Online Purchase Through Social Media in India

Social media has begun as an Internet-based platform which is extremely dynamic and vibrant. It has proved to be an extremely useful platform where one person can communicate with hundreds or thousands of other people. It is one of the most recent and successful technological innovations offer a wide range of benefits (21st Century Technologies. (1998)). It has been the main ground for selecting the topic of Social media for the research purpose. Also much research has not been done on what factors influence consumers while they purchase from social media in the Indian context and their impact on purchase intention; therefore Social Media has been selected as the topic for research.

According to Brien, C.O. (2011). Social Media refers to a collection of social technologies which have enabled a revolution in user generated content, global community and publishing of consumer opinion. It can also be defined as a group of Internet-based applications that is built on ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content (Kaplan, A. M. and Haenlein, M. (2010)).

According to Social Media Marketing Tips (2018) In India, there are over 462 Million internet users and 200 Million are active social media users. In 2016, 24.33% of Indian Population accessed Internet via Mobile phone and the trend is predicted to grow at 37.36% by 2021. India is second largest online market behind China. Internet usage is male dominated in India with 71 percent to 29 percent female. Google+ is 2nd most used in India with 82% accounts after Indonesia with 83% account. Activities on Social Networking sites are high between 6 PM to 10 PM. Mumbai and New Delhi accounts highest traffic to social media sites. Over 60% of active social network users are college going students.

According to Jain, S. (2016, December 16) India has world’s largest number of Facebook Users with over 195 million users, overtaking US by over 4 million subscribers. There are 155 Million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) in India, of which 147 Million MAUs access Facebook via Mobile Phones and 73 Million users are active daily on Mobiles (Facebook.com, 2018). Key Facebook Users from India are aged 18-24, which is the largest and fastest growing population segment. In India, 76% of Facebook users are Men, and 24% users are women, which illustrates the barriers women face in India to access technology and information. He further analyze that twitter, the microblogging site has 23.2 million Monthly Active Users in India, which is 2nd largest in Asia-Pacific after Japan with 26 million MUAs. Over all, Twitter accounts for only 17% of Indian Social Network users. Twitter is at 2nd place in terms of User Engagement after Facebook. Globally, Twitter has 320 million users, 140 million of Daily Active Users and 305 of MonthlyActiveUsers. There are over 30 Million LinkedIn Users also in India, while 467 million users globally. LinkedIn, comparatively, is the fastest growing professional network in India. Currently, LinkedIn is the most frequently used social network for recruiting, because it results in the most successful hiring. Most active users on LinkedIn India are of age group 24-35. 46% of LinkedIn users are Female and 54% are Male. YouTube, the video-sharing site has more than 60 million unique users in India with users spending over 48 hours a monthly viewing video `content. More than half of YouTube viewers watch YouTube Videos on their Smartphone or tablet. Over 70% of YouTube viewers in India are aged below 35, female users’ accounts for 38% and Male users are 62% on YouTube. When compared to last year, YouTube in India is up by 90% while the watch-time has grown by 80% in 2016. Globally, YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine after Google. 1/3 of Internet users use YouTube. Monthly 6 Billion hours of videos are watched on YouTube. Globally, there are 176 million registered Pinterest users out of which 110 million are active users. After Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest is 3rd most popular social network in India. 80% of traffic to the site comes from Mobile device. Pinterest has 80% female users and 20% male users. Majority of daily active users on Pinterest are under 40. Jain S. (2016, December 16) further analyses that there are 16 Million Instagram users in India. Globally, there are 400 Million active Instagram users with 75% of users from outside US. 30% of overall Internet users are on Instagram 74% of Instagram users in India are Men and 26% are Female. The average users post engagement rate of Instagram is 3.31%, while Twitter has an average of 0.07% only.

E-commerce in India is said to be the largest and most profitable for a new business start-up. India’s Digital advertising market has grown at 33% annually between 2010 and 2016. E-Commerce in India is currently at 2 Lakh Crores and is predicted to grow 5 Lakh Crores in 2017. 77% of online users buy products exclusively on Social Media. 43.8% of Indian Internet Users has purchased at least one product online and by 2019 it is expected to grow by 64.4%. 59% users shop on tablets, 69% shop on Mobile devices, and 38% shop on weekly basis.50% of shoppers buy products online based on recommendation through social media networks and 74% of customers rely on social media for making their purchase decisions the sale of physical goods via digital channels in India amounted to 16.8 Billion U.S dollars in revenues Jain, S. (2016).

In order to understand the various factors influence online purchase through social media; TAM model has been reviewed and found three major factors which influence broadly the buying through social media such as perceived usefulness, perceived value and perceived security and their influence on purchase intention has been found out.