Discuss the impact of social media communication on consumer purchase pattern.

Identify gaps, give

recommendations and proposal for betterment.

Impact:

Social media can be termed as the collection of apps and websites that allows users to create and share
content and socially enhanced networking. Social networking sites have almost 1.73 billion users all over
the world (eMarketer, 2013) that shows the impact of social media. Social media advertising or
communication has a huge impact on consumer buying behavior. Business owners can encourage
people to use social media while shopping by including social media in their point of sale marketing.
Social media influences shopping behavior in all age groups but specially youngsters (Dieangruthai,
Voramontri, Webster and University of Thailand). Now a day’s youngsters and students are spending
more time on social media which includes Facebok, Instagram, Twitter and so on. By considering this,
most of organization are now focusing on social media advertising (Khanna and Saxena, 2013). For
organizations, advertising of products on social media is cheaper than traditional advertising and people
spend more time on social media that increase reach of the advertising as well. In today’s world, most of
the people which includes students and youngsters are on social media and spend most of their time on
it (Leslie, Klieb, Webster and University of Thailand). According to Facebook, in 2014 facebook has
earned $5.4 billion more revenue from advertising on facebook. Priyanka, 2013 has revealed that, word
of mouth, posts about product and reviews about products influenced buying decision of consumers.
Now consumer have more information about products as compared to sellers because of social media.
Agarwal and Prasad concluded that, electronic word of mouth has become most important factor for
consumer. As consumers check online reviews and comments about a product before purchasing and
make positive or negative perception about that product according to it. Furthermore consumers are
intended to change their purchase decision. Sharma and Rehman also revealed that negative and
positive electronic word of mouth has a great impact on sale of company and image of brand. Social
media influenced both intention to purchase and actual purchase. Pedraja and Yague, 2011 examined
that customer seek information from different sources which comprises of online reviews, comments
and online experiences of customers when he has intention to purchase. After that he evaluate
information and make a decision to buy a product.

Recommendations:

 Be accurate and honest about your product.

 Be aware of your audience and be respectful to your customers.
 Be sensitive about the content you share.
 Be confidential
 Be effective