The evolution of consumer behavior in the digital era (age) ; the social media saw the world move from a linear, retail-focused model to today’s iterative, digital-centric model of customer behavior. Nowadays, customers have sufficient access to smartphones and the internet to go beyond the shelf when evaluating a product that they want to buy. The influence of social media on consumer behavior keeps accelerating in all markets. Therefore, the modern customer decision process is much more iterative. Customers today hop between different stages of the funnel between multiple companies, thanks to the power granted by the internet.
SOCIAL INFLUENCES OF THE CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN THE DIGITAL ERA
Social media has opened up a new opportunity, both for the business and consumers, to interact with each other on a real-time basis. In this study, consumer behavior in the digital era (age), we integrate qualitative user-marketer interaction content data to analyze the evolution of consumer behavior. The impact of community contents from consumers and marketers on the consumers’ decision process is tremendous. Consumers also control potential self-selection biases and relevant factors such as pricing, promotion, social network attributes, consumer demographics, and unobserved heterogeneity. However, the influence of social media on consumer behavior has proven to be very effective. Our findings show that engagement in social media brand communities leads to a positive increase in purchase expenditures.
DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS ENVIRONMENT
Today, connected consumers rely more on their peers’ recommendations to seek information and prioritize the quality of their experience with the brand as par with the product itself. Furthermore, the evolution of consumer behavior forces companies and brands to adapt their message and communicate differently with their clients. Customers are bombarded with thousands of pieces of information every single day over the internet. This has a great influence on consumer decision processes.
For this assignment, and thanks to new technological innovations and the analysis of personal data accessible online, I believe marketing campaigns will be more personalized, more targeted towards the connected consumers, and will aim firstly to satisfy the customer’s experience. The influence of social media on consumer behavior will become even more important to the success of digital campaigns.