Central Queensland University: Social Media and Buying Behavior

This report investigates the impact of social media on consumer buying behavior, focusing on brand awareness, marketing strategies, and consumer decision-making processes. It explores how social media platforms influence brand perception, customer engagement, and purchase intentions. The report examines the role of social media in shaping consumer behavior, including the impact of online advertising, brand communities, and peer influence. It also analyzes the methods used to collect and analyze data related to consumer behavior, such as surveys and statistical software. The research aims to determine the effects of social media on consumption patterns, brand awareness, and referrals, specifically referencing companies like Woolworths and Central Queensland University. The report further discusses the importance of understanding the relationship between social media and consumer behavior to improve marketing strategies and business performance. Overall, the research aims to provide insights into how businesses can leverage social media to enhance customer engagement and drive sales.

Running head: THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOR 1
The Impact of social Media on Consumer Buying Behavior
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Aim and research questions.........................................................................................................................3
Research objectives.................................................................................................................................4
Research questions..................................................................................................................................4
Preliminary critical literature review...........................................................................................................4
Brand awareness and buying intention....................................................................................................4
Collective value creation.........................................................................................................................5
Brand-related social media......................................................................................................................6
Methods of data collection and data analysis...............................................................................................8
Gantt chart...................................................................................................................................................8
References.................................................................................................................................................11

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Introduction
As a result of the advent in the internet over the recent past has broadened the
opportunities available to businesses, for instance the solution platform being one of them. It is
prevalent that the existence of the internet has allowed people the chance to utilize online
platforms as a medium of communication such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp among
other platforms that has resulted to business interactions without the need for physical meetings
(Godey et al., 2016). In addition, as part of the internet experience, social media platform is an
essential communication channel. The internet has advanced into a vehicle for social
communication that connects individuals from different parts of online communities. The
significant contribution of social media is that it has transformed the approach through which
communication between marketers and consumers.
Aim and research questions
All over the world corporation are continuously in search of for new approaches to reach
consumers. Therefore, organization are current placing substantial value on the manner through
which social media hence it should be used to nature customer brand insight to sway their
purchasing objective. According to Alalwan (2018) the strategic integration of corporations to
the usage of social media will gain advantage over those that have not put them in place.
Through evaluating the influences of social media on labelling as well as advertising ways, a
study of the current works on social media usage and brand awareness help to ascertain
successful approaches to enhance customer involvement through social media. In light of this
statement, the primary goal of this paper is to explore the impacts pf social media on consumer
buying behavior through the following research objectives.

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Research objectives
i. To determine the impact of social media channel on the consumption pattern of
consumers on Woolworths financial performance.
ii. To explore the relationship between social media awareness and referrals of Central
Queensland University and Australia as a whole.
Research questions
The research paper seek to answer the following research questions:
1. What is the impact of social media channels on the consumption pattern of consumers in
Australia’s Woolworths Company financial performance?
Preliminary critical literature review
Brand awareness and buying intention
The rise in the usage of social media has resulted to a key change in the manner through
which buying customer brand cognizance and making interconnection between brand awareness
as well as the purpose to buy. The major move is the fact that brand are no more basically static
descriptions but a proactive as share of social course. Research has shown that currently brands
are regarded as a continued social process, where value is co-related in the negotiations and
interplay of several stakeholders (Husnain, & Toor, 2017). Brand value and brand awareness are
connected social correlations and the reaction within social connectivity through which
significance becomes an aspect of brands and the significance of brand relations in fashioning
value and enhancing customer decision-making (John, Emrich, Gupta, & Norton, 2017). Adept
corporations have acknowledged that customers have uncountable brand options and
opportunities on a day-to-day basis and social media impacts the way they perceive dissimilar

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brands at the time of making buying decisions. Indeed, even at the time of change in social
media mechanism as well as the inclined use of technology customers still undergo a collective
set of steps when it comes to making decisions that influence their buying options. At the4 time
of determining the type of product to purchase the shopper first attains consciousness and
familiarity with the product and then subsequently develop constructive or destructive emotional
state to the product before finally taking action to purchase or reject the product.
According to a study conducted by Harvard Business School it has found that models
moves alongside a progression of effects, which influence the way a customer makes decisions,
with technology being the first stage of product recognition (Yahia, Al-Neama, & Kerbache,
2018). In another way, a consumer makes the first decision through the first minutes of seeing
the product on whether to buy it or not centered on the first acknowledgment of the product
(Khatib, 2016). Therefore, in case the customer does not have an optimistic relation with the
recognition, it is not possible to move to the next phase of decision-making. Consequently, the
first approach is critical in addressing consumer behavior. As a result, business should recognize
the value of using social media mechanism as a behavioral tool in the ladder of customer
behaviors.
Collective value creation
During brand community development, social media identification in the communal as
well as social drivers play a major part in value formation. Kumar et al. (2016) asserts that using
social media helps to create communities that links the advancing use of technology with the
development of value-creating approaches in business sector. On the same note, these
communities’ aids in creating value through sharing information, creating dynamic, generation
of extra avenues to support consumption as well as significant responses to products and

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advancing a competitive consumerism driving force (Ramanathan, Subramanian, & Parrott,
2017). According to many researchers, they argue that these factors fall into two main groups:
features created by users and features advanced by the company. Often, social media platform
such as Facebook promotes a high extent of consumer-generated information, which could be
utilized to backing social behavior about products to improve brand acknowledgement.
For example, some of the most influential tools that are linked to the usage of social
media in supporting shopper decision-making echoes the social media mechanism used in
building collective value. Additionally, socialization about certain prospects as well as
knowledge play a role toward influencing decision-making and shape the manner in which
consumer measure brand-based content. Similarly, peer communications and social mechanism
help in influencing the way consumers perceive company-created information (Saboo, Kumar, &
Ramani, 2016). In general, brand price and buying decisions are connected more to the strength
of peer interraction as well as social tools that support brand name instead of firm-created
content present in marketing segments. Accordingly, these aspects support the confidence that
price is aligned with brand cognizance and these features successively influence the way
customers reaction to a product or a brand.
Brand-related social media
According to, the scholar assert that brand loyalty becomes a major focus when a
business considers the usage of social media. For instance, Facebook has approximately 1 billion
proactive operators most of whom access at least once every month. More than 500 million
Facebook operators access their accounts every day either through the mobile apps or through
internet-based platform (Schivinski, & Dabrowski, 2016). Consequently, the extensive use,
advertisers have found Facebook as a social media as a platform that is most appropriate to

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introduce brand-connected information as well as promoting brand associations. Nonetheless,
even though corporations look at Facebook as an suitable means for promoting brand awareness
that is used to gain customer attention, not all the response to marketing in social media are
beneficial. Although brand-related information is being initiated at a rapid pace on Facebook
platform, social media-based advertising is at time looked at an unwanted component and
businesses ought to be aware of how customers react to their advertisements because they it has
effect on brand-linked content (Song, & Yoo, 2016). Studies have shown that it is significant for
companies to acknowledge the procedure of introducing advertisements and brand-connected
content in social media since it calls for close scrutiny of the content and a focus on building
brand-based community (Sudha, & Sheena, 2017).
Generally, brand communities form a basis for the existence of brand loyalty and positive
response to brand-centric content (Xie, & Lee, 2015). Therefore, when developing a social media
platform for brand presence, it calls for an understanding of the approach through which social
media operate and the way the brand communities navigate through the app on social media.
Brand communities comprises persons who have made decisions to demonstrated and take part
in a relationship to key information being shared in the community. This include sharing of
commentaries on products, incentivize features that shape decision regarding contribution in the
community and responses to novel products. In addition, creating a social connection that has
socially driven experience features helps to create a sense of belonging (Wang, & Yu, 2017). As
a result, for leaders such as Facebook they need to advance social interactions by creating an
engaging settings to encourage people to engage with the content. For instance, content about a
specific product brand can appear on Facebook linked to a unique Web search for a certain
product. The consumer could then be asked to “Like”, which means to show approval or “Share”

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the content as a show of approval by physically sharing the information with others (Xiang,
Zheng, Lee, & Zhao, 2016). Indeed, such simple tasks involve participants in an interactive
manner that aid them in making decisions around certain products and offer feedback to
advertisers.
Methods of data collection and data analysis
The research will employ a quantitative research approach. Quantitative methods is
considered the most appropriate data collection methods because it puts more emphasis on
objective measurements as well as mathematical, and statistical analysis of collected data by use
of surveys, questionnaires and polls. On the same note quantitative method is used because it has
the capability to manipulate pre-existing statistical data using computational techniques. Since
the research population entails a large population groups of online social media consumer
behavior, the researcher will use survey questions (Palinkas et al., 2015). The survey questions
will be circulated to specified departments within Central Queensland University that will be
respondent to by students regarding how social media has influenced consumer buying behavior.
Subsequently, the participants responses shall be analyzed using a statistical Package for the
Social Sciences (SPSS) software.
Gantt chart
The project commenced in July 15, 2019 and is expected to be completed by October 14, 2019.

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References
Alalwan, A. A. (2018). Investigating the impact of social media advertising features on customer
purchase intention. International Journal of Information Management, 42, 65-77.
Godey, B., Manthiou, A., Pederzoli, D., Rokka, J., Aiello, G., Donvito, R., & Singh, R. (2016).
Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand equity and consumer
behavior. Journal of business research, 69(12), 5833-5841.
Husnain, M., & Toor, A. (2017). The impact of social Network marketing on consumer purchase
intention in Pakistan: Consumer engagement as a mediator. Asian Journal of Business
and Accounting, 10(1), 167-199.
John, L. K., Emrich, O., Gupta, S., & Norton, M. I. (2017). Does “liking” lead to loving? The
impact of joining a brand’s social network on marketing outcomes. Journal of Marketing
Research, 54(1), 144-155.
Khatib, F. (2016). The impact of social media characteristics on purchase decision empirical
study of Saudi customers in Aseer Region. International Journal of Business and Social
Science, 7(4), 41-50.
Kumar, A., Bezawada, R., Rishika, R., Janakiraman, R., & Kannan, P. K. (2016). From social to
sale: The effects of firm-generated content in social media on customer behavior. Journal
of Marketing, 80(1), 7-25.
Palinkas, L. A., Horwitz, S. M., Green, C. A., Wisdom, J. P., Duan, N., & Hoagwood, K. (2015).
Purposeful sampling for qualitative data collection and analysis in mixed method
implementation research. Administration and policy in mental health and mental health
services research, 42(5), 533-544.

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Ramanathan, U., Subramanian, N., & Parrott, G. (2017). Role of social media in retail network
operations and marketing to enhance customer satisfaction. International Journal of
Operations & Production Management, 37(1), 105-123.
Saboo, A. R., Kumar, V., & Ramani, G. (2016). Evaluating the impact of social media activities
on human brand sales. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33(3), 524-541.
Schivinski, B., & Dabrowski, D. (2016). The effect of social media communication on consumer
perceptions of brands. Journal of Marketing Communications, 22(2), 189-214.
Song, S., & Yoo, M. (2016). The role of social media during the pre-purchasing stage. Journal
of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, 7(1), 84-99.
Sudha, M., & Sheena, K. (2017). Impact of influencers in consumer decision process: the fashion
industry. SCMS Journal of Indian Management, 14(3), 14-30.
Wang, Y., & Yu, C. (2017). Social interaction-based consumer decision-making model in social
commerce: The role of word of mouth and observational learning. International Journal
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Xiang, L., Zheng, X., Lee, M. K., & Zhao, D. (2016). Exploring consumers’ impulse buying
behavior on social commerce platform: The role of parasocial interaction. International
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Xie, K., & Lee, Y. J. (2015). Social media and brand purchase: Quantifying the effects of
exposures to earned and owned social media activities in a two-stage decision making
model. Journal of Management Information Systems, 32(2), 204-238.

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Yahia, I. B., Al-Neama, N., & Kerbache, L. (2018). Investigating the drivers for social
commerce in social media platforms: Importance of trust, social support and the platform
perceived usage. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 41, 11-19.