American International Journal of Available online at http://www.iasir.net Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences ISSN (Print): 2328-3734, ISSN (Online): 2328-3696, ISSN (CD-ROM): 2328-3688

AIJRHASS is a refereed, indexed, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary and open access journal published by International Association of Scientific Innovation and Research (IASIR), USA (An Association Unifying the Sciences, Engineering, and Applied Research)

Social Media and Customer Purchase Decision 1Shantanu Prasad, 2 N. K. Totala,3I. C. Gupta 1Assistant Professor, Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resource Development, Symbiosis International University, Pune DK-1/176, Scheme No. 74, Vijay Nagar, Indore-452010, INDIA 2Reader, IMS, Devi Ahilya University, Indore 265, Usha Nagar Extension, Opp. Vishram Bag, Ranjit Hanuman, Main Road, Indore, INDIA 3Former Dean, Management, Devi Ahilya University, Indore R. N. T. Marg, Indore (MP), Pin-452001, INDIA

Abstract: Use of is rampant worldwide. In India the number of active users of has gone to 82 million till June 2013 (increase of 15% since January 2013). It has touched 100 million (number of users) in 2014 which is just next to US. 75% of Facebook users access it through mobile phones. As per TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), 89% of 198 million internet subscribers access it from mobile devices out of which majority are users of social media. One of the greatest advantages for marketers is increasing brand awareness and hence attracting leads. Companies communicate customers more efficiently because social media offers huge opportunity to reach people in a new way. The most effective marketing tool is customer advocacy (word of mouth) because people trust what others talk. Literature on social media usage and effectiveness is available but there is a need of scale development and validation for the accurate assessment of impact of social media on customer purchase decision so that it could help managers to formulate effective and efficient strategy for social media campaign. Keywords: Social media, purchase decision, purchase behavior, buyer behavior and online marketing

I. Introduction The impact of social media on customer purchase decision is very high. In general the steps in buying process of a customer are one’s need recognition, information search about the product, then comparison of available different alternatives and finallythe purchase decision is taken to satisfy one’s need. Because of technology advancement, social media enables access to authentic information at opportune time even when the customers are at home and hence they can do comparisons and have better control from anywhere in the world. This media is facilitating people to reach restrooms and grocery stores anytime from anywhere through mobile phones or computers or any other device [3]. The trend in India is also changing; advertisements are not producing expected result. In Canada, Print, radio and television advertising has gone down by 41%, 26% and 22% respectively. Approximately more than 66% marketers and managers feel that the Internet plays very vital role in connecting the customers with the brands [37].In India also, Digital marketing has beenstarted effectively because it is cost-effective and appealing to the customers. Smart phone has increased the social media activities; approximately 75 million people in India use internet on mobile phone out of which 19.8 million users are using social media on mobile phone and 85% users of social media are youth [17]. Multinational companies are using Facebook and to communicate with the customers. Social Media is influencing consumer behavior andis proving to be the preferred media all over the world. In India the use of internet has increased 45 percent from 2011 to 2012 [21]. India has become third largest Internet user after China and United States and Japan has gone to fourth position.According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) the number of Internet subscription in India was 164.81 million till March, 2013, and seven out of eight persons access internet through mobile phones [47]. By the end of June 2013, the internet subscription was 198.30 million (20 per cent growth from previous quarter) as per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.With this growth rate, the number of Internet users will cross 260 million which is approximately the number of internet users in US [8]. Use of social media in India has increased; the number of active users of Facebook has gone to 82 million till June 2013 (increase of 15% in last 6 months). It has touched 100 million (number of users) in 2014 which is just next to US [48].75% of Facebook users access it through mobile phones. As per TRAI, 89% of 198 million internet subscribers access it from mobile devices out of which majority are users of social media [43].Social media like; Facebook, YouTube etc., have become choice of people because it offers two-way peer-to-peer

AIJRHASS 14-691; © 2014, AIJRHASS All Rights Reserved Page 166 Shantanu Prasad et al., American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 8(2), September-November, 2014, pp. 166-171 multidimensional communication ease as compared to traditional ones [5]. Social environment and relations are getting defined in new manner as people (customer / user) are spending time and interacting through social media more [23]. Through online communities people connect to each other and enjoy social ties and trust like in real life they do. Companies realize importance of and word of mouth spread and hence create fan page on Facebook, Twitter accounts , blogs etc., [5]. Members of online brand communities participate and get relevant information and companies are exploiting this for the marketing of brands through such virtual relationship with customers [40]. Companies can increase brand awareness and hence attract leads through social media as communication with the customers become very easier and faster with multiple options. A case in point is Dell which generated revenue of more than more than $6m through Twitter in 2009-10. It is very difficult through traditional media to spread word of mouth effectively through influential advocates because recruiting such advocates is very challenging job. Reference [4] shows that customers connect to each other and gain impetus by doing so through blogs, social networking sites; MySpace, YouTube and so many other online communities. It is, therefore, required to review all dimensions of social media usage related to customer purchase decision to conclude scope for future research which could help managers in formulating strategies regarding social media campaign. II. Review of Literature There has been emergence and continuous growth in social networking sites since 2000, which have been enabling people to share and enjoy in various fields like education, news, music, movies etc. This started affecting business environment in terms of transactions, advertisements and products / brands information.As per Merriam- Webster dictionary social media is "forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and blogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)" and networking is "the exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions; specifically: the cultivation of productive relationships for employment or business." Word-OF-Mouth that is exchange of words from one person to another is proving to be most influential way of advertising and experts feel that it has become pillar for interactive marketing [1]. Customers develop relationship with each other by content sharing and interaction through participating in new social networks [27]. With the web 2.0 technologies, social media enable people to share and create content pertaining to brand or anything with the use of internet resulting in change in online consumer behavior [31]. There is impact of such change on companies, products or brands. Customers are becoming more powerful as they are now more dependent on information shared among themselves about the brands they interact about rather than the information provided by the firms ([39], [15]). Such interactions have greater impact than traditional way of marketing ([12], [51]). Email was discovered during 1960 [6] but the internet got available to the people from 1991.

Social Networking Social networking sites are websites which provide services to the users to develop contacts by searching/ finding and adding friends / colleagues / relatives online to their profiles and also by creating groups/ communities / forum. They can interact, send messages and keep updating their profiles.Google Images (Google I), Flickr and Yahoo Images are some popular picture sharing websites. Social news web sites enable us to find and share materialon internet. There is provision of uploading links and , and also there is provision of voting and writing comments, for example;Digg (www.digg.com).Some of the popular social networking sites that were created in 1990s were Six Degrees, BlackPlanet, Asian Avenue, and MoveOn. Blog site; Blogger and site on which customer can read and write product review; Epinins were also created. People used to post comments on webpages through ThirdVoice. File sharing was possible through Napster which lead to violation of copyright laws as music files were shared avoiding normal distribution methods [42]. In 2000,sites;LunarStorm, six degrees, , ryze, and Wikipedia were launched which enabled people to share common interest in education, music, entertainment and friendship. In Fotolog, sky blog and came into existence in 2001 and MySpace, Linkedln, lastFM, tribe.net, etc in 2003. Facebook Harvard, Dogster and were created in 2004 and in 2005, Yahoo!360, YouTube, cyword, and Black planet came into existence [30]. LinkedIn is most popular professional networking site.

A. Facebook Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites known for “friendship”. At the end of 2004, Facebook had 1 million active users and by march 2013 the number has gone to 1.11 billion [46].It was launched in 2004 [19]. It was created by Mark Zuckerberg who was a student in Harvard University and others [7]. On Facebook personal profile is created; friends are added, messages are posted, automatic notifications are

AIJRHASS 14-691; © 2014, AIJRHASS All Rights Reserved Page 167 Shantanu Prasad et al., American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 8(2), September-November, 2014, pp. 166-171 there when messages, comments and photos are updated. Users can join different groups as per common interest; college group, organizational group. In 2010 at the time of FIFA football world cup, 8 million users got registered with Facebook after viewing the ad which Nike did with Facebook.Companies are exploiting this popularity of Facebook and are using communities on it to build up relationship with them. With the help of social ads, sponsored pages and apps, brand groups and other such marketing tools, they are using such platform to communicate with the customers [50].

B. YouTube Videos are uploaded and shared through YouTube as it is one of the most popular social sites for the same.In 2007 the bandwidth of YouTube was equal to that of entire internet in 2000 [9]. The bandwidth of YouTube was approximately US$1 million a day [53]. It is the world's most popular online video community, where one can see and upload videos. YouTube, which was founded in 2005 by three PayPal employees, facilitates a platform to connect people and play the role of major distributor for original content creators and advertisers. It is based in San Bruno, California and it uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display videos (user-generated), movie and TV clips, music videos and video blogging.Google Inc. purchased YouTube In November 2006.In July 2006 it announced that over 65000 new videos were being uploaded per day and 100 million videos were being viewed every day.

C. Twitter Twitter was founded in 2006.It became popular because of provision of micro blogging and usage by celebrities [49].Friend feed was founded in 2007. It was used for consolidated updates from different social media. Facebook acquired Friend feed in 2009. In 2008 Ping.fm came into existence. This micro blogging and networking enabled users to post to many social networks at a time [26].Net Log (earlier name were Facebox and Bingbox), the Belgian social networking sit was created in 2009 for the youth of Europe [2]. came into existence in 2010.It is a social site that works through Gmail by enabling users for status updates, photos and links and also facilitates to extend the activities on other sites like Facebook etc., [24]. Google Blog Posts is one of the popular blog hosting sites. Twitter is one of the most popular micro-blog social networking services through which users post and seemessages (Tweets) through the users’ profile page. Messages are received by the followers who subscribe (or become friend) to the author’s profile and such messages can be restricted by the author to any subscriber or friend in the circle. People are using such social media through the web, texting messages through mobile phones (with internet connection), or external applications.Such social media have become very popular now days to connect with people at large or people of the country and communicate instantly and effectively. Facebook and Google+ have become main means of communication for business because of its real-time information sharing among users or friends with ease and speed [36]. There is need of promotional strategies which could be two-way communication (conversation with customers) [4]. Such changing need is changing the ways companies are spending their money [32]. The impact of offline media in terms of customers’ engagement and brand experiences is decreasing so more investment is being done on social media and customer analytics to assess the impact. Consumers give more importance to brands mentioned in blogs and the “likes” the brands get on social networking sites than the information provided by the companies for their brand [13]. 20 per cent of people of Canada participate in discussion online through social media [44], 63 per cent of people in the age group 18 to 34 years use social networking site; like Facebook [29]. Is it the case that fundamental change is inevitable because people are adopting these upgraded new technologies and idea, is a question for marketers to ponder over [33]. Such new ways of communication are distinguished from that of traditional media in terms of more consumer engagement, exchange of information through many ways, messaging and tracking [3]. The way social media is gaining importance among mass, it is going to be most important tool for the marketers, scholars and practitioners to comprehend the online behavior and take the advantage.

Social Media vs. Social Networks We have been developing and upgrading our technology throughout the history which has been making our communication smoother and more effective [10]. For sending and receiving messages over long distance telegraph was used which started in 1792 [42]. Reference ([18], [20]) show Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist and Ferdinand Tonnies, a German sociologist, were the pioneers of social networks during 1800.According to Tonnies social groups could exist because members shared values, beliefs or conflict. Durkheim integrated empirical research with sociological theory.Radio and telephone were used for social interaction in late 1800, though through radio only one-way communication was possible [41]. Phone phreaking was the word used in 1950 about which Brett Borders has said that phreakers hacked (got unauthorized accessed

AIJRHASS 14-691; © 2014, AIJRHASS All Rights Reserved Page 168 Shantanu Prasad et al., American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 8(2), September-November, 2014, pp. 166-171 through self-made devices) the mailboxes (Telephone system) of corporates and hosted first blog and podcast [6]. We can understand social Media as strategy for broadcasting, and Social Networking as usage for connecting with people [14, 45].Through social media communication or interaction is done with people at large whereas social networking is a means of communication or interaction among audience with common interests [14]. So, social media is a system or communication channel and social networking is a two-way communication.Social networks gained momentum in 2005 with Yahoo 360, YouTube and Facebook. Only Harvard community had access to Facebook initially, but later to high school students and then it was made accessible to everyone. Facebook got 1 million new users every week in 2007. Through Yahoo 360 people with common interest could connect or get connected with their friends by creating profile and photo album. Reference [31] shows that social media is one of the applications of internet which facilitates generation and exchange of user-generated material.It is referred as user-generated material or media; some ads are liked or not liked because of the fact that those are created by customer [5]. Social media have enabled organizations to reach customers online and interact with them about the brands and build the brand reputation.Reference [31] showsKaplan and Haenleindifferentiate social media which have three components;concept, media and interface. Different segments of users use online interaction for the satisfaction of their needs [22]. Such electronic media have not been acknowledged so much earlier that these facilitate customers to recognize their need and communicate to the concerned companies accordingly [3]. People, some times, have more faith on these media as compared to traditional promotional mix sponsored by companies [3]. The importance of social media varies worldwide. Reference [11] shows that the research (about 23 social media sites) conducted by Chan and Guilletanalyses that the most widely used were Twitter (56.7%) and Facebook (53.7%) and other significant social sites were YouTube (38.8%), Flickr (26.9%), and TripAdvisor (23.9%). According to them all hotels appear to their marketing activities through various social media sites and they also found that approximately 22% hotels used blogs for such activities, and few of them used Linkedln, MySpace, Second Life to communicate with the customers. Chan and Guilletsuggested that they should select particular social media as per organization specific traits.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in US conducted a successful awareness campaign at the time of H1N1 virus outbreak in 2009. Through Twitter, widgets, web 2.0, and YouTube they disseminated relevant information to the masses to actively participate against the swine flu [3]. As a result 3 million views of H1N1 related YouTube videos were recorded by CDC and 1 million followers of Twitter linked through their account to H1N1 link. So people got involved actively for the social welfare and they could take decisions related to H1N1 virus [3]. Companies which analyze and understand the interests and need of audience and formulate the social media marketing strategy accordingly are successful (Vinerean et al., 2013).Customer purchase decision is taken in five steps; 1) Need recognition or problem recognition, 2) Information search, 3) Comparison of alternatives, 4) Final purchase decision and 5) post purchase behavior [34]. Five-Stage Model of the Consumer Buying Process [34]:

Problem Information Evaluation of Purchase Post Purchase Recognition Search Alternatives Decision Behavior

Problem recognition is the first step of customer’s purchase decision process. It drives decision making because it is the difference between the present state and the desired state [25]. The moment the customer feels the drive from within he / she starts searching information and collecting data from different sources. If such information resolves his problem or appears to satisfy his need, he will take final purchase decision or else he will like to collect more data [35]. In the stage of evaluation of alternatives the customer compares different choices which can solve the problem; by doing so the customer develops believes and attitude (positive or negative) towards such different choices.The customer starts analyzing critically and responding over different attributes of the alternatives and their advantages and disadvantages [38]. In purchase decision stage the customer make his mind decisively after classifying different brands. In post purchase behavior, the customer is either satisfied or he regrets his purchase decision which depends on the purchased product whether it lives up to the customer expectation or the product performance is not up to the expectation [35]. Out of many consumer decision-making models the model which is broadly at the core suggests three steps broadly: search of information, evaluation of different alternatives, and post-purchase behavior [16]. In this process of purchase decision, customers think about the attributes of different products and services logically and avail the trial to take decision about particular product which can satisfy his need in minimum cost [25].

III. Conclusion The different usages of these social media are broadly in terms of gathering information, doing interaction, doing enquiry, doing discussions, creating and witnessing advertisements, downloading and uploading of

AIJRHASS 14-691; © 2014, AIJRHASS All Rights Reserved Page 169 Shantanu Prasad et al., American International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, 8(2), September-November, 2014, pp. 166-171 pictures, images and videos. These have impact on customer purchase decision in terms of need recognition, information search, alternatives evaluation, final purchase decision and post purchase behavior. There is a need of scale development so that impact of social media on customer purchase decision can be assessed accurately which could help managers to formulate effective and efficient strategy for social media campaign.

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