Understanding Consumers’ Decision-Making Processes When Buying Products

Article 1: Social media and brand purchase: Quantifying the effects of exposures to earned and owned social media activities in a two-stage decision making model

The aim of this report is to identify the decision-makings of a customer while buying products or goods of a brand based on the research of three articles. Three articles of different writers have been chosen for this report as they all have researched on the reviews given by the consumers on the internet. Various research methods have been explained along with the alternate methods that might have resulted in positive manner for the proposed agenda. All the research papers have certain limitations; these articles are chosen in pattern that the next paper cover the limitation of the first article. This resulted in better transparency for the topic and the limitations of the project.

Social media and brand purchase: Quantifying the effects of exposures to earned and owned social media activities in a two-stage decision making model

Reference:

Xie, K. and Lee, Y.J., 2015. Social media and brand purchase: Quantifying the effects of exposures to earned and owned social media activities in a two-stage decision making model. Journal of Management Information Systems, 32(2), pp.204-238.

This article presents research on the effects of the exposures to the owned and the earned activities in social media and their interaction on brand purchasing process in two-stage decision model including the amount of the products purchased offline and their likelihood to purchase (Lamberton& Stephen 2015). The writers of this article seek to find out the effectiveness of social media exposures forthe brands with efforts made for the promotion (Xie& Lee 2015). Another seeking leads them towards the application ofboth the likelihood towards the stage of purchasing and the amount of purchased goods or products in the offline stage. The authors seek to find out the answer of the question ‘how channelsshould be optimally utilized’, as only in an extreme condition the negative moderatingeffect because of any type of social media activities might become substantial. In this situation, the household is being exposed to large volume of any type of social media activities. It is also represented as a nontrivial question or agenda of this article (Xie& Lee 2015).

This could help in providing an integrated setting, in order to illustrate the relative multi-metric marketing’s effectiveness efforts considering the social media exposuresand promotional programs in-store based on those findings.The framework presented by the authors was based on the long-standing Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) (Botetzagias, Dima& Male 2015).TPB holds that people in respond to the informationsignals, proceed through a series of stages that are being started with knowledge-building related to the cognition or learning, and awareness to action means conation or do, and conviction.Moving forward the authors have put emphasis on the uniformed customers and resulted that in respond to informationsignals like social media advertising the uniformed customers had to proceed through the stages of likelihood on the purchasing of products or goods and represented it as stage 1 ‘Being informed’. After that second stage had been proposed namely ‘Purchasing’ in which the amount of products that has been purchased offline. The information had been collected through tracking the levels of exposures to the owned social media activities and earned social media activities through the learning and awareness towards the product (Xie& Lee 2015). Owned social media activities has been referred for the manager response and the brand page newsfeeds, whereas earned social media activity has been referred to the activities like “share”, “like”, status updates and comments on the brand pages.Interaction between the earned and the owned activities have also been proposed in this article. The behavioral or cognitive components or behaviors have beentraced through the amount of purchased products offline through presenting a figure of theoretical framework, which can be helpful in exploring this topic.

Alternative Methods Proposal

The proposed article was based on the data analytics and imperative in FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) industry involving the ‘guesswork’ that is being involved in the strategizing and corporate planning.This study can provide managers about the knowledge that the social media can be characterized by promoting potential trade-off with in-store and advertising the channel interplay. This article can promote the managerswho are concerned with the market shares and relative performance measures in utilizingthe proposed study and can take proper cautions while employing the competitor-benefiting socialmedia exposures (Lianos 2015).

This study was limited to the social media advertising, which cannot predict the offline purchased goods or products. Social media has very little impact on the brand product purchasing because of the sheered amount of owned advertising events. This failed in introducing the possibilities of the customers those could be averse to overload of the social media marketing. Facebook is not a place where every individual is trying to know the products as; it is not the reason behind connecting to then Facebook.

Collecting data about the customers from the branded stores could be helpful in estimating the exact reaction of the customers on buying the products. This will be covering the customers who are interested in brands excluding the unnecessary individuals who will buy the products from the general stores or super markets. Data mining is the latest technology for predicting the behavior and action of the customers, which could have also improved the results that are being stated in the above article (Wu et al. 2014 ). This could have not only covered social media, but have also have included all the online buyers who are buying branded products online. Majority of the population nowadays are moving towards online purchase. The focus should be the majority not the traditional ways. For effective and efficient results an individual cannot depend on the ‘guesswork’, it should be well calculated and based on evidence and data mining is the way of knowing the customers without waiting for the feedbacks. The authors have predicted some results based on the comments that have been made on the Facebook pages. Most of the newspapers have reported that there are almost 40% Facebook identities are either fake, hacked or missing ids, which cannot be helpful in getting accurate data and feedbacks (lee 2014).The authors have proposed Facebook as the primary media as it is the most popular social networking website; regardless of that, the authors should have collected information from the branded stores. Because ‘the reason most members are joining a brand on Facebook is most likely not to learn about products’ will be a complete myth. The users are connecting to the Facebook for their personal use like entertainment, chatting etc. Social media could be a medium for the great hub of interested buyers but there are also different methods that could be more helpful. An alternative approach can be proposed like there should be a direct link to the original website of the brand on every advertisement social media (Wilson & Post 2013). It should only be used in manner to calculate the strength of the customers not about their choices and preference.

Article 2: Consumers’ Role Performance and Brand Identification: Evidence from a Survey and a Longitudinal Field Experiment

Data mining is the latest technology but ethical issues surround no-doubt implementation of data mining, which might be opposed by the customers (Tene&Polonetsky, 2012). This will collect personal information and the places on the web the user is moving by following ‘cookies’ of the internet users.

Consumers’ Role Performance and Brand Identification: Evidence from a Survey and a Longitudinal Field Experiment

Reference:

He, Y., Chen, Q., Lee, R.P., Wang, Y. and Pohlmann, A., 2017. Consumers’ Role Performance and Brand Identification: Evidence from a Survey and a Longitudinal Field Experiment. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 38, pp.1-11.

The aim of the authors in this article is on identifying the processes and antecedents that could lead to much strong brandidentification.The authors aimed at betterassessing the casual relationships hypothesized in the proposed research.The authors seek to find out how an organization fosters the intrinsic motivations of the consumers to act their interest of the brand (He et al. 2017). Another question which answer was being searched in this report was that how the motivations influence the role behaviors of the customers within the community of the brand and afterwards their identification with those brands. In the second study, the authors were seeking to find out what kinds of marketing techniques or tactics could be employed in order to motivate the community behaviors that effectively and efficiently foster the brand identification. In order to answer this question the authors aimed at identifying the processes and antecedents that could lead to stronger brand identification (He et al. 2017).

To get answers of these questions, the authors used experimental stimuli in order to manipulate self-competency, self-belongingness, and self-autonomy. The actual and very behavioral measures had been proposed to enhance the managerial relevance and theoretical contribution because of the manipulated factors (Yukl, 2012).

Data were being collected using the survey, which was based on web-based questionnaire(www.sojump.com) for a limited period. In this survey the number of customers, logging into the brand websites had been noted in order to determine which time of the day or the day most users are logging into those website.The authors sent an invitation mail, in which the questionnaire web link was attached (He et al. 2017).

Based on the methods author findings were resulted that most of the users logon to the brand websites in theperiod between 8:00 PM and 11:00 PM on Saturdays andSundays (mith et al. 2017). This article eliminated the limitation of the article proposed above as the questions were being asked to the paid customers only, which eliminated the group of people who are not involving with the brands. The findings led the authors to give a statement “for consumers with highlevels of brand identification when the brand is mature andwell known”. The findings onactual behavior and behavioral intentions of the users resulted in compellingthe empirical evidence that supports the causal relationships hypothesizedin the theoretical model proposed in the paper.The findings also helped in demonstrating that the members of the brand community perceived self-competency and self-belongingnessin brand community. Participation in both extra-role and in-role andextra-role behaviors resulted, fosters consumer brand identification (Lii& Lee 2012).

Above paragraph states about the strengths of the article but there were certain limitations of the article which can be stated as the research was not capable of answering all the questions that the authors was seeking to find out. Two studies were made in the research but both were failed to support the proposed hypothesis ‘more involved extra-role behaviorsexert a stronger impact on brand identification than relatively lessinvolved in-role behaviors’.

Heuristic-system model could have resulted in finding of the answers the authors were seeking to find. Because the researchers were not able to find the answers can be explained as the types of community behavior represents the more engaged brand experiences, regardless of the fact that whether that is extra-role or in-role (Brocat, Voorhees & Baker 2012). There is the possibility of different role activities on the brand identification has been moderated by the individual stage of the consumers of brand identification.The heuristic–systematic model could have pointed out the heuristic cues that were associated with the applicability, accessibility, and availability, ofthe knowledge of the individual. It would have helped authors toexamine the three elements of the heuristic cues in the researchcontext, because many cues that have no content could have related cues of the number of online reviews that were existed on the online review sites. This could have also helped todiscern whether the selected heuristic factor is valid in this preferred situation.Secondly, and the most important aspect is that the heuristic–systematic model could havehighlighted the co-occurrence of heuristic and systematic informationprocessing. It could have cover the population who are involved completely with the brand as someone will only give time for the reviews if the individual is connected to that particular brand, a human nature. Almost each individual nowadays connected to the internet, this led the more involvement of the individual on the webpages and if the individual see the known brand, it will automatically attract the consumers or the customers to give their perceptive on the nature or demand-meetings of the product. It can be expected that this could have covered each individual that is in role with the brand and could have resulted in more efficient and effective findings. The reviews with ratings could have make the system to separate them in different categories, and this could have let the authors to discriminate between the good reviews and bad reviews, as one could not look all the reviews which could lead to loss of some hidden reviews and could affect the findings (Kauffman et al. 2016).

Providing reviews on certain brand is the personal thought of the individual, it is their responses and using it as evidence to derive results could have let to the expose user’s activities that where they are going and what they are buying which can lead to certain ethical issues (Zikmund et al. 2013). This could be uncomfortable for the individuals who are getting involved in the review system of the brands.

Examining the influence of online reviews on consumers’ decision-making: A heuristic–systematic model

Reference:

Zhang, K.Z., Zhao, S.J., Cheung, C.M. and Lee, M.K., 2014. Examining the influence of online reviews on consumers’ decision-making: A heuristic–systematic model.Decision Support Systems, 67, pp.78-89.

This article aims at delving into heuristic– systematic model in order to enrich the understanding on how onlinereviews might affect the behavioural intention of the consumers. In order to achieve the above objective authors have reviewed prior literature on dual-process theories andhow these theories can be applied in the sector of online reviews and other wider problems in Information Systems (IS) (Zhang et al. 2014). Through heuristic-systematic model the authors are seeking to find firstly, what are the heuristic factors and key systematic for understandingthe influence of the online reviews provided by the consumers (Moore 2015, p.35). Secondly, whether there is existence of bias effect or not betweenthe two types of factors. The bias effect could help in explaining how systematic and heuristic factors might interact with each other, which is a priortheoretical extension in the proposed heuristic–systematic model. Examiningthe bias effect can be helpful in order to provide notable implicationsfor further examining the influence of the online reviews on decisionmaking of the customers (Yin, Bond & Zhang 2013).

There have been three research methods used in this article which can be listed as: firstly, online review site that includes dianping.com, which is basically about reviews on the restaurants. Review messages have been listed with the basic information of the restaurants, by providing unique web pages for every restaurant (Zhang et al. 2014). Besides providing a large amount of content related to the reviews,Dianping.com was offering numerical information in order to show the numberof reviews submitted to every restaurant and used the numbers of “contribution value” and “medals”to demonstrate proper ranking level to differentreview contributors or consumers. Dianping.com appears tobe proper research website that helps in enabling the subjects to develop perceptionsconsidering the content of argument quality and variousheuristic cueswhich can be stated as perceived quantity ofreviews and source credibility. Secondly, Questionnaire development and pilot study, which included survey questionnaire as it was done in previous article. Thirdly, Data Collection, which included distribution of final questionnaire to the potential users of review sites that was affiliated with Dianping.com.

Findings of this article can be stated as; this article provides a strong empirical support for the influence of customer’s decision makingfrom perceived quantity of reviews and source credibility to the argumentquality in the environment of online websites. The proposed bias effect helped in uncovering the relationshipbetween heuristic and systematic factors (Zhang et al. 2014). In order words, perceptions of the consumersin relation with the online reviews’ content can be strengthenedby the perceptions of the customers related to non-content online reviews’ cues. Ifconsumers finds out that the receive reviews from credible sources and quantityof reviews to be large, then the consumers will perceive and further expect thatarguments represented in online reviews are more persuasive and informative (Cheung, Xiao & Liu 2012).Based on the findings it can be suggested that the both cue-related and content related thinking have the potential to influence the judgment making of an individual as, the findings were seems to be consistent with the additional effect of the heuristic-systematic model.

Emphasizing on the strengths of the article it can be stated that the managers of firms or any organization can be beneficial through this research.The managers might involve in the phenomenon of onlinereviews system through the discussed four stages which are moderator, observer, participant, and mediator (Park & Allen 2013).Through the lens of this report managers of the organization or the firms would be able to understand and predict the impacts of the online reviews.

There were certain limitations to this research paper because of the research methodology that has been proposed in it. Firstly,only a single online review site that is Diaping.com has been adopted for the research context (Bellur&Sundar 2014).Secondly, the authors have not considered the impacts of negative online reviewson the decision making of the consumers. Another limitation was that the authors’ research has been restricted the analysisof source credibility and the argument quality towards positive reviewsonly in order to achieve a simple design and highlight the focus of the research.

The findings could be made more efficient and effective in the way of searching the answers of the proposed questions, if authors have consider more than one online review website and considered all the negative reviews in the research (Van Noort&Willenmsen2012 pp.138). This research can be extended by the involvement of many other inline review websites including Dianping.com. Proper care or priority should be given onthe influence of different control variables, online platforms, product types and cultural backgrounds. In specific manner, “prior research suggeststhat the influence of online reviews may be subject to different platforms” (Cheung &Thadani 2012, p.465). Consumers practicing collectivist cultures might have showed a highertendency of information-seeking in online communities than the consumersthat are in individualist cultures. There should be proper testing of control variableslike income and price, in order to control any confoundingeffects on the decision-making of the consumers. Considering different would have resulted in efficient manner as this could have covered the aggressive stages which are mediator, participant, and moderator, which was beyond the scope of the research.

Keeping record of an individual without permission can lead to ethical issues, which might affect the research (Suhonen et al. 2015). By this alternate research method, the personal comments of the individual will be exposed; no-doubt they have been exposed already on the web page but that is official page on which customers are providing their comments in order to seek help or by negative reviews and trying to help others by giving good reviews (Yin Bond & Zhang 2013). Involving those comments in the research data could let to ethical issues for the individuals who are getting involved in this research.

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