The Impact of Social Media and Digital Marketing on Consumer Behavior

Introduction

Digital marketing refers to using the internet through social media search engines and other channels by using electronic gadgets like computers, mobile devices, tablets, etc., to reach consumers. Digital marketing promotes products on brands through one or more forms of electronic media. It is distinguished from conventional marketing as it includes channels and methods allowing businesses to analyze marketing campaigns and to understand what is working and what is not working. As this is the world of inventions and technology usage is rising, digital markets are increasing exponentially. Digital marketing mainly uses the internet. Other channels are being used for digital marketing: electronic billboards, mobile instant text messaging, mobile apps, podcasts, digital television and radio channels, etc. In a nutshell, it can be said that the digital market covers all the digital platforms and modern technologies in interaction. That is why digital marketing is often referred to as electronic commerce, also known as e-commerce representing the economic activity of buying and selling products and services through online platforms. Digital marketing includes a wide range of economic activities such as retail stores, online banking services, transport and hotel booking services, money transfers, online payments, etc. In digital marketing, business activities can occur in all three main transaction categories such as business to business, business to customer, and customer to customer. Consumers are getting attracted to digital marketing day by day as they get a wide range of information about products. Consumers found digital markets the easiest way of completing the purchase of products from anywhere in the world. Digital marketing not only makes way for companies to attract customers for their products, but it also paves the way for companies to expand their sales all over the world.

Several studies have been conducted so far to find out the reasons behind the popularity of digital marketing by finding out its impact on consumers. It has been found that digital marketing helps build customer loyalty and customer satisfaction, which are significantly correlated. In the digital markets, the behavior of the internet users plays a significant role in the purchase of the market, and one of the most significant impacts of digital marketing is that it is successful in satisfying customers’ wishes which increases customer satisfaction (Mackinney et al., 2002). Due to the extensive usage of digital marketing, customer loyalty has been implemented, which indicates that customers are loyal to a particular firm or company from where they purchase their necessary products. It is one kind of repetitive purchasing behavior of customers that means that they are choosing a particular company while buying products. The role of digital marketing here to increase customer loyalty is that it helps to provide sufficient information about their products. That’s why customers have the privilege of being fully aware of the product fully (Zeithaml, 2000). Loyal customers are considered a blessing to business firms as they work as a catalyst to improve the profit of the company doing business (Anderson & Mittal, 2000).

This study tries to examine the impact of social media and digital marketing on consumer behavior through the collective discussion from different scholars and researchers. The remaining sections of this chapter are organized as follows. Section 2 presents an overview of social media and digital marketing with consumers within the current literature. Section 3 presents multiple experts' discussions about the impact of social media and digital marketing on consumer behavior. Section 4 concludes the discussions with limitations.