The Impact of Social Media Marketing on Consumer Behaviour

Abstract: Social media has become an integral part of our lives over the last decade. This fact creates an opportunity for businesses to engage in a particular type of relationship with their customers, one that is entirely digital. Online marketing is, as such, the norm in today’s society, and using this tool enables organisations to influence the perception of consumers through paid advertisements and, ultimately, shape their buying behaviour. The main purpose of this study is to show the impact advertising has on purchase intention and to what degree it manages to influence consumers.

Keywords: social media, marketing, consumer behaviour, online advertisement

Introduction

As humans are social beings and personal aspects of the real world have migrated to the unremittingly changing online medium, so did the interaction between businesses and their clients. This lead to a new category of customers, ones that are well-informed, connected, confident in their value for the company and with higher expectations than in the past. For this very reason, businesses nowadays prefer to employ a more marketing oriented strategy in order to attract and retain customers, and what better way to engage with multiple people at once, with relatively minimal costs and great efficiency, than through social media platforms.

Advertising is the most viable tool to reach a customer base and depict key features of a branded product. Traditional advertisement channels such as television, radio or outdoor billboards are almost rendered obsolete, as online ads are quickly becoming the new standard of persuasion.

In an article focusing on the impact social media has on purchase intention, the authors state the following:

Social media is being increasingly used as a platform to conduct marketing and advertising activities. Organizations have spent a lot of time, money, and resources on social media ads. However, there is always a challenge in how organizations can design social media advertising to successfully attract customers and motivate them to purchase their brands. (Alalwan, 2018)

This statement acknowledges the effectiveness of online ads while also posing the question of how efficient they really are in the context of buying behaviour, which we will try to address in this article.

Nowadays, approximately 80% of companies have a webpage and studies show that 3.4 billion people have a social media account. The online presence of organisations provides them with the opportunity to offer their consumer base a unique brand of customer support and to employ an ingenious and profitable type of marketing. The almost instantaneous interactivity enables clients to be more involved, to receive faster service, and interact with each other in order to share information and review products. This represents an extension of the traditional CRM. (Kim, 2017) Aside from creating online communities to facilitate this kind of networking, businesses utilise several online marketing strategies, the most relevant being social media posts, blogs, and email newsletters.

The main purpose of this article is to determine whether or not online advertisements influence buying behaviour and to what degree. Other inquires we pose are related to the frequency of clicks, the reliability of the ads according to the users, and their attitude towards targeted ads.

We strive to offer a general idea of how social media marketing works, its effects and importance in the business world, and by what means can it prompt a customer to either purchase or dismiss a product.

There is an abundance of psychological implications in any discussion involving the behaviour of consumers, which can be unpredictable at times. However, it is possible to notice patterns and rationalise certain buying decisions, and for this purpose we conducted an experiment in the form of a survey.