Question

SECTON C: ANSWER ONLY ONE QUESTION FROM THIS SECTION (600 WORDS)- 30 MARKS

Q6. As a result of the Covid -19 (Corona Virus) Digital Marketing is growing and likely to be adopted by all consumers. Discuss your view on this statement with practical examples.

Q7. Examine any five (5) legal and ethical challenges affecting the success of online businesses globally (600 words).

Answer 1

COVID-19 has restricted the movement of all, whether it is business, people, or promotion. Earlier what was once a medium of promotion, billboards, and outdoor advertising has been limited to a larger extent. People have started to live in a remote world, trying to make the virtual world real.

Social media pervasion into lives to people is not new. It started from the 2000s from MySpace and Orkut and then FB revolutionised the entire environment, making social media a part of every life. People started sharing things about themselves, staying connected. Later businesses came in there to stay connected by making their pages and promoting their brands and doing market research. Now, political campaigns started happening, with millions of dollars invested in promotion and market research and sometimes to influence people's choice and behavior.

Lately, space was taken up by specialized social media like micro-blogging site twitter, or photo-sharing Instagram, or a professional community like Linkedin. More and more people were now online for their everyday needs, to connect with people, find jobs, stay updated, or understand the products or celebs more.

At the start of 2020, more than 4.5 billion were using the internet. Also, the active social media users have been more than 3.8 million out of this. Nearly 60% of the population is online and that is a huge number for marketers to channelize. The annual growth of this number is 9.2% y-o-y. More than 99% of total social media users access it via mobile.

With good connectivity in developing countries and cheap data rates, the penetration has increased much more.

A newly launched video on a popular video streaming platform can garner millions of views in a few hours. That's the power of social media and its only growing.

With COVID-19 this usage has become multifold with now movies releasing on the web before theatres. These channels then become a hotspot of digital marketing with ads, influencers, engagements by companies taken over here.

Also, the advent of digital marketing like eCommerce. With some of the big giants like Amazon, Walmart, Alibaba that are selling everything online. Their usage has gone multifold in the pandemic. With people restricted to their houses, these doorstep delivery channels became their only hope. Whether it is the essential or luxuries, everything was made available online.

With an easy interface and improved connectivity, now everyone can use it. It is not just limited to youths now but is increasingly used by elderly people too.

Some of the popular channels like messenger owned by FB is also used for this digital marketing by many companies.

Recently during the COVID-19 time, automobiles that did not make a debut online selling also started this. With virtual showrooms opened by many like VR tech used by Tesla in Tmall or its plan to go fully online in sales and closing showrooms. A lot of other companies like Hyundai and MG started booking online, trying to give a hassle-free service.

Thus, digital marketing is growing and it has taken in everything consumer wants. With Amazon like behemoth at the helm, it is only seen to be growing. Better connectivity has brought people online in a big globalized world to share their thoughts and opinions, interact with each other, make their purchases, and everything. With the pandemic, the virtual world has become the new real and people who earlier neglected it or skeptical to use like automotive companies or the elderly are also using it. With its easy access, it can be said digital marketing is likely to be adopted by all consumers