Impact Of Social Media On Consumer Behavior And Marketing Strategies In Australia

Persuasiveness of Social Media over Traditional Word of Mouth

During the past few years, both business and consumers behaviors have changed as a result of the tremendous increase in the use of internet across the globe. A large number of people tend to communicate through the social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube among others more than the traditional conversation(Hur, Kim, Karatepe & Lee, 2017). These social and technological changes have affected not only the people’s lives but also the marketing industry. In the past, face-to-face marketing was the best strategy that every company applied, however, in the recent developments has seen it losing the persuasive nature to the current social media marketing.

Research indicates that as much as about 70% of the conversation takes place offline Australia, 20% of consumers account for one-third of the social media conversation and is increasing tremendously. Research shows that many consumers are currently relying on the social media to learn on the availability of new product, many rely on the social media information, comments and views from the friends and relatives to make purchase decisions on particular products(Chang, Yu & Lu, 2015). Other marketing research shows that the new ads on the social site are the major stimulator to purchase a product and services. From these previous researchers, it is a clear indicator that social media is now becoming more persuasive than the traditional word of mouth that marketer relied on.

The Traditional WOM communication has been recognized as past compelling method as a result of the shift of marketing strategies towards social media that have the capability of reaching a large number of people providing opinions, reviews, prices and images of each product. These aspects have been recognized as essential factors that have contributed to the persuasiveness nature of the social media over the traditional Wom. The typical social media marketing tools are categorized as viral marketing, referral programs, and community marketing. Therefore, this paper mainly focuses on determining the significant reasons that are behind the persuasiveness of the social media over the traditional word of mouth, with focus on the Australian Market and consumers.

All business organizations are formed with one aim; to prosper, that is only achievable through the volume sales of the products and services leading to large market command. The large volumes of transactions are always achieved after extensive marketing that creates awareness of the product and promotions that entice consumers to make purchases over the other competing products (De Vries Gensler & Leeflang 2012). Most of the organizations focused on the traditional word of mouth as a form of marketing that is currently losing focus on the social media platforms that are not well popular with most of the organizations.

Impact of Social Media on Consumer Behavior

Marketing research shows that the social media platforms have a significant impact on the consumer behavior that determines the purchasing intention and trend of a customer than traditional marketing (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016). About 60% of Australia customers rely on blogs for directions before making purchases. Therefore; many organizations find it difficult in changing their marketing strategy from traditional word of mouth to social marketing to capture the number of customers. This can only be achieved when organizations understand the reasons that are behind the persuasiveness nature of the social media over the traditional word of mouth.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the reasons behind the persuasiveness nature of the social media over the traditional word of mouth in today’s marketing sector in Australia. The objectives will be realized through addressing the following primary question: Is Social Media more persuasive than the traditional Word of Mouth in marketing sector? The minor issues will be:

1.    How many Australian are using social media tools?
2.    How many Australians make purchases as a result of social media impact?

III.    What are the factors that drive the Australians consumers to use social media as product information and purchase intentions?

1.    Why Australians are companies use social media as a marketing tool for the traditional word of mouth?

Today, the world has technologically changed in almost every aspect. These changes have a direct or indirect impact on various sectors of organizations, therefore use, and role of social media in marketing is vital to the companies. Australians business organizations will, therefore, stop applying the traditional marketing and embrace the social media marketing strategies to remain relevant in the market.

At the end of the study, the research proposal is expected to have the following outcomes:

ü    The number of Australians that are using social media

ü    The impact of social media on the purchasing intentions of Australians consumers.

ü    The number of consumers that purchase as a result of the social media impacts.

ü    The reasons behind social press persuasiveness nature over word of mouth.

Every business organization produces goods and services to be utilized by consumers. These products only reach the consumers when the business organizations make an effort to supply and persuade the consumers to use the products. The persuasion process is done through marketing strategies. Marketing refers to the method of ascertaining consumer’s needs, creating the awareness of the solutions of the needs and persuading the consumers to adopt or use after making the supply of all the answers to the consumer to satisfy their requirements. According to (Terech, 2018), marketing is a process of creating, communicating and delivering value to consumers and managing the relationship to the benefit of both the consumer and stakeholder.

Research Objectives and Questions

 The primary aim of marketing is always to persuade the consumers to prefer particular products and service over another with the purpose of increasing the volume of sales. The intense nature of marketing strategies still differs depending on the product and the marketing tool used. (Jae Hung & Suk Bong, 2018)Marketing has a long history as people did change goods and goods in the old age. The marketing concept gained changed during the industrial revolution of 18-19 centuries when productions of products were separated from their consumption. They were mass production as a result of improving technology and infrastructure that led to c growth of competition among companies.

Therefore, for business organizations to survive these respective companies have to capture as many customers as possible through the use of word or mouth commonly known as face-to-face communication. Continuous consumer’s behavior change and technological development led to the development of the internet that globally affects the marketing sector.

The traditional marketing that is word of mouth marketing emphasizes on the promotion and sales of goods and services through the face-to-face conversation between salespersons and the consumers. The conventional word of mouth marketing concept has the following implications:

1.    Focuses on the product
2.    All the marketing strategies and people concentrate on the selling of the product

III.    The ultimate goal is to earn profit through maximization of the sales

The modern concept of marketing focuses on the consumers’ needs as a guiding to the production and delivery of the products and services that will eventually satisfy the needs more effectively. Thus the main implications in the modern marketing are:

1.    The concept focuses on the customer orientation
2.    All marketing activities aimed at satisfying customer

III.    The primary purpose is to persuade purchases and create a long-term relationship with customers.

The emergence of social media has subsequently pushed business to adopt social media as a form of marketing and tool of public relation tools. This is made possible by the global usage of mobile devices that make a large number of people to be logged into the social media communities. This makes it very easy for a number of the business organization s to have an easy time in accessing the potential customers without spending a significant amount of energy and money.

Several types of research have presented essential similarities and difference between the social media marketing and the traditional word of mouth. This can be understood through the Attribution Theory that examines the persuasiveness of the marketing strategies. The attribution theory developed by F.Hieder’s is used in the marketing sector to understand the marketing and consumer behavior by indicating the cause-and-effect relationships (Maymon et al., 2018). The approach is applicable since it highlights crucial aspect such as homophily and social ties that have an impact on both the social media and traditional word of mouth.

Marketing Evolution and Purpose

The Attribution Theory describes how consumers behave towards a marketing message. A consumer always tends to asses accuracy of information presented; therefore, non-credible information still manages to be less persuasive than credible details due to discounting principle: that examines the effects of the source provider’s characteristic on persuasion (Pishghadam & Abbasneiad, 2017). The homophily or rather the source similarity refers to the degree individuals are similar about specific terms of social features which directly relate to social ties.

The homophily is identical in both categories but differs in roles. For example, the traditional word of mouth tends to influence individual, and the implications depend on the relationship between the two communicators. On the other hand, the social media focus on a large number of people who voluntarily interact and therefore are willing to communicate with the product.

The social media and the traditional word of mouth differ in the concept of the social ties. Social media have less communicator than word of mouth hence less social ties that may not facilitate the purchase decision of a customer (Sungsin et al., 2018). However, the social media tends to have varied information and connections that aids in persuading a customer to decide on a particular product. Therefore, homophilous information received from the social media is considered as more credible than the heterophyllous information. Thus the similarity of the information source is positively related to the persuasiveness of the supplied information.

The consumer’s purchase of a product depends on the level of persuasion impacted by either the product or the marketing tool. Both the social media and traditional word of mouth have different levels of transferring knowledge and information into action and all follow the same purchasing model (Govindan ,Sarkis & Palaniappan, 2013). However, differences arise on the information search and evaluation of alternatives. Before every purchase, there is always an existing problem that a consumer needs to fulfill through buying a particular product or service. Therefore, the consumers tend to look up for information about a product in any possible way such as price, quality and shelf life (Kikyoung, Gangseog & Youngjee, 2017). After which, the consumer will evaluate the knowledge gained: in the WOM tends not be varied as in the Social media that have both the images of a variety of products under one platform.

The vast and varied information obtained makes it easy for the consumer to make right decisions unlike in the WOM that the customer will have to move from one shop to another to get varied information. Substantial information in the social media makes it persuasive for the customer to make a purchase decision on various products. The purchase decisions depend on the gathered information, the product and the customer needs. This is different in the social media that one is capable; of getting the ideas of past experiences with a particular product, hence influencing one to make the right decision (Jian-Ping et al., 2017). The evaluation of the post-purchase is more elaborated in social media than in WOM: the latter does not provide a basis to show varied customers experiences as in the social media that everyone is capable of sharing their good experiences accompanied with pictures, hence increasing the persuasion level.

Comparison of Social Media and Traditional Word of Mouth

Both the two variables have different speed by which information reaches from one person to another. Social media tends to have high speed, making it a more viral channel than the word of mouth that entails one person and another. The high viral nature of social media makes it more persuasive than the traditional WOM marketing method because it tends to cover a large number of people within a short period. Therefore, product positive reviews from customers will reach a large number of people when shared in a social media hence persuade more people to buy a particular product than in the Traditional WOM

Different types of the method are always applied to researchers that are primary and secondary (Snelson, 2016). To ascertain the research questions on this study, the mixed methods will be implemented, that has both the qualitative and the quantitative techniques to collect sufficient data that will be enough to explain the research topic.

The qualitative method will help the research to understand the theoretical background of consumer’s behavior and why the social media is more persuasive than the traditional WOM. (Carpenter & Srivastava, 2018)The qualitative will identify the cause-effect factors of the social media and WOM towards persuasion to a customer to make a purchase.

  The quantitative research will be applicable in determining the numerical data regarding the persuasiveness of information towards deciding on both the traditional and the social media categories (Rutberg & Bouikidid, 2018). The quantitative methods will also provide the difference in number between consumers who get influenced by the social media against word of mouth.

Literature review: The underlying theories on the persuasion nature of both the social media and WOM have been obtained through the reviewing the literature of past works. The researcher has already read several books, journals, and publications on topics that are related to the problem (Handcomb et al., 2016). These extracted secondary information aids in understanding the issue before embarking on the actual data collection and analysis method.

Semi-structured Interviews: To accurately support the above theories from the literature review, some of the customers will be interviewed through a semi-structured interview, the Australian retail customers will be able to provide precious information on factors that contributed to their decision-making process regarding the social media and WOM marketing strategies (Palinka et al., 2016). Retail owners too will be an interview to share their views on the marketing strategies used and determine the reasons behind the adoption of each approach.

Attribution Theory and Persuasiveness

Online Survey: online survey will be used to collect data and capture a large number of participants, and is capable of collecting opinions, attitudes, and descriptions (Leung, Terrana & Jerzak, 2016). The most excellent platform that will be used is Survemonkey.com, one of the credible academic research sites. Other social sites that will be applicable are Facebook, and Twitter among others. The survey will be distributed among the online purchasing groups and other related customer groups.

Questionnaires: simple questionnaires will be designed to capture every aspect that will need to analyses the research topic. The surveys will be administered and collected by the researcher within the given time frames. The questionnaire will be applied in.

The results of the data will be measured and validated depending on the prescribed actions that are adapted and drawn from the previous researches on the marketing. The scales will be unified on five-point scales to provide a clear understanding of the offers choices to the research participants. The standard measure will be persuasiveness that will be related to the strength of the information scale. This measures the degree to which the consumer tends to perceive a particular product concerning the information ads the persuading factors.

The information that is collected from the literature reviews, questionnaire, and interviews on the persuasiveness of the social media and the traditional word of mouth will be analyzed through mixed methods (Bansal & Srivastava, 2018).

Content analysis will be used to analyze the literature reviews and then presented in sorted from that make it easy to understand. The choice of content analysis roots from the previous such cases and is capable of relating the social media text, voices and images to the aspect of persuasion. Through this method, it is possible to understand all the advantages and disadvantages that are related to the two variables (social media and WOM)

The predictive data analysis methods such as Analysis of variance(ANOVA), chi-square and Pearson’s correlation that are always used to determine the relationship between variables will also be used to determine the relationship between social media and persuasion, and WOM and creed to clearly understand how each variable works(Frieder, 2016).

The descriptive data analysis method will be used to analyze the quantitative data after a series of examinations of the collected data (Sijistma & Ark, 2017). The investigation will determine the average time a customer takes before deciding on all the two variables.

Conclusion

The analyzed data will be presented through the use of pie-charts, graphs, and tables for easy understanding of the information by the related stakeholders.

The organizational study of the proposal is as follows:

Chapter One: Is the Research proposal outline entails the proposal background, the problem statement, the justification, objectives and hypothesis.

Chapter Two: Is the Literature review of the past works that helps in understanding the research questions through exploring the theories and factors.

Chapter Three: Is the methodology study that examines the process of data collection methods that will be used and the data analysis that will be used in interpreting the collected information. It further examines justify adoption of each method.

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