10 August 2021

Research pick: Post-covid online marketing - "The influence of social media platforms on the customer purchase intention post COVID-19 outbreaks"

Research published in the International Journal of Technology Marketing has lessons for companies that wish to get the most out of their social media presence in selling to customers in the post-covid era.

Maria Venensia Sarita Putri, Farras Ramadhan, Kemri Agustine Dameria Simangunsong, and Willy Gunadi of the Bina Nusantara University in Daerah, Indonesia, explain how social media have become prominent tools for consumers searching for information, perhaps even far beyond the conventional search engines. How social media influences customer purchase decisions is an important point to address in understanding the future world of marketing especially in the wake of the paradigm shifts in lifestyle that has emerged from the covid pandemic for so many people.

The team explains that social media is inextricably linked to online shopping. Consumers can be far more involved through opinion, commentary, and suggestions than they ever were in the era before what we came to know as Web 2.0 and certainly far more than the way they were when all shopping was based in bricks-and-mortar stores, marketplaces, and perhaps mail order via advertisements in print publications.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, for many consumers in developed and developing nations, online shopping became more important than ever before and for some the only way to make purchases in times of lockdown. During the pandemic, online activity has increased across social media and many online shopping platforms are reporting increased sales over the last 18 months or so.

There may be some degree of reversal as nations work their way through the pandemic, but from the current perspective, online shopping platforms and social media are here to stay. As such, marketers need to understand the behaviour of their putative customers in these realms in more detail, which is where the current study can provide new insights that will be pertinent in the post-pandemic world. Intriguingly, the team has found that “Even if all of [our] data gives a supporting result towards performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and hedonic motivation, the effect clearly contradicts social influence, habit, and informativeness.” It will be critical in future marketing studies in this realm to determine why that is and how it might play out in online shopping in the coming months and years.

Putri, M.V.S., Ramadhan, F., Simangunsong, K.A.D. and Gunadi, W. (2021) ‘The influence of social media platforms on the customer purchase intention post COVID-19 outbreaks’, Int. J. Technology Marketing, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp.82–100.

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