Social Networks Marketing and Consumer Purchase Behavior: The Combination of SEM and Unsupervised Machine Learning Approaches

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how social network marketing (SNM) can affect consumers’ purchase behavior (CPB). We used the combination of structural equation modeling (SEM) and unsupervised machine learning approaches as an innovative method. The statistical population of the study concluded users who live in Hungary and use Facebook Marketplace. This research uses the convenience sampling approach to overcome bias. Out of 475 surveys distributed, a total of 466 respondents successfully filled out the entire survey with a response rate of 98.1%. The results showed that all dimensions of social network marketing, such as entertainment, customization, interaction, WoM and trend, had positively and significantly influenced consumer purchase behavior (CPB) in Facebook Marketplace. Furthermore, we used hierarchical clustering and K‐means unsupervised algorithms to cluster consumers. The results show that respondents of this research can be clustered in nine different groups based on behavior regarding demographic attributes. It means that distinctive strategies can be used for different clusters. Meanwhile, marketing managers can provide different options, products and services for each group. This study is of high importance in that it has adopted and used plspm and Matrixpls packages in R to show the model predictive power. Meanwhile, we used unsupervised machine learning algorithms to cluster consumer behaviors.