The Importance Of Social Communication

963 Words4 Pages
Human beings are communal and nowadays, consumers play a part in variety of activities, from consuming content to sharing information, experiences, opinions, and involved in discussion with other consumers online (Heinonen, 2011). Today, with the development of Internet, online social networks have become significant communication channels and also virtual societies have emerged. Online world has become a new kind of social communication, connecting people to diversity of online communities has been growing during past decade. Groups that may never meet in the physical world but nevertheless they are able to affect behavior including purchasing decisions (Evans, Jamal & Foxall, 2009). Internet is a social place where generated new forum for…show more content…
Facebook.com is one of the most widespread social networking sites. Individuals who are members of Face-book can build dynamic profiles about themselves and sharing information with other persons within the group (Boyd & Ellison, 2008). Social interaction with others created new behaviors and also affected on consumer’s daily purchase decisions (Rogers, 2003). Different ranges of people have effect on consumers such as family members, friends, co-workers, and group or individual that consumers would love to associate themselves with them (Schiffman, Kamk & Hansen, 2008). These ranges of people could be involved in consumer’s online social networks, and influence from these individuals can be online as well. Consumers make many product decisions every day and they would like to take advice from others (Evans, et al, 2009). Online social networks are worthy platform for consumers to collect information and advices. Cheung, Zhu, Kwong, Chan & Moezl (2003) determined that there are five domain factors recognized to explain online consumer behavior, and they recommended these five factors can be further explored. Two of the factors are: (1) Consumer characteristics, including behavioral characteristics (considering product information, access location, duration and frequency of usage) and experience. (2) Environmental effects,…show more content…
2) What are the details behind online social networks’ influence on consumers’ purchasing decision process? 1.5 Delimitation The study sets the scale of online social networks on Facebook, in its place of other online social networks like YouTube or twitter. The qualitative research emphases on the active users of Facebook, which means they expend more time on Facebook than the average. And the data gathered has no geography restriction. The supermarkets stated in qualitative research are not limited to specific country. And only the superstores that created their Facebook page is considered in this study. Age, gender, nation background and occupation are not considered in this study. 1.6 Dispositions This thesis contains the following chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction: This chapter introduces the background of online social networks and consumers’ purchasing decision behavior. The chapter continues with specifying the problem argument and defining the purpose of the study. Chapter 2: Theoretical framework: This chapter presents the significant prior studies on this topic, including online social networks, the effect of online social networks, consumers’ purchase decision behavior, and the explanations behind online social networks’ influences on consumers’ purchase
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