Impact of Social Media Usage on Consumer Behavior

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of the impact of the use of social media before purchase. Today, the Consumer is inclined to use various social media tools to stay connected with the outside world. Social media is consistently used to do online shopping these days.

There are many factors that influence the use of social media for shopping. One, today Companies are connecting themselves to potential and existing customers through this platform which lead to potential selling and buying. It also serves as a great platform to communicate, inform and promote the product or services.

With many reputed Companies making their presence felt on the social media sites, Customers are finding it convenient to seek information online to make their purchase decision. One may find two set of categories of customers who indulge in social media. A set of customers who will explore the products and services and its reviews online to finally make a purchase offline. And the other set of customers, who would purchase online looking at the reviews and exploring the variety of products and services offered. This paper analyzes the factors that are considered to use Social media while purchasing both online and offline.

The research was done among internet-savvy consumers in Pune area with a convenient sample size of 286.Based on data analysis, there is a significant impact of social media on consumer behavior. According to the data analysis done and its significant value in ANOVA table, it can be seen that the various parameters of social media like social proof, product awareness, promotions and offers and social influencers have an impact consumer behavior, thus Null Hypothesis is rejected & Alternative Hypothesis is accepted.

In social media, the factor that impacts the consumer behavior the most is reviews/ratings