent utility and amusement on LBA shirking are more prominent for medium and overwhelming clients than for light clients.

 

Åkestam et al. (2017) indicated that depictions of homosexuality in promoting can prime purchasers to consider others, in this way influencing them socially. In accordance with past investigations of depictions of homosexuality in publicizing, these impacts are directed by perspectives toward homosexuality.

 

Boerman et al. (2017) suggested that the outcomes of online behavioral advertising (OBA) were dependent on advertiser-controlled factors (e.g., the level of personalization) and consumer-controlled factors (e.g., knowledge and perceptions about OBA and individual characteristics).

 

Zarouali et al. (2018) uncovered that expanding security control remarkable quality utilizing UI components prompted increasingly basic preparing of focused publicizing; simultaneously, when youths saw a higher protection control, they likewise assessed a focused on promotion as progressively compelling, persuading and dependable (i.e., increment in saw convincingness). The investigation further distinguished two hidden components by which these impacts work: saw control and self-adequacy.

 

Dehling et al. (2019) solidified the discoveries in a procedure model connecting buyer attention to and information about online conduct publicizing with their demeanor towards online social promoting, which demonstrated that customer impression of online conduct publicizing was not steady; rather, they continually developed, activated by encounters with online social publicizing. For customers, online conduct publicizing was a component until they got irritated and it turned into a disturbance, and this was treated as a tight rope stroll for suppliers of sites and online applications.

 

Nadarzynski et al. (2019) uncovered Facebook to be the favored decision of web-based social networking, with members seeing it to be an incredible and extensive stage for the social association. Members likewise featured a few parts of special substance to be significant at expanding commitment with the objective populace, including proper utilization of shading, level of intelligence, utilization of cleverness, and namelessness. The site investigation demonstrated a 277% expansion in the immediate passageway on the chlamydia testing pack page and a 41% increment in chlamydia test unit orders, in correlation with the standard time frame before the mediation.

 

Nasrullah and Khan (2019) uncovered that the understudies appreciate meeting new companions web-based utilizing online life as opposed to meeting face to face and thus they invest a great deal of energy-dependent. It was likewise affirmed that the awful remarks were gone effectively through web-based life influencing other's assumptions and the vast majority of them emphatically accepted that all the data in internet-based life was valid and dependable and the gossipy tidbits were spread effectively in online life. Further, it was additionally affirmed that web-based life doesn't bolster the Learning of the understudies.

 

 

Rath (2019) suggested that perceiving a communication as persuasion was likely to activate consumers’ persuasion knowledge and examined a series of nuanced inferences whereby consumers believed that the agent was attempting to induce the consumer to do something that serves the agent’s interests over those of the consumer, which conveyed to consumers that the agent had a low opinion of them.

 

Yim et al. (2019) presented an application administration stage for focused commercial in ATSC 3.0 and demonstrated that notice substances were effectively conveyed continuously and non-constant over both communicate and broadband systems. Customized customer side ad exchanging was likewise performed dependent on the application in ATSC 3.0 runtime condition.

 

THE RATIONALE OF THE STUDY:

With over 3 billion people using Social Media, it is not something that needs to be advertised. But the profiles created represent a virtual persona for us. These profiles are created using attributes from our real life. This process of setting up a profile requires the collection of our data. Some of it is general but some of it can be classified as sensitive data. Awareness is still required on how to operate a Social Media Handle carefully as there are rising cases of privacy breaches and cybercrime. The research aims to help people understand the operations of the Virtual World of Social Media. A better understanding of its operations will make them aware and help them browse Social Media without risking their physical or material safety. For any research suggestions to be effective, the research problem must be mapped out. In this case the knowledge gap of Urban Youth regarding the processes behind Social Media must be mapped.

 

The urban youth is not new to social media. Even though we are talking about India, with its perception of being an under-developed country, the urban youth here has been online for at least 7 years. The earliest and the most popular platform is Facebook, even though now other platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok have replaced Facebook in terms of Popularity.

 

Despite such levels of exposure ignorance and common misconceptions persist. This limits the potential of expansion and experimentation that can be done by social media companies with their platforms. To clarify map the gap and fill it with the right knowledge is the rationale of this study.

 

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES:

1.     To assess the knowledge of participants about Social Media and the data collection practices involved in it.

2.     To assess the knowledge of Targeted Advertisement.

3.     To assess the perceptions and feelings of the participants towards Data Collection and Targeted Advertisements.

 

RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS:

The study was undertaken with some research hypotheses in mind. These were not backed by any study, just generic assumptions. These hypotheses were as follows:

·       Despite being on Social Media well before JIO, still, the urban youth are not fully aware of the processes behind the User Interface.

·       There are lots of misconceptions about these processes.

 

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

In the backdrop of JIO’s digital revolution in 2016, rural India has accessed the internet for the first time. These will be the first mass of people in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities to come online. But Urban India has been online for some time now. The youth in urban India are tech-savvy having been using the internet since the early 2000s. They have accessed Social Media since its inception. But I believe that still the urban youth are not fully aware of the processes behind the User Interface. Knowledge about terms like Data Collection, Targeting, cookies, etc is still lacking. There are lots of misconceptions about these processes as well.

 

Research Design:

Type of Research- Qualitative Research- The reason for choosing Qualitative Research rather than quantitative research is that this research aims to unearth the feelings, perceptions, and the current knowledge base of the Urban Youth towards Social Media. These factors being qualitative were the primary factor for the selection of the type.

 

The intention was also to allow the interviewed people to describe their experiences in their own words. Their choice of words would highlight the underlying emotions and subtext of their attitude towards Social Media.

 

Data Collection Methods:

In-Depth Interviews:

A top to the bottom meeting is portrayed as an emotional research strategy where genuine individual gatherings are coordinated. In such a meeting, there are scarcely any amounts of respondents so that on a program, thought, or subject the respondent's perspectives are researched. A top to the bottom meeting can in like manner be referenced as an inaccurately composed meeting that allows the open door for both the examiner and interviewee if there ought to be an event of changing headings and researching extra centers when required.

 

Singular Interviews:

The individual meeting is for the most part used data collection methodology in Health and social research. Growing thought has been given in the composition to the route toward driving a meeting, particularly with respect to the activity of the questioner and the association between the questioner and interviewee. The individual gathering is a critical strategy for getting information into people's observations, understandings, and experiences of a given ponder and can add to the through and through data variety. In any case, the meeting is more than a conversational correspondence between two people and requires noteworthy data and skill to assist the questioner.

 

Sampling Design:

30 Individuals (24 Boys and 6 Girls) individuals between the age of 20-25 years from the urban location were taken into consideration by using a convenience sampling technique.

 

DATA INTERPRETATION AND ANALYSIS:

Thematic Analysis is a famous technique for dismembering emotional data in various controls and fields, and can be applied from numerous perspectives, to a lot of different datasets, to address heaps of different research questions!

 

It is one of the gatherings of strategies that consideration on recognizing planned significance over a dataset. Topical Analysis is the best thought as an umbrella term for a ton of approaches for analyzing abstract data that shares consideration on recognizing themes (instances of significance) in emotional data. The different versions of TA will all in all offer some degree of theoretical flexibility, be that as it may, they can differ hugely to the extent both essential perspectives and procedures for delivering topics.

 

For the research youth between the ages of 20-25 were approached. They all belong to either the final year of Undergraduate studies or are working. These people have been born and brought up in urban developed cities. The interviewees are from urban cities. The group has been chosen by Convenience Sampling. In this method the researcher approaches those people who are in his/her social circle and those he can approach with less difficulty and they fit the criteria of the interviewees. This method has a non-probability aspect to it.

 

The following themes were discovered throughout the interview:

1.     Familiarity with the Terms:

All the interviewees had a vague familiarity with most of the terms. They had either heard it somewhere or were trying to come up with definitions putting together their current vocabulary. Though there was incorrectness in the definition, the terms had not surprised them completely. The most technical term seemed to be ‘Cookies’. ‘Cookies’ refers to a small file sent from the website to the user’s web browser. It tracks the user’s visit along with any information the user might have volunteered. This was the one that most of the interviewees from non-engineering backgrounds did not know the definition of. Data Collection was the most familiar aspect of the interviewees. All the interviewees knew that their data was being collected by the social media network which they were a part of. Rather than being surprised their tone reflected that it was a question with an obvious answer as if they were pointing towards the futility of the question. Target Advertising was also familiar to all the interviewees. All of them knew the definition of it. But it would be fair to say that most of them guessed the definition using their current vocabulary as none of them knew the technical processes involved. They did not know who it was that was targeting or how it worked.

 

2.     Sale of Data:

The second running theme throughout the interviews can be noticed is the ‘Sale of Data’. This reflected when they were asked the question of what an anticipated threat is you feel about Data Collection is. The common answer was an ill-intentioned company getting their hands on their data through a financial transaction (Buying or Selling). This was a common perception that Social Media platforms are involved in the selling of data. This was also confirmed with the question, ’Who is doing the targeting?’ The same perceptions of buying and selling data were revealed. With answers ranging from data analytics firms selling the data to social media platforms itself selling the data.

 

3.     Lower standards of Privacy:

Even with the assumptions of sale of data, the interviewees continue to use Social Media highly frequently. These assumptions have not forced them away from social media. On the question of Data Collection and Targeting being a convenience or nuisance, each one said it is both. It is a double-edged sword that they have adjusted to and continue to live by. One of the attributable reasons for this phenomenon can be to the Indian Culture at large which regards privacy a Luxury. A research paper by the Digital Empowerment Foundation, has studied the social factors which are the reasons for not giving the same amount of respect to privacy which it gets in the west.

4.     Targeted Advertisement was more convenient than a Problem:

Despite knowing that the cause of Targeted Advertisements to be the voluntary and involuntary data collection, Interviewees did not outrightly label it as a nuisance. Trying to moderate their criticism, they said it was both or as one interviewee said, “It’s a double-edged Sword”. Attempts to moderate could only point to their guilty pleasure of indulging in shopping due to targeted advertisements. And outright rejection would be a hypocritical stance. Hence, it shows the scope for trust to be developed.

 

CONCLUSIONS:

The assumption that despite being on Social Media well before JIO, still, the urban youth are not fully aware of the processes behind the User Interface turned out to be true. Although the interviewees had heard of all the terms asked from them, they did not know the actual definitions. This was highly true for technical terms like cookies, and moderately true for general social media terms like Targeted Advertising and Data Collection techniques used by Social Media Platforms. It was found from the study that the participants were familiar with Social Media Platforms and having accounts on multiple platforms. High frequency of usage, the majority using it daily. Participants were also aware of the Data Collection undertaken by these platforms. It was found that all the participants were aware of the term, targeted advertising, but the technical definition was known to very few participants. Also, they were not aware in most cases, who it was that did the targeting. It was further concluded from the study that data collection had an overwhelmingly negative perception, but Targeted Advertisement had mixed reviews. Many of the participants had acted on these advertisements and had bought products online. Further, misconceptions range from Social Media Platforms selling user’s private data, third parties accessing their data on the platforms itself to these platforms accessing Camera and Microphone of the mobile to collect private information.

 

IMPLICATIONS/ RECOMMENDATIONS:

The study recommends that the gap between Social Media Companies and the Indian Urban consumer is not a big one. The consumer is a hooked user. The usage frequency is high along with the retention rate. Indians are also the early adopters of new features as well as any new platform which is launched in the market. These attachments on behalf of the consumer have been achieved despite the element of mistrust that they have. Despite the feeling that their data is being sold, their usage does not get affected. Hence, it would go a long way if these social media platforms release in reader-friendly formats about the behind the scenes workings of their business it would go a long way to drown the misconceptions and build trust with the consumers.

The study can also be used as a metric to develop and design new social media platforms for the Indian Urban Consumer. This study tells about an aspect of the anthropological behaviour of urban consumers on social media platforms. When developed correctly to grab and hold the attention of consumers, companies can expect to achieve this rate of loyalty from this demographic. This study along with other factors should be kept in mind while developing as well as marketing new social media platforms.

 

LIMITATIONS:

This study is not one without its limitations. Limitations have grown due to the COVID-19 crises as well apart from just being human. In the pursuit of being narrow and focused information gets left out and topics are not covered. The major limitation of this project is that it does not take for Rural India, which too enjoys the same amount of access to the internet as the urban population. They have also joined social media at an astonishing rate. They also need to be aware of what they are signing up for. It would be reasonable to assume that there is a high possibility that their awareness about the terms might be less in the first place but still it would in their advantage if the knowledge gap is measured and subsequently covered.

 

SCOPE FOR FURTHER RESEARCH:

Rural India would be the natural extension of this study. Since, the internet revolution of India in 2016, they have accessed the internet with great speed. With the internet have come social media which is a major component of internet access. The fall in Data package prices meant that rural India could remain online for a much greater time without incurring expenses with money they do not have. Another scope of further research would be to study more aspects of the Anthropological Behaviour of the Users. Some of the topics that can be covered are the Violent Troll culture of Indian Social Media, how access to the internet has affected (Positively/Negatively) the backward classes of society, etc. Virtual personas are an extension of the real person. Can anthropological studies be conducted while studying these online personas? Can Social laws and policies be framed by studying online trends? These are some of the answers that India requires while going through these phenomena.

 

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Received on 24.05.2020          Modified on 17.06.2020

Accepted on 29.06.2020           ©AandV Publications All right reserved

Asian Journal of Management. 2020;11(3):233-240.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2020.00036.0