Social Merchandising: An Opportunity for an Organization to Leverage Social Media in their Broader Marketing Efforts presented on March 2016

1. Ketan S. Vira
•Associate Professor with GNVS Institute of
Management
•M.Com, M.A.(Eco), M.Phil, MBA
•Experience in Retail, Garments Manufacturing
and Real Estate
•Teaching Experience of 12 yrs
•Area of Interest: Managerial Economics,
International Business and International
Finance

2. An Opportunity for an Organization
to Leverage Social Media in their
Broader Marketing Efforts

3. Introduction
• Social Merchandising is the activity of promoting the
sale of goods through conversation about the product
or brand in general. It also emphasizes on driving
momentum and engagement for specific products.
• Kevin Tate (2012) believes that it’s an evolutionary line
with respect to how brands are using this channel to
influence their customers which he states the
evolutionary line to be as follows:
• Social Media(2007) Social Marketing(2009) Social
Merchandising(2013)

4. Benefits of Social Merchandising
• Product Discovery
• E-commerce
• Study Consumer Behaviour

5. Shortcomings of Social Merchandising
• Intruding into privacy
• Difficulty in implementing in small businesses

6. Application of Social Merchandising:
Rately Social Merchandising
• Generating on site traffic on ecommerce site
by attracting consumers on social media
platforms and making consumers to share the
products that they feel are best suited to their
need and results in buying it either through
social media or through e-commerce sites.

7. Strategies used by marketers to drive
engagement through their social
merchandising endeavor
• Using the high potential product
• Profiling on the basis of the engagement and involvement
of audiences using social merchandising efforts
• Define actions to be taken as to what is expected from the
audiences
• Selection of channel
• Using sophisticated visual content to leverage to attract to
get attention in today’s feeds
• Social Merchandising is continuous and ongoing process
and toolset to assess and post product related content and
experiences using multiple social media channels

8. Case Study: Nike
• Use of Nike Fuelband has
created a break through since
2010 which makes millions of
people to use it on a daily basis
and has resulted in strong user
community of Nike brand
loyalty.

9. Growth of Social Media
• There is 46% penetration in terms of Internet
users globally.
• 31% Active Social Media Users

10. There is 10% groth from Jan
• There is 10% growth from Jan 2015 to Jan
2016 in terms of active social media users

11. • Asia-Pacific shows growth of 12% in terms of
active social media users.

12. • South-Asia stands at 2nd
rank with 480 million
users i.e. 29%

13. • Facebook, YouTube,
Twitter, Google+ &
Instagram are top 5
social media
platforms

14. • India stands at
7th
for Facebook, 8th
for YouTube
4th
for Twitter & 2nd
for Google+ in terms of users.

15. • Across almost all the platforms age group of
16-24 is maximum user

16. • From the above data it is apparent that the
marketers can use different social media
platforms in their marketing efforts of
profiling, segmenting, targeting and
positioning which will help them in engaging
the audiences in their marketing efforts

17. Research Question
• How the use of different social media
platforms will be effective for different
product categories?

18. Objective of the Study
• Measuring effectiveness of social channels in
marketing efforts
• Selection of channel on the basis of product
categories
Propositions
Impact of selection of social media platform
and the effectiveness of it in marketing efforts

19. Research Methodology
Operational definition of:
• Effectiveness: It will be measured on the basis of
Visuals, Layout, Customer Engagement and Content
• Marketing efforts: Efforts are in terms of profiling,
segmenting, targeting and positioning
• Channel: Channel here means social media platforms
like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram
• Product Categories: Different product categories are
on the basis of product identified by social media
platforms

20. Research Design
• The paradigm of the study is from the marketer’s
perspective.
• The epistemological stance of the study has taken
Positivism Approach.
• This is quantitative study by using survey method. In
addition, study has used content analysis by referring
to different reports on the trends of social media
• The primary data is collected through a primary source
using Google forms and the data is analyzed by the
same. The total number of respondents is 34

21. Tool used in the study
• The questionnaire has multiple choice close ended
questions to assess the effectiveness of social media
platform and to understand the preferred channel for the
product categories. The product categories are decided on
the basis of categorization by the social media platforms.
Part A of the survey includes demographic profile like Age,
Gender, Marital Status and Occupation. Part B gives the
details about the number of hours spent on different social
media platforms. Part C is focusing on the effectiveness to
increase customer involvement in each category and on the
basis of several parameters to rank social media platforms.
• The secondary sources are used to study the trends and
how far it has permeated in the society

22. Analysis
• The 65% of the respondents are from the age
group of 18-24 and 32% are from the age
group of 25-34, around 74% of the
respondents are male, 88% of the
respondents are unmarried, 41% are students
and 18% each are Professional and Self-
employed each and 21% are in Service.

23. Number of hours spent by the respondent
on several social media platforms
Number of
hours spent in a
week
Facebook YouTube Twitter Instagram
Up to 7 hours 20 18 30 25
8 to 15 hours 05 09 02 06
16 to 24 hours 03 02 00 01
25 to 32 hours 03 02 00 01
33 and above 03 03 02 01

24. Ranks are assigned on the basis of effectiveness that can
increase involvement in each of the category:
Category Facebook YouTube Twitter Instagram
Apparels 1 3 4 2
Automobiles 1 1 4 3
Computers 1 2 4 3
Food and Beverages 1 2 4 3
Health and Beauty 1 1 4 3
Insurance 1 2 4 3
Internet and Software 1 2 4 3
Retail 1 2 4 3
Media 1 2 4 3
Furniture 1 2 4 3
Kids and Baby Products 1 2 4 3
Jewellery 1 3 4 2
Watches and Accessories 1 3 4 2
Games and Toys 1 2 3 3
Electronics 1 2 3 3
Travel 1 3 4 2
Bank 1 2 2 4
Books 1 2 3 4
Real Estate 1 2 3 3
Education 2 1 4 3
Art and Music 2 1 4 3

25. Ranking of respondents for each social media
platform based on several parameters
Parameters 1 2 3 4
Visuals 22 06 03 03
Layout 23 03 05 03
Customer
Engagement
27 04 01 02
Content 22 07 03 02
Facebook

26. YouTube
Parameters 1 2 3 4
Visuals 21 07 02 04
Layout 16 10 04 04
Customer
Engagement
16 09 05 04
Content 24 06 02 02

27. Twitter
Parameters 1 2 3 4
Visuals 09 11 09 05
Layout 10 09 11 04
Customer
Engagement
12 09 08 05
Content 10 11 05 08

28. Instagram
Parameters 1 2 3 4
Visuals 13 07 06 08
Layout 14 11 03 06
Customer
Engagement
14 07 07 06
Content 11 10 03 10

29. Findings
• Facebook is found to be still the most effective for all the
categories except Education and Art & Music where
YouTube is more effective. In case of Automobiles and
Health &Beauty, Facebook and YouTube shows the same
level of effectiveness in terms of customer engagement.
YouTube is the second most preferred platform but in case
of Apparels ,Instagram is more preferred as compared to
YouTube in spite of being the second most effective
platform for most of the categories. Twitter is more
preferred for banking to drive conversation as compared to
YouTube and Instagram. Finally Instagram is comparatively
better for customer engagement for Apparels, Jewellery,
Watches & Accessories and Travel.

30. Findings
• In terms of measuring effectiveness on
parameters of visuals, it is highly ranked on all
the social media platforms. Twitter which has
less scope in terms of visuals shows high
ranking on the content. Layout is better
ranked on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Customer Engagement is ranked more on
Facebook followed by YouTube and
Instagram. Facebook is also preferred for
content too.

31. Conclusions & Recommendation
• It can be said from the above study that Social
Merchandising can be effectively used by assessing it
on the parameters of Visuals, Layout, Customer
Engagement and Content. It can be made more
effective by relating categories on the basis of
involvement using different social media platforms.
• Social Merchandising is the activity which can be only
executed through social media platforms. Right use of
social media platforms mix along with the
consideration of parameters will definitely make the
whole exercise worthwhile.

32. Thank You