The Effects of Social Media in Purchase Behaviour ofthe UK Consumers - Research Paper Example

The effects of social media on purchase behaviour of UK consumers Contents Introduction 3 Social Media Definition 4 Use of Social Media in Marketing 5 Consumer Decision and purchase behaviour 6 Influence of Social Media on Consumer Purchase 7 UK and Social Media 11 Social Media Usage in the U.K. 11 Influence of social media on consumer purchase 12 Conclusion 14 Reference List 15 Bibilography 18 Introduction The growth of social media has become a formidable phenomenon in the 21st century, which is, shaping the behaviour of the consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. The use of e-commerce has become extremely popular among the consumers as a potential tool for shopping. Globalization has heavily impacted online purchase. The marketing literature suggests that, social media have become a useful tool in influencing purchasing behaviour of customers. Integrated marketing have used social media extensively to influence purchasing behaviour of customers. Many researchers have jointly agreed that, social media has become one of the strongest tools of communication with the customers (Dholakia, Bagozzi and Pearo, 2004). Social media have been described as a communication technology that allows the users to share and discuss ideas and create an environment where consumers can share ideas about products. The growing influence of internet use has enhanced the use of social media and it has become a useful tool to manipulate the behaviour of the buyers (Calder, Malthouse and Schaedel, 2009). According to the data that has been published by “Global Social Network” as of 2012 there were 518.512.109 users in Europe itself. By the end of 2010, Facebook had more than 500 million users across the globe. Social media is essentially a more powerful tool compared to traditional media not only because social media can be used as a tool of promotion, but also it is used as a source of interaction among the consumers. Consumers can be educated via the use of social media regarding the use of products, personalities, brands and issues. Researchers like Blackshaw and Nazzaro (2004 cited in Mangold and Faulds, 2009) have shown that social media encompasses a wide range of online activities like blogs, service rating websites, discussion forums regarding products, moblogs, chat rooms and discussion forums that are widely used by companies to reach to the target audiences. The multinational companies are largely using these social media to create consumer awareness, opinions, attitudes, post-purchase communication, acquisitions and evaluation (Mayzlin, 2006). The works of researchers like Miller (2009 cited in Kelsey, 2010) has shown that, companies have entire dedicated departments that cater to the development of social media to communicate with the customers. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of social media on the purchase behaviour of the consumers in U.K. This is a secondary research that uses the data collected by different researchers to find the impacts on the U.K. customers. The report first provides the basic idea of social media and its use in the marketing. This is followed by an exploration of the relationship between consumer behaviour and social media which provides a theoretical background to the topic. The penultimate section explores the case of the U.K. and discusses the impact of social media particularly on the U.K. consumers. Social Media Definition According to the definition provided by Ellison (2007), social networking have been described as a web-based service that allows consumers to build a public or semi-public profile which allows him to connect to multiple people on a virtual basis. Social media also allows the users to traverse through the contacts that they have created within the social network. It has to be understood that, social media is much more than what the people are doing with technology itself. According to the Campbell, et al. (2011) Web 2.0 has evolved over time from being a simple tool of information retrieval to that of collaboration, interactivity and interoperability. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), had defined social media as a “group of Internet based applications” that combines the technological and ideological platform of the Web 2.0 platform and creates an environment where users can create their own contents and exchange them with other users simultaneously. A similar definition was also provided by O’ Reilly (2005 cited in Thackeray, et al., 2008) and strengthened the notion that social media creates a user generated content that can be shared by multiple users. Some researchers have used the concept of social media and social networking interchangeably. However, Cox (2010 cited in Chi, 2011) have established a subtle difference between the two by stating that social media is more like an environment in which social networking takes place. There are different types of social media marketing tools that are being used by researchers namely social news sites, social networking, social bookmarking, social sharing and blogs (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). Social News Sites: These are sites which allow the users to submit articles, videos, photos and blog posts to the community. Public voting decides the popularity of an article and makes it appear in the first page of the website. Social Networking: These are the most common form of social media that allows users to create a profile of them on a web based platform and are widely used as a medium of communication between consumers. Facebook and MySpace are the most used form of social networking. Bookmarking Sites: These helps the users to manage, organize and save links on the internet that the consumers finds to be most favourite. Tagging of links makes it easier to search share websites. Examples of bookmarking sites include Magnolia and Delicious. Social Sharing: Sharing of media is one of the most common features of social media and some of the websites specialize in some particular forms of media sharing. Videos and photos are the most common form of social media that is shared. Popular sites in social sharing include Youtube and Flickr. Blogs: Blogs are one of the oldest forms of user generated contents that are used by people to express their own ideas on the internet and they are considered as an advanced form of message boards and forums. Use of Social Media in Marketing A synthesis of the literature shows that business houses use social media for six main areas namely marketing and advertising, management of social capital, knowledge management and relationship management. The marketing literature is filled with instances of the use of social media as a major tool in the marketing promotional mix. According to the research conducted by Akrimi and Khemakhem (2012), it has been found that, marketers are largely using the huge potential that is provided by the social networking sites. Social media has provided a huge customer base that was not present in the era of traditional media. Researchers have shown that social media have become an important marketing tool that is used by companies to build favourable opinion about the company and the products. Communication is an integral part of marketing aspect and social media has largely increased the scope for open communication with consumers. Social media is largely used in advertising and promoting products and allows marketers to involve the customers in the product development process. It has also been shown that social media provides the advantage of engaging the customers which creates a long-term relationship with the customers. Social networks have the power to create a networking of resources between business-to-business and business-to-consumers which in turn links the strategic value of business with its performance. Tracing the reactions of the consumers and following up with the response has become an important part of the marketing strategies of companies. Customer interaction has become the priority of social media marketing. Social media is a powerful marketing tool because; it represents a combination of software, media information, marketing and entertainment (Kotler, 2011). Some researchers have also argued that, social media is more trustworthy compared to traditional media that have increased their usage among consumers. They believe that the companies have very few chances to conceal information from them in a social media compared to traditional medium. This is also another reason for which companies have resorted to the use of social media as a promotional tool for marketing (G. E. Belch and M. A. Belch, 2007). Consumer Decision and purchase behaviour Models of consumer decision behaviour are abundant in the literature. An initial model of consumer decision was developed by Kollat, Engel and Blackwell (1968). Figure 1: Consumer purchase decision model (Source: Kollat, Engel and Blackwell, 1968) The above picture shows that consumer purchase is a multi-stage process that is affected by a number of factors. The first step is the stimuli that come largely from the environment created by the marketer as well as the external searches. The model shows that both environmental variables and individual variables are factors that influence the purchase decision of the consumers. The actual decision making process is a seven stage process that begins with need recognition and ends at divestment. The basic theory of consumer decision making process have been modified and presently there are five different stages in the purchasing decision of the consumer namely, recognizing the problem, searching information, evaluating the alternatives, final purchase and the post purchase decision (Silverman, 2011). The stage of problem recognition has been defined as one of the first stages of the consumer purchasing decision process according to the views of Kotler and Keller (2009). Before the proliferation of social media, problem identification was largely influenced by the use of traditional media like newspapers, televisions and radio broadcasting. The second stage is that of the information stage where the consumer uses all the information that is available to him from both internal and external sources to match the product with his cognitive needs (Hoyer, 1984). Customers try to find the best alternative to the product by researching about the products that he wishes to buy. The third stage in the consumer purchase process is that of evaluation of alternatives in which consumers considers both direct and indirect experiences. Evaluation of alternatives on the part of the consumers largely depends on the needs and expectations of the consumer. The fourth stage is the final purchasing where consumer finally decides to buy the product. Researchers are of the view that, attitude of other people and unanticipated external factors are the stimuli which influences the final purchasing decisions of the consumers (Nelson, 1970). The final stage is the post purchase decision stage in which the consumers experience a certain degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction after consumption of the product. If purchase of the product leads to dissatisfaction, then, consumers becomes cautious in their future purchasing process and will consider other options for their future buying. Influence of Social Media on Consumer Purchase In the last five years there has been a huge growth in the acceptance of social media as a tool of consumer communication. According to the research conducted by Dunne, Lawlor and Rowley (2010), it has been found that, social networking sites provide are platforms where millions of customers can meet virtually and share information about products by communicating freely with one another. Social networks are widely used for the propagation of information regarding a company or a brand thereby creating a wider representation of the company. The research conducted by Bronner and de Hoog (2010) have revealed that the influence of social media is so strong in the society that the people have started to spend a significant time of their time on the use of internet. Consumers have been found to spend a considerable amount of time in purchasing online products compared to purchase of products from physical stores. The research conducted by Hayta (2013) had revealed that the impact of social media on the purchase behaviour of the consumers can be classified into three groups. The first one is the behaviour that affects purchasing decisions, influence of others on the purchasing decision of the consumers and finally, using social media as a tool to report the post purchase behaviour of the consumer. The study that conducted by Wang, Yu and Wei (2012) had focused on online socialization of consumers and communication with peer groups. It has been observed that socialization impacts the perception of consumers in two ways, firstly through conforming to the peers and secondly through reinforcing the development of the product. Social media provides a platform for the consumers to learn about the attitude and beliefs of the peers regarding a certain product. Lueg and Finney (2007) have shown that, consumers often want to buy the same brand that has been purchased by the peers and avoids any other brand. It has been observed that the role of social media in consumer purchase is a multi-faceted concept where the consumers not only purchase the product from the internet based platform but also express their post purchase experience on the internet. Researchers have observed that information search is a very important aspect of the consumer purchasing decision and social media is being actively used as a tool of information search by the consumers. It has also been argued that social media provides a proper tool for providing the feedback for the products that makes the customer feel engaged in the buying process. Social media has been found to influence all these aspects of the consumer purchase decision. There is a stiff competition among the marketers to grasp the attention of the individuals. It has been found that social media can have a big role to play in expressing the transparency of the company and evoking thought process of the consumers (Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden, 2011). In this regard, the model developed by Constantinides and Fountain (2008) has closely worked to extend the model that has been developed by Kotler. In a traditional marketing, environment consumers are only stimulated by certain controllable and uncontrollable factors. However, in case of social media marketing, consumers are exposed to a wide range of experiences and online marketing mix that are beyond the control of the marketer. The following diagram represents the scenario. Figure 2: Influence of social media on consumer decision of purchase (Source: Constantinides and Fountain, 2008) Another attempt has been made by Evans (2008) to show the impact of social media on the purchase decision of the consumers. The schematic diagram for the same is shown in the figure below. Figure 3: Funnel model of consumer purchase (Source: Evans, 2008) It can be seen from the above diagram that, social media forms a bridge between awareness and purchase. It acts as a medium to provide information like brand reputation and product advantages to the buyers which in turn invokes the consideration of purchase among the consumers finally allowing him to purchase the product. Presence of social media has widely increased the level of word-of-mouth advertising that is used by consumers. Researchers have shown that consumers have a wider range of access in the era of social media usage compared to what they had in the past, in times of traditional marketing. Social media allows users to read reviews about products and rate the products. This particular aspect has increased the pressure on the marketers as consumers can negatively speak about the products in an open forum earning negative publicity for them. There is also a growing consensus among researchers that social media is particularly popular among a certain section of the population which should act as a basic motivation for the companies to target consumers. For instance, it has been observed that consumers above the age group of 55 and more have no extensive use of social media. Young adults have a greater tendency to spend time online and this forms the target market for social media. UK and Social Media This part of the report focuses exclusively on the U.K. by utilizing data that has been collected by other researchers in due course of time. The social media usage in the U.K. has been growing consistently over the past few decades and marketers are increasingly targeting new customers based on the usage of social media. In case of the U.K. it has been observed that, Facebook still remains as the largest social media site followed by Twitter and Instagram. In order to obtain an idea about the use of social media this research has used two independent surveys that have been conducted in the country. This report uses secondary data for the purpose of investigating the topic. The first one is a survey that was conducted by Mintel and the second one was a survey that was conducted by YouGov in the U.K. The findings from these studies have been compared and contrasted with the other findings in the literature. Social Media Usage in the U.K. There has been a considerable decline in the use of Facebook users and as of 2013 there were 31 million users which were 1.5 million lower than the value in 2012. There have been multiple reports regarding the loss of popularity of Facebook among the younger generation (Rose, 2014). Facebook has been constantly losing its popularity in the U.K. over the last three years. Notably the reduction has been considerably higher in the college and the teen crowds. Facebook has lost 2 million users in the U.K. and the largest reduction has been observed in case of teenagers. Most of the current users remain in the age group of 23-54 years (Garside, 2013). There has been a considerable rise in the use of Twitter customers. There are 15 million users of Twitter in the U.K. and it has found to be extremely popular among the college going crowd and the teenagers. Twitter provides comprehensive information about public agencies and other updates in a faster manner (Arthur, 2012). The rise in the proportion of Smartphone users has raised the proportion of use of Twitter as 80% of the consumers access the site on their Smartphone’s. Similarly, the growth of LinkedIn in the U.K. has crossed the 10 million mark and the page visits reported by the social networking site has remained steady at 60 million mark. 64% of the LinkedIn customers have however used the social networking site to access corporate websites (Eckstein, 2014). In other words, it provides a better platform to business environment compared to Twitter. A huge growth has also been observed in the use of Pinterest users. Towards the beginning of 2011 there were 200,000 users and in early 2014 there were 2 million of them. Instagram has also shown growth in the U.K. Influence of social media on consumer purchase In U.K. particularly it has been observed that the use of social media has been extensive. In a survey conducted by Mintel it has been found that, over a quarter of consumers in the study have used social media to interact with the brands (Mintel, 2014). The following graph shows the purchase actions of consumers based on the information that they had collected from the social media. Figure 4: Use of social media in consumer purchase decision (Source: Mintel, 2014) It can be clearly seen from the graph that majority of the customers have collected information from social media. The answers provided by the people in the survey clearly link the five stage model of customer purchase created by Silverman (2001). For instance, it has been found in the survey that customers had got to know about products that they were previously unaware about in the past. Researchers like Singh, Veron-Jackson and Cullinane (2008) have shown that social media are now being increasingly used by consumers to seek maximum information about products. This also bears testimony to the fact that the dissemination of information on social sites and their uninhibited access by the public have reduced the control that companies have on the information. It has also been found that consumers have been recommended about certain products in their social media circle. This finding of the survey is also consistent with the findings of Mukhopadhyay and Yeung (2010) had shown that consumers tend to interact with their social groups in the social networking sites. Communications on the social networking sites have a major influence on shaping the attitude of consumers regarding a product. The survey had also asked questions regarding the evaluation of products that consumers do before they purchase a product and consumers have reported that they seek the opinion about products on the social networking sites. These findings are also consistent with the findings of Kozinets (1999) who had shown that the consumers generally collect information regarding products on social media and the information collected by them online helps them in evaluating product options. However, this finding in the survey can be contrasted with the findings of Irmak, Vallen, and Sen (2010) who had found that consumers who have a desire to be highly unique among other buyers have been found to be less influenced by other consumers using social media. The survey conducted by Mintel had also probed regarding the post purchase behaviour of the customers. The findings from the survey had revealed that the consumers have shown a tendency to obtain support on the products that they have purchased from social networking sites. The research conducted by Hanna, Rohn and Crittenden (2011) that had shown multinational companies largely depends on maintaining customer service relationships based on social media. In another survey that has been conducted by the YouGov on 2000 UK consumers has shown that the social media plays a major role in influencing the purchase decisions of the consumers. It has been revealed from the survey that 46% of the consumers have made online purchasing decisions based on the influence they received from their peer group from social media (Digital Strategy Consulting, 2013). This finding can be compared to the findings of researchers like Karmarkar and Tormala (2010) who had shown that, social media allows the consumers to get involved in the product development and this in turn shapes their attitude towards purchase of products. Lord, Lee, and Choong (2001) had also reached a similar finding and stated that informational influence from peers have the capability to alter the purchasing intent of the consumers. The survey had also revealed that 35% of the customers also use social media to complain about any inappropriate experience that they had while using a particular brand. It has been revealed during the survey that, if the ratio of good reviews to the bad reviews is low then this will create sufficiently negative influence on the purchase decision of the consumers. This finding is consistent with the finding of Chevalier and Mayzlin (2006) that had shown that negative comments received on a social networking site have an overall negative impact on the purchase decision of the consumers. Previous works of the researchers have suggested that, cognitive evaluations about a particular brand suffers adversely if there is a negative word of mouth campaign about a particular advertisement of the brand on social media. Conclusion There is no denying the fact that the use of social media has become extremely popular in the field of marketing. Consumers are spending a considerable amount of time online which has significantly increased the importance of social media in their decisions. The analysis from this report has shown that social media has an influence on all of the five major steps of consumer purchase process that has been studied by Silverman (2001). From the point of seeking of information to the point of post purchase evaluation, consumers are heavily influenced by the social media. It has been observed that social media has become a very important platform for advertising and marketing of products. The modern consumer spends a considerable portion of his time online and social media is an integral part that shapes the attitude of consumers regarding particular brands and products. The case of U.K. is no exception to this trend. In surveys conducted among the U.K. consumers, it has been found that, they are indeed affected by social media. Consumers in the U.K. have been found to frame their attitude and beliefs regarding certain products and brands based on the opinions expressed on the social networking sites. Additionally, they have also been found to be greatly influenced in their product evaluation stages. The boundless expression of opinions by consumers however, increases the pressure on the marketers as they have no control in these consumer interactions. Few trends have been observed in the use of social media in the U.K. For instance, there has been a reduction in the number of Facebook users in the U.K. but rise in popularity of other mediums like Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Based on this observation it can be implied that, marketers have to consider promoting products on sites other than Facebook like Pinterest and Instagram. Also it has been observed that a significant portion of the respondents in independent surveys have shown a tendency to use social media as a platform for venting their grievances about a particular brand or product. This implies that, marketers should be able to provide the kind of expectations that the consumers have from them. Reference List Akrimi, Y. and Khemakhem, R., 2012. 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