Influence of Social Media on the Indian Automotive Consumers: Primary Study in National Capital Region

Abstract

With reasons like increase in paying capacity and higher living standards leading to substantial growth in the automotive sector each year, the automotive OEM's cannot afford to lag behind in social media marketing. The objective of this paper is to identify and investigate the extent of influence of social media in the Indian Automotive Consumers by conducting a thorough primary research. The study looks towards social media's influence on consumers at multiple stages involved during the buying process as well as the impact of consumer activism through social networks on brand loyalty. The need of the hour is for the automotive OEM's to recognize the importance through social networks marketing phenomenon. A simple random sampling technique is adopted in the paper to select the sample respondents. The primary data is collected from the NCR region from 131 respondents. Analytics is used as a statistical tool to infer the results and come to a conclusion. The results reveal a strong influence of social media in influencing the consumer over multiple buying processes parameters. Influence of Social Media on vehicular research, suggestions, connected vehicle technologies, finance calculator and Facebook page marketing showed a significant share in impacting a consumer before buying an automobile.