Research on Social Media Marketing and Consumer Buying Decisions

This research project investigates the significant influence of social media marketing on consumer buying behavior. It explores the tactics employed by brands, analyzes consumer attitudes before and after social media marketing campaigns, and compares them with traditional marketing methods. The project delves into key themes such as consumer motives, viral advertising, virtual brand communities, and user-generated content. The study employs both quantitative and qualitative research methods, including statistical analysis of social media data and correlational research to assess the relationship between social media marketing and buying decisions. The research also addresses challenges like content selection, managing customer interactions, and the impact of various social media problems. The findings contribute to understanding how businesses can leverage social media to enhance customer attitudes, improve return on investment, and influence consumer purchasing intentions.

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Research project
[Type the document subtitle]
12/26/2019
student name

Research project 1
Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Research problem.......................................................................................................................2
Research objectives....................................................................................................................3
Research questions.....................................................................................................................3
Research hypothesis...................................................................................................................4
Literature review........................................................................................................................4
Social media marketing..........................................................................................................4
Consumers sentiments toward marketing..............................................................................5
Virtual brand community tool................................................................................................5
Buying decision process.........................................................................................................6
Consumer motives/attitudes...................................................................................................7
Social media problems...........................................................................................................7
Research methodology...............................................................................................................8
Data collection and analysis.......................................................................................................9
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Research reflects systematic and creative work in order to enhance human knowledge, stock
of knowledge of society and culture. This piece of research will discuss the role of social
media marketing and its influence of buying behaviour. This will include searching or
investigating exhaustively. This may include experimentation and interpretation of the data,
revising the laws and available theories in light of latest and new findings or practical
application. The purpose of this research reflects the need to assess buying behaviour and
understanding the consumer’s reaction towards social media marketing conducted by the
organizations (Zhang, 2015).
The current trend in most of the industries has reflected digital marketing to be effective and
through this research the purchasing influence over the consumers through this marketing
strategy would be analysed. The digital marketing is very wide marketing strategies adopted
by most of the global and large companies in today’s scenario. However social media
marketing is one of the digital marketing strategies that will be consider to study in the
research further (Kaplan, 2015).

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Research problem
The problem identified through the social media marketing analysis is the investment by the
company is high in this marketing, mainly in human resource and technological use. The
problem of this research is social at scale, that reflect the need to assess the consumer
behaviour and influence of the social media marketing over the purchase intention and
difference than that of traditional marketing methods. The investment is huge and the efforts
by the company are higher in case of social media marketing, which reflect the need to assess
the return on that investment for the companies. The associated problems considering social
media marketing influence is selection of the content to be used for marketing or advertising
and management of social media marketing interaction with the customers to create positive
influence. Social media reflect the connection and interaction between customer and
company. Thus, through the research problem, the study will include the investigation of the
implications of this marketing’s strategy towards improvement of customer attitude towards
the brand (Craig & Douglas, 2015).
Thus the research problem statement reflect “ to assess the influence of social media
marketing for enterprises and benefit from technological updating and return on investment,
considering the positive influence over consumers and their buying intention.”
Research objectives
The research objective chapter reflect the scope of the study and the key purpose for which
the study has been conducted. Considering the above stated research problem, the key
research objectives include
RO1: To study the social media marketing and tactics adopted by the brands

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RO2: to analyse the consumer behaviour after social media marketing and compare the same
with previous buying behaviour and attitude
RO3: studying the four major themes within the research problem stated that are consumer
motives and attitude, viral advertising, virtual brand communication, and user generated
content (Chari & Feng, 2018).
Research questions
This section of the research will include major questions to be evaluated and investigated
through the study. The research questions include
RQ1: Does there is significant influence of social media marketing on consumer buying
decision?
Research hypothesis
Research hypotheses in research proposal include clear, specific and testable predictive
statement regarding possible outcome of the research. For instance, this will include
presuming the difference on the relationship of particular variables (Craig & Douglas, 2015).
The hypothesis reflects the testing of the statement or the prediction of the acceptance. The
two variables of this research study is consumer buying behaviour and social media
marketing campaigns
H: The social media marketing impact the consumer buying decision significantly.

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Literature review
Social media marketing
Social media marketing has been one of the popular research topic with the emerging
technologies and changing consumer attitude as per the changing digital environment in most
of the nation across the globe. Social media as defined by the researcher is a group of
applications based on internet that are developed on technological and ideological
foundations allowing the end user to develop and interchange the information of user
generated content. Some of the most popular social media platforms or the software tools that
are allowing to share the user generated content are Facebook, Instagram, you tube, snap
chat, LinkedIn, and various other social networking sites (Limbu & Babin, 2016).
Thus it can be said that the users or the participants of these social networking sites include
are able to generate their profiles, change their images, reflect their identity through phrases,
invite their colleague and friend to stay in contact and share content. The social media
environment pertaining to commerce or trade reflects the use of such platforms by the users
to collect relevant information of the brands and using the same for buying decision (Mills,
2015).
Consumers sentiments toward marketing
CSM is one of the tool or factor that will be helpful to measure the way consumers would
perceive the content shared among the users. Consumers sentiments toward marketing
reflecting the marketplace playing key roles in various activities consumption. Consumer
technology reflects the consumer readiness is the propensity to use latest technologies and
embracing the accomplishing goals in work and home. This signifies the importance for the
retailers to perceiving the brand positively or negatively that may be unrewarding. Another
reflected term through previous studies includes innovation adoption process that is one of

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the instrument described by the scholar while providing consumer acceptance information
(Oldham & Silva, 2015).
This instrument describes five major steps including innovation knowledge, formation of
consumer attitude towards the innovative idea, decision pertaining to adoption or rejection of
innovation, implementing the idea, and conformation towards the decision making of
consumers. Thus the evidence suggests that the IAP knowledge could be helpful to the
marketers for obtaining social media marketing (Mohd & Sasmita, 2015).
Virtual brand community tool
Virtual brand community, the term reflects major topic studied by the scholars that are part of
social marketing. This tool includes aggregations of the customers that are occurring based on
the brand interest. According to Hudson, VBC tool is responsible for increase in participation
frequency and positive participation of consumer’s experience that could be more loyal
towards the brand (Tuten & Ashley, 2015).
One of the emerged concepts within the research scope is shopper marketing. This reflects
the creation of new touching points for consumers and business interactions. As per the
researchers, shopper marketing is planning of marketing activities that are influencing
purchasing path, initiating from the motivational point to trade emerging purchase,
consuming, repurchasing, and recommending. Perceived fit is very significant factor that is
essential element in shopper marketing (Oldham & Silva, 2015).
Buying decision process
Buying decision process reflect the stages by the researcher which reflect five stage of
consumer decision making that represent before, active and after purchasing a particular
brand. This reflect cost benefit analysis include steps that are need recognition, information
search, choice evaluation, purchase and post purchase evaluation. From these steps it can be

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said that the social media marketing can influence all the stages of buyer decision process.
For instance, the first stage that is to recognise need and wants can be done through consumer
engagement by the companies to understand the products needed to the consumers where the
new product development can be considered by the company. This interaction can be done
through social media platforms (Mukherji & Arora, 2017).
The second stage includes information search which would be done by the consumers
through social media like you tube reviews. The third stage is evaluation of alternatives, this
will include comparing different brands by the consumer to judge which brand or product is
better, and this can be done through analysing reviews and shared comments of the previous
consumers of the product (Pappas, 2016).
The fourth stage include purchase decision, which could be done through online portal of the
brand, through social media platforms, this will include making purchase and payment
through digital platform. The last stage is post purchase behaviour; through social media
platforms the company can get the feedback from the consumers in form of rating, comments
on website, and comments on Facebook or Instagram which will reflect the behaviour or
consumer satisfaction (Thomson, 2016).
Consumer motives/attitudes
The consumer motives reflect the reaction and attitude of the consumers will will reflect the
impact of the marketers strategy. This reflected the examination of relationship between
consumers responsible to social media advertising on Facebook. This includes the study of
psychological factors of attitude and self-disclosure of members of Facebook group. The
changing attitude could be positive or negative according to the study as the preference of the
consumers are responsible for the consumer changing attitude. The measurement of the

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changing attitude can be done through observation and analysis of the comments and likes or
dislikes by the consumer on Facebook within a time frame (Tiago, 2014).
Social media problems
The prior researches included the common problems like not enough resources. One of the
biggest obstacle identified by the scholar for the marketers are lack of skilled employees in
order to deliver their social media campaigns. Another problem identified is well executed
and well planned hash tag campaign that can be helpful in brand promotion. One bad hash tag
campaign could result into negative influence. Another problem identified is improper use of
acronyms and slang. Social communication is identified to be snappy and short in order to
gain user attraction. However the adoption of online slang could be either inauthentic or
difficult and can be interchangeable, which resulted into distortion of the marketing message
by the brand. Ignoring comments is another major issue reflecting the business needs to
consider high priority on the consumer’s comments in order to assess the consumer changing
perception and reply to the comment is also essential to manage customer relationship
(Petersen, 2015).
Research methodology
Research methodology chapter of the research study reflect the design, procedure, and
techniques to be used to conduct this study. This help to select and process the topic
information. Considering the study on impact of social media marketing the research purpose
is analytical research. Analytical research is a particular type of research that will include
evaluation of facts and figures from the relative information collected. Moreover, this
includes critical thinking skill that will include various ways like public opinion, meta-
analysis, and literary research. Analytical research will reflect analysing answer the research
question instead of just identifying and describing the research problem. Moreover, it can be

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said that the research method to be used in this research study is quantitative research and
qualitative research (Hudson & Roth, 2016).
The quantitative research reflects the use of figures and statistics to be used to assess the
research problem and interpretation of the results from the quantitative data. Moreover from
the interpretation of the data would also include analysing the consumer behaviour and
perception that would include qualitative research design. Considering the quantitative
research method, use of statistics from social media platforms would be considered.
Moreover to understand the behaviour of the consumers, the correlational research under
quantitative research method will be considered. According to correlational research, the
relationship between two key variables is analysed. According to the research problem, the
correlation between social media marketing and speed of the buying decision is assessed
reflecting correlational research (Kaplan, 2015).
Data collection and analysis
Data collection is one of the crucial aspects as the result is based on the relevance and
variability of the data or information collected to conduct the study. There could be two type
of data collection method that is primary research and secondary research. The data collection
methods used for this research is secondary research method. The secondary research reflect
that the information collected is from the existing data that is available data from government
sites, social media platforms, journals and literature (Stephen, 2016).
The report will consider collecting the accurate and latest information from social media
sites. For this the social media pages of some of the top Australian brands would be consider
to study the consumer behaviour. Moreover the statistics from the annual report of the
companies will also be collected in order to analyse the result of the campaign over sales of
the company. Moreover, observational method would also be used the collection of consumer

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reaction towards marketing campaign on social media platforms. The most important aspect
of the research data collection is that the data collected would be valid, accurate, reliable,
timely and complete (Zahay, 2015).

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Conclusion
From the report it can be concluded that the hypothesis that will be tested is “The social
media marketing impact the consumer buying decision significantly.” Considering the study
on impact of social media marketing the research purpose is analytical research. The research
method to be used in this research study is quantitative research and qualitative research.