A study of the influence of social media on buyer behaviour among youth in India

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to avail this chance for thanking my research instructor, family and friends, for supporting me and having their belief in me throughout the research. I would like to thank these people for the profound guidance they provided, without which, I would have never been able to conduct this research.

DECLARATION

I, (Your name), would like to declare that all matters discussed in this dissertation reflects my individual work without any assistance. The contents of this dissertation have not been submitted before for any examination at academic, as well as, professional level earlier. Through this dissertation, I only reflect upon my personal views, which cannot be essentially associated with my institution.

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ABSTRACT

In this study, we try to discover the influence of social media on buyer behaviour among youth in India. The main focus of the research is to explore the influence of social media on buyer behaviour among youth in India, for buying consumer electronic products. It is significant for the marketer to understand the motivational factors related to consumers before deciding the type of social media tool. Therefore, the study is aimed at understanding the factors that youth, aged between 18 to 35 years of age, consider before buying consumer electronics products online. The research study analyses the number of people purchasing electronic goods after reading online reviews or blogs, the role of recommendations through blog or reviews in influencing the young user to purchase the product, the significance of product reviews for consumer electronic products and to understand the significance of social media campaigns in increasing the buying of products. This research study is focused upon the collection of primary, as well as, secondary data. The study employs mix methodology in order to achieve meaningful and useful results. The data for the primary research has been extracted from distributing survey questionnaires among youth aged 18-35. The secondary data has been extracted from number of sources such as journal articles, books, internet publications and unpublished researches. The analysis has been conducted by using SPSS software, that allowed for reliable statistical data analysis. The questionnaires and interviews revealed that social media websites have strongly evolved the old traditional styles of marketing, and has strongly influenced the buying decisions of the consumers, using these websites. It can be argued that the concept of materialism and social comparisons has strongly evolved as a significant issue among youth, with the passage of time and advancement of technology. Moreover, the most common predictor of materialism, among youth, is the social comparison with friends as well as with media figures. Social networking and blogging websites have also underrated the other means of social communications such as, e-mails etc. Therefore, companies are required to pay adequate attention towards social network communities in order to stop losing their customers to their competitors. The limitations of this study, and suggestions for conducting future research on this topic are also included in this ...