Rationale of the research

The particular research will focus to identify the social media marketing and its impact on retail market in India, especially the home furnishing retail industry. The success of an organization is highly dependent on the marketing strategy and policy. The popularity of the products depends on the promotional strategy implemented by the company. The company is controlled by not only the quality of the products and services, but also on brand image that company offers. The marketing of the products includes advertisement public relation, promotion and sales marketing (Solomon 2014). The process of marketing has considerably changed over time and the improvement of technology is having its impact on it. The international business organisations have integrated social media as an integral part of their marketing process. Compared to the traditional mode of marketing, social media has the potential to communicate the products to the customers with low marketing expenses along with the wider reach (Solomon 2014).

 However, various factors plays important role in utilising the social media marketing for the promotion of the products. The primary factors that contribute in the success of social media marketing are the economic status of the target market and the technological advancement. The technological advancement includes the advancement attained by the country along with the incorporation of the technology by the greater section of the population. For instance, technological adaptation in the countries like U.S. and Australia has attained its peak and is inseparably integrated in the daily lives of the people. This helps both the national and international organisations to utilise social media for their marketing process.

Social media marketing implies the social networking, website networking and television marketing. These marketing channels contain high potential as they not only communicate the products to the customers, but also provides platform to the customers to get in touch with the company as well as other customers seeking greater insight about the products. The companies gain opportunity for not only delivering the products to the customers, but also retaining them by building relationship by satisfying their need. Moreover, it helps in recording information for future usage.

Rationale of the research:

Most of the researchers and practitioners have raised this issue in order to evaluate on how social networking, website networking and television marketing left major positive impact on the consumers’ behavior. This research will focus on the impact of social media marketing of the home furnishing retail market in India on the customer behaviour. India is a developing country, which creates opportunity for the international companies for social medial marketing, as the country is the fourth largest internet user around the globe (Cia.gov 2018). The study has focused to evaluate the impact of social media for business expansion of retail industry all over India. Moreover, it will identify the influential factors affecting social media marketing process that has left major impact on the target population.

Factors contributing to the success of social media marketing

The aim of this research is to identify the impact of social media marketing on consumers’ purchasing behavior.

• To identify the impact of social media marketing on consumer behaviour in Home furnishing retail market in India
• To identify the influence of social networking on customer behaviour in the same market
• To identify the influence of pictorial representation and advertisement in the selected market

Rapp et al. (2013) identified the contagion effects of the use of social media marketing in the retail industry. According to the authors, it not only influences the promotion and customer value of the company, but also has contagion effects on the overall business process. Their research predicts the influence in customer loyalty through the use of social media marketing by creating brand reputation in the target market. The constant growth in the use of social media among the customers forces the retailers to incorporate social media in the business marketing process for all aspects of promotional activities. Tiago and Veríssimo (2014) in their paper “Digital marketing and social media: Why bother?” communicated the limitations of digital marketing in the firms of retail industry. Their results communicate that limiting the use of social media in promotional activities fails to attain the potential benefits. The retail firms can explore greater benefits in incorporating customers’ opinion in the decision making process. They can build relationship using this process that modifies the customer behaviour for a particular brand.

The research conducted by Hudson and Thal (2013) encounters the change in the customers’ decision making due to incorporation of social media in their marketing process. Their research marks the last decade as the growth span of social media marketing that considerably changed the view of the customers and how it engage them with the brand. Their research however is supported with the data from the tourism industry. Öztamur and Karakad?lar (2014) on the other hand identified the variables that influence the impact of social media marketing in the customers’ perceived value and behaviour. They focused their study on four American and Turkish companies and their social media marketing on Facebook and Twitter. Their study reveals that clear communication using understandable language is of primary importance. This should be aligned with the local language to make it easier for the common people to greater perceive the value being proposed. Similarly, the selection of the popular social networking channel in the target market is also of same importance. Öztamur and Karakad?lar’s study reveals that the Turkish companies under study fails in incorporating the necessary language needed for communicating their products to the target market, whereas, the incorporation of Twitter by the American companies failed to provide the expected results due to the extreme use of Facebook.

Benefits of social media marketing in retail industry

 Kumar et al (2016) identified the importance of the content included in social media pages through they communicates to the customers. the results of the research reflects that the quality of the content is proportionate in influencing the customers in making purchase decision. Lee (2013) in his research answered the question of how social media influences the customer behaviour. According to the author, increased use of social media by the customers helps the company to communicate the advantages of the products provided by the companies. Ertemel and Ammoura (2016) points out that use of social media in the retail market has moderate relation for decision making process and post purchase behaviour. However, the social media marketing enables the customers to communicate the perceived value of the products being delivered and the individual need. The company needs to modify the required for attaining benefits of the system.

Constant modernisation and technological development in India is leading the customers in using the social media in their daily lives. The customers are now moving their preference to the online shopping for their basic needs like glossary. Prashar, Vijay and Parsad (2015) in their report identified that there is a noticeable growth of 85% in online shopping compared to 65% growth in regular shopping in 2013. Vinerean  et al (2013) offered similar results in their study that communicates integration of technology in daily life provides opportunity for the marketers to use social media marketing as important tool in marketing. This denotes a significant involvement of the customers with the technology and the use of social media. Hence, use of social media for the marketing process will be beneficial for the retail firms for gaining competitive advantage in Indian market. This can help the companies in addressing a significant portion of the customers due to their active presence in the social media. Another study conducted by Panda, Swar and Mukerjee (2014) identifies the influential factors in Indian market. They are customer commitment, reliability, reputation and retail environment. The technological advancement and incorporation in daily lives of the citizens of the country helps will provide suitable environment for the retail industry to incorporate social media in their promotion for influencing the mentioned factors.

The existing literatures provide insight about the benefits of use of social media marketing by the house furnishing retail firms. These also communicate the capabilities in influencing the customer behaviour. The primary factors that contribute in the success of social media marketing are the economic status of the target market and the technological advancement. The technological advancement includes the advancement attained by the country along with the incorporation of the technology by the greater section of the population. However, the a few studies are present in the market that successfully communicates the impact on the Indian market. This creates an opportunity to direct this research for identifying the impact of social media marketing on consumer behaviour in the retail market. Moreover, the companies can both identify personal interest of the customers and align the brands in accordance for gaining greater attraction. Additionally, they can influence the interest of the customers through the use of social media.

Research philosophy and methodology

This section of the research paper provides clear idea of the process, by which the data are collected and analysed. This also communicates the focus of the research by justifying the process incorporated for attaining particular goal. It is important to follow the research guideline that helps in reproducing similar data when similar methods utilised in similar type of research (Sekaran and Bougie 2016). The research onion is utilised that helps in designing the methodology for the research. Different layers of the onion communicate the methods incorporated in the study.

Philosophy of the research communicates the dimension in which the research is being carried out. The research philosophy is constituted with three major ways positivism philosophy, realism and interpretivism. This will help in countering the central question of research that is if the social entities require objective or subjective perception, which in turn interprets the nature of reality.  Interpretivism as stated by Eriksson and Kovalainen (2015) communicates social actors, which are involved are continuously accomplishing the social phenomenon and providing them meaning. It will narrate the process and the influential factors that direct the customers’ behaviour related to the particular products sold. Positivism lastly identifies and describes the elements of the research. This helps in identification of the truth underlies by simply dictating the elements of research without tampering it (Collis and Hussey 2013). In this very specific study positivism research philosophy will be selected as this particular methodological tool is used after making a keen observation about the research issue. This will be helpful in identification of the impact social media marketing on the customers’ behaviour pattern in the retail market of India.

Research approach identifies the validity of the existing theories or it can propose new theories as well. Research approach is constituted with two major parts including deductive approach and inductive approach. With the help of deductive approach the researcher can evaluate necessary data and information based on the exiting theories analyzed on literature review (Zikmund et al 2013). On the other hand, inductive approach primarily focuses on evaluating necessary information based on new theories. This research will select inductive approach based on the way social media marketing and its influence consumer behavior. By evaluating theories on consumers’ purchasing behavior the study would focus to highlight the impact social media marketing on influencing the buying behavior of Indian retail customers. After evaluating consumers’ behavior theories the researcher would like to analyze buying behavior perception of customers from Indian retail industry in order to know whether they are influenced on social media marketing or not.

Two types of research strategies exist from which the researcher has to select depending on the type of research being conducted. They are qualitative research method and quantitative research method. Quantitative research method on the other hand helps in extracting the quantifiable data. This type of research method is useful in identification of the results of a phenomenon (Creswell and Creswell 2017). This specific research will select quantitative method because it utilizes various data collection methods like survey, structured interviews, study records and documentation. This helps in obtaining data that describes the nature of the phenomenon, which in turn helps in assuming the relation between the element and the influence of it on the society. Quantitative research being objective and effective will be utilised in this research. This will help in revealing the truth by identifying the degree of influence the social media makes on the customer behaviour (Levy and Lemeshow 2013).

Data collection technique is the systematic method of gathering appropriate information from various resources. Data collection method is constituted with two types that include primary source of data collection technique and secondary source of data collection technique. For this particular study primary data will be used for getting immediate response from the participants.  The method that will be utilized is quantitative method that will help in collecting feedback of participants on the home furnishing retail market in India and the impact of social media marketing on customer purchasing behaviour. Questionnaire will comprise of a number of closed ended questions with the options provided which will limit the opportunity for the respondent to a certain range, which can hence be quantified (Palinkas et al 2015). Total 100 participants will be involved for collecting their response. 100 is a standard size based on which sufficient data regarding the research issue can be collected. Total 100 questionnaires are prepared for collecting necessary information from the respondents.  This will keep the research method simple and easy. This will help in analysing customers’ purchasing behaviour in the retail market of India. The questions in the questionnaire will be set accordingly in relation to the social media marketing to identify its impact.

Sampling

The sampling method that will be incorporated in this research is probabilistic sampling as it provides the most accurate data. With the help of probability sampling technique the researcher would like to select the respondents randomly from retail sector. Total 250 sampling size would be selected among which 150 respondents are from customers of retail industry and 100 participants will be involved from employees in home furnishing retail industry. By involving both the customers and the employees, the research will be conducted about the impact of social media on business expansion of retail industry. Forms will be distributed by going to the retail firms in order to acquire necessary data and information.

Data analysis process incorporates the data interpretation. The data collected through the closed ended interview schedule and questionnaires will be put into the graphs and tools for the analysis process. The responses collected through the data collected will be analysed using statistical analysis tool that includes mean, median and mode. This will help identifying the factors of social media marketing that influence the customers in theri decision-making process. This will again classify the dependent and independent variables in the data. Next tool incorporated for this research is the regression tool. The positivity and negativity in the relationship between the variables will be identified utilising the Pearson’s regression correlation tool (Draper and Smith 2014). This again will help in understanding if the social media has or has not any impact on the purchasing behaviour. However, this tool cannot provide the extent of relationship between the variables. The research then utilises the descriptive statistical analysis. It helps in summing up the acquired results for a detailed description, which will help the reader to have a clear idea of the phenomenon under study. In other words, this will describe the findings regarding the impact of social media marketing in modifying the purchasing behaviour of customer in house furnishing retail market in India. This will further help in presenting the data on systematic manner for greater understanding.

This particular research issue is constituted with two variables including impact of social media is the independent variable and consumers’ purchasing behavior is dependent variable. With the help of an effective qualitative data analysis the research variables will be proved. In order to maintain accuracy of data an effective regression analysis would be conducted to prove research variables.

Several limitations of the study can be highlighted that is possible to encounter in conducting research. The first and foremost is the participation of the respondents in research. Moreover, the authenticity of the collected data is also questionable as the respondent might be reluctant for providing authentic information perceived data. Moreover, the demographic profile of the country also communicates that the females of the family are likely to visit the retail stores which limits the collected data to only one segment of the society keeping the data incomplete. In addition, India is a multicultural nation where the cultural differences considerably change the customers’ purchasing behaviour. This will considerably modify the collected data and will widely vary in different parts of the country. Moreover, the country is in its developmental phase, which makes it hard to address the complete population of a particular society. Lastly, social media is in a constant change, which makes it harder to base the research on specific social media channels. Some of the major recommendations are provided based on which these limitations can be overcome.

Ethical consideration is one of the important parts of research that helps the researcher identify and limit the research within the boundaries of ethics. The ethical guideline as proposed by Faden et al (2103) identifies the need of safeguarding the interest of the respondents. Hence, the personal information of the respondents needs to be kept secret. By making face to face communication prior approval from the respondents should be taken before extracting information (Miller et al 2012). Furthermore, the manipulation of the source of the data is also unethical as it will reduce the authenticity of the research. Lastly, the copy right should be issued in prior for avoiding the charges of data theft.

Ethical Considerations Made

• Approval is taken from the informants and is encouraged to participate in the research process.
• The identity and personal information of the informants are kept secret where necessary for safeguarding the safety of the informants.
• No forceful extraction was considered in research for extracting authentic data from the respondents
• Proper citation is provided to the data collected from the existing literature to maintain the authenticity of the research and avoid plagiarism.

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