Impact of Social Media on Consumer Buying Behavior

This research is about the study of the Buying process of consumer's complex purchases, that keeps a special emphasis on how the process is being influenced by the use of social media. Here, the complex buying behavior refers to the infrequent purchases by the consumer with their high involvement that makes a significant brand difference. Social media is becoming a new trend. Over the last decade, the World Wide Web has seen a burgeoning in user generated web technologies like blogs, social networks and social media websites. All in all, that is known as social media and these technologies are the actual reason in the enablement of expansion in the user generated content, a community that is worldwide. Social media has given rise to the online platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, where people can connect with each other, share thoughts and the content. This revolution of social media has given new way of gaining the information on the products as well as on services. One consumer's opinion and feedback on products and services can be dominated by strangers on Social media, which subsequently influence the opinions in the offline world also. But undoubtedly Social media has given the power to the consumer where content is generated by them only through online conversations so consumers are the one who play an important role in making or breaking the brand. The marketers try to understand the utilization of Social media by the consumers and their deciding pattern on the basis of the content showed there that can change their decision process. The research also explores that how the abundance of the content and the user generated information can change the buying pattern of the consumers. The six phases of customer decision process, also known as EBM model has been used. The research has also been done to know the relevance of the model in the context of Social media usage. A quantitative survey has been done to explore the aspects of the customer decision process.