Effect of Social Media Advertisement on Purchasing Behavior: A Response from Female University Students and Female Faculty Members

Due to the characteristics like cost-effectiveness and access, Social media has evolved as an effective and popular online marketplace where companies can offer their products and services to a larger audience. Advertisers utilize Scheduling tools, hyper-target audience, and personalized content using data and analytics to maximize the benefits of social media as an advertising platform. In the context of traditional advertising, studies have identified certain factors that significantly influence the effectiveness of ads. This includes, Consumer attitudes towards the medium, Uses, Mood, Involvement, and the extent to which the medium is interactive in nature. The present study intends to seek the effect of social media advertising on the purchasing behavior and the association between consumer’s perceptions of social media advertisements and buying behavior in the context of said characteristics. To find the relationship between the effect of social media and study variables, primary data has been collected using questionnaires from 396 female students and faculty members from three public sector universities in Lahore, Pakistan. The effect of advertisement is measured on a four-point Likert scale from high effect to no effect according to the participants’ opinions The extent of social media advertisement’s effect has been explored by applying an ordinal logistic regression model. Findings revealed a significant effect of the time spent on social media by a user and buying behavior. Similarly the buying behavior was also reported to be affected by the type of advertisements, attention, perceived positive role of these advertisements in making better decisions, consideration of these ads as helpful in improving standard of living, and kinds of advertisements. The variables family income, education, age, university, status, daily hours, motivation, kinds of advertisement, and source of advertisement, are more likely to move in the higher category of the effect of advertisement on purchasing behavior with an odds ratio>1. The findings reveal that social media advertising influenced the purchasing behavior of female social media users. It is proposed from the study results that companies should focus on publicity elevation activities using social networks as this is a less costly, more effective method and addresses a large target audience.