The Impact of Social Media on Consumer Behaviour

Abstract

Social media plays a very imperative role in the lives of consumers all around the world. It is an internet-based platform which serves as a communication and marketing tool for the consumers as well as the business organisations which has significantly contributed to the globalisation of the market. It connects users from all around the world swiftly in no time. With the evolution of technology, the latest trend in marketing has been the introduction of social media. It has empowered the consumers to review products and post their opinion on these platforms which are accessible by a large portion of consumers. This has made it vitally important for business ventures to maintain an online presence in order to advertise their products. Thus, business organisations must understand the impact of social media on consumer behaviour. The main objective of this study is to research the influence of social media on the buying behaviour of consumers. The researcher has followed the descriptive research method. 203 samples have been collected through a convenient sampling method. Age, gender, educational qualification, occupation and marital status are the independent variables. Frequency of advertisements on social media, frequency of products bought on social media, reasons for buying products on social media, level of satisfaction of products bought on social media and the source of products are the dependent variables. Complex graphs and Correlation are the statistical tools used for analysis. The result obtained from the analysis of the study is that a majority of the respondents, especially women, belonging to the age group of 18-40 years prefer to purchase products on social media platforms, when compared to the physical stores. It was also inferred that this is because they believe that it’s a more trustworthy source and allows them to keep up with the trends. Thus, business organisations, ranging from small scale to large scale, must carry out effective social media marketing strategies in order to maximise sales and customer satisfaction.