Digital marketing which has affected every facet of business has not left the Indian car market untouched. It affects consumer behavior to a significant extent right from awareness and evaluation to the post-purchase stage while buying a car. The paper aims to analyze the impact of digital practices being followed by Indian car market players on consumers’ buying-decision process. It finds the most preferred digital media channel used by the customers to search for information while buying a car. It also analyzes the demographic profile of the people who use digital channels while buying a car, and attempts to understand the impact of digital marketing communication by car marketers on consumers’ buying-decision process. The study is based on primary data collected by administering a structured questionnaire to the car owners in Delhi/NCR area for the period from May 2014 to October 2014. The data is analyzed with the help of statistical techniques like chi-square and t-test.

This is not typical of many quotes that emerged during the Internet fury of the late 1990s cautioning organizations of their awaiting demise if they ignored this new interactive medium. Bill Gates was a visionary who in 1995 envisaged the technology-driven future. Today, the essence of the quote needs no evidence. The tremendous growth of the Internet, and particularly the World Wide Web, led consumers and firms to participate in a global online marketplace which caused firms to experiment with innovative ways of marketing to consumers in computer-mediated environments (Ricciuti, 1995). This interactive medium today has crossed the boundaries of a traditional computer and extended itself to many digital devices, namely, mobiles, smartphones, tablets, digital outdoors and digital TV. This revolution in digital technology has urged companies to redesign the marketing practices to engage effectively with past, present and potential customers (Gay et al., 2007). Digital marketing being one of them has kick-started altogether a new era in the marketing field.

The Digital Marketing Institute, Dublin, Ireland defines the term as “the use of digital technologies to create integrated, targeted and measurable communications which help to acquire and retain customers while building deeper relationships with them.” In simple words, digital marketing refers to promotion of goods and services over digital channels. Digital channels include computers, mobiles, smartphones, digital outdoors and digital TVs. However, the Internet remains the core promotional medium in digital marketing, but it extends itself to non-Internet channels also that provide digital content, such as Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), callback and on-hold mobile ringtones, e-books, optical disks and games. The most common digital marketing channel options of today are banner advertising, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), pay per click, e-mail, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), voice broadcast, fax broadcast, blogging, podcasting, video streams, digital brand engagement, blog, wireless text messaging, instant messaging, mobile phones, SMS/MMS, display/banner ads and digital outdoor (Wertime and Fenwick, 2008). Digital marketing facilitates communication at a faster rate and has broader reach than traditional marketing communication (Smith, 2007).

Consumer Behavior, Cracking the Digital Code, A Study of Indian Car Market