Chapter 1: Introduction
A study on the basis of the procedure of decision of the consumers for purchases widely affected through the social media. The internet-based life has included an important scenario as a specialized device. People all across the world make use of online life for interfacing with other or associations. People have a good deal of association through web-based media of networking, through this way, data is devoured by various people. The data therefore turns into a wellspring of impact on the buyers along with their conduct of purchasing (Wibowo, et al., 2020). people across the world had started using online networking like Instagram, Facebook, Linkedln and Twitter.
The buying behaviour of the consumers can be complicated as well as mysterious at times. In the present time, study of consumer behaviour has turned out to be very significant as well as challenging. For reasons as such, it becomes very important to take into account the effect of social media on the behaviour of the consumer. The use of social media marketing has become the main objective of organisations in the recent time. the reason is that there has been upsurge in the market competition in various segments and the only way of combating this is providing the best experience to the customers by studying their consumer behaviour (Yadav & Rahman, 2018). The ultimate scope of this research is to analyse the impact of social media marketing on consumer behaviour.
Following are the main objectives of the present study:
- To analyse the impact of social media on consumer buying behaviour
- To study the concept of social media marketing
- To identify the impact of social media on consumers
- To evaluate different channels preferred by the customers for buying decisions over traditional channels.
- How do the customers gather and process information before making a purchase?
- How are the consumers affected by social media in different stages of their decision making?
There are many ways of making use of the networking sites of social media for attracting consumers through the marketers. In the contemporary era, social media is a type of tool that is not only helping the marketers in selling the products or services, but also helping the consumers to buy them. One of the most vital uses of social media marketing is providing advantage to the customers in selecting as well as ordering products from various options available online (Tafesse & Wien, 2018). It is a kind of communication in between the marketers and the customers. the websites help the customers in buying products, sharing thoughts and many more. Through social media marketing, the consumers can update their knowledge through visiting different sites of social media networking. For instance, on a daily basis, around 500 million people are visiting Google, 130 million are making use of Instagram and the many others are using Skype, Twitter and Facebook. There are various organisations which makes use of Wikipedia (Voramontri & Klieb, 2019). This is being done by them for gathering huge amount of information with respect to the different kind of services, products and the way of increasing the product development. The sites of Social Networking are gaining popularity these days among the consumers. These sites are making an additional platform for the customers and themselves too (Dwivedi, et al., 2021). There are many researches carried out in this area which might be enjoyed by people who use social media for staying in contact with their peers, make different types of plan, make various plans, making some new friends through the use of technology and enhancing the growth of digital media. Most of the advertising companies are getting information of different social networking sites. At present, there have been a lot of changes in the consumer’s buying pattern. It has been noticed that before ordering an item, people nowadays check for the details of the product through the social websites or through internet (Pop, et al., 2022).
Chapter 2: Review of Literature
The idea of Word of Mouth was presented in the year 1950 and it has been revitalised through the internet. Word of Mouth is said to be a face-to-face communication in between receiver as well as communicator who is apparent by the receiver as non-commercial with respect to a brand, service or a invention. Word of Mouth is a fundamental source of information for the buying decision of the consumer, providing shape to the perceptions, attitudes, as well as expectation of the brand, services and product along with impacting every stage of the decision-making procedure of the consumer from awareness of the product to selection and the evaluation after purchase (Alghizzawi, 2019). Word of Mouth has got new prominence at present because of the greater interconnection of individuals on social media. Online or electronic Word of mouth is the type where the users offer ratings as well as reviews to every form of products, services and brands on the review sites. It can be described as any statement which is positive or negative made through the probable, actual or the previous customers of accompany or a product that is made available to a crowd of people as well as institutions through the Internet. There can be dissemination of the electronic word of mouth through many ways on the platforms of social media, or the comments area on the sires of e-commerce as well as disseminated information is very infrequently available by the community-controlled communications of marketing (Cheung, et al., 2021). Content created by the users of the internet who are even customers is commonly apparent to be autonomous of the commercial influence. This faith as well as trusts makes the customers go to forums, blogs along with some other impartial sources of social media for collecting information for the decision of purchase.
There are differ ways of modelling the behaviour of the customers, that is dependent on objective of the study and is even a valuable method in the approach of decision making that studies the events which preceded as well as follow a purchase and which describes the way in which decisions are made. the decision-making process of the consumers can be described as the pattern of behaviour of the customers which precede, determine as well as follow on the process of decision for taking over the need of satisfying products, services or ideas (Ismail, Nguyen & Melewar, 2018). the models of consumer have reached in their complications, with the simplest ones constituting of the economic model, the psychological model, the pavlonian learning model as well as the sociological model. At the end of the 1960s, many complicated models were established. The established models were known as the outstanding models of consumer behaviour. The models seized the phases of the process of purchase but varied on the basis of their focus on various variables as well as their presentation (Kizgin, et al., 2018). But the models were criticized as they were extremely simple and had poorly defined variables, vague as well as complicated interrelationships and the missing of an empirical support.
Social Media
Many authors have currently calculated the impact if social media on the consumer behaviour even though not from the view point of the procedure of decision making. The consumers make use of social media for the advantage of an urgent admittance to information as per their suitability aiding them in deciding the things that has to be bought or get more information on the new brands or the products, when and at which place they have to buy (Zhang & Li, 2019). The online reviews from the customers have been proved to have an impact on the choice of product as well as the purchase behaviour by the consumers. Participatory culture have been brought through social media in which the users network with some other individuals of similar mentality for engaging in a never ending loop of sharing various information, keeping a track of the updates as well as requesting opinions along with ratings on ever kind of products, activities as well as services. The quality of review of the online items , characterised through perceived persuasiveness as well as informativeness, along with the perceived intention quality are identified as having a significant positive impact on the purchase intention of the consumers. Social media is measured to be a more trustworthy information source in comparison to the corporate communication as well as advertisements (Laksamana, 2018). There is a distrust feeling towards the media. Thus, the consumers are running away from old-style media like magazines, newspaper as well as television for guiding their purchases. Overload of information is the key problem in online decision making. Social media along with its sheer volume of information has led the people in the state of analysis paralysis, making it extremely difficult to go through all the available options. Because of the bounded in a rational way, there is a restriction to the amount of information which can be processed through people and it is not east to analyse all the alternative of the choices in details.
There are three different kind of research design- Analytical, explanatory as well as exploratory. Out of the three, analytical design helps in evaluating as well as understanding the study in details. The exploratory design is used for having an understanding of the concept in the starting stage of the study and explanatory design is utilised for the development of relationship between two components that are considered (Cheung, Piers & Rosenberger, 2020). For this paper, there has been a use of analytical research design for getting an in-depth idea of the current concepts as well as theories.
The study is dependent on the use of secondary data. It will comprise of all the type of data which are available in the printed firm or in the online stage.
In order to evaluate the qualitative data, there has been use of thematic approach. Various themes will be used which are directly related to the topic of research.
At the time of carrying out the study, time frame is always limitation in each research. Along with this, the resource accessibility also stays in question. Some of the resources stayed unavailable or inaccessible (Li, Larimo & Leonidou, 2021). But the study is planned in a most appropriate manner which helped in the completion of the research in the correct manner.
Social Media as Electronic Word of Mouth
Strict ethical guidelines were followed during the complete course of the study. For carrying out the secondary research, referencing plays a very important role and there has been use of proper referencing in the paper for avoiding any kind of plagiarism activity. Therefore, no approach as such was taken which could violate the rules as well as regulations of the ethical guidelines.
Social media might look like a new inclination but the ancestry belongs to the starting of the age of computer in 1950s. The technology at present is the outcome of the constant progress in social media in the past years. Usenet’s that was launched in 1979 was the very first progenitor of the social media and the journey from Usenet’s to Facebook has been a lengthy journey (Arora & Sanni, 2019). Social media has completely acquired the business marketing which is being clinched in close to every major as well as small enterprise organisations. Through setting up of concise goals as well as objectives, social media marketing increases their strategies hence great return on investment. Social media marketing even aids in setting some measurable goals, knowing the consumers as well as doing research and development, finding out some new social networks and increasing the potential of selecting main linked topics to the organisations from online contents. Marketing through social media aids in boosting up the organisation’s branding.
Consciousness of the brand helps in giving the customers a better knowledge of the product. So the name of the brand must overshadow the product as well as services (Tajvidi, & Karami, 2021). Through selecting the correct channel of social media for marketing the commodities of the organisation, the organisation can make sturdy strategy of social happiness. With further reference, an eye for the metrics exist connections as well as customer connections is achieved. Hence, online media provides a viral marketing on the hot topic. The message tends to come from one individual to some other, with the aim of evoking intentions which increases the intentions. With further reference, example of viral campaigning comprises of LAS Ice container confront which got an increased consideration of media through drenching the entire planet that even film stars as well as owners took part.
YouTube, Facebook as well as Google has been among the most well known sites that controls the social media marketing, with some huge amount used up on consumer advertisements. Twitter is also taken into consideration as a more reactive website because of its real-time data on various followers. There are even some new rising organisations such as TikTok which are attempting to enter the networks of social media for bringing competition to the latter bigwigs of social media (Magno & Cassia, 2018). The following figure shows the most dominant platform of social media in the entire world in 2018.
Figure 1: Number of monthly active users of selected platforms of social media
Source: Zafar, et al., (2021)
It has been noticed that there is a difference in between social media as well as social networking in that social media is viewed as a strategy for online broadcasting while there is involvement of networking as a utility for connecting the online site users.
Buying Behaviour of the Consumers
Accordingly, the study executes that people purchase goods which are both expensive as well as inexpensive through taken into consideration the recommendation dome from peers as well as online contact in the social media. The bond in between customer behaviour and social media marketing is presented through Jacobson, Gruzd & Hernández-García, (2020, who argues that there is an impact of social media on the attitudes of advertisements, quality of brand as well as consumer’s buying intentions. In the end, the customers cannot be impacted on the way the purchase can be directly but can act like a mediating effect on the preferences as well as choice. Either effective branding even has an impact on the way in which consumers take some decisions in understanding the purchase. Further if any friend or relative post their recommendation of certain items on online platform, the effects are in their decisions with the purchase of goods.
The advertisements on social floor offered through business-related branding impacts the attitude of the consumer along with the intention of purchase. With the above details, the influencers can plan their strategies for attracting as well as retaining customers. The marketers in the present era make utilize of online platform as a device for the groups of marketing. With respect to this, it is easier to have a proper communication with the consumers on the social media as not expensive to publicize their work or brand (Dolan, et al., 2019). Social platform is just for advert except it act like the branding foundation in which potential customers be able to have a conversation through one another as representatives of brand. Majority of the consumers make use of social media for searching the brands as well as items of purchase that can be utilised as an advantage for advertising. If the customers have problems regarding the products or services of a company then they can reach certain company with the help of social media which is a much easy path of communicating with their grievances. The organisations are quite in a challenge on the way to act in response to the comments of the consumer on social media but responses as such can develop string image of brand which in turn will persuade the customers for purchasing the products of a specific firm.
There are several factors which intend to a customer purchase, some brand, counting the conviction on that trademark as well as situational elements such as location, arrangement and also sanitation of the environment. This position makes the customers discover it very easy to purchase the item because of the constant loyalty. As social media allows right of entry to the in sequence even after the physical one, the customers make social order as well as get deliveries through the retail shops along with the deliveries. Thus, the situation elements impacting the purchase of all the customers comprises of lighting, melody and beautification of the goods. Further, there are even solutions such as time, the reason of making a purchase and the overall impact of frame of mind on accomplishment a same item (Jacobson, Gruzd & Hernández-García, 2020). The behaviour of purchasing is different in different groups, people as well as organisations as people have various ideas well as experiences with respect to the various brands which satisfy their desires as well as needs. The consumers are influenced through exterior factors for repurchasing the goods mostly from social crowds as well as individual point of view.
Effect of Social Media on the Consumer Decisions
Chapter 5: Conclusion
It can be concluded from the study that social media marketing plays a very important role in attracting consumer behaviour. It allowed the overall latest facts as well as trends to be followed, that the created online activity in the form of opinion of the customers. This could be replayed in the form of reviews as well as posts, permitting the customers in forming attitudes towards them. The interactivity in between the consumers went on to permit the forming of concerning some products. They can either be negative as well as positive on the foundation of the connections that after that resulted to either a reacquirance by the customers. Social media commerce even has the potential of purchasing the products due to positive analysis. Therefore, the bellwether would go towards increasing the overall sales margin of a company.
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