Consumer Behaviour For Social Media And Internet

Overview of Consumer Behavior

Discuss about the Consumer Behaviour for Social Media and Internet.

The paper presents a brief overview of the consumer behavior. It explains that how social media channels and internet sources influence the buying behavior of the consumers. Consumers play a vital and significant role in the economy. It explains that how various factors affect the pre-purchase and post-purchase behavior of the consumer. It explains the significance of online consumer movement. It explains that how the consumer is becoming the leader of the market.

A consumer is a person who buys various products and services for personal use; they do not buy the products for resale and manufacture purpose. Therefore, consumer influences the marketing activities from various ways. A consumer is also considered the digital native. Further, consumer movement is an effort to promote and encourage consumer protection through an organized and formulated social movement. It advocates and promotes rights of the consumers. In other words, consumerism is a formulated and organized movement of government and citizens to impose and enforce the powers and rights of buyers in relation to the sellers. There is various factors influence the buying behavior of the consumers. These factors include the situational factors, social factors, and personal factors (De Mooij & Hofstede, 2011). Therefore, the firm should focus and analyze these factors to provide satisfaction to the consumers.

The online consumer movement protects the rights of the consumers and it maintains unity and collaboration among consumers. It helps to protect unfair trade practices and malpractices in order to gain revenue and profit in near future. The consumer movement includes the democratic and voluntary movement of the consumers. It is a movement of consumers, for the consumers and by the consumers (Zsóka, Szerényi, Széchy & Kocsis, 2013).

Social media is a good source to gain survival and profitability of the company. Social media, internet, and online sources play a vital role to increase the sales of the products in the market. The online social media channels create a new place of communication and interaction among the people. Individuals can share their knowledge, experience, and opinions with one other due to the various social media channels (Rucker, Galinsky & Dubois, 2012). These social media channels have an impact on the consumer behavior in terms of purchasing and communication. Further, consumer movement plays a vital role in trade and commerce. The consumer movement provides help to the economy. It provides satisfaction to the consumers. After various researches, it has been analyzed that a consumer is the most important sightseer on the people premises. Thus, the companies should provide protection to the consumers. The various rights have provided to the consumers such as the right to safety, right to choose the products and services, right to be informed, and right to be heard. The consumer movement in India is very slow (Reed, Forehand, Puntoni & Warlop, 2012).

Online Consumer Movement and its Significance

The consumer decision-making includes a continuous flow of an interaction and communication between behavioral actions and environmental factors. The pre-purchase and post-purchase decision-making process is very complex for the consumers. When a consumer realizes and understands the needs, requirements, expectations then he finds the information related to products and services. Thus, he collects the information about the products and services such as products variations, product alternatives, product brands and product quality. It is called pre-purchase decision-making process. The consumer can collect information and facts about a product and services that is depending on his age, education, risk, gender, product price and acceptance. The search activities include the specific, incidental and ongoing search activities (Hoyer & Stokburger-Sauer, 2012).

Further, all the experiences, information and activities that follow purchase are included and integrated into the post-purchase behavior. Generally, after making a purchase, the post-purchase consumer’s conflicts and disputes are raised in the market. Sometimes, they take wrong decisions related to products and services. The conflicts and disputes occur due to a lot of alternatives available in the market. Sometimes, the marketers need to ensure the consumer choices and requirements. The sellers mention important attributes, features, and benefits of the product to address and resolve the concerns of the consumers. The post-purchase dissonance and conflict affect the level of satisfaction adversely (Michaelidou, Siamagka & Christodoulides, 2011). Further, post-purchase is the stage of the consumer decision process where a consumer will take further action and decision based on their dissatisfaction and satisfaction level. The level of satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the consumers directly related to the various relationships between pre-purchase or initial expectations of the product and the post-purchase of the products. After the purchase, the consumers check and evaluate the quality and quantity of the products. If the consumer feels that product performance and quality is less than their expectations then consumer feel dissatisfied. If the products are according to the expectations and requirements of the consumers then it will provide satisfaction to the consumers.  The Conflicts and dissonance arise due to dissatisfaction behavior of consumers. In today’s era, various social media channels are popular such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.  The social media is an important source that provides various kinds of information to the consumers (Gensler, Völckner, Liu-Thompkins &Wiertz, 2013). The social media channels help to customers to take various decisions related to purchase and post purchase of the products. These channels provide various information about the brand of the company. Social media plays an integral role to improve brand awareness and it also helps to provide customized product to customers in the market (Couldry, 2012). The potential consumers can know about any café and restaurants before visiting there through various social media channels such as facebook and Google. These channels help to provide the right information about the online products and services. People have chances to know any special discounts and festivals offers on the products and services with the help of these channels. The social media networks also help to create consumer movement in the marketplace. It promotes and encourages rights of the consumers (Hutter, Hautz, Dennhardt & Füller, 2013).

Factors Influencing Buying Behavior

After various researches, it has been analyzed that social media channels enjoy higher reliability and loyalty from their consumers in the market. It provides various opportunities to consumers to gain various profits in the market (Gensler, Völckner, Liu-Thompkins &Wiertz, 2013. People can share their knowledge, experience, and information with the help of social media channels. Through social media, the company can make coordination and cooperation with its audience in the market. By using the social media channels, consumers are able to search new information related to their products and they are also able to give order for the chose products and services. The consumers can also do online supping through social media channels and internet (Labrecque, 2014).

But the consumers need to aware about the social media channels. E-commerce creates the awareness among the consumers related to various products and services. E-commerce provides chances to consumers to know about the defective products and services in the market.  The consumers are able to compare the various prices of the products and services with the help of social media channels. Further, E-commerce creates awareness among the consumers in terms of prices and quality of the products (Kwok &Yu, 2013).

The companies also provide various schemes to make more aware to the consumers in the market. E-commerce also increases the knowledge and experience related to online shopping and other online products. Through social media, the consumes can make payment through debit card, and credit card. The social media channels are increasing the awareness of the consumers across the world. The social media is an important source to reach its massive audience in the world (Tsimonis &Dimitriadis, 2014).

But now a day’s various challenges are faced by the consumers related to social media channels. Sometimes, these channels are not able to provide the right information about the products and services. It does not increase the brand awareness in the market thus; various challenges are faced by the consumers in the market. The uses of social media are increasing day by day. These channels create real business values and effective relationship with customers. Various benefits can be taken by the company and consumers as well with the help of social media channels (Gensler, Völckner, Liu-Thompkins &Wiertz, 2013).

On the above discussion, it has been analyzed that social media and internet help to consumers to make an effective decision in regards to pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase behaviors. The companies should protect the rights of consumers and it must provide adequate and appropriate information to consumers related to online products and services. Further, online consumer movement also plays a vital role in the market. The companies should focus on the interests, expectations, and requirements of the consumers to attract more consumers in the market. In this way, the companies can gain long-term success and growth in the market. E-commerce and companies should conduct some awareness programs and campaigns to increase the awareness of the consumers. Now it is assumed that social media and internet sources play an integral role in today’s world.

References

Couldry, N., 2012. Media, society, world: Social theory and digital media practice. Polity.

De Mooij, M. and Hofstede, G., 2011. Cross-cultural consumer behavior: A review of research findings. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 23(3-4), pp.181-192.

Gensler, S., Völckner, F., Liu-Thompkins, Y. and Wiertz, C., 2013. Managing brands in the social media environment. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27(4), pp.242-256.

Hoyer, W.D. and Stokburger-Sauer, N.E., 2012. The role of aesthetic taste in consumer behavior. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 40(1), pp.167-180.

Hutter, K., Hautz, J., Dennhardt, S. and Füller, J., 2013. The impact of user interactions in social media on brand awareness and purchase intention: the case of MINI on Facebook. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 22(5/6), pp.342-351.

Kwok, L. and Yu, B., 2013. Spreading social media messages on Facebook: An analysis of restaurant business-to-consumer communications. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 54(1), pp.84-94.

Labrecque, L.I., 2014. Fostering consumer–brand relationships in social media environments: The role of parasocial interaction. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 28(2), pp.134-148.

Michaelidou, N., Siamagka, N.T. and Christodoulides, G., 2011. Usage, barriers and measurement of social media marketing: An exploratory investigation of small and medium B2B brands. Industrial marketing management, 40(7), pp.1153-1159.

Reed, A., Forehand, M.R., Puntoni, S. and Warlop, L., 2012. Identity-based consumer behavior. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 29(4), pp.310-321.

Rucker, D.D., Galinsky, A.D. and Dubois, D., 2012. Power and consumer behavior: How power shapes who and what consumers value. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(3), pp.352-368.

Tsimonis, G. and Dimitriadis, S., 2014. Brand strategies in social media. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 32(3), pp.328-344.

Zsóka, Á., Szerényi, Z.M., Széchy, A. and Kocsis, T., 2013. Greening due to environmental education? Environmental knowledge, attitudes, consumer behavior and everyday pro-environmental activities of Hungarian high school and university students. Journal of Cleaner Production, 48, pp.126-138.