# The Social Media Cone: Towards Achieving the Manufacturing Competitiveness Goals

Manoj Kumar Singh, Harish Kumar, M. P. Gupta, J. Madaan

► To cite this version:

Manoj Kumar Singh, Harish Kumar, M. P. Gupta, J. Madaan. The Social Media Cone: Towards Achieving the Manufacturing Competitiveness Goals. 15th Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society (I3E), Sep 2016, Swansea, United Kingdom. pp.53-58, 10.1007/978-3-319-45234-0_5 . hal-01702164

HAL Id: hal-01702164

https://inria.hal.science/hal-01702164v1

Submitted on 6 Feb 2018

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

Distributed under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 - Attribution - International License
# The Social Media Cone: Towards Achieving the Manufacturing Competitiveness Goals

¹Manoj Kumar Singh, ¹Harish Kumar, ¹M.P. Gupta and ¹J. Madaan

¹Department of Management Studies,
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, New Delhi 110016, India
{manojksiet@gmail.com, hrishkr08@gmail.com,
mpgupta@dms.iitd.ac.in, jmadaan@dms.iitd.ac.in}

**Abstract.** The competitiveness among the different organizations in any industry might be raised due to changes in the technology, emergence of new competitive forces, devising and adopting newer business models, developing innovative products with differentiating pricing methods. The social media strategy is adopted by organization to harness the potential and get advantage in terms of the profit. Social media has provided both the opportunities and challenges for the organizations particularly to the high end manufacturing. The study undertakes the literature survey and the expert opinion on the factors which influence the electronics manufacturing industry. The findings suggest the key factors and a model in which the social media plays the important role to enhance the performance of electronics manufacturing sector.

**Keywords:** Social media, electronics manufacturing sector, Competitiveness, performance of industry

## 1 Introduction

The growth of the electronics manufacturing industry (EMI) could impact the socio-economic condition of any country. The EMI ranks high among the various segments that can contribute significantly to GDP of any nation. The core philosophy of manufacturing sector has shifted from Plan-Do-Check Act (PDCA) to operational expenditure based model now. Most of the demand for electronics hardware in India is met by the imports. The government had announced National Policy for Electronics in 2012, with an objective to achieve a turnover of about $400 billion by 2020. The government has taken various initiatives such as 100% FDI through automatic route, capital subsidy of 25% under Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (20% for Special Economic Zones) for ten years from the date of approval of the project, 2-5% benefits for export under Focused Product Scheme (FPS), 75-100% skill development assistance for sector on total cost of the project, preference to domestic manufacturing in government procurements, availability of land for Electronics Manufacturing Clusters, and setting up semiconductors wafers fabrication manufacturing facilities etc. for boosting this sector.

The perception of competitiveness varies from firm, industrial and national level. At firm level it is the ability to persuade customers, ability to improve continuously their process capabilities. Whereas at the industrial level competitiveness could be understood by comparing the performance of industry with that of other nations. India lags behind in hardware manufacturing because of various reasons, such as high pow-
er cost, lack of fund, high transaction cost, poor supply chain, etc. The cutting edge
technology in the industry is the need of the hour [4] to sustain. The next generation
technology including social media, big data analytics and cloud may play a significant
role for the growth of such industries. The consumers have adopted the social media
platform on a massive scale over which they can suggest the changes in the products,
innovative solutions, and priorities for the development. The market could be sensed
from the interactive discussions with customers over social media.

## 2 Literature Review

Indian IT hardware and electronics industry is still in a nascent stage of development. However the country has well performed in the software industry and highly competitive in the global market. The electronics industry has the potential of creating enormous employment opportunities including skilled and semiskilled manpower. The competitiveness of electronics sector has shown its influence on the spread of education and health care through ICT (e-learning) and tele-health services to both rural and urban areas as well as implementation of e-Governance [5]. The social media is the platform for sharing the information online. The research shows that organizations that are using social media in B2B environment, they are getting the advantages of online feedbacks regarding their products and services. This would help the organizations to improve their products and policies which simultaneously enhance the company's trust and brand value.

Today, most of the organizations are using community discussion, employees' fo-
rums, blogs, Facebook, linked in groups and Twitter for the discussions, policy design
and decision making. The customers based industries must explore social media for
online marketing and customer complaints. Social media must be integrated with
overall manufacturing strategy so that customers will get the desired products. Some
of the key observations regarding India from the literature are i). 66 percent of the
current demand is met by imports for electronics products; ii). High value added
manufacturing is likely to be restricted to less than 7 percent in 2015 depicts opportu-
nity loss of $200 billion between 2011 and 2015 in the absence of intervention; iii).
Raise in domestic manufacturing to 50 percent till 2015 to create employment for
nearly twenty lacs people; and iv). Therefore, it is very critical to recognize the EMI
as a priority sector and provide favorable conditions for its growth in the country.

## 3 Challenges in Using Social Media

Despite of vast potential benefit of using social media technology in EMI, there are
considerable challenges that need to be addressed, some of these identified through
the literature are-

(1) Level of accountable and control by both consumer and manufacturing or-
ganisation

(2) Clashes between social media platform and organisation due to hierarchy in organisational structure.
(3) Governance issue with changing in social media platform for the manufacturing organisation.

(4) Fear of employees working on social media platform may be distracted by social media and hence be less productive at work.

(5) Concern of for loss of commercially sensitive information when using social media platforms.

(6) Because of peer pressure on manufacturing organisational, they adopt the latest platform of social media.

## 4 Research Methodology

The various factors affecting the EMI are identified from the extensive literature survey. The identified 48 factors have been listed in appendix-1 in the study. The study utilizes the expert opinion to identify those factors which are influenced by customers through social media and showing significant impact on manufacturing sector. The experts were mainly chosen from the government, industry and academic fields. The brief details of the experts are listed in Appendix-2 along with their experiences. The personal details are not discussed in order to maintain the confidentiality of the experts. The total eleven experts were chosen, five from industry, three from government organizations and three from the academic field. The experts were asked to give their response in yes or no in front of each factor. In first phase, the factors were mailed to the experts and responses were recorded. In second phase, a separate version was recorded from each expert in order to avoid the biasness in opinion on the factors. For few factors the consensus were not achieved. Then the decision was made on the basis of majority.

## 5 Findings and Discussions

Indian EMI is facing infrastructure and supply chain issues, which are hampering the competitiveness. The major ones are related to the high cost of power, finance, logistics, high transaction costs and high raw material costs due to cascading taxes and inverted duties on dual use inputs. The in-house production raises the cost of goods by 8-12% depending on the value addition.

Based on the expert opinions, the study finds seven key factors which are influenced by customers and have significant role in manufacturing process. These factors are product quality, product design, customer needs, service quality, product cost and government regulations. The customers may suggest to the manufacturing unit regarding the product requirement, its quality, product looks, and how much they are willing to pay for the product. The big organizations having integration with social media platform are analyzing various discussion happening over social media among the consumers to mine the relevant information regarding their own products, services and product competitors available in the market. Such analysis prompts the organizations to make their strategies to attract the customers with high quality and low cost
products or services. This makes the market players to be competitive and compete each other by providing the sustainable products or services to their customers.

A conceptual model has been designed to show the social media effect on
competitiveness of manufacturing sector (fig.1).

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>Fig.1. Research Model for impact of social media on electronics manufacturing sector</figcaption></figure>

**6 Conclusions and Further Research**

The next generation technologies are impacting the industries and have the im-
mense potential for influencing growth. Therefore, the manufacturing industries also
need to identify the technology options to craft the strategy to influence their sustain-
able growth. The designed model explains how the social media plays the key role to
improve the performance of electronics manufacturing sector while placing the cus-
tomers' opinions and feedbacks in center of the production.

The factors identified by the literature survey and the expert opinion are open to-
further discussion and future research. We would support the research framework
may be used in future studies for clear understanding the importance of social media
strategies in view of manufacturing sector. The proposed research framework could
be further refined and validated by incorporating case based research.
# 7 References

1. Bottles, K., & Sherlock, T.: Who should manage your social media strategy? Physician Executive, 37(2), 68–72(2011).

2. Dutta, S.: What’s your personal strategy. Harvard Business Review. November(2010).

3. Gallaugher, J., & Ransbotham, S.: Social media and customer dialog management at starbucks. Management Informations Systems Quarterly Executive, 9(4), 197–212(2010).

4. Gupta, M. ., & Jana, D.: E-government evaluation: a framework and case study. Government Information Quarterly, 20(4), 365–387 (2003).

5. Gupta, M. P., Prabhat Kumar, and Jaijit Bhattacharya.: Government online: Opportunities and challenges. Tata McGraw-Hill (2004).

6. Hoffman, D., & Fodor, M.: Can you measure the ROI of your social media marketing? MIT Sloan Management Review, 52105(2010).

7. Hvass, K. A., & Munar, A. M.: The takeoff of social media in tourism. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 18(2), 93–103(2012).

8. Khan, M. U.: A comparison of the electronics industry of India and Korea. Technology, 18(2)(1998)

9. Liu, X., Grant, D. B., McKinnon, A. C., & Feng, Y.: An empirical examination of the contribution of capabilities to the competitiveness of logistics service providers: A perspective from China. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 40(10), 847-866(2010).

10. Ng, C., & Wang, C.: Best practices in managing social media for business. In Thirty Fourth International Conference on Information Systems Milan 2013, 1–11(2013).

11. Thakur, B., Gupta, R., & Singh, R.: Changing Face of India’s Industrial Policies : A Look. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publication, 2(12), 1–7(2012).

<table><caption>## Appendix-1. List of factors affecting manufacturing sector identified from the literature</caption><tr><td>1. Size of domestics market for EMI</td><td>2. Growth rate of industry</td></tr><tr><td>3. Government policies for facilitation the EMI</td><td>4. Need for common tax structure</td></tr><tr><td>5. Availability strong legal and regulatory framework</td><td>6. Incubation for entrepreneurship</td></tr><tr><td>7. Low cost of capital (interest on capital)</td><td>8. Availability of resources at low cost</td></tr><tr><td>9. Numbers of new firms registered</td><td>10. Investment in infrastructure building</td></tr><tr><td>11. Low cycle time of registration of the firm(online facility and ease of registration)</td><td>12. Substantial R&D Expenditure on EMI by government and private org.</td></tr><tr><td>13. Availability of transportation infrastructure</td><td>14. High exchange rate risk of currency</td></tr><tr><td>15. Proposition for joint research collaboration for EMI</td><td>16. Expenditure on science and technology education for building technological capability</td></tr><tr><td>17. Availability of Supplier network</td><td>18. Marketing excellence</td></tr><tr><td>19. FDI investment in host country for industry</td><td>20. Ease of Doing Business</td></tr><tr><td>21. Good macro-economic condition of the country</td><td>22. Ease of regulations for the sector</td></tr></table>
<table><caption>Appendix-2. Personal details of the experts selected for the study</caption><tr><td>23. Human resource development</td><td>24. Export of electronics goods</td></tr><tr><td>25. Global export share</td><td>26. Share of industry in % of GDP</td></tr><tr><td>27. No. of patents registered by the industry</td><td>28. Quality products by the industry</td></tr><tr><td>29. Low cost products by the industry</td><td>30. Need for product differentiation</td></tr><tr><td>31. Integration of industry with research institutions/universities</td><td>32. Complicated and time taking decision making in government approvals process</td></tr><tr><td>33. Efficient operational capabilities</td><td>34. Inter-state trade restrictions</td></tr><tr><td>35. Unavailability of skilled manpower required for industry</td><td>36. Low level of R&D and Innovations investments by EMI</td></tr><tr><td>37. Unavailability of raw material and components at competitive cost</td><td>38. Focus on research and innovations of electronics products and manufacturing</td></tr><tr><td>39. Service quality of the products</td><td>40. Mergers and acquisitions</td></tr><tr><td>41. Usage of renewable energy source by the manufacturers</td><td>42. Customer focus (The willingness and ability to bring the customer to the focus of organizational)</td></tr><tr><td>43. Effective cost leadership to deliver the quality product at low cost</td><td>44. Customer feedback for the product</td></tr><tr><td>45. Internationalization of Industry</td><td>46. Competitiveness performance of Industry</td></tr><tr><td>47. Customer participation and engagements</td><td>48. Product design and new product innovations</td></tr></table>

<table><thead><tr><th>S. No</th><th>Designation</th><th>Experience</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td colspan="3">Industrial Background</td></tr><tr><td>1</td><td>Sr. Manager production from the electronics manufacturing industries.</td><td>22yrs</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Manager marketing of electronics manufacturing.</td><td>17yrs</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Industrial consultant.</td><td>5yrs</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Manager, Production of electronics manufacturing.</td><td>9Yrs</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Manager, Production and Industrial of electronics manufacturing.</td><td>6yrs</td></tr><tr><td colspan="3">Government organisations</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Scientist from the government organization.</td><td>11Yrs</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>Undersecretary from the government organization.</td><td>7Yrs</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>Sr. Scientist from the government organization.</td><td>11Yrs</td></tr><tr><td colspan="3">Academicians</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>Professor, from reputed institution.</td><td>8yrs</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>Professor, from reputed institution.</td><td>18yrs</td></tr><tr><td>11</td><td>Professor, from reputed institution.</td><td>12yrs</td></tr></tbody></table>