Academy of Marketing Studies Journal (Print ISSN: 1095-6298; Online ISSN: 1528-2678)

Abstract

Exploring the Role of Social Media in Shaping Consumer Buying Behavior: A Factor Analysis Approach

Author(s): Chand Prakash, Sunil Kumar, Amit Dangi and Kanchan Yadav

Nowadays, social media has become an integral part of the individuals' life. It has also been researched that social media has influenced the buying choices of the customers. During the past few years, these social media's rise provided the marketing professionals with the chance to reach their customers faster. The companies' online campaign and promotion through social media are benefited persuasive features from various multimedia channels. Marketing mix has become an important aspect of the phenomenon of social media. Previous studies have indicated that social media enabled 25% of the consumers to post on their social media to provide information to others related to their purchase. Another study by Postill & Pink stated that social media had played an important role in making customers purchase decisions. The consumers use social media to gather full information; 49% of the people can make decisions for certain products, and 60% of consumers prefer to share information about the products with others online. This study is primarily directed to identify the significant factors that explain social media's role in shaping respondents' shopping behaviour and their perceived significance level. This is an empirical investigation, and a sample of 200 online shoppers form NCR (Gurugram, Delhi, Noida) was taken. The study identified four factors named Source of updates, Influencer, Convenience, Experience sharing. All the identified social media roles like the source of updates, influencer, experience sharing, and convenience significantly influence consumer buying behaviour. Based on the mean value of the roles, social media's influencer role was the most contributing factor in shaping the buying behaviour, followed by convenience and source of updates. The experience sharing role was the least significant factor. This study may help online retailers and website developers use the social media platform to combat the competition effectively.

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