As part of an assignment of a course in Brand Management taught by well renowned Prof. Sridhar Samu and S Bhardwaj who are ace in the field of Market Research and Brand Management and teach at Great Lakes Institute of Management Chennai Information was complied by the data available on the Internet, personal interviews, a social experiment and I have tried my best to maintain correctness and credits as much as possible.

1. CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
FAKE INFORMATION AND WORD-OF-MOUTH BEHAVIOR
GROUP 10
INTRODUCTION
Hoax news or fake news is a type of news that consists of deliberate distortion spread via
print or social media. Yellow journalism or fake news has been increased by digital news
over the recent years. This kind of news is published usually to mislead in order to damage an
entity, agency or person or gain politically or financially, using dishonest, or fabricated
headlines to augment readership. Clickbait stories earn advertising revenue from this.
TYPES OF FAKE NEWS
1. Propaganda
2. Clickbaits
3. Parody
4. Misleading headlines
5. Biased News

2. IDENTIFYING FAKE NEWS
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions authored a summary to
help people identify fake news
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HOW FAKE NEWS GOES VIRAL
The presence of social media platforms like Twitter has made fake news become viral among
the public. False political information tends to spread 3 times faster than other false news
according to Research. False tweets have a higher chance of being retweeted than truthful
tweets. This is because humans have a tendency to spread false information, they are attracted
to information and events that are new and surprising and this causes high-arousal in the
brain.This stops people from verifying the information. Consequently, huge online
communities form around a piece of distorted news without any prior verification of the
veracity of the details. In our study we try to understand the different types of fake news

3. consumers receive and how they respond to it. We conducted a survey and also undertook an
experiment to see the impact of fake news among the college students.
WHAT DID WE DO - SURVEY & EXPERIMENT?
The recent trend in the smartphone industry of spreading fake news and leaks out to tech
influencers and YouTube channels seems to work like magic because it does succeed in
generating a lot of buzz right before a new product launch. Things like this can not just be
used as a publicity stunt, but on a deeper level, can also work as a great PR tool since it gets a
lot of super sharers’ attention and they get to post/write/talk about it.
Essentially, we employed the same tactic when we did not get sufficient responses for our
survey. This also doubled up as a study of how fake news is spread and how people respond
to it.
What we did was drop a small little lie of our team mate’s “wedding” in one of our class
groups. The group, which was as silent as a winter night, burst into life the very next minute.
Everybody started congratulating him and asking him about the details.
So, we can clearly see the fake news being lapped up by people initially without being
questioned. There were a few people who did reach out to the concerned person and asked
him about it and whether it was true or not. However, for maintaining the integrity of the fake
news, he maintained that the news was true.

6. There are different ways in which people respond to information. While some are calculated
about it, most do not pay active attention to the news if it does not affect them on a personal
level (i.e physically or financially) and with the advent of technology has made passing on
messages a new platform of crowd sourced news.
In an attempt to stay updated and also show the world that you are abreast, people have
gamified the concept of forwarding messages and posts without often checking out the
validity and credibility of the source.
To understand the motivations behind why this culture of fake news took roots in the psyche
of our society and bring forth the latent agenda behind propagating fake news we came up
with a simple aforementioned experiment and studied the various reactions and the proximity
of each respondent to the subject.
Our experiment shows that fake news and false information can take on different outcomes
and have major impacts, because information shapes our relationships and decisions in or
way or the other.
We form an idea about the people or a situation when we come across the information. So if
the information we saw on the Web is invented or the message on Whatsapp is fabricated,
false, exaggerated or distorted, it hinders the reality and ends up in wrong decisions and
irrationality.
OUR EXPERIMENT
When we spontaneously created a fake chain of information of a friend getting married,
Congratulations started pouring in within seconds and the message had reached across people

7. in the college within minutes. However, there were three major ways in which the fake news
was received:
1. The Gullible Ones: The major chunk of respondents who did not know the subject
closely, were easily sold on the idea and the cohort immediately congratulated the subject
without checking the origin of the news.
2. The Curious Ones: The cohort that found the news difficult to believe, tried to verify
the news first before jumping on to conclusions. However, a precious insight that we
generated was how fast this communication is today because we slated the experiment for
two hours, but the message started gaining momentum in the first 15 minutes itself. But when
the subject fed them with some more fake news, they bought it and continued to congratulate
him.
3. The Non-Believers: This is the rational cohort that tried to seek proof beyond words and
since, this was a personal issue, most close to the subject and have an old association with the
topic and the subject, did not believe the news.
IMPLICATIONS
There are different ways in which people respond to information. While some are calculated
about it, most do not pay active attention to the news if it does not affect them on a personal
level (i.e. physically or financially) and with the advent of technology has made passing on
messages a new platform of crowd sourced news.
To stay updated and show the world that you are abreast, people have gamified the concept of
forwarding messages and posts without often checking out the validity and credibility of the
source.

8. To understand the motivations behind why this culture of fake news took roots in the psyche
of our society and bring forth the latent agenda behind propagating fake news we came up
with a simple aforementioned experiment and studied the various reactions and the proximity
of each respondent to the subject.
Our experiment shows that fake news and false information can take on different outcomes
and have major impacts, because information shapes our relationships and decisions in or
way or the other.
We form an idea about the people or a situation when we come across the information. So if
the information we saw on the Web is invented or the message on Whatsapp is fabricated,
false, exaggerated or distorted, it hinders the reality and ends up in wrong decisions and
irrationality.
If we look at it from a larger angle, every message whether it be about a product or a news,
travels at the same lightning speed in 2020 and has repercussions based on its authenticity.
The latest example that we would like to bring forth is the chaos created by the Corona Virus
news across the continents, giving rise to the world’s first Infodemic.
On February 2, the World Health Organization dubbed the new coronavirus “a massive
‘infodemic,’” referring to ”an overabundance of information—some accurate and some
not—that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when
they need it.” It’s a distinction that sets the coronavirus apart from previous viral outbreaks.
While SARS, MERS, and Zika all caused global panic, fears around the coronavirus have
been especially amplified by social media. It has allowed disinformation to spread and
flourish at unprecedented speeds, creating an environment of heightened uncertainty that has
fueled anxiety and racism in person and online.

9. Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615184/the-coronavirus-is-the-first-true-social-
media-infodemic/
Our learning from this has been this:
Take 30 seconds to check it out!
No matter the news no matter the source before you like, share or comment on a news:
1. 30 sec to read it
2. Verify the source
3. Examine critically
4. Read the purpose of the message
5. Understand the message clearly
6. Do not react emotionally
7. Think about what you have just read.
Be careful! Be vigilant!
RESULTS
Upon informing people about the fake marriage news, rather than analysing the news, they
were immediately shocked and taken aback and started to believe that the news was true. This
is mainly because of the fact that we, as humans, give so much importance to the credibility
of the sources who informed. Our team mate was not an exception. Our Team mate (Rakesh)
was not there for the CB project discussion. As a way to penalise him, we even decided to
spread the news that Sundar is getting hitched. Upon hearing the news that Sundar is getting
hitched, Rakesh was so shocked and believed that the news was true and rather than
analysing the news on its own.
The same happened with other people too. When informed in the WhatsApp group, people
started personal conversation scolding Sundar in this case also wishing him lately. One
common line we came across all these things was “Why did not you tell me separately, You

10. could have told me beforehand”. These were the classic reactions that we guys were able to
record
INFERENCE
If the same were to be extrapolated to the real-world scenario, people do not believe the
product or services. Rather what they believe is the credibility of the sources. How many
times have we heard this? “Hey, he told me that the service is bad, hence the service has to be
bad”. We have seen in many examples such as Movies, Restaurants what not. If a step
forward is taken, is this why restaurants urge the customers to give positive feedback in
Zomato. Surely, they know how big a task is to handle negative feedbacks.
To conclude, people should evaluate themselves the product or services or any news for the
matter of fact, rather than just blindly believing in the sources.