The Effect of Social Media on Consumers Purchase Intention (Research Paper Sample)

The effect of social media on consumer’s purchase intention
Name
Institutional affiliation
The effect of social media on consumer’s purchase intention
Introduction
Social media use is currently growing at an astronomical pace. Twitter and Facebook are becoming the communication tools in the stock market thus exhibiting their power in affecting enterprises. It is for this reason that management of social networks is of particular importance in the business world today. The questions of social media research, its role in driving globalization, social and political upheaval are becoming considerable factors in business performance. As much as websites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin are known to provide business the opportunity to link with customers, their specific effect on customer's purchase intentions remain unclear (Dabholkar, & Sheng, 2012). Therefore, the basis of this research is the need for research-based information in clearly understanding the effect of technological social systems on driving demand hence the business success. The research will consider how the social aspects of technology and marketing, combine to create the beneficial E-marketing.
Recent research has been dealing with the general effect of social media on business performance. Thus, there is substantial need to consider the consequence of social media on customers buying choices and intentions. Technology is proving to be a behavioral factor in business because of its possibility to make individuals deviate from decisions frontier of neo-classical economics. The deviation is particularly because of the emotions triggered by social media (Rapp, Beitelspacher, Grewal, & Hughes, 2013). Understanding the dynamics of social networks is thus important in avoiding the miseries of negative impacts of social media. Customer’s purchasing intentions are critical to business success since they can affect the business either negatively or positively. The negative effects of social media are more pronounced because they can cause the business a severe harm that might take years to remedy. The research is useful to business decision makers because it will bring research-based information regarding the effects of social media to their businesses.
Literature Review
Social media involves a diverse range of online, verbal forums counting blogs, chat rooms, sponsored discussion boards, inter-consumer email, products rating forums and websites, social networking websites, audio, movies, photographs or images containing sites, and online discussion forums and boards just to name a few (Hanna, Rohm, & Crittenden, 2011). Owing to the dynamics of communication system associated with the increasing use of the internet and social media, understanding the prevalent technologies is becoming indispensable for business success (Berthon, Pitt, Plangger,& Shapiro, 2012).
The criticality of social media in business is very much profound especially now that there is increasing use of personal wireless devices like cellphones that are projected to expand and popularize social networking websites (Kim, Gupt & Koh, 2011). The mobile and internet technological innovation has provided social media, which in turn has provided a new dawn for marketing (Naylor, Lamberton,&West, 2012).Business decision makers can achieve the maximum utilization of social media information only if they integrate social media information in their strategic planning (Wang, Yu, & Wei, 2012).
Latest studies have confirmed that the wide number of the world's population is utilizing social media, and consumers are finding it useful in referring to the sentiments of other consumers prior to making product purchase resolutions (De Vries,Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012). The success of product marketing thus proves to be embedded on social media. Considering enterprise perspective, it is, therefore, essential for business managers to analyze the purchase intentions of consumers grounded on social media marketing (Hutter, Hautz, Dennhardt, S., & Füller, 2013). Analysis of consumer’s purchase intentions will support and contribute to effective decision-making as well as e-commerce development. Recently, research has considered consumers purchase decisions in respect to online websites but less has been considered about the utilization of social media obtainable information in decision-making having in mind its purchase intention influence (Pookulangara, & Koesler, 2011). Conclusively, the literature review brings clear how social media is influential in purchase intentions of consumers but little is done in regards to the use of the social media derived information in decision-making. This research will assist in help bridging the gap between social media information and enterprise decision-making.
Research Method and Approach
In the current literature and the social research exercise, there exist three widespread and well-established purposes of research - description, explanation and exploration (Hair Jr, et. al, 2015). The techniques differ based on data collection, research objectives as well as the research questions emanating from the objectives (Bryman, 2012). The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of social media for managers in decision-making owing to the effect of social media in influencing the purchasing intentions of consumers. Saunders et. al, 2009, consider that a research with a primary focus of gaining insights concerning a recent phenomenon such as social media is exploratory in nature. However, this research considers a closer attention to social media but further aims at revealing the relationships between various variables.
The variables in this case involve the decision-making by managers as a dependent variable and several other independent variables emanating from the social media effect to consumers purchasing intentions. The research is a survey that will be carried out once. The respondents will involve selected one top executive from ten randomly selected multi-national companies in the world. Randomly targeting multi-national firms will maintain the objectivity of the research in addressing a worldwide issue of the existing gap between business decisions and available social media information. A total number of 10 structured questionnaires will be administered online and excel spreadsheet and SPSS software used in analyzing the data. Graphs, tables and charts will be used in presenting descriptive statistics of the research.
The proposal
Although the phenomenon social media is new in the business world, its importance is critically growing vivacious in the current business mix (Mangold, & Faulds, 2009). Considering the aspect social media in regards to customer buying intentions, the management of the primary three social media revolution sites (Google+, Twitter, and Facebook) becomes of importance especially for a company striving to bring its commercial activities up to speed (Chi, 2011). In making marketing decisions, firms require extensive information on the behavior hence buying intentions of its target customers. The importance of this research in bridging the gap between social media information and business decision making cannot be undermined.
The study will consider collecting evidence-based information on the importance of social media in influencing consumer purchase intentions. The research will then consider whether the various social media using firms are gathering relevant information on the same. After collecting the aforementioned data the study will analysis the entire chain of social media information identification, the considered importance, its use in decision-making and will finally recommend the best ways of bridging the gaps that are eminent in current use of social media information in decision.
Despite the growing awareness of the significance of social media in business, various business managers and administrators do not efficiently utilize the social media researched based information in making critical decisions (Weinberg, 2009). Social media can assist in brand showcasing, digital exposure increase, loyal prospects development, mutually beneficial relationship creation and boosting search engine and traffic ranking (Chen, Fay, & Wang, 2011). All these aspects are vital in influencing customer purchase intentions hence decision making. The full potential of social...