Backup of Evaluate The Impact of Social Media On The Buying Behaviour of A Consumer - WBK

EVALUATE THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE
BUYING BEHAVIOUR OF A CONSUMER

Abstract
Social media has been influenced by the buying power of the customer in various
industries. It has been acknowledged as one of the most affecting tools for
supporting the enterprise. Social media has been acting as the advertisement
medium of the industry in a huge number of the viewer. In this study, the researcher
has been including that the buying behavior of the consumer has been identified as
one of the most popular areas of the research in the context of improving the
business. Research paradigm of positivism, deductive approach and descriptive
design was used. It was found that use of social media generates brand awareness
increasing number of orders placed by customers in the industry.
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 7
1. Methodology of the research........................................................................................................... 12
1.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................................... 12
1.2 Customers as promotional agents.................................................................................................. 12
1.3 Secondary analysis......................................................................................................................... 13
1.3.1 Theme 1: Customer engagement behaviours in social media: capturing innovation
opportunities.................................................................................................................................... 13
1.4 Research design............................................................................................................................. 16
1.4.1 Research process..................................................................................................................... 17
1.4.2 Primary research process........................................................................................................ 17
1.4.3 Secondary research process.................................................................................................... 18
1.5 Research methods.......................................................................................................................... 18
1.5.1 Sampling technique................................................................................................................. 18
1.5.2 Sample population.................................................................................................................. 18
1.5.3 Sample size............................................................................................................................. 19
1.6 Data collection method and analysis............................................................................................. 19
1.6.1 Secondary data analysis.......................................................................................................... 19
1.6.2 Quantitative data analysis....................................................................................................... 19
1.6.3 Research timeline.................................................................................................................... 20
1.7 Data Quality-validity and reliability:............................................................................................. 21
2. Results and Findings........................................................................................................................ 22
2.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................................... 22
2.2 Social media and affects................................................................................................................ 22
2.3 Finding 1: Improving Consumer Mind-Set Metrics and Shareholder Value through Social Media:
The Different Roles of Owned and Earned.......................................................................................... 23

2.4 Finding 2: Effects of Social Network Marketing (SNM) on Consumer Purchase Behaviour
through Customer Engagement........................................................................................................... 26

2.5 Finding 3: Investigating the impact of social media advertising features on customer................. 35
2.6 Finding 4: The Effect of Social Media Communication on Consumer Perceptions of Brands..... 42
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2.7 Finding 5: Customer social participation in the social networking services and its impact upon
the customer equity of global fashion brands...................................................................... 48
2.8 Finding 6: The influencing factors of social media on buying behavior..........................52
2.9 Finding 7: Elements of social media that is influencing purchasing behavior................53
2.9.1 Social media advertisements.................................................................................. 53
2.9.2 Social media presence of the companies............................................................... 54
2.10 Finding 8: Customer engagement behaviors in social media - Social media campaigns 54
3. Empirical part of the research.......................................................................................... 56
3.1 Customer Buying Behaviour:......................................................................................... 56
3.2 Various Theories of Customer Buying Behaviour:......................................................... 56
3.3 Customers as promotional agents................................................................................. 58
3.4 Brand presence and social media................................................................................. 59
3.4 Impact of social media on developing economic condition through buying behavior.....62
3.4.1 Democratization of information............................................................................... 62
3.4.2 Effect of algorithms of various media websites on social commerce......................62
3.5 Influencing consumer behaviour through influencers.................................................... 63
3.6 Consumer decision-making process.............................................................................. 65
3.7 Challenges involved in influencing buying behavior of customerssing social media.....67
3.9 Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 70
Conclusions and proposals..................................................................................................... 71
References.............................................................................................................................. 76
Reference list.......................................................................................................................... 80
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List of Figures
Figure 1.1: Segmentation of Online users over the world...............................11

Figure 1.2: Customers influenced by social media..........................................11
Figure 1.3: Thesis Outline................................................................................15
Figure 2.1: The Sales Funnel.......................................................................... 21
Figure 3.1: Gantt chart.....................................................................................31
Figure 4.1: Use of Social Media for communication........................................33
Figure 4.2: The S-O-R model.......................................................................... 33
Figure 4.3: Social Media used by Retail companies....................................... 34
Figure 4.4: Rice of Social media in the retail industry..................................... 36
Figure 4.5: Rise of social messaging...............................................................37
Figure 4.6: Vital Needs for Influencing Buying behavior of Customer.............38
Figure 4.7: Percentage of global people who use social networking sites......39
Figure 4.8: Percentage of people globally on Facebook.................................40
Figure 4.9: Social Media influences Buying behavior of Customer.................41
Figure 4.10: Percentage of global users of Twitter..........................................43
Figure 4.11: Time spend per day for users on the social networking site.......44
Figure 4.12: percentage of social networking users........................................46
Table 4.13: statistical analysis of survey......................................................... 46
Figure 4.14: Improving Use of Social Media for influencing the Buying behavior of
Customer..........................................................................................................48
Figure 4.15: Social media advertising investment...........................................49
Figure 4.16: Facebook users...........................................................................50
Figure 4.17: Social media penetration.............................................................50
Figure 4.18: conceptual model........................................................................ 52
Figure 4.19: Number of Facebook users in million..........................................55
Figure 4.20: Brand fan page of eBay...............................................................56
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List of Tables
Table 3.1: Timeline.......................................................................................... 31

Table 4.1: Use of Social Media for communication.........................................33
Table 4.1: Social Media used by Retail Companies and its Importance.........35
Table 4.3: Use of Social Media communication to influence the Buying behaviour of
Customer..........................................................................................................37
Table 4.4: Vital Needs for Influencing Buying behaviourof Customer.............39
Table 4.5: Social Media influences Buying behaviourof Customer.................40
Table 4.6: Responses of managers.................................................................43
Table 47: Responses of managers..................................................................44
Table 4.8: Response of managers...................................................................46
Table 4.9: Response of managers...................................................................48
Table 4.10: Improving Use of Social Media for influencing the Buying behaviour of
Customer..........................................................................................................49
Table 4.11: Current user base.........................................................................53
Table 4.13: Representation of retail companies worldwide.............................76
Table 5.1: Recommendation 1.........................................................................81
Table 5.2: Action plan for Recommendation 1................................................ 81
Table 5.3: Recommendation 2.........................................................................82
Table 5.4: Action plan for Recommendation 2................................................ 83
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Introduction
It has been seen that in the present year the internet has grown tremendously and
the internet users has also grown. The use of the social media is growing very fast
and the business related to the social media also growing fast. It has been seen that
the use of the internet and web 2.0 applications has increased. Web 2.0 is the new
advancement which has been transferred the internet to a social environment by
introducing the social media in which many people can interact with each other.
It has been seen that the social media now has been used to promote the
products of the company as mostly use this media platform to create brand
awareness. The social media is able to make an influence to the buying
behaviour of the customers. According to a research it has been found that
around 70% of the customers are visiting the social media to get help of to get
the information related to the desired product. From these 70% people 49%
people has made their decision to buy those particular things which they want
information. Moreover, 60% of the customers shared that particular information
about those products. it has been seen in the recent time the online shopping has
been increased in all around the world and most of that the information from the
social media helps the customers to make better decisions. This research will
focus on examining the role of social media on the customer buying behaviour.
Objectives of the research
The objectives of the research are:
To analyze the role of social media in influencing buying behaviour of consumers
To analyze impact of social media marketing strategies on the buying

behaviour of global consumers
To analyze the effect of social media in the buying behaviour of the global
consumers
Aim of the research
The aim of the research is to understand and evaluate the impact of social media on
the buying behaviour of consumers through analyzing global scenario .The main
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endeavour of the research is to analyze the impact of the social media in the context
of the consumer behaviours well as the purchasing behaviour of the consumers.
Research questions
RQ1: How use of social media by firms can influence buying behaviour of
consumers in local and global context?
Hypothesis
H0: Social media does not influence buying behaviour of consumers, hence
buying behaviour of consumers is not affected by social media.
H1: Social media is a chief influence on the buying behaviour of global consumers,
hence it has significant impact on the buying behaviour of consumers.
H3: Although social media influences buying behaviour of consumers in a

global scenario, it does not influence buying behaviour of consumers.
H0: Social media has not influenced the buying behaviour of the consumers,
hence the behaviourof the global consumers in the context of the buying the
goods and services have not affected.
H1: Social media has played an important role in the context of the changing the
trends of the purchasing process of global consumers. Hence it can be said that it
has a severe impact regarding the buying behaviourof the global consumers.
H2: Although the social media has influenced the buying behaviourof the
consumers in the context of the global consumer behaviourhence it has not
affected the purchasing power of the consumers.
Method
Both primary and secondary research has been conducted in order to understand the
importance of social media and its role in consumer buying behaviour. Primary data and
secondary data have been gathered using different research strategies and tools. The
study is based on positivist ontological view and deductive reasoning with case study
research design of descriptive research. Thematic analysis has been done. In this
research, the researcher has conducted both the primary and the secondary research
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method in order to understand the impact of social media regarding global
consumer behaviour. Primary data, as well as the secondary data, have been
collected by using different strategies of the research as well as tools of the
research. This study based on the positivist ontological view as well as deductive
reasoning in the context of the research design of the descriptive research.
Limitations of the study
The researcher has been seen to conduct the research based on a particular
company or customer segment. The use of a broader spectrum for the research has
created a major limitation in the research work. Furthermore, the aspect of time
constraint acts as another limitation in the research study. It has been further seen
that the researcher had to conduct the research on a limited budget, adding on to the
limitations of the study. The researcher had to even conduct an interview with ten
managers to understand the influence of social media on the buying behavior of
customers. However, the interviewees had a tendency to not divulge every detail of
information in the interview, adding on the limitations of the research study.
The research work has dealt with the use of social media as an influence on
the buying behaviour of customers all over the globe. This has been dealt with
in five chapters which were written as given in the points below:
Chapter 1: Introduction
This is the first chapter of the research study. The researcher was seen to
provide a background of the research topic. Further, the researcher has
framed the a. Further, the researcher has provided an insight into the area of
research along with a gist of the method which shall be applied to
systematically fulfil the purpose of the research study.
Chapter 2: Literature Review
This is the second part of the research conducted by the researcher. The researcher has
been seen to go through past literature studies and review the same to gain an
understanding of the research topic. This was done by reviewing past research studies
dealing with themes such as customers as promotional agents, the presence of brand
and social media, advertisement and brand awareness, algorithmic updates used in
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social media and the use of social media as a promotional platform. Further,
the researcher was seen to make sure to go through research studies of last
five years to ensure relevance of data to understand various concepts related
to customer decision-making and social media as a marketing tool when it
comes to the buying behaviour of customers all over the globe.
Chapter 3: Research Methodology
This is the third chapter of the research study. The researcher here has provided a
thorough insight into the method which was applied by the researcher for investigating
the issue. The researcher has provided the research paradigm by stating and justifying
the use of positivism research philosophy, deductive research approach and descriptive
research design in the methodology. Further, the researcher has stated the sample size
and sampling method implemented in the research. Moreover, the researcher has
provided the use of ethics in the research work.
Chapter 4: Results and Analysis
This is the second last chapter of the research study. The researcher was seen to
provide an introduction into the chapter by providing an insight into the two types
of research data analyzed in the chapter. The researcher was noted to do both
primary and secondary research by use of secondary data analysis through the
use of thematic analysis and interview analysis in the researcher work. This was
done since there was no particular target of customers interviewed in the
research work. Further, examples were provided from various global companies
in the retail industry using social media as a marketing tool in their firm.
Chapter 5: Conclusion and Recommendations
This is the last chapter of the research work. The researcher was seen to summarise the
overall results of the collected data and analysis of the same in the chapter. Along with
this, the researcher was seen to link each of the research objectives with the analysed
data results. Further, the researcher was noted to test each of the framed hypotheses in
the first chapter and declare the proved hypothesis in this chapter. Moreover, the
researcher was seen to provide recommendations based on the findings of the research
study. Along with this, the researcher has provided the future scope of
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the research study giving an insight into the proposal for future research
topics in the chapter.
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1. Methodology of the research
1.1 Introduction
The objective of the research can be termed as the twofold- first is to find out the
components and the variables which has been involved in the decision making and
secondly it will identify the various changes which has been made by the social
media in terms of buying behaviour of the customers. This research will provide a
clear and better understanding of the both the consumers as well as the companies
prospective in which it will identify why, when and how the use of the social media
has an impact on the changes of the buying behaviour of the customers. It may also
be identify the possible insights for many companies which will identify the drawback
and the future opportunities in the current marketing era.
1.2 Customers as promotional agents
As it is briefly mentioned earlier, it is a common event to witness that the social media
page of any product and promotion has been brimming with the reviews provided by the
customers or the buyers of the certain products/services. It is a fact that these reviews
happen to influence the purchase behaviours of the segmented customers in general. In
discussion with this certain aspect, the opinions of Javornik (2016) have suggested the
coinage of social influencers which is a class that are supposed to represent the
individuals with an influential following status in the domain of social media. According to
Bai et al. (2015, p.540), influential or internet famous people arte the one who has gained
a huge amount of followers in different social media bases and thus are in a position to
create a public opinion. Worth mentioning names are Pew die Pie and Casey Neistat with
combined followers of more than 100 million in different social media platforms. Business
houses and politicians to exploit the public opinion can use this. After the recognition of
social media as an effective tool for promoting certain products/services, the established
business organizations has been heard to target those influencers for sponsored
promotion of the same. Thus, the social influencers can be considered as analogous to
the brand ambassadors of the respective milieu. As per a report, various influencers
charge an amount to post about a commercial organisation. Using this social influencer
has made this an extremely easy job. Millions of people are getting notifications in their
Smartphone. The increasing
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trend of social media addiction in the millennial generation has termed by the
researcher as the “magic maybe”, people are being observed to look at their phone
at an increasingly fast rate within very short interval of time. The researcher to
produce dopamine hits in the minds of the user coins this. This has been exploited by
the organisations. The social influencers have been seen as the messiah of the free
media. Their followers are blindly following their opinion about something. Studies by
Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016) have shown that the opinions of these influencers
appear to impart a great impact on the customers independent of the fact that
whether the review is sponsored or not. Scholars have named it as ‘bandwagon’
effect. This idea has been approved further by PwC total retail survey where almost
45% respondents of their survey commented that comments, reviews and feedbacks
are typical to influence the buying behaviour of the customers.
1.3 Secondary analysis
1.3.1 Theme 1: Customer engagement behaviours in social media:

capturing innovation opportunities
Social media has several impacts on the consumer’s behaviour such as

buying and selling process, promotion, advertisement, and many others. In
the recent technological updated era, the retail industry has been severely
influenced by the social media such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook. As per
the viewpoint of Colicev et al. (2018, p.36), in the context of the consumer
behaviour, the S-O-R (stimulus-organism-response) model has been used.
This model has analyzed the individual response in the context of their
environment. This model has assumed that the environment has an influential
effect on the behaviour and the culture of an individual.
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Figure 4.1: Use of Social Media for communication
It was understood that explicit use of social media sites for communicating with
customers. For example, companies like Mango are known to use several social
media websites for interacting with customers. However, using a limited number of
social media sites for communicating with customers. For example, management at
Amazon only uses Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to connect with customers.
Figure 4.2: The S-O-R model
(Source: Police et al. 2018, p.46)

The retail company can improve the brand image by accessing furthermore active on
the social media. In this article, the researcher has also taken seven hypotheses in
order to proper analysis of the impact of social media on the behaviour of the
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consumers. In addition to that social media is an easily available medium of collecting the
consumers’ feedback as well as the review of the retail product. According to Police et al.
(2018, p.96), in this study the researcher has included some utility benefit regarding the
consumers in the context of advertisement as well as purchase in social media such as
entitativity value, brand learning value and hedonic value on the intention of CEB in the
environment of the brand page. In the methodology part, the researcher has also done a
survey regarding the research firm of the online market.
Figure 4.3: Social Media used by Retail companies
It has been understood that the most used social media page is Facebook, followed by
Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest. However, a few companies like eBay were
noted to use other social media sites. This is important for the managers of various retail
brands such as Amazon, Costco, Mango and eBay since it not only enables the
companies to raise brand awareness but also aides the brands to attract new customers
and increase brand loyalty for the company. Moreover, it has used this in campaigning as
a platform for informing viewers and increasing the scope of new buyers and ensuring
the achievement of profit maximisation in the company. For example, eBay was known to
use Facebook for attracting new customers by using it as a platform to inform viewers
about the availability of a sports jacket and a pair of running sneaker shoes at the
discount rate of 10%. This enabled them to influence as much as 10,839,778 followers.
Moreover, use of social media resulted in 5% increase in brand
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awareness influencing several of its followers to buy its products resulting in
growth and expansion of its business up to countries like Latvia.
As opined by Colicev et al. (2018, p.25), in this survey the participants have been
asked several factors related to their favourite brand, last six months online
purchase history, the name of the brand that they are following in the facebook
and many others. In addition to that, an email confirmation has also been sent as
for a confirmation of the participants. The sample size in this study is 654 among
them 50.5% are male and 49.5% are female. Average age is almost 39.45 years
and their average income is almost $ 50k to $ 74,999 per year. This research has
also concluded some limitation such as the intention of the customer towards the
feedback and the collaboration. In addition to that, the study is limited as it has
been conducted in the cross-sectional manner. Hence the future studies can be
able to take only a few objectives from this study as per the researcher. The
method of sampling has been conducted in the market of US as well as the
participation of the survey are also belongs from the US. Hence as per the
viewpoint of Colicev et al. (2018, p.23), the research is limited in the US market
and the impact of social media on the consumer has been remaining unexplored.
1.4 Research design
The aim of the survey is to understand and evaluate the impact of social media on
the buying behaviour of consumers through analyzing global scenario. The survey
was carried out in the form of questionnaire. It has been seen that the researcher had
only one chance to gather the data therefore the researcher has to identify the
requirement of the data and its classifications and to design the questionnaire in
order to meet the main objectives of the research. The questionnaire which has been
used in the research was designed on the theoretical framework which is based on
the decision making process, social media marketing. In order to ensure that the
respondent can easily decode what the researcher wants that is why it is necessary
to clarify the questionnaire structure. The researcher has made an appropriate length
of the questionnaire. It has been stated in the starting that the researcher wants
examine the relationship between the social media and the consumer behaviour for
the consumer’s perspective. That is why the entire question which has been asked
has been subjected to the individual’s belief and attitudes which has been written in
the form of scale questions.
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The questionnaire will be sent with the help of the email to all the international
companies and various people who is helping to gather the data for the
researcher. Moreover, for the interview purpose the questions will be limited to 10
to know the impact of social media on the retail businesses. Research design
indicates set of methods that are used in order to gather and analyzing measures
of the variables. There are two types of study can be defined by the design which
has been based on the differences of framework, research design can be
distinguished into different categories and that are descriptive research design,
exploratory research design and explanatory research design (Brannen, 2017).
For the current study, descriptive research design has been selected.
Descriptive research design helps in accumulating data through observing the

behaviour of the research subjects without influencing them. Based on the
current study interview of managers of social media enterprise are taken on
the basis of descriptive design in order to prove the appropriateness while
conducting interview based on consumer behaviour. Descriptive research
design is also appropriate to test and measure a large number of samples
(McCusker and Gunaydin, 2015). Thus to gather results that can provide
definite answer to the hypothesis, descriptive research design has been used.
1.4.1 Research process
Research process indicates the procedures that have been used in order to
obtain necessary data and information for answering the research questions
that have been formulated in the course of the study. In order to get an idea
about the impact of social media on improving consumer behaviour, primary
analysis, that is, interview and secondary analysis, that is, thematic analysis
has been conducted for improving the social media influences.
1.4.2 Primary research process
For the second and the third hypotheses of the study that associates in depth
understanding regarding buying behaviour of people and whether social media has
any impact on the buying behaviour of the consumers, primary research has been
conducted. For the primary research, survey research strategy has been chosen to
be appropriate. In the process of primary research firstly, data related to influence of
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social media on the consumers have been gathered. On the basis of second and
third hypothesis the main focus of the study is given on buying and improving
customer behaviour towards purchasing of a particular product. After the selection
procedure is done the sampling techniques and data collecting procedure is selected.
For the research, interview of managers in the retail industry have been taken. For
improving the procedure 10 open ended questions were collected by interviewing 10
managers of the social media enterprise regarding retail industry.
1.4.3 Secondary research process
In order to gather necessary data related to the first hypothesis of the study,
secondary research method has been used. The research strategy for secondary
research is to gather information and secondary data from company reports and
findings of the previous researchers. The articles have been searched from the
Google scholar library data bases with the help of appropriate key word search. For
searching the articles, keywords like “role of social media in consumer behaviour”,
“influence of social media on buying behaviour of consumers”, “social media as a
marketing tool”, “social media as an effective tool of influencing purchase behaviour”
have been used. After primary selection of the articles, only peer reviewed journal
articles have been chosen for extracting data. After selection of the relevant journal
articles necessary data through content search has been extracted and with the help
of of thematic analysis, data have been analyzed.
1.5 Research methods
1.5.1 Sampling technique
In order to ensure that the research result is valid, appropriate sampling is essential.
Sampling can be done using probability sampling and non-probability sampling. For
the current study, probability sampling is used. Probability sampling is categorized in
simple random sampling, stratified random sampling and cluster random sampling
(Patten and Newhart, 2017). For selecting the respondents, simple random sampling
is used in which each member of the population holds a non-zero probability of being
selected for participating in the survey. Simple random sampling is used in order to
avoid the bias from selection of the participants.
1.5.2 Sample population
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Sample population is not specified as the research is done on a global area
which identifies the drawback faced while conducting the interview.
1.5.3 Sample size
For conducting the interview, 10 open-ended questions are prepared for 10

managers of social media enterprise to get an idea about the impact of social
media upon consumers in retail industry.
1.6 Data collection method and analysis
1.6.1 Secondary data analysis
The data gathered from the journal articles has been analyzed with the help of
thematic analysis techniques. In the process of the data analysis, different
themes have been identified and analyzed accordingly. Moreover, in this
research work the quantitative data will be used.
1.6.2 Quantitative data analysis
There are two types of distinct research methods which can be used to analyse
the data. One is quantitative and another one is qualitative. By these methods a
researcher can able to collect the data for the purpose of obtaining information
from them or to solve a particular research question. The Quantitative data is a
data collection technique or analysing technique which generate the findings in
the numerical data. Moreover, the qualitative data analysis is in form of the
descriptive accounts of observation of data. Even though it is usually good to link
quantitative data with other methods like in-depth interviews in order to make
balance between the findings of a research, this research is to identify the stage
where social media has obstruct in the consumer decision making process, in
which is to describe facts and reasons in different phenomenon (social media and
traditional mass channels) and to explain the case-and-effect relationship
between irresistible information on social media and consumers’ responses.
In order to analyze the survey results it is important to consider quantitative data analysis
technique. Through quantitative data analysis technique, it is possible to illustrate the
research results in a form of numerical data and statistical format (Saunders and
Bezzina, 2015). The survey results have been analyzed with the help of Microsoft excel
tool where percentage analysis has been done to present the data in
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form of charts. From the identified trend of the chart key trend of the answers has
been analyzed. For the purpose of this particular research work the quantitative data
has been gathers and utilized. With the strategy of the survey which has been
collected allows the collection of the large amount of data from sizeable respondents
in highly economical way. It also provides a logical and critical approach which allows
the researcher to control the measurement and the outcome of the survey which has
been conducted. Since the scope of the research is to reach the various individuals
ranging the different age and genders in the country and in the world and the more
responses will be collected the credibility of the findings will be high. Due to the
sample size the researcher can able to conduct the in-depth interviews with the
respondents which the respondents can able to provide their opinions and the
researcher can analyse their beliefs and attitudes. Besides the survey which has
been made by the open ended questions in which the respondents can able to
express themselves properly.
1.6.3 Research timeline
Table 3.1: Timeline

(Source: Created by author)
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Figure 3.1: Gantt chart
1.7 Data Quality-validity and reliability:
In order to ensure the validity of the research, the interview questions has
been tested, which will help the researcher to provide better questions to
assure that the respondents will not face any kinds of issues while answering
the questions. Before asking the questions to the respondents the researcher
has consulted and approved these questions by the thesis supervisor at the
time of outlining the survey questions. Moreover, before sending to the actual
respondents the researcher has try it out by sending it to few peoples in order
to get suggestions to improve do some of the modifications.
Analysing and conclusions of the research has been made on the actual numerical
facts which have been collected in the form of data, In order to maintain the verified
data. As for the reliability of the research it is refers to the stability of the measure
and the extent to which the data collection method will yield consistent analysis.
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2. Results and Findings
2.1 Introduction
In the findings, the researcher analyzes and represents the primary data
collection with the quantitative analysis method of research investigations.
With the help of findings and interpretation, the social media impact on the
consumer purchasing behaviours has been analyzed globally with the
increase of growth in retail industry. For the secondary analysis, the
researcher chose the thematic analysis. The articles are also been taken for
the secondary analysis to conduct survey with the thematic approach.
2.2 Social media and affects
Before understanding the topic it is required to understand what social media is.
Social media is the websites and the applications which enable the users to
create and share or to participate in social networking. There are many types of
social media in different categories. However it can be divided into five types:
1. Social networking sites

2. Social news
3. Media sharing
4. Blogs
5. Micro blogging
Now days it has been seen that the social media has been used to do marketing which
are affecting the buying behaviour of the customers. In other words, it can be said that it
is a process in empowering individuals or the companies to promote their websites,
products, and/or services through various online channels; it helps to interact with and to
tap into a much larger community that may not have been available in the traditional
advertising channels like television and printing media. It has been seen that in the
present time the people have a huge interest in the social web in which the people can
have the common interest which can be gathered from the thought sharing’s, comments
and the ideas. The social media now can be termed as the advertising channels. It is the
place where all the various business can listen and understand the needs of the
customers and analyse customers various needs and they can promote their product to
the vast social sphere. It has been seen that many
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companies spent a huge amount of money in their advertisements which will help the
company to create brand awareness. However, in the social media it is quite easy for the
companies to operate their marketing with minimum amount to be spent. It is just require
to open one page and to maintain it and by providing a few extra dollar it can reach upto
as many as the company wants to reach. Unlike the traditional advertising, individuals in
the social media era have access to contents that are not necessarily associated with
commercial intent (neutral); consequently, if a person like content, he/she is likely to pass
it on to their peers, families, and so on via social sites, then content will be spread out
quickly without interfering with traditional marketing.
2.3 Finding 1: Improving Consumer Mind-Set Metrics and Shareholder Value

through Social Media: The Different Roles of Owned and Earned
In this research, the researcher has assessed the mindset of the consumer and the
stakeholder through the social media. Hence the metrics of the consumer mindset has
remained unchecked. The researcher has included accessibility and likelihood model
with diagnosticity perspective in order to describe the effects of earned and owned social
media on the brand awareness, customer satisfaction, and the purchase intent as well as
link all these mindsets of the consumers to the shareholder value. There are 45 brands
that have been analyzed on a daily basis in the 21 sectors by using the vector auto
regression method. In this study, the researcher has included the positive and the
negative impact of the social media on the behaviour of the consumers.
The researcher has allocated 10% of the bulge in the marketing analysis of the social
media. 500 companies of the Fortune group have been analyzed. Among them 73%
have the account on Twitter, 66% have account in facebook and 62% access the
YouTube channels. The company has got social media exposure by voluntary as well as
a recommendation, user produced brand mentions (Statista.com, 2019). There is a
particular part of social media activity such as brand image, popularity; search for
information that a company has not directly controlled or generated has been named as
the ESM (Earned Social Media). On the other hand another social media activity such as
per view, star ranking, scrolling that a company has generated by itself is termed as OSM
(Owned Social Media). In this, the researcher has analyzed a conceptual framework in
order to better understand of the mentioned topic. Owned and earned social media have
been also discussed in this study as well as the stages of
23
the information processing of the consumers have also included in this study.
As per the online study, there are 2.46 billion social media users have been
identified in 2017 (Statista.com, 2019). It was understood that it is important to
have a good interaction experience with customers as it builds a bond of trust
between the two resulting in higher sales volume. This aids in the objective of
profit maximization for the organizations.
Figure 4.4: Rice of Social media in the retail industry
(Source: Statista.com, 2019)
Facebook Active monthly users of 2.07 billion

Instagram Active monthly users of 800 million
Twitter Active monthly users of 330 million

LinkedIn 500 million members
Pinterest Active monthly users of 200 million

Snapchat Daily active users of 178 million
Table 4.11: Current user base

Almost 300 million users are sharing their stories on the Instagram, by the increasing of
the rate of the social media the advertising activity of the company has been also
improved such as the advertisement are now allocated as per the targeted group. As per
the current studies, there are more than 500 million members on the LinkedIn, 178
24
million daily active users in the Snapchat, 200 million monthly active users in the
Pinterest. Through the help of the social media, the company, as well as the
organization, has been improving its promotion activity. In the instance of Pinterest, there
are several home decorator companies have been using their advertisement. According
to the data of the facebook, among 94 people out of 100 are using their Smartphone
instead of the TV. As a result, the advertisement on the social media has noticed by them
effectively (Statista.com, 2019). There are all or 94% of the total users are strongly active
on a monthly basis. As per an online report, there is almost 78% social media time has
been spending on the smart phone. In addition to that social message has been served
through social media. As a result, the consumer has been extremely conscious about
their lifestyle as well as health (Statista.com, 2019).
Figure 4.5: Rise of social messaging

Social messaging through social media has a great benefit to the business.
The consumers are using the email, the smart phone as well as social media
in the context of the retail industry.
25
Figure 4.6: Vital Needs for Influencing Buying behavior of Customer
It was understood from the above graph that it is important to provide relevant data
when communicating via social media for positively influencing the buying behavior
of customers. However, it is important to see the transparency and understanding of
customer demands when influencing the buying behavior of customers.
2.4 Finding 2: Effects of Social Network Marketing (SNM) on Consumer

Purchase Behaviour through Customer Engagement
Social commerce can be denoted as emerging market where business is generally

conducted via different types of social networking platforms. Social commerce site is
playing important role in order to influence the purchase intentions of customers.
26
Figure 4.7: Percentage of global people who use social networking sites
From a study, it is found that 71% of the users, who use the internet, have
active accounts on various social networking site (Statista.com, 2019).
Figure 4.8: Percentage of people globally on Facebook
27
Facebook and Twitter are the basic platforms of social networking site which is
used to analyze the interests of sellers or buyers. From a recent study, it is found
that approximately 2.32 billion of people use Facebook as active users monthly
(Statista.com, 2019). Therefore, it can be said that in context of retail industry,
this huge numbers of users might be targeted by the management of companies
or advertising their products or services. This article aims to develop a conceptual
model regarding social factors like social support, product uncertainty, and seller
uncertainty. In addition to it, this study also aims to develop relationship between
social factors within social networking sites and behaviour of users. Moreover,
result of this study aims to analyze how social networking sites may increase
purchase intentions of users within social shopping.
Figure 4.9: Social Media influences Buying behavior of Customer
It has been understood that social media has mainly had a positive influence
on the buying behavior of customers leading to increased sales volume in the
industry. It increased the brand loyalty among customers as well. However, it
results in a slight decrease in the number of orders placed by the customers.
28
As per the viewpoint of Barhemmati and Ahmad (2015, p.101), marketing tools
can boost profitability of substantially of an organization. In the context of
Amazon, it has been found that excellent customer service of this form has
enhanced the satisfaction of customers and the profit level of this form has
increased 10.9 % than year 2017 (Amazon.com, 2019). The other aim of this
study is to examine the influence of SNM on the ultimate buyers’ behaviour that
uses social network websites. Along with it, a survey has been done for this study
taking 50 respondents within campus of National University of Malaysia. The
result of this study would show relationship between purchase behaviour of
customers and engagement of customers within social networking sites.
Social media marketing or SNM is considered most important marketing efforts of a

business where stakeholders, as well as customers both, are the participants of the
social media websites. In this aspect, stakeholders of a retail company get chances for
interacting with their customers about problems and product requirements. In social
network marketing, many organizations use to advertise their products to reach more
potential customers. Therefore, it helps to develop bilateral relationship among existing
customers and the management of company. Customers are interacting with each other
regardless of restriction of pace, medium and time. As commented by Barhemmati and
Ahmad (2015, p.101) old fashioned method of communication between a company and
its customers have been changed into modern communication method. In the early days,
there were no help lines for customer service available in order to interact with the
companies. Nowadays, customers are telling the management of companies about their
needs, expectation, and requirements through online communication methods.
Therefore, it is important for a company to develop a two-way communication method
between its customers and management level by which they would understand their
views and feedbacks. Through the aid of customer service website, consumers can
review their purchased products and provide feedback about those products. It is also
important for a company to be active within social networking sites and communicate with
their consumers who are not developing any type of online presence and are losing every
type of competition.
Through the aid of several types of research, it is found that SNM critically influences
the purchase behaviour of customers who use different social networking sites like
Facebook, twitter, and Instagram for daily routine (Statista.com, 2019).
29
Figure 4.10: Percentage of global users of Twitter
From a recent study, it has been shown that number of Twitter users has nearly 326
million globally who have accounts on Twitter (Statista.com, 2019). Therefore, the
management of companies of retail industry has huge opportunities to showcase
their products in front of these customers. It has been seen that, in case of Amazon,
SN sites has increased the profit of this company by 6.74% (Amazon.com, 2019).
The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of the purchase behaviour of
customers by creating an emotional bond between customers and a brand or a firm.
As per the viewpoint of Barhemmati and Ahmad (2015, p.101), increased rate of SM
usages can be visible within every tiny corner of the world. People from several
countries use to spend a major amount of daily time on social media. In this
perspective, marketing department of companies selects different lifestyle groups for
targeting customers through social media. As example, marketing department of a
company generally targets open social groups of Facebook to advertise their new
products like bags, accessories, and clothing. Recently, Amazon sends messages to
their uses providing ideas about their new offers, sales, and coupon codes. This idea
30
has enhanced the number of customers of Amazon by 6.32% than the year
2017 (Amazon.com, 2019).
Another concept in this aspect is social networking site or SN. In the social
networking sites, user generally creates profile and communicate with each other, In
addition, they also post different information and after that, this information with other
users. As commented by Barhemmati and Ahmad (2015, p.101), Popularity the
social networking sites are increasing day by day due to the convenient access of the
sites. Users of SN sites can choose arrangements and appearances of personal
profiles which are truly favourable for those users. Those users can turn on as well
as turn off their chat window which is easily accessible. Different types of social
networking sites are available on internet and these sites are found easily through
the help of search engines. As per the viewpoint of Barhemmati and Ahmad (2015,
p.10), for the organizations who are targeting their consumers via social networking
sites, popularity of those sites and the total number of daily time spent by the
consumers on these sites need to be analyzed by those forms. Examples of those
popular Sites are LinkedIn and Facebook.
Figure 4.11: Time spend per day for users on the social networking site
(Source: Snakesquad.neocities.org, 2019)
Number of users of these sites is increasing day by day and it creates a

scope of displaying products in front of the eyes of consumers.
31
Marketers have utilized these social networking sites to do events, marketing
activities, internet marketing, sponsorships and social media marketing These
Sites are truly efficient for companies to track beliefs of customers and to
analyze their attitudes over a particular product or service.
Customer engagement emphasizes long term relationships with consumers for

aspect of companies. As per the opinion of Barhemmati and Ahmad (2015, p.10)
it can be denoted as how a customer of company is engaged to a product or how
loyal a customer is over the products or services of a firm. Marketing managers of
companies are monitoring the purchase behaviour, feedback, and expectations of
consumers for creating good bond between a company and customers. Popular
sites like Facebook and twitter monitor the individual preferences of the
customers through their web search and upload advertisements accordingly. This
increases the chance of buying that product by 90%.
From the findings and researchers of above study, it can be said that
eagerness of the marketing chiefs for linking above matters is truly high and it
is increasing still. New digital technology has been evolved which is used to
analyze the customer behaviours on social media platforms like blogs, wikis,
Web 2.0 and in the micro blogging websites like YouTube and Facebook.
These social media websites are influencing emotional perspectives of
consumers. In this aspect, it can be said that the management of a firm and
users communicate virtually through social networking sites and it can help
the customers for giving true opinions about new services or products.
Interaction of seller and buyer within these social media platforms

engagement that is not temporary.
A survey has been conducted taking 50 respondents from the retail industry. From the
survey, it is seen that people, who have income between RM 1000 to RM 1499,
percentage of those people spending time in social networking site is 16%. In addition, it
is seen that people who have income levels between RM 1500 to RM 1999, 10% of these
people spend their daily time on social network sites. Therefore, it can be said that
people with low earning have more user counts in SN sites that people with high earning.
Along with it, it is seen that people who have earning range of
32
more than RM 5000, 10% of these respondents have accounts on social
media websites.
Figure 4.12: percentage of social networking users
(Source: Barhemmati and Ahmad, 2015, p.10)
From the above figure, it is seen that nearly 60% of the respondents have user
accounts on Facebook which is highest among all SN sites. In the third position, it is
Twitter. Nearly 26.5% of respondents use this website. The least uses social media
website is LinkedIn. Nearly 2.3% of respondents use LinkedIn on a daily basis.
Therefore, for retail companies like Amazon, eBay, and Tesco, it is suggested
that management of these organizations may use Facebook for promoting their
products. In addition, they also use Instagram for advertising their products. In
the context of Amazon, it is seen that online advertisement of this retail form on
Instagram has improved its profit by 5.78% (Amazon.com, 2019). On the other
hand, in the context of Tesco, it is seen that advertisements this company has
enhanced its net annual revenue by 3.45% (Tesco.com, 2019).
33
Table 4.13: statistical analysis of survey
(Source: Barhemmati and Ahmad, 2015, p.10)
The above table represents the income level and the purchasing behaviour of
the respondents. The sum of squares between groups is 52.82. In addition,
the sum of squares within groups is 93.91. Mean square is 2.94.
Calculated frequency of mean indicates that emotional engagement, created

between the company and customers shows positive purchasing behaviour of
customers. Thus, it is clear that in order to enhance the purchasing behaviour
of consumers, advertisements within the social networking site is crucially
important. In addition, the value of sig, in this aspect is 0.43. Thus, the value
of Sig is more than 0.05. Therefore, the null hypothesis is not rejected.
Therefore, it clearly indicates that purchasing behaviour of customers would
be affected positively by influence of social networking sites.
From the above study, it is concluded that this research has been done with
help of the previous studies. This paper has also suggested that, in order to
enhance the effectiveness of advertisements, marketing managers of different
companies can take the help of social media for advertising their products.
From this study, it is also concluded that a positive linear correlation exists between
the customer purchasing behaviour and customer engagement. In addition to it, it is
found that 44% of low emotional people and 68% of high emotion people have felt
satisfied after communicating retail companies through online social networking sites.
It has also been found that retail; companies can use the SN sites for enhancing
customer loyalty and to analyze the purchase behaviour of customers. Based on the
analysis, both of the research hypotheses have been confirmed.
34
Figure 4.14: Improving Use of Social Media for influencing the Buying
behavior of Customer
It would be best to increase the social media pages used for interacting with
customers. This would lead them to communicate and influence the buying
behavior of more customers in the global retail industry. However, there is a
need for improvement of staff in order to positively influence the buying
behavior of customers in the industry
2.5 Finding 3: Investigating the impact of social media advertising
features on customer
2.5.1 Purchase intention
Social media is used as a platform for conducting advertising and marketing

activities. The Retail industry is spending a lot of resources, money, and time on
social media advertisement. Therefore, the study aims to evaluate the factors for
customer retention with motivating them by purchasing their brands. The conceptual
model deals with the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology
(UTAUT2) in context of hedonic motivation performance expectancy and habit along
with in formativeness, perceived relevance, and interactions. In this study, survey of
437 participants have been done using questionnaire and data was collected. Hence,
the study will focus on the practical and theoretical guidelines on marketers for
implementation of advertisement and effective plan over the social media platforms.
35
Figure 4.15: Social media advertising investment
36
Figure 4.16: Facebook users
37
Figure 4.17: Social media penetration
As opined by Alalwan (2018, p.65), customer is engaged with the social media platform
according to the perception and behaviour like Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, and many
more. However, retail industry started thinking of customer attraction towards their
purchasing behaviour which can help to build profitable marketing for them. 524.58 billion
USD was spent on advertisement as per the report of statistics (Statista.com, 2017). For
example, it is observed that Jordan is taken to be the fastest emerging county in context
of social users with the investment of social marketing activities with the rise of 7.2 million
users. In addition, around 32.3 billion USD has been spent on mobile advertising on
social media (Statista.com, 2017). From the illustrated graph, it can be observed that
social media users have been grown from 2013 to 23017 over 11.3% and hence it helps
to expand the retail business across the world. In addition, it can be predicted that
Facebook users globally will expand over
38
1.3% from the year 2017 to 2023 with the increase of social media
advertisement (Statista.com, 2017). From the third figure, it can be evaluated
that YouTube is more in use than the other whereas Reddit has less
popularity of social media advertisement.
As highlighted by Alalwan (2018, p.65), with the use of modern and interactive
technology (Web 2.0), firms-customer communication edge is represented via social
media. This helps to be more informative about their customers by communication. In
addition, researcher focused on conducting examination about the customer
behaviour by discovering the reaction and perception of customers over the social
media advertisement. Retail industry targets their customers' decision-making
process with the help of communication and promotion via social media
advertisement. For example in case of Woolworth, a retail industry focuses on social
media advertisement for customer retention and increased up to 38% of smart phone
users along with the GDP increase of 2.5% in 2016 (businesstech.co.za, 2019).
As discussed by Alalwan (2018, p.66), the concerned always remains with social
media advertisement for customer behaviour. Thus, many researchers have done
testing related to social media marketing issues. On the other hand, informativeness
and entertainment have an impact on social media by the attitudes of customers. The
habit of the customer also influences the perceptiveness of industry advertisement
perspective with the three dimensions such as perceived usefulness, perceived
enjoyment, and perceived use. Further, it has been researched that, habitual
behaviour could hinder negative impact on social media. Moreover, customer
attitudes are influenced by the role of organizational reputation. Social media
activities are formulated by the behaviour of customers. Therefore, with the help of
survey questions, factors examined are innovativeness concerns, perceived
usefulness, and privacy concerns. Credibility, mobile technology, and evaluations of
emotions are the target platform using Facebook. As cited by Alalwan (2018, p.67),
social media advertisement are charged free which enables customer to read and
watch the advertisement free of cost. Customer can be concerned about the price
value of the industry's advertisement via social media. The interactivity of high
degree is an attribute of Web 2.0 technology.
39
Figure 4.18: conceptual model
(Source: Influenced by Alalwan 2018, p.68)
Hypothesis has been created using the factors of Performance expectancy, Hedonic
motivation and Habit, Interactivity, Informativeness, and Perceived relevance.
H1: Customers’ purchase of products is positively influenced by

Performance expectancy in social media advertising
In online marketing of retail industry, customers are largely involved with the
new system as useful, productive, effortless and time-saving. Person targets
social media advertisement as valuable and useful for buying the products. As
per the viewpoint of Alalwan (2018, p.67), online purchasing behaviour of the
customer in malls is less useful comparatively with the online purchasing that
affects the performance expectancy. Therefore, the first hypothesis is proved.

Hedonic motivation in social media advertising
UTAUT2 is involved with the hedonic motivation role (Alalwan, 2018, p.68). Social
media platform has been proved to be entertainment and fun for the people. In
addition, customer attracts social media due to the attractiveness and creativity.
40
Empirical study proves to be an impact on social media advertisement by intrinsic
motivation. Therefore, the customer perception and reaction of purchasing
behaviour have been predicted by hedonic motivation based on hypothesis.
H3: Customers’ purchase of products is positively influenced by Habit in

social media advertising
According to Alalwan (2018, p.68), habits can be the articulated degree of judging the
actions of individuals. Habitual behaviour can be analyzed based on the daily
reaction to customer purchasing behaviour. In addition, customer is more habitually
engaged with the applications and system. Thus, Customer is likely influenced by the
social advertisement with positive reaction which follows this hypothesis.

Interactivity in social media advertising
Interactivity is the aspect emerged with social media platforms and online areas.
Further, the communication process is enabled by the interactivity with the
exchange between parties across online area. Therefore, level of interactivity
calculates the purchase intention of customer which follows this hypothesis.

Informativeness in social media advertising
Informativeness can provide information based on consumer purchasing

behaviour. Therefore, the informativeness level in social media advertisement
can empower consumers in order to possess better purchasing behaviour.
This follows the hypothesis statement to be true.

Perceived relevance in social media advertising
As opined by Alalwan (2018, p.69), customer preference is customized and

tailored by the advertisers using the social media platform. Accordingly, it can
be argued that social media advertisement is dependent on the decision
making for the achievement of preferences and goals of the retail industry.
41
As stated by Alalwan (2018, p.70), the survey done in this article reviews about
the result of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter users such as about largest portion
of users are facebook user of 71.2%, 65.3% of Instagram and 30.1% of Twitter
account users. Accordingly, with the 437 survey questionnaire conducted, around
69.1% of the participants use the following accounts which resemble the
popularity of the social media advertisement by the retail industry.
As per the discussion of the study, the main dimension is discovered of social media
marketing with the purchasing behaviour of the customer. Furthermore, social media
advertisement can give comprehensive, timely and up to date information in a
convenient way to the customers. Therefore, the customer can save their efforts and
time with the information research process. In addition to this, Alalwan (2018, p.70)
highlighted that the innovative feature of social media platforms can empower the
industry in order to accurately tailor and customize the messages and advertisement
in terms of customer's characteristics, lifestyles, interest, and needs.
Practical implication of this study can focus on the marketers who are engaged in the
social media advertisement. With the help of feedback and comments, marketers can
enable to judge their industry performance based on consumer purchasing
behaviour. In addition, firms request the marketers of the respective companies to
respond and track the comments, feedback, and inquiries. As mentioned by Alalwan
(2018, p.70), the use of chat rooms and live chat text can create interactivity for
customer services. Informativeness for the customers can help to cover the product
dimensions such as discounts, delivery, features, price, and availability with the
advertisement. The cognitive advertisement need to include higher quality, lower
cost, product availability and customer guarantee related to the feeling of consumers
to the targeted brand in retail industry. Further, the involvement of the interactivity,
perceived relevance and informativeness mechanism can results in the increase if
the performance expectancy of the social media advertisement for the industry. It can
be concluded that customer intention of purchasing behaviour has been analyzed
based on the performance expectancy, perceived relevance, hedonic motivation,
informativeness, habit, and interactivity. Further, Alalwan (2018, p.70) stated that the
new techniques like Scheduler R package) and Netvizz are needed to analyze the
data collection method.
42
2.6 Finding 4: The Effect of Social Media Communication on Consumer
Perceptions of Brands
Firms are depending on the market advertisement for retaining consumer with the
firm generated content. As the brand manager and researcher have understood
the effect of social media communication on consumer behaviour. As per the
viewpoint of Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.189), they research about 504
Facebook users of Poland in order to evaluate the impact of social media on the
customer purchasing behaviour towards the brand. In addition, the researcher
has also analyzed the brand attitude, purchase intention and brand equity for
conducting survey globally. In order to test the conceptual model, 60 brands have
been chosen in the article with the clothing industry of Poland.
Figure 4.19: Number of Facebook users in million
Form the graphical analysis, it can be observed that in January 2019, overall 10 countries
facebook users are expanded globally in which India ranked on top while the United
Kingdom lies down. Thus, with the help of internet users, the company can
43
expand its business with the use of social media communication towards their
brands on purchasing behaviour of customers.
The media have expanded globally over the past decade. As per the article statistic,
the internet accessing of people towards the purchasing behaviour exceeds about
34% of the population across worldwide (Internetworldstats.com, 2013). However,
about four to five internet users out of seven visits their internet sites every day. With
the increase of the social media user, online consumer behaviour can be understood
with the help of communication approach. As highlighted by Schivinski and
Dabrowski (2016, p.190), the customers are turning the traditional media via radio,
television, and magazines for the purchasing products. Traditional brand
communication is administered and controlled by the marketing managers with the
gradual increase of purchasing behaviour of the consumers.
Figure 4.20: Brand fan page of eBay
(Source: Facebook.com, 2019)
As opined by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.191), the retail industry for studying
its brand management has relied on the relevant research in terms of virtual brand
communities, advertisement, brand fan pages, and online reviews. The social media
44
impact on consumer behaviour can be determined by the gap of the firm's control or the
communication control with the purchasing products in retail industry. The new
technology such as web 2.0 with social media has helped internet users to expand their
online gallery of purchasing. Nowadays, companies are focused on the imminent need in
order to develop the two-way relationship between the customers for fostering
interaction. On the other hand, social media enhances the customer and the companies
to build peer to peer relationship with the attainable brand loyalty. For example in the
case of Tesco, the best performance of the firm is in February 2018 of about 27.8%
(campaignlive.co.uk, 2019). It is achieved with the help of creating brand loyalty to the
customer's purchasing behaviour. In addition, Tesco took around 35% of stake for the
online operation via social media in UK grocery retail (campaignlive.co.uk, 2019).
Moreover, in the article review, the firm creating the social media communication
approach is fully advertised by the marketing strategy and company. In the
communication, managers are involved in social networking for the rise of customer
purchase towards brand via Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Furthermore, the UGC
(user-generated content) has created powerful communities in order to facilitate the
interaction of consumer to consumer behaviour with accelerated communication.
However, Web 2.0 and Internet have entrusted proactive behaviour of consumer in the
purchase and information process. As per the viewpoint of Schivinski and Dabrowski
(2016, p.192), consumer insights and brand conversation have been grown by UGC for
the retail industry. In addition to it, UGC mainly focuses on consumer dimensions rather
than marketing it by professional as the primary advertisement over the internet can help
to create more brand equity towards the customers. Further, UGC covers three
conventions regarding the publicity over the internet are content needs to be publicly
available; content reflects creative efforts and content must create professional practices
and routines. Communication is integrating the UGC tools as effective marketing for
engaging consumers to the industry compared to the traditional channels. As commented
by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.193), brand equity for the company can drive its
growth and brand wealth. Social media communication while improving brand equity can
influence the customer to understand the most favourable branded product than the non
branded product in the same company. Therefore, in order to study the brand equity of
the company enhancing the consumer perception can be evaluated with the cognitive
perspective of
45
brand in the social media advertisement. Brand equity and social media
communication can be relatively dependent as it affects the internal and
external sources of information to judge the brand choices.
Social media is considered important for increasing the marketing campaigning

procedure in order to help customer buy products easily from the company.
Social media is not incorporating necessary ideas that can be improved in
increasing the profit of the company for future. Social media marketing campaign
helps in increasing the demand of the company as social marketing provides
relevant ideas that can increase the demand of the company for future.
On other hand, as discussed by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.194),
marketing campaign is necessary as it helps in gathering information and
media updates that can improve the profit of the company for future.
Therefore, marketing campaign on improving social media and attracting
customers helps in improving the profit earning for the company. Social media
lays a great emphasis as it helps in receiving information from particular
sources that can help in increasing the profit of the company for future.
As highlighted by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.195), incorporating new ideas
that can help in improving the marketing campaign is organizing program for
improving the brand awareness in order to attract customers. Henceforth, customer’s
buying decision depends on the positive and negative feedback received through
social media posts. It also depends on areas that need to be improved in organizing
marketing campaign for the betterment of the retail industry for future.
H1: Firm-created social media communication positively influences brand equity
As illuminated by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.194), brand

communication over social media is stimulus that causes positive effect in
customer over brand awareness. With the advertisement, social media
communication influences brand equity creating hypothesis
H2: User-generated social media communication positively influences

brand equity
The article research state that the customer is involved with the UGC for brand
advocates and sharing opinion about the products and brands with the customers.
Finally, UGC is the most influential component in order to make effective
46
communication with the customer for their purchasing behaviour towards the
brand rather than the traditional advertising.
H3: Brand attitude positively influences brand equity
Brand attitude judges the behaviours if the firms with the purchase interest,
brand consideration, brand choice, and purchase behaviour. Therefore,
empirical research shows the positive association and brand awareness to
achieve greater revenues. With the increase of brand attitudes, market share
increases of the company which creates this hypothesis.
H4: purchase intention is positive influences by Brand equity
In order to access the customer behavioural influence in social media

communication, the brand attitude with Facebook users adds purchase intention.
As opinionated by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.196), Customers are
frequently converting to social media for conducting the information search in
order to make purchasing decision. Thus, it is creating the hypothesis.
Further, in the article, the survey has been conducted with the brand page choices
with several Facebook users. The questionnaire has been done based on three
product categories of brand, generating an advertising brand benefits, brand page
with 500 subscription and Facebook users in the brand page with UGC. As per the
viewpoint of Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.200), in the survey around 60 brands
have been taken along with the 523 questionnaires for the industry in Poland. As a
result, the firms using social media communication has a positive effect on brand
equity and brand attitude. In addition, user-generated content also gave positive
effect on brand equity and brand attitude on facebook. Model 3H has been tested
between the purchase intention and brand equity.
It has been evaluated that most popular trends in the online branding and marketing
are the growth of social media in recent years according to the product popularity
towards customer. As opined by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.201), companies
such as Coca-cola, Starbucks, and Guinness are the one who is highly tuned with
their customers via social media inside their marketing agenda. Therefore, in order to
maximize brand visibility, social media sites offer convenience for brand managers
and marketers to collaborate with customers. In such context of customer behaviour
47
of purchasing, marketer needs to induce customer by participating in the social media
campaign with the UGC process. Further, the industry can nurture brand loyalty and
reduce service cost of the online products towards the customers. In the article review,
with the help of the social media advertising strategy, Coca Cola brand has generated
sales promotions. Moreover, the research has investigated the behavioural influences of
customers towards social media communication on brand attitude and brand equity.
Thus, the firm content does not directly influence the perception of consumers which
affects customer behaviour towards the brand. Finally, social media advertisement
creates a viral response in advertising to a large public view. Thus, the retail industry can
increase its brand awareness and brand attitudes towards the customer other than
competing with social media content of UGC.
Reviews that are posted on social media have a lot of effect on purchasing products
as feedback helps customers in getting an idea about the products. Thus, updating
posts and review creates a positive as well negative impact on purchasing products
from the online site or the company. In addition, viewing posts and review creates a
great importance as Amazon, Ebay and other retail industries are increasing its profit
on the basis of posts and reviews that is posted on the social media sites.
As evaluated by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.200), posting ideas and
concept regarding the improvement of the company helps in increasing the
customer attraction which in turn helps in increasing the demand of the company
for future (Amazon.com, 2019). Thus, online or social media posts help in getting
idea about the requirements that can help the company in improving its profit
level for future. Moreover, reviewing posts and updating profile helps in improving
the profit level of the company for future use and also help in identifying the
drawback that leads to the downfall of consumer behaviour.
In comparison to this, as suggested by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.202),
posts received through social media help in understanding about the positive and
negative side that lays an impact in improving the customer behaviour of the
industry. Reviewing post on social media hampers in purchasing products from a
specific company in order to improve the customer attraction procedure.
2.7 Finding 5: Customer social participation in the social networking
services and its impact upon the customer equity of global fashion brands
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People, who are up to date within an era of information technology, are offered to
communicate with the companies. As opined by Chae and Ko (2016, p.3811),
Participation of customers is crucially important for the aspect of online environment.
The aim of this study is to provide clarification in order to explore relationship with
customers and social networking sites. Internet is considered as the pathway for
directly communicating as well as interacting with customers. Different types of retail
brands like Woolworths, Amazon, and eBay are taking the help of social networking
sites for enhancing the net annual revenues. From a recent study, it has been shown
that advertisement through direct messaging has enhanced the net annual revenue
of Woolworths to a percentage of 9.78% (Woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2019). Therefore
it is seen that among all types of social networking sites, direct messaging service is
preferred by the customers of the retail industry. Thus, it is suggested that other retail
companies also may take this strategy for improving their profit level.
A Webpage update regarding the particular company need to be done approximately

within a timer span of 2 weeks. For Amazon it needs to be updated after 5 days
(Amazon.com, 2019). On other hand, as explained by Chae and Ko (2016, p.3810),
around webpage updating needs to be done after 3 weeks as Costco is a wholesale
market which is not able to update its profile frequently. Web page creation can be
done after 1 month as Woolworths are not often changing its selling pattern which
can become difficult in improving the pharmaceutical market.
The time required for making the social media update is 2 months. This procedure
occurs for eBay as it come second in online shopping sites which needs a frequent
update of social webpage for attracting customers (Ebay.com, 2019). In addition,
creating a web page take almost 2 days as Tesco it considered one of the most
popular retail companies which attracts consumer in purchasing product.
It is necessary to update web page profile for helping customers at attracting
towards purchasing product (Amazon.com, 2019). Thus, updating web page
plays a crucial role in improving the social media sites for attracting customers in
increasing the demand of any retail industry for future. Web page creation can be
done by taking guidance from Amazon and Tesco as it is considered as the most
popular sites that can attract customer without any difficulty (Amazon.com, 2019).
The Essence of a firm in the aspect of marketing activities is to analyze the needs of
the customers and develop products according to the requirements. From a recent
49
study, it has been seen that a huge percentage of customers approximately 43.25%
of consumers prefer social network sites communication medium with the
companies. Therefore, it can be said that in order to enhance the marketing profit of
the retail companies, management needs to focus on the sites. In addition to it, these
companies may introduce online shopping sites for showcasing their products. In this
way, customers would swipe the products and can choose the products according to
the expectations. It is seen that, in context of Tesco, introduction of the online
shopping site has enhanced their profit level by 3.78% (Tesco.com, 2019). On the
other hand, in context of Woolworths, the introduction of the shopping site has
enhanced the annual net revenue of 11.56% (Woolworthsgroup.com.au, 2019). This
increased statistics represents that customers of the retail industry generally prefers
online shopping sites than going for actual shopping for clothes and groceries, Thus,
an aspect of social networking sites, online websites have played most important role
for companies like Woolworths and Tesco.
This study has found the need for a thorough examination in order to build
long term relationships with consumers. As per the viewpoint of Chae and Ko
(2016, p.3810), Purposes of below study is to assess causal relationships
between the customers and environment of SNS services Apart from this the
other purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of social networking
sites on the purchasing behaviour of customers.
Nowadays, fashion brands and firms those have limited their social networking
services initially, have suffered major losses in the competitive market. In the
context of the retail industry in aspect of eBay, has not initiated its customer
service facility initially. Thus, this firm has faced nearly 6.38 % loss due to the
dissatisfaction of customers (In.ebay.com, 2019). However, in recent days, the
customer service facility of E Bay is excellent and customers can interact with
help centres instantly. It has improved customer satisfaction and consumers can
provide the feedback according to the experiences very smoothly.
Characteristics of the online site users can play a critical role in influencing channel
choice of customers regarding making purchases. As per the viewpoint of Chae and
Ko (2016, p.3810), self-efficacy can be denoted as the most noticeable attribute of
the customers who are engaged within different types of social media.
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The research on the social commerce sites reveals that customers who use social media
for communicating with the brands, self-efficacy of those consumers would enhance
through sharing of data and information with the management or companies.
In the context of the retail industry, from a study, it has been found that sales
of the retail industry are more than $25 trillion within the year 2018. In 2019,
the sales report of the retail industry is expected to reach $30 trillion.
Rank Company Worldwide Retail sales

1 Walmart $495.76
2 The Kroger Co. $115.89
3 Amazon $155.94
4 costco $123.84
Table 4.13: Representation of retail companies worldwide

(Source: Snakesquad.neocities.org, 2019)
The above table shows the representation of retail companies worldwide. From the
table, it is seen that Walmart has most sales percentage in retail industry. In addition,
Costco is in 4th position and the total sales revenue of this company is $ 123.84.
Primary differences among traditional e-commerce sites and the SNS service is
that consumer plays both of the role of seller and consumer through continuous
communication between consumer and the sellers. Hence it can be seen that
social networking service offers more convenient shopping experiences that the
traditional e-commerce sites to their customers. In addition, it can be said that
retail companies who have introduced their products within Instagram, has
achieved more profit than other retail companies.
Based on the discussions of the study, the following hypothesis of this study
can be formulated.
H1. Social networking service shopping aspect has positive influences on the
motivation of participants of SNS
H2: In the context of SNS service has positive influences on the social
participation of consumers.
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H3: The user orientation of SNS service has positive influence on motivation
of SNS participation.
H4: the user orientation of SNS service has positive influence on the
participation of customer brand.
H5: Trust has a positive influence on customer equity.
For the research investigation purpose of this study, a preliminary test has been
conducted among 37 graduate students. In addition, 5 experts from the textiles industry
also are asked for preparing the list of 3 global. Retail brands according to the popular
SNS services. From the trust, it has been seen that Louis Vuitton and Uniqlo are within
highest ranking. Therefore, it can be said that these companies have modified their SNS
services in order to attract more customers worldwide. The facility of the SNS services of
Louis Vuitton has positively impacted on the satisfaction of customers. From a recent
study, it is seen that annual revenue of Louis Vuitton in year 2017 was $9.9 billion and in
the year 2018, it was nearly $11 billion (Louisvuitton.com, 2019). Therefore, it can be
said that introduction of the online website of this firm has increased their percentage by
11.1%. Survey questionnaire has been drawn in the research investigation into test
validity of research hypothesis.
From the above study, it is concluded that the implementation of online websites
and SNS service is important for enhancing the satisfaction of customers.
It is considered as a difficult procedure to overcome the challenges faced by the

Amazon Company in selling products due to lack of consumer behaviour. On other
hand, as stated by Chae and Ko (2016, p.3812), Woolworths Company faces
challenges in meeting the consumer demands and also focusing on outside food and
liquor business which automatically lowers the profit. Amazon is not fulfilling the
demands of consumers, Woolworths is not able to supply enough food that can help
in improving the business and also consumer behaviour (Amazon.com, 2019).
Challenges faced by the companies are comparatively same as both the managers
are not able to cope up with the consumer behaviour. It becomes difficult to improve
the challenges faced by Woolworths. In comparison to this, as opined by (), Costco
Company faces challenges in the upcoming year due to rise of e-commerce. It also
faced difficult in increasing the profit from 2014 to 2016. After certain years the
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company faced threats which lowered down the profit level to 10.25% in 2017 that
create problem in improving the consumer behaviour. Challenges faced in due to the
rate of market capitalization were 31M while lowered 22.25M in the year 2016.
Tesco is facing challenges in increasing the operating profit margin which was
around 1.79% in 2017 which lowered up to -1.19% in 2018. On contrary, as
influenced by (), challenges turned up when Amazon and Woolworths joined hand in
case of supplying various products within a short span of time (Amazon.com, 2019).
The main focus is on inventing new ideas that can help in overcoming from
the challenges and improve the impact of social media on improving the
consumer behaviour.
2.8 Finding 6: The influencing factors of social media on buying behavior
In recent decades, social media plays a greater role in increasing the purchasing
behavior. Along with this the promotions and feedbacks of the customer also
influences buyers. Globally around 80% people are more engaged with the social
media. Hence the companies are more focused on promoting its product and
services through social media as it can reach out to maximum number of people. In
social media, customers used to provide feedbacks on the product so that it can help
in making decisions for the other customer whether it is worth buying or not. Along
with this Holt (2016, p.13) stated that through customer feedbacks, the companies
can understand the probable issues that are customers facing with the product.
Therefore the company can develop the product in order to fix the customer issues.
Figure 4.21: Social media influence increasing purchasing power
(Source: marketingcharts.com, 2018)
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Furthermore, social media also helps in to reaching the help and support team
easily so that it can communicate regarding the issues and the support team can
fulfill customer queries. However, sometimes it can be seen that customers are
providing wrong feedbacks on the products that is creating a challenge in context
of adapting the product. In addition to this, for promoting a product Facebook is
the perfect platform as more than 67.8% people spends more than 8 hours time
on Facebook (Godey et al. 2016, p.4). So it can be stated that using customer
feedbacks on social media in order to increase the purchasing power. In addition
to this another influencing factor is, the social media promotion helps customers
to avail attractive offers and be up-to-date with it. In this context, sometimes it is
not possible for the customers to go through the company website or outlet to
check offers. Hence, promoting the offers also attracts customers to get into it.
2.9 Finding 7: Elements of social media that is influencing purchasing behavior
2.9.1 Social media advertisements
In this study, it has been focused on the impacts of social media in developing the
purchasing power. In this context, one of the most useful elements is the
advertisement. Different companies with new and existing products used to promote
its product with different types of advertisement styles that is able to attract
customers. For example, in Facebook, it can be seen that there are many small and
large companies such as Nokia and Samsung creates advertisements for the
promotion of its newly launched product. Nowadays, video advertisement is the key
promotion method for the companies. According to Ashley and Tuten (2015, p.15), in
time of accessing Facebook, it can be seen promotional videos are there that attracts
customers more rather than promotions through image poster. In addition to this, the
companies used to focus more on specialized offers in order to attract customers.
Hence it can be stated that social media advertisement is the most useful elements
that is influencing the purchasing behavior of customers.
2.9.2 Social media presence of the companies
In recent decades there are more than 2.77 billion people that are using social
media. Erkan and Evans (2016, p.47) cited that, in order to expand the business
all the companies has focused on promoting the product through social media.
The online presence of the companies helps customers in following ways:
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● Keep up to date with recently launched products
● Comparison of price and specification
● Get to know more about the product without visiting online store
● Get to know the feedback of other customers
Therefore, if a brand puts all its attention in the social media promotion it can help in
expanding its business. In recent decades, the challenges between different brands
have increased to a new level. However the companies are more focused on
attracting customer through personalized offers and attracting promotional strategies.
2.10 Finding 8: Customer engagement behaviors in social media - Social
media campaigns
As per the viewpoint of Ngai (2015, p.32), billions of people are using social media in
recent times, different companies has chosen social media as the platform of
increasing the purchasing power. The rising difficulty of choices related to social
media is creating success in business expansion. However, there is different kind of
people with different choices. In the busy time schedule it is quite hard for the people
to get connected with the latest product by visiting stores and online website. Hence
90 % of the companies have presented itself in the social media platform.
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Figure 4.22: Active social media user
(Source: statista.com, 2019)

Through the social media campaign, branded companies are trying to engage people
towards its product. Beside Facebook, there are lots of social media platforms such as
Facebook, twitter, Instagram. According to a report, there are 1.65 billion people that are
using Facebook. Furthermore there are more than 300 million people that used share its
stories on Facebook, Instagram and twitter. There are more than 200 millions of active
users of Interest and 178 millions of active users in Snap chat. Kumar et al. (2016, p.7)
mentioned that these platforms are not so well developed yet for the marketing promotion
same as Facebook and Instagram. Along with this, people used to spend 792 minutes
per month in Facebook. Hence, the brands have decided to promote its product via social
media so that it can gain the attention of customers.
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3. Empirical part of the research
The company which has been chosen in this part is Elko Grupa which will help to
understand the impact of the methods which will be used to understand the
impact of the social media on the buying behaviour on the customers.
3.1 Customer Buying Behaviour:
There are many theories related to the buying behaviour of the customers and
the businesses which are constantly analyzing to understand how to persuade
the consumer to buy their products and services. It has been seen that many
customers feel that they need to purchase one specific product they will go
through a series of steps before making the purchase. However the pattern of
buying is different from customer to customer and their decision has been
affected by the several of factors like the cultural influences, environmental
influences and sometimes the customers own personality.
3.2 Various Theories of Customer Buying Behaviour:
There are few theories and models to analyse the buying behaviour of the
customers which has been mentioned below:
Generic Theory of Buying Behavior: if the customer has to buy a number of

products then the customer will follow the generic model of decision making.
By going through a process which will help them to make a decision. In this
situation it can be said that the buyer will able to recognize the need in which
the buyer will make a purchase in which they will do the research about their
products and their price. It can be understand by an example, one customer
will buy one washing machine as the old one is damaged and it will take allot
of money to repair so the customer will buy a new one but after analyzing the
price, features and design to make that purchase. If the customer is able to
purchase the product successfully they will more likely to buy the same
product from the same company
Cultural Theory of buying Behavior: the culture can influence the decision of
the customer to buying behavior. It is because the culture is his set of values and
the customer’s needs or beliefs which they have learned in the context of
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community. It has been seen that the beliefs will lead to the certain
buyer’s behaviors. The customer’s social class which has been based
on the group family members, their income, and their educations can
affect the buying behaviors. Often it has been seen that there are many
optional leaders in the group who can make some influence over the
buyer’s behavior in which the leader will provide his knowledge over
the products can affect the business of the company.
Buying behavior of Environmental Theory: it has been seen that the
buyer can exhibit the different buying behavior which has been based on
the certain situations. For an example. If the customer loves to eat the
peanuts as a snack but the customer is not consider its buying when they
want to impress their friends that means it has been depends on the
current situation or the environment. Another example will make it simple if
the customer who is working all day without even drinking water at the end
of the day the customer will feel thirsty and the customer will buy the bottle
of water which he will see first regardless of the price.
Buying Behavior in Internal Theory: it has been seen that many people
love to shop and the customer can able to go to every shop at every place to
consider and examine the price and quality of the product before making any
decision. However, some of the people have some personality which will
encourage them to select a particular product to buy it when they find it good
enough in terms of quality but not best in terms of its price or in the features.
The lifestyle of the particular buyer can also affect the buying decision. If the
consumer is living in society where the people have their own car then it will
be able to affect the decision of the customer and provoke him to buy
one car even it is not necessary.
All these methods can be used in the Elko Grupa which will help the company to
understand the requirements of the people living in the country as well as for the
world. By understanding these methods the company will able to provide better
services to their customers. Elko Grupa is one of the largest distributors of the IT
products in Europe and Central Asia. The company is acting like a consultant to the
various partners and wholesalers of the computer and electronic products. The
company have to understand the importance of the social media and their impacts on
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the company. To understand the impact of the social media it is require to understand its
impact need to understand the various points which has been mentioned below:
3.3 Customers as promotional agents
As it is briefly mentioned earlier, it is a common event to witness that the social media
page of any product and promotion has been brimming with the reviews provided by the
customers or the buyers of the certain products/services. It is a fact that these reviews
happen to influence the purchase behaviours of the segmented customers in general. In
discussion with this certain aspect, the opinions of Javornik (2016) have suggested the
coinage of social influencers which is a class that are supposed to represent the
individuals with an influential following status in the domain of social media. According to
Bai et al. (2015, p.540), influential or internet famous people arte the one who has gained
a huge amount of followers in different social media bases and thus are in a position to
create a public opinion. Worth mentioning names are Pew die Pie and Casey Neistat with
combined followers of more than 100 million in different social media platforms. Business
houses and politicians to exploit the public opinion can use this. After the recognition of
social media as an effective tool for promoting certain products/services, the established
business organizations has been heard to target those influencers for sponsored
promotion of the same. Thus, the social influencers can be considered as analogous to
the brand ambassadors of the respective milieu. As per a report, various influencers
charge an amount to post about a commercial organisation. Using this social influencer
has made this an extremely easy job. Millions of people are getting notifications in their
Smartphone. The increasing trend of social media addiction in the millennial generation
has termed by the researcher as the “magic maybe”, people are being observed to look
at their phone at an increasingly fast rate within very short interval of time. The
researcher to produce dopamine hits in the minds of the user coins this. This has been
exploited by the organisations. The social influencers have been seen as the messiah of
the free media. Their followers are blindly following their opinion about something.
Studies by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016) have shown that the opinions of these
influencers appear to impart a great impact on the customers independent of the fact that
whether the review is sponsored or not. Scholars have named it as ‘bandwagon’ effect.
This idea has been approved further by PwC total retail survey where almost 45%
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respondents of their survey commented that comments, reviews and
feedbacks are typical to influence the buying behaviour of the customers.
Apart from the consequences of the bandwagon effect, the customers are also been
discovered to shape their purchase decisions on the reviews and suggestions of their
friends and families. Almost 80% of the global respondents of the survey conducted
by PwC opined that the purchase behaviour has been influenced by the reviews
provided by the friends and family. Digital marketing is a very popular tool that has
been provided by the media platforms to help the organisations make targeted ads in
the platform. This has also shaped the public purchasing opinion. Whenever there is,
an individual observes a same advertisement in the different platforms repeatedly.
This changes the perception of the consumer about the products and ultimately leads
to make a purchase or make an opposite opinion about the product. Elko Company
must need to use the customers as the promotional agents which will help the
company to target more customers in the market.
3.4 Brand presence and social media
It is required for the company Elko to create awareness of the products which
they are selling it will create a brand presence in the market and it will help them
to make register their presence in the global market. Scholars of public relations
such as Colicev et al. (2018) have suggested the fact that drawing social
influencers to promote a certain brand will go in vain if the virtual visibility of the
brand is not proper. The virtual visibility in the domain of social media can be
acquired by a consistent and credible brand presence in the same. Alalwa, Rana,
Dwivedi and Algharabat (2017) emphasized on the term ‘strong feed’ which is
almost an inevitable condition for the business organizations to drive purchase
decisions and buying behaviours on their own. Furthermore, it is an exaggeration
to admit that higher number of posts is expected to come up with higher
probability of brand awareness. Thus, the emphasis on the term on ‘strong feed’
is not redundant and the impact of the term can be escalated by adding ‘frequent’
to it since it directly contributes to the enhancement of brand awareness.
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Figure 2.1: The Sales Funnel
(Source: Colicev, 2018)
In terms of enhancing brand awareness, the organizations like Elko appear to rely on the
traditional mode of advertising but scholars like Godey et al. (2016) have indicated to
difference significance on posting ads regarding a certain product/service in the social
media. This school of scholars appear to perceive ads in social media as an immensely
effective tool for exercising the aspirations of targeting of the concerned market. Thus,
the activity of placing ads usually comes out with a better alignment with the business
goals of the respective organization. This alignment will further ensure subtle governance
over the purchase behaviours of the targeted customers. The prime target of the
organisations is to make the consumer take the purchase. Earlier the purpose of the ad
swore to make the customer about the product. However, the social media also checks
on the progression of bad marketing. As the consumers can discuss and share their
thoughts about a product or service they have purchased. Inferior quality can lead to the
destruction of the brand image. Therefore, the organisations needed to be extra caution
when creating targeted ads. Javornik (2016) have discussed about the importance of ads
to ‘retarget’ a certain set of customers since an advertisement in a particular webpage
will drive them through a sales funnel that the respective organization can be aspired of.
The picture above empirically attempts to illustrate the phases a customer typically
undergo before
61
taking the decision of purchase. This image can be considered as virtual sales funnel
where the marketer can lead the customer to and drive the requisite sales out of it.
The study conducted by Barger et al. (2016) has suggested that advertisements in
social media are an effective tool to ensure repeated sales. Thus, most of the
scholars studying the relationship between the effects of advertisement and the
purchase behaviour have suggested that advertisement can be perceived as a gentle
reminder of a particular product/service. Furthermore, in case of out of stock
products, the advertisements can show complementary products, which might
enhance the brand loyalty of the respective customer. According to Ramanathan et
al. (2017, p.110), the enhancement of the brand loyalty is done by various other
activities, which make the consumer participate actively. Organisations promote and
conduct social media quizzes to make the consumer more attracted to the product.
Active participation makes the customer talk about the product in their community.
Organisations make the consumer feel more align with the brand by making them
visualising how the brand could affect an individual’s life. However, many have opted
for the negative marketing strategy. Luxury brands opts a strategy to make the ads
that focuses on the richer section of the society. This means making the customer
feel alienated with the brand. However, aligning the advertising aspirations with the
sales funnel is of paramount significance in the course of extracting a parallel
between social media promotions and purchase.
In the context of the brand awareness most if the organization has preferred to follow the
traditional tools of the advertisement. In this study, the researcher has focused on the
social media as an advertising medium. According to Swani et al. (2017, p.96), this new
era of the advertisement has played an important role in the consumer behavior. In
addition to that, the marketing organization have also started to target a specific group in
the context of the conducting the business. The active and relevant advertisement can
not only improve the brand image of the company but also the reputation in the
respective market. Advertising and brand awareness has also improved the business,
revenue as well as the expansion of the company. A company can create a web page
and can also promote this page through the social media. This image of the company
can be considered as the virtual image of the company as it can be easily accessed by
the consumers. From the viewpoint of Bai et al. (2015, p.112), this study is mainly
focused on the relation between the effective advertisement and the consumer
behaviour. However, the advertisement strategies on the social media
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can also influence the sales graph of the respective organization as well as
the company in the context of the global consumer.
3.4 Impact of social media on developing economic condition through

buying behaviour
Alongside the increase of purchasing power, the social media also has the impact
on the economic growth of the country. The purchasing power of customer and
the economy of a country are related in between; hence the growth in purchasing
power also helps to increase the economy of the country.
3.4.1 Democratization of information
The democratization of information helps the small brands to increase the

number of customers. The social media marketing is profitable for both the brand
and the social media operator. Social media is internally related to a series of
social platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. This is the new
trends of advertisement model. The customer’s engagement in social media
helps the brand in order to expand the business. The more the business expand,
it has pay more taxes to the government. Hence it can be stated that indirectly
social media is the great role player for the economical growth. In addition to this,
the more the business expands, the investors also agrees to invest on the
business. Furthermore, it is helpful for the small entrepreneurs as it can promote
its business easily through social media and compete with large companies.
3.4.2 Effect of algorithms of various media websites on social commerce
The advent of social media in the early 2000s has been mainly based on creating a
fun experience for its users. However, the social media has evolved from its early
stages into a giant social commerce industry. This Industry has mainly been a
hunting ground for many big retailing Industries and new start-ups to make their
brand image and affect consumer perceptions. The need of a proper algorithm in a
social media platform is justified when the amount of business houses depending on
social commerce is taken into account. As cited by Yasmin(2015,p.70), Business
house uses the tools that were provided by the social media platforms like Google ad
words or Facebook or Instagram marketing tools . This tool has been built on specific
algorithms that promote and affect the visibility of a brand or company. The
understanding of these algorithms is very crucial in regards to the understanding the
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rise and fall of various media houses. For example, YouTube’s algorithm is mainly based
on the understanding of more activeness on the platform. This can be understood by the
rise of T-series. A commercial music media company has now almost more than 87
million subscribers. This has been mainly possible due to excessive content posting by
the organization, which makes the YouTube algorithm to
push its content upfront.
Figure 4.23: Algorithm structure
(Source: Influenced by Todor, 2016)

The consumer behavior can be analyzed by introspection of this incident. The content,
which is being visible at the top of the social media pages, has a significant role in the
consumer purchasing behavior. Instagram however has updated its algorithm in 2019.
Instagram now promotes more users on the basis of personal relation, friends or family.
However, the Instagram business accounts provides all type of facilities like
advertisement, targeted ads etc. Facebook has updated its math game by addition of
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promoted ads everywhere. Facebook has no necessary filter to block ads.
This is a very acceptable approach for the Business houses.
3.5 Influencing consumer behaviour through influencers
Influencers in the context of social media have been nonexistent in the early 2000s. It
has seen massive rise in the last 4-5 years. This can be mainly accounted to the
facts that more people are using social media on a daily basis. The rise of various
social media platforms has also given few people with a huge amount of
unprecedented followers. People from various backgrounds who are publishing or
creating content for the consumer have gained massive popularity. Business houses
absorbed this idea and used this to make Influencers to promote their band.
Figure 4.24: Influencer marketing economics
(Source: influenced by Liu et al., 2015)

As cited by De Veirman et al. (2017, p.800), millennial generation has been accused of
following these influencers without questioning. The Business houses are using this as
an advantage. Less money is allocated to the product quality whereas more money is
being allocated to the digital marketing by influencers. Influencers play the role of
potential buyers and carefully use their platforms to place the product. For example,
Casey Neistat , an independent Youitube creator has been used by Mercedes to make
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an ad for its new model. Liu et al. (2015, p.50), have coined influencer marketing.
This is considered the most effective form of marketing as this decreases the
resource allocation for advertising, content and video. Moreover, the brand image is
being sure to be communicated to millions of followers around the world. The
consumer of this trick is mainly the social media users. Social media users knowingly
or unknowingly are a consumer to the marketing strategy. This also helps making a
brand image among the consumers and drastically improves brand recognition.
3.6 Consumer decision-making process
Consumer decision-making process has been cited Xie and Lee, (2015, p.205), as to
very vulnerable. The business houses have been trying to exploit this vulnerability.
Figure 4.25: Decision making Process
(Source: influenced by Zhang and Benyoucef, 2016)

Decision making process of the consumer can be divided into the following stages
1) Recognition
The recognition is of paramount impotence in the decision making process of the
consume3rs. The consumer trend to identify the ideal stage and the actual stage that
the consumer is put in. The consumer is more likely to get attracted to the ideal stage in
order to get more recognition from its peers. For example, seeing a sky resort in an
Instagram post makes the consumer more aligned to visit that exact place.
2) Information
Users tend to search about the information on the product or the services that they are
going to avail. This search results tend to show the pictures, budget rates, previous
66
customer reviews. These factors hugely influence the consumers to but that
product or the service
Figure 4.26: Reasons for using Social Media
(Source: influenced by Zhang and Benyoucef, 2016)
3) Pre Purchase
Evaluation before the purchase has been made the consumer tend to make
a search about the alternatives available. The consumers search on various
search engines or social media platforms. This searches if turn out to be
positive and the consumer is satisfied with the product and its pricing then
the purchase has been made (Menon et al., 2016).
4) Purchase
The consumer tend to buy the product from their website and after
availing the product the consumer tends to post on the social media
platforms. This makes the product available to their peers and close
relatives, which in turn changes their perception about the product.
5) Post purchase
Post purchase, is a very crucial area for determining the effect of the product on
the market. The social media platforms have been extremely influential in the
communication process. The users tend to communicate with their friends and
actively post about the positive or negative reviews of the product. If the product
67
stands out in terms of it claims. The positive reviews make it a
contender in the market.
3.7 Challenges involved in influencing buying behavior of
customerssing social media
1. Exposure
The exposure of customers to the various social media networks defines their
attitudes towards the buying behavior. It has been noted that exposure is a
critical factor that determines the level of customer online buying behavior. This is
because it defines the manner in which the customers are searching the
information regarding the products and services. As opined by Lee (2013, p.51),
a number of customers do not have an online presence owing to their economic
status or traditional preference of purchase. The number of active users defines
the rate at which the products of a company will be purchased through their
online site. As per the research, about 98% of people globally active on social
media sites where only 11% opt for the micro blogging site (Lee 2013, p.51).
Since there have been a number of social media platforms the exposure of
customers to the appropriate platform defines their buying behavior. It has been
noted that social media such as facebook and twitter as well as instagram has
been accessed by people of age ranging from 11-65 years of age with the
maximum traffic of being the age group of teenagers and adults. In addition to
this the social news websites are mainly accessed by the age group 40-50 years.
68
Figure 27: Types of social media sites used on daily basis
(Source: Lee 2013, p.45)
However, it has been noted that the companies have been facing issues in
considering the social network preferences of the customers. In most of the cases it
has been observed that the companies are using then social media platforms based
on their usefulness. However, they fail to conduct a research on the fact that specific
customer groups have specific social media preferences. Some of the customers do
not have access to facebook and twitter. In this case the companies marketing their
products or services only on these sites have limited customers.
2. Attitude
Customer attitude towards the usage of social media and accessing the
promotional events on it depends on their attitude. In countries such as South
Africa and New Zealand, the customers are mainly influenced by the quality of
the products rather than their promotional events on the social media. In addition,
most of the rural areas in these countries do not proper social networking usage
culture. The facebook users in South Africa have been 19.8 billion whereas in UK
it is 32.7 million. This difference in statistics is due to the fact that the South
African culture still prefers the use of traditional mode of lifestyle as well as
buying. As per the annual report, the online buyers of PWC in Russia are 71%
69
whereas in Germany it is 36% (Lee 2013, p.52). Hence this defines the attitude of
the customers that have a great impact on their buying preferences and that is
also mediated through social media. Since social media has emerged as a
platform for internationalization of business through digital marketing, the
attitudes of customers in accessing these platform is seen as a major challenge.
On the basis of a number of scholarly articles it can be deduced that customers
prefer market9ing through social media in most of the geographical areas. As
argued by Alalwan (2018, p.70), traditional advertising is still preferred in some
regions where digitalization enhances the complexity of products and the related
information. Attitude of customers in accessing social media for gain information
regarding a product or service is also influenced by the brand image.
3. Decline in the organic reach
The number of monthly users on facebook and twitter is over one billion, while that in
instagram and pinterest is hundreds of millions. To have a continued traffic on the
channels, the company designers use a number of complicated algorithms. This
enhances the content of the marketing event on social media page in order to attract
a number of customers. However, this complex nature of these algorithms often
creates security challenges for the company (campaignlive.co.uk, 2019). Moreover,
the algorithms might also become frustrating and limited to certain coding. In most of
the cases the customers also does not feel connected to the company owing to the
company owing to their onlie presence only. In some cases the customer queries are
not solved and the management team fails to analyze the customer preferences. As
argued by Schivinski and Dabrowski (2016, p.189), the face to face communication of
customers with the executives help in building a strong bond and also facilitate
further future purchase. On the other hand, Lee (2013, p.45) stated that in the
present era of digitalization, advertising using social media adds to brand image and
organization productivity.
4. Related Cost
The cost involved in such social media marketing costs huge and is also included
in the operational cost of an organization. In order to attract the customers, a
number of channel traffic, digital attributes and pay-per-click has been involved
that adds extra cost to the organizations. For example, TESCO has spent 84
70
million British Pounds on their social media advertising in 2017
(campaignlive.co.uk, 2019). This has been a huge amount that is not possible to
be afforded by many SMEs. This reduces the competitive advantage of such
companies in the market since the high value ads provide attractive content to
the customers influencing their buying behavior positively. It has been argued
that a number of multinational companies spent huge amount on their advertising
that also tend to reduce their sales. This is because they fail to spend on quality
maintenance and packaging. In contrast a report stated that TESCO gained £297
million revenue in the same year that was due to their strong online presence
(Internetworldstats.com, 2013). This has been due to the fact that the content of
social media influences the preference of customers and provides the reliable
information about a product or service. This in turn enhances the traffic to the
websites and their sales rate. However, quality should also be a parameter in
order to keep the potential customers engaged. Compromise in quality can
hamper company sales to a great extent.
3.9 Conclusion
In this study, the researcher has reviewed several articles regarding the impact of social
media in the context of the global consumer behaviour in the retail industry. The
researcher has discussed all the factors that have an impact upon the consumer
behaviour in the retail industry as well as the online purchase and selling nature of the
recent updated technology. The researcher has clearly established the positive relation
between the social media and the behaviour of the consumers in the retail industry.
71
Conclusions and proposals
Conclusion
In this study, the researcher has clearly established the positive relation between the
social media and the behaviour of the consumers. The various topics have been
analyzed through the five chapters. In the first chapter of the introduction, the researcher
has included the research area as well as the background such as the rise of social
media and its relation with the retail industry. In the aim and the purpose of the study has
been describing the main requirement of the study. In this research, the researcher has
included the research question as well as a hypothesis in order to have a better
understanding of the topic. Limitations of the study, as well as the thesis outline, have
also been included. In chapter two of the research theoretical framework has been
conducted in order to analyze the previous study. In chapter three descriptive research
designs as well as deductive research approach have been conducted. There are
secondary quantitative research methods used in order to collect the information. The
researcher has also discussed the ethical consideration as well as research timeline
regarding the implementation of social media on the consumer in the retail industry. In
the chapter four of this study, the relevant article on the regarding topic has been
discussed in order to gather the information in the relevant topic.
Linking with objectives
The main objectives of the research areas below:

● To identify the role of social media in the context of the global market.
The research objectives of the study have clearly linked with the research topic in
order to analyze the impact of the social media in the behaviour of the consumers
● To analyze the effect of social media in the buying behaviour of the
global consumers
In this research, there is all the role of the social media in the context of the global
consumer market has been analyzed properly. In addition to that, the effect of social
media in the buying behaviour of the global consumers has been also established.
● To analyze the role of social media as an advertising medium in the context

of market strategies.
72
In this research, the researcher has described the role of the social media in the
advertising medium on behalf of the retail company in order to improve the business.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1
In order to upgrade the consumer behaviour in the context of the social

media, the retail industry has to be more active on social media for improving
their brand image as well as their popularity.
SMART Analysis
Recommendations
S-Specific It is specific because it improves the brand image.
M-Measurable It is measurable because all the social networking sites

are technologically enough updated in the context of
their database.
A-Attainable It is attainable because of an engaging simple technique.
R-Relevant It is relevant because it can improve the revenue as well as

the popularity of the company.
T-Time specific It is time specific because popularity has not to be

achieved in a small time frame.
Table 5.1: Recommendation 1

Action Plan
Activities Time Span
73
Research in the respective 1st Week
market regarding the business.
Finding the appropriate social 2nd-3rd Week
media sites in order to

accession.
Open an account in the 4th-5th Week
respective social media sites.

Be strongly active as well as 6th-7th Week
access the account on a daily

basis.
Table 5.2: Action plan for Recommendation 1

Recommendation 2
The company has to be technologically updated in order to align with social media for
several reasons such as advertisement, branding, promotion and many others.
SMART Analysis
Recommendations
S-Specific It is specific because all the recent business strategies of the

successful business are based on technological up gradation.
M-Measurable It is measurable because daily monitoring of the gradation

can be achieved.
A-Attainable It is attainable because all the software and the online

technology are easily available in the market as well as
professionalism can also be hired.
74
R-Relevant It is relevant because it has the power in order to improve the
business.
T-Time specific It is time specific because it has to be implemented in a

specific manner in order to avoid the hazards.
Table 5.3: Recommendation 2

Action Plan
Activities Time Span

A specific research has to 1st Week
be done in the context of
the specific business
organization.
Hire professionalism in the 2nd-3rd Week

respective field in order to
avoid the consequences.
Implement the upgraded 4th-5th Week

technology as well as
Continuous monitoring of
the recent up gradation.
Link with social media 6th-7th Week

sites through the
technology in order to
improve the business.
Table 5.4: Action plan for Recommendation 2

Limitations of research
In this research there are some limitation has been included such as the time limitation,
fund issues, and many others. A few of the work have been unexplored due
75
to lack of time. If there is enough time more sample can be taken in order to collect
more data regarding the behaviour of the consumer in the context of social media.
One of the most important limitations of this study is lack of fund allocation in the
transportation, data collection and many others that have affected the study.
Future scope
The research has provided several data that can be used in future studies as
well as the new resources in the respective field. Advanced research on the
impact of the social media on the behaviour of the consumers can be
conducted based on this study in the future. This research has been served
as the secondary basis information. In the future, the research has to come up
with a better solution as well as attractive alternatives in the respective issues.
However, this research has been conducted through a comparative analysis
regarding the global consumer behaviour as well as social media.
76
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Appendix 1
Figure 1: Facebook web page of eBay
(Source: https://www.facebook.com/ebay/)
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EVALUATE THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE

BUYING BEHAVIOUR OF A CONSUMER

1.2 Customers as promotional agents.................................................................................................. 12

1.3 Secondary analysis......................................................................................................................... 13

1.3.1 Theme 1: Customer engagement behaviours in social media: capturing innovation

1.4.1 Research process..................................................................................................................... 17

1.4.2 Primary research process........................................................................................................ 17

1.4.3 Secondary research process.................................................................................................... 18

1.5 Research methods.......................................................................................................................... 18

1.5.1 Sampling technique................................................................................................................. 18

1.5.2 Sample population.................................................................................................................. 18

1.5.3 Sample size............................................................................................................................. 19

1.6 Data collection method and analysis............................................................................................. 19

1.6.1 Secondary data analysis.......................................................................................................... 19

1.6.2 Quantitative data analysis....................................................................................................... 19

1.6.3 Research timeline.................................................................................................................... 20

1.7 Data Quality-validity and reliability:............................................................................................. 21

2. Results and Findings........................................................................................................................ 22

2.2 Social media and affects................................................................................................................ 22

The Different Roles of Owned and Earned.......................................................................................... 23

through Customer Engagement........................................................................................................... 26

the customer equity of global fashion brands...................................................................... 48

2.8 Finding 6: The influencing factors of social media on buying behavior..........................52

2.9 Finding 7: Elements of social media that is influencing purchasing behavior................53

2.9.1 Social media advertisements.................................................................................. 53

2.9.2 Social media presence of the companies............................................................... 54

3. Empirical part of the research.......................................................................................... 56

3.1 Customer Buying Behaviour:......................................................................................... 56

3.2 Various Theories of Customer Buying Behaviour:......................................................... 56

3.3 Customers as promotional agents................................................................................. 58

3.4 Brand presence and social media................................................................................. 59

3.4.1 Democratization of information............................................................................... 62

3.4.2 Effect of algorithms of various media websites on social commerce......................62

3.5 Influencing consumer behaviour through influencers.................................................... 63

3.6 Consumer decision-making process.............................................................................. 65

3.7 Challenges involved in influencing buying behavior of customerssing social media.....67

Conclusions and proposals..................................................................................................... 71

Figure 1.1: Segmentation of Online users over the world...............................11

Table 3.1: Timeline.......................................................................................... 31

Objectives of the research

The objectives of the research are:

To analyze the role of social media in influencing buying behaviour of consumers

To analyze impact of social media marketing strategies on the buying

of the consumer behaviours well as the purchasing behaviour of the consumers.

hence it has significant impact on the buying behaviour of consumers.

H3: Although social media influences buying behaviour of consumers in a

Limitations of the study

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

provided the use of ethics in the research work.

Chapter 4: Results and Analysis

Chapter 5: Conclusion and Recommendations

1.2 Customers as promotional agents

1.3.1 Theme 1: Customer engagement behaviours in social media:

Social media has several impacts on the consumer’s behaviour such as

Figure 4.2: The S-O-R model

(Source: Police et al. 2018, p.46)

consumers in the context of advertisement as well as purchase in social media such as

survey regarding the research firm of the online market.

Figure 4.3: Social Media used by Retail companies

Descriptive research design helps in accumulating data through observing the

1.4.1 Research process