Our behaviour is determined by a lot of things that happen around us, and most of the times it is pretty difficult to comprehend and develop a clear inference as to why a person acted in this particular fashion. When it comes to consumer behaviour, speculations around it have grown to be even more sophisticated because of media and technological advancements. If we focus on consumer behaviour, it can be understood that with the beginning and massive growth of online shopping and interactions of brands on social media the game of buying and selling has actually changed. Concurrently, the craze of street shopping is losing its sheen due to the popular and surging idea of e-commerce.
Online shopping has brought about a swap in how we, customers behave. Let us start with a simple example, we buy a watch online and we have the ability to read others’ reviews before buying and sharing our reviews post our shopping for it. This gives an upper hand to both the customers and the manufacturing company to understand each other better. However, the flip side is that because of extensive social media usage, the bad reviews can actually damage the image of a decent brand too.
Media is a channel through which advertisements and brand promotions take place but now with social media, everyone has become an influencer. Each one of us are buying and at the same time selling brands. This might happen unconsciously but yes; we all are doing it! We buy a new lip colour, wear it, flaunt it and post that, we want to share our experience of how good/bad the brand and its services were. In that process we all are marketing.
Most of us might have experienced that when we look for a product, we tend to get the advertisements from various e-commerce websites. There are popups, notifications and various discount offers that emerge to attract new customers and hold on to the previous ones. In this case, marketing happens through social media. Not just that; our day begins the moment we check our phones. We scroll through Instagram and Facebook to look for updates, but somehow ads, pop-ups and notifications come along and eventually we end up buying the product/service we were looking for. So, it is on social media, a consumer discovers and buys a brand. We can also call it the journey from e-commerce to present day social commerce.
Social commerce is not only beneficial for the consumers but for the producers as well. It becomes a trouble-free task for them to deliver the kind of purchase experience that customers are looking for. On the other influencing people through social media is quiet easy as it behaves as a community. People would rather prefer the unfiltered feedbacks and reviews from their peers rather than a television commercial.
Social media transforms us in many ways; the most obvious and undeviating can be detected from our consuming behaviour.
About the Author
It's the passion that fulfils us with life, so that we never give up on our dreams. For me, passion is writing! It makes me feel alive.