12. Influence of Social Media Marketing on Health Care and Automobile Sectors in India

The emergence of social networking sites (SNSs) globally has brought in a paradigm shift in word-of-mouth (WOM) communications, enabling users to observe, interact, and exchange information. From Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to Pinterest, corporations have increasingly started to use various forms of social media to reach out to their customers, partners, and employees. This has opened new avenues for businesses to reach their target customer base as never before. In India, although penetration of the Internet continues to remain low, it is estimated that around 180 million people in India are active users of online services and various social media and e-mail platforms. This increased growth in the use of social media has evoked a gold-rush-like response from organizations. The purpose of this study was to carry out a comparative analysis of the use of social networking sites as a marketing communication tool across two sectors in the country (health care and automobile). Comprehensive analysis was used to study the presence of the various social media platforms and understand how the health-care and automobile sectors are leveraging them for their own benefits. The study also attempts to understand the nature and level of usage of social media by both the health-care sector and automobile sector. A comprehensive literature research was initially undertaken to build the hypothesis that formed the basic framework for conducting this research work.