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The Impact of Social Media on Consumer Purchasing Decision

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The Impact of Social Media on Consumer Purchasing Decision
Explain how the Internet can influence the consumer decision-making process for the following types of purchase decisions. * Buying tickets for a music show (5) * Deciding to invest money in a restaurant chain (5) * Purchasing insurance for your car (5) * Buying shoes for yourself (5)
You may find it helpful to visit some websites for the afore-mentioned products. [20 marks]

Introduction
The advent of internet has brought more convenience to the time starved modern day consumers. This assignment will dwell on information searching on the internet as well as the manner in which the internet can assist consumers in the alternative evaluation stage of the decision making process. Consumer decision making theory focuses more “traditional” non-internet based consumer decision making. The need is therefore highlighted for marketers to understand consumer behavior and consumer decision making in an internet environment to be successful in this ever-growing and popular medium. Sultan and Herichs (2000:386) support the view that as more advanced technologies enter the household domain it becomes increasingly important to understand consumer respond to new technologies. The consumer buying process involves the following stages: problem identification, information search, evaluation, decision, and action and post sales.

Buying tickets for a music show
The internet can be used through the whole decision making process of buying tickets to a music show. The booking can be done easily online through websites such as computicket.com. The consumer can visit the website to find out about upcoming music shows in the area of interest and the dates they would like to book the tickets for. They can then search to see if there are any tickets available online for the show they are interested in. The Internet plays a vital role during information search stage, evaluation, decision, and action and post sales. Tickets can be compared in


References: 1. Chaffey D & P.R Smith (2002), eMarketing eXcellence, Third Edition, Elsevier, Amsterdam 2. Fareena Saultan & Roy B. Herichs (2000), Consumer preferences for Internet Services over time, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Volume 17 issue 5 3. Laurie Windham & Ken Orton (2001), The Soul of the Consumer, All Worth Press, UK 4. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=856364 5. http://online.computicket.com/web/ 6. www.hippo.co.za 7. www.woolworths.co.za
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