Role of Social Media in Consumer Decision making Process

Abstract

Consumer purchase decisions are affected by so many factors. Consumer first identifies their need and products and they like to collect information about those products from various sources. Social Media is one such source from where consumer collects information about the products and organizations. With the availability and accessibility of social media on our mobiles the process of collecting information has become easy. Now a day's social media has started playing important role in the lives of people. People these days not only use social media to be in touch with family and friends but they too use social media to share their views nut also use to share their experience with products and organizations. People like to read reviews of other people before taking any decision about going for the movies, before booking hotels, before going for dinner or before taking any purchase decisions. The study intends to find out the role of social media in consumer decision making process.

Full text

IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM)
e-ISSN: 2278-487X, p-ISSN: 2319-7668. Volume 21, Issue 7. Ser. V (July. 2019), PP 22-28
www.iosrjournals.org
DOI: 10.9790/487X-2107052228 www.iosrjournals.org 22 | Page
Role of Social Media in Consumer Decision making Process
Dr Sapna Dadwal, Ritu Malik
Professor, Management Department, St Andrews Institute of Technology & Management, India
Assistant Professor, Information Technology Department,CPJ College of Higher Studies & School of Law,
Inida
Corresponding Author: Dr Sapna Dadwal
Abstract: Consumer purchase decisions are affected by so many factors. Consumer first identifies their need
and products and they like to collect information about those products from various sources. Social Media is
one such source from where consumer collects information about the products and organizations. With the
availability and accessibility of social media on our mobiles the process of collecting information has become
easy. Now a day’s social media has started playing important role in the lives of people. People these days not
only use social media to be in touch with family and friends but they too use social media to share their views
nut also use to share their experience with products and organizations. People like to read reviews of other
people before taking any decision about going for the movies, before booking hotels, before going for dinner or
before taking any purchase decisions. The study intends to find out the role of social media in consumer
decision making process.
Key words: Social Media, Consumer ,Decision Making, Accessibility
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Date of Submission: 06-07-2019 Date of acceptance: 23-07-2019
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I. Introduction
Consumer decision process is very complex process and all organization tries to understand and study
this process as organizations survival depends upon understanding this process. The consumer decision process
is affected by so many factors and these factors are changing with the change in technology and change in
environ and change consumer thinking & likings. Social media refers to computer generated apps with which
people can quickly share their views and liking with everyone. With advent of PC social media started gaining
importance in people lives. People has starting using social media and social networking sites not only for
connecting friends & relatives but also sharing their views and information.
Now social media is available on mobile and web-based technologies has created highly interactive
platforms through which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated
content. It introduces substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities
and individuals.
.
Types of Social Media
People still does not understand the complexity of this internet. In most people mind social media
means Face book, Instagram, Twitter etc. People has yet to understand that social media is very wide and very
complex domain. Social Media is mainly divided into 6 Categories.
1. Blogs- These are described as online journals where the blogger posts his or her daily activities or any other
thoughts. Blog is generally used by all categories people who have passion for writing. There are more than
200,000,000 blogs.
2. Social Networks-Many people consider that social media is equivalent to social networks but the truth is
different; these websites are truly more dynamic and attract more traffic. These social networks are various and
numerous but, by far, Face book is number one, being a global movement and its evolution seems to break any
limits of the online power of influence
3. Social Bookmarking- Social bookmarking is not very popular but it is a real help for the ones who
understand how Social Bookmarking works. Social bookmarking is safe as these are hard to manipulate. One
of the most important social bookmarking networks is Delicious which has a very simple method of tagging the
bookmarks, easy to navigate and use.
4. Media Sharing-Diverse the high speed internet speed has given people to use media sharing app like
YouTube, flicker All around the you tube is being used by millions of people for sharing their ideas. Flicker is
also recognized as a huge inspirational resource; almost 3000 images are uploaded every minute.
5. Micro blogging – Micro Blogging is a information network, which is similar to blogs, but there is word limit
in each post and is a faster mode of communication. Micro blogging allows users to spread their short-texted

Role of Social Media in Consumer Decision making Process
DOI: 10.9790/487X-2107052228 www.iosrjournals.org 23 | Page
messages via instant messages, mobile phones, e-mails, or the Web. For instance, Twitter, launched in 2006, is
one of the primal and leading micro blogs that currently has over 180 million users as of 2014 and handles over
1.8 billion search queries per day (Twitter 2013).
“Social media usage in India is increasing day by day and number of internet users in India will
reached 627 million users by December 2019 India is a key market for social media giants. In India, the number
of people actively using Social Media will be 168 million in 2019 and it is growing faster with the availability
of cheaper broadband connection and internet enabled handsets at very low prices” (Report –The Economic
Times.). Social media is changing the people‟s interaction. Emotions like love, friendship, family bonding,
intimacy and language and are finding various platforms and forms of expression. Social media has become
very popular among people in very short span of time because of its people friendly technology. No other
media has become so popular in such a short period of time as social media.
Top Social Networking Sites in India
Google+- Google+ is one of the top social networking site which has become popular. Google+ has integrated
face book, Google products such as Google Ad Words and Google Maps has integrated with search engines. It
also provide some pages to its users.
Twitter-Twitter allows companies to promote their products in short messages limited to 140 characters which
appear on followers‟ home pages. Messages can link to the product‟s website, Face book profile, photos, and
videos
Face book-Face book pages are far more detailed than Twitter accounts. They allow a product to provide
videos, photos, and longer descriptions, and testimonials as other followers can comment on the product pages
for others to see
LinkedIn-LinkedIn, a professional business-related networking site, allows companies to create professional
profiles for themselves as well as their business to network and meet others.
Foursquare-Foursquare is a location based social networking website, where users can check into locations via
their smart phones. Foursquare allows businesses to create a page or create a new/claim an existing venue.
YouTube-YouTube is another popular avenue; advertisements are done in a way to suit the target audience. In
the advertisement on the YouTube marketers tries use such language which can influence consumers decision
maiing preference ..
Instagram- Instagram has now 1billon users. The user engagement rate of Instagram is much higher than of
Face book. “According to Scott Galloway, the founder of L2 and a professor of marketing at New York
University‟s Stern School of Business, latest studies estimate that 93 percent of prestige brands have an active
presence on Instagram and include it in their marketing mix”.
Delicious, Digg and Reddit- Delicious, Digg and Reddit are popular social bookmarking sites used in social
media promotion. They are heavily used by the social media marketers to promote their websites due to their
ability to share links
Tumblr- Tumblr first launched ad products on May 29, 2012. Rather than relying on simple banner ads, Tumblr
requires advertisers to create a Tumblr blog so the content of those blogs can be featured through the site. In one
year, four native ad formats were created on web and mobile, and had more than 100 brands advertising on
Tumblr with 500 cumulative sponsored posts.
Future of Social Media Marketing in India
Now a day‟s Social Media has become necessity for people as well as for organizations. An
organization can have an competitive advantage on their competitors if an organization understand its customers
and their issue, the social media can help the organization in doing this. Moreover social media has a very low
cost as comparison to other strategies. With social media and with very little creativity, an organization can
easily reach out to their customers and build a successful brand.
Group buying and social commerce are the recent trends. Many e-commerce sites offer attractive
discounts for a group of shoppers on their combined Purchases. Group buying brings together customers who
would like to buy a product. The increase in volume lets these websites offer attractive discounts. Some of the
websites that offer group buying are taggle.com, snapdeal.com. In a social commerce model, invitation-only
shopping sites give discounts to consumers if they add their friends to the site. Businesses are able to take
advantage in relationship building, achieving on-line and offline marketing objectives, and brand building etc.
II. Literature Review
Social media has becomes an important communication tool that people use to connect to other people
or organization. People use social media to share their experiences, reviews, information, advice, warnings, tips
and/or any kind of issues that are interesting to their “connection” or friends. That information is a helpful
source, which may influence consumer‟s decision-making. “The people use information on social media as the

Role of Social Media in Consumer Decision making Process
DOI: 10.9790/487X-2107052228 www.iosrjournals.org 24 | Page
guideline for their future purchase or planning their future trip. Also, social media is used as advertising for the
marketer. Marketers take this advantage and create marketing strategy, which in turn could help them gain more
customers. The social media environment is very easy to apply and to reach the reach customer. (Patarawadee
Sema, Johnson & Wales University, Feinstein Graduate School)”.
“The rapid adoption of online social networks (OSN) across different stakeholders raises several
interesting questions on different facets of its dynamics. Properly governed and designed OSN can play an
important role in supporting different types of decision making (DM), as they provide their
participants/stakeholders various forms of support, ranging from the instrumental to the emotional and
informational.” The synergy of these themes provides an innovative and unique perspective on the actual
process of DM within OSN. Only online survey method is used to address the potential utilization of OSN as a
support tool for the DM process. “The OSN support and empower users in their decision making process
specifically in three key phases that include Intelligence, Design and Choice. Results also reveal that different
types of users (observers, seekers and advisers) have significantly different participation styles, which in turn
have an impact on the efficacy of the DM process (Valeriy Sadovyikh, David Sundaram,Selwyn Piramuthu)”.
“A naturalistic online information search exposes individuals to multiple sites and conflicting
perspectives. In this study, evaluation is done on how the holistic stance of a web search toward a product
influences purchasing decisions (Rod D roscoe. Carola Gributus, Joseph.‟ Berlin., Irfan Kula)”. “The 20% of
Face book users have used popular social medium to research products before buying and 42% have written
online review about a product. Further analysis of social media users‟ online behavior shows two distinct
categories of online sharing: High shares which comprised 20% of online consumers were younger, loyal to
brands, and had numerous electronic devices. Second one is low shares, which accounted for 80% of online
consumers, were generally older, more concerned with quality than brand, and less likely to be loyal towards a
brand (Drell,L , Mashable)”. “Consumer online resale is becoming an increasingly common method of both
buying and selling goods. When an item can be easily resold online, consumers' subjective estimation of the
value of that item changes in complex ways based on consumption cost and resale return. This in turn can affect
consumers' decisions to purchase new products consumers' awareness of the resale value of an already
possessed product can influence their decision to purchase a new product; and when the product to be resold is
the same type as the desired new item (e.g. an old idle mobile phone and a new mobile phone), the influence of
resale awareness on purchase intention by notifying the consumers that there are future chances to resell is good,
the awareness and expectation for an online resale could be prompted which in turns enhances the intention to
purchase ne good(Shuling Liao, Hsunchi Chu, European Journal of marketing.)”. “The emergence of Internet-
based social media has made it possible for one person to communicate with hundreds or even thousands of
other people about products and the companies that provide them. Thus, the impact of consumer-to-consumer
communications has been greatly magnified in the marketplace. Social media is a hybrid element of the
promotion mix because in a traditional sense it enables companies to talk to their customers, while in a
nontraditional sense it enables customers to talk directly to one another. The content, timing, and frequency of
the social media-based conversations occurring between consumers are outside managers‟ direct control (
David.J Faulds,.W. Glyns,. Mangload)”.
III. Research Methodology
Research is a systematic inquiry aimed at providing information to solve problems (cooper and
Schindler,2002:14).Differing requirements of information, availability of time and need patterns have led to the
developments of various types of research methods the need of any research method, however remains the same
–to get information the reason behind the use of any method for research should justify the generation of
optimum results. This study is based on primary data, which has been collected through questionnaire having
statements to which respondents have to give their level of satisfaction ranging between 1-5 level and agreement
ranging from strongly agrees to strongly disagree. Since it was not feasible to examine the entire universe the
representative sample were selected from Delhi, Gurgaon & Noida. Respondents were asked to fill
questionnaire personally,
Objectives of the study
The objectives of the study are –
 To find out Consumer‟s behavior towards social media
 To determine various factors influencing purchase decision of consumers
Data analysis
To know the perception of customer towards organizations and role of markets in digitization of India
they were asked to evaluate each factor first on statements ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree and
then they have to evaluate their believe with each factor on 1-5 scale. There are other questions also which will

Role of Social Media in Consumer Decision making Process
DOI: 10.9790/487X-2107052228 www.iosrjournals.org 25 | Page
be evaluated on customer‟s statements. The responses are analyzed by calculating the mean value and the results
are presented in the subsequent discussion.
Demographic Profile of Respondents
Table-1
Age
Income
Education
Average Time spent on Social Media in a week
Respondents Age
Frequency
<20 yrs
20-25yrs
25-30yrs
Respondents
monthly
Income
less than
50,000
Respondents Education
Frequency
Less than
Graduate
Graduate
Respondents %
less than 1 hr
1 hour to 3
hour
3 hour to 6
hour
6 hour to 10
Respondents Gender
Gender
Frequency
Percentage
Male
215
55
Female
175
45
Total
390
100

Role of Social Media in Consumer Decision making Process
DOI: 10.9790/487X-2107052228 www.iosrjournals.org 26 | Page
% of Respondents Using Social media
Usage of different sources of social media
Comparison of Usage of various sources of Social Media
.
Online Reviews of the products influencing purchase on social media
Social Networking
Blogs/forums
Social Bookmarking sites (
Reddit, Diggs etc)
Photo/Video sharing website (
Youtube, Flicker etc)
020 40 60 80 100
Respondents %
Respondents %
010 20 30 40 50 60
Face book
youtube
Twitter
Online Forum
%
%
0
20
40
60
80
Strongly agree
Agree
Neutral
Disagree
strongly
disagree
Series1
Respondents
%
Social Networking
323
82.8
Blogs/forums
20
5
Social Bookmarking sites ( Reddit, Diggs etc)
13
3
Photo/Video sharing website ( Youtube, Flicker etc)
212
54

Role of Social Media in Consumer Decision making Process
DOI: 10.9790/487X-2107052228 www.iosrjournals.org 27 | Page
Advertisements/ blogs/FB Posts by various brands Influences purchase decisions
Consumers change the attitude towards the product/Service after reading positive/ negative comments in
social media
IV. Conclusion
1. Social Media is used by most of the users at stage of evaluation of alternatives of decision making process
2. User Reviews and friend‟s recommendation are the most influencing factors on consumer purchase
behavior and on Consumer decision making process
3. 67% of the consumers would change their attitude towards product/service after reading positive/ negative
reviews on social media
4. The most visited social media website is Social Networking sites SNS followed by Media sharing sites you
tube etc.
5. Face book is the most widely used information source while Twitter is the least used.
6. Most of the respondents Search for information before buying
7. Consumers rely on information available on social media if they have uncertainties regarding a purchase
because they believe it‟s credible
8. Social does trigger need of consumer in decision making process.
9. Social Media has the power to create a positive or negative brand image on consumer‟s mind.
10. Advertisements on Social Media does play an important Role in purchasing decision as well as brand
building of the product
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Dr Sapna Dadwal" Role of Social Media in Consumer Decision making Process" IOSR Journal
of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM), Vol. 21, No. 7, 2019, pp. -.22-28