Social Media Made Me Buy It: The Impact of Social Media on Consumer Purchasing Behavior and on the Purchase Decision-Making Process

Abstract

Social media has changed everything around us, with just one click of a button, any of us can share their opinions and reviews with a lot of people who can share them in their turn with plenty of others. Hence, the click of the button has become more of a political, economical and social power that can raise millions for charity, tear down companies and brands and even make presidents. The purpose of this paper is to research empirically, the impact of social media on the purchasing behavior of consumers, and especially on how the feedbacks and reviews influence each of the stages of the consumer decision making process, a sample of 828 randomly selected, Moroccan social media users, was investigated through a survey. The results show that consumers' purchasing decision is highly influenced by social media networks. According to the results, the influence of social media on information and evaluation of alternatives stages is higher than the rest of the stages of the purchase decision making process. Finally, almost most of the survey respondents (85,4%) believe that social media has an impact on our purchasing behavior.