Paper for the Special Theme on Social Media: One of

the Big Five Trends in ICT

The Impact of Social Media Sites on the Effectiveness of Consumer
Buying Behaviour for Electronics Goods - A Study of Women
consumers in the Indian Electronic Market

Kirti Arekar1, Rinku Jain1, Surender Kumar2 and Shalaka K. Ayarekar3

1
K.J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies & Research, Mumbai, India
2
Aqua Marine Maritime Academy, Navi Mumbai, India
3
D.Y. Patil Management Institute, Mumbai, India
[email protected]

Abstract: This study provides an understanding of the effectiveness of social media sites on various parameters of
consumer buying behaviour. It estimated the relationship between several independent variables, including composite
buying behaviour, usual buying behaviour, and variety-seeking buying behaviour, disagreement buying behaviour,
impetuous buying behaviour, with that of consumer buying behaviour as the dependent variable in the electronic
appliances market. The study sought to determine the factors affecting consumer preferences and behaviour in the Indian
electronic market. This study primarily focused on young working women using electronics product across Maharashtra,
India. Data was collected from 1,272 working women. The major findings of the study indicates there is the positive effect
of social media on variety seeking buying behaviour, disagreement buying behaviour, usual buying behaviour, composite
buying behaviour and impetuous buying behaviour. This findings of this study supports producers and retailers with an
understanding of consumers’ buying behaviour towards electronics appliances and consequently will help in improving
customer satisfaction.

Keywords: Buying Behaviour, Composite Buying Behaviour, usual Buying behaviour, social media sites and variety- seeking
buying behaviour.

1. Introduction
Social media creates a relationship between industry people and buyers. Nowadays, this relationship has
changed with the introduction of social media. Consumers’ behaviour can be influenced through social media.
Thus the industry should create marketing plans with the intention of generating good relationships with
customers. Some studies state that the buying behaviour of social media consumers is highly influenced
through the Face-book when compared to Twitter. Social media is an open platform to create a variety of
novel methods and sources of online evidence. Further, it can be shared and used by buyers with the intention
of providing insights about products, facilities, characters and subjects. The implementation of innovative
technologies has also altered the way in which consumers buy products or select services. Buyers’ behaviour of
online consumers thus presents a challenge to managers to improve digital policies to maintain
competitiveness in the marketplace. Consumers’ attitudes, opinions and purchasing behaviour also changes
due to various aspects through the influence of social media.

Social media differs with Web 2.0 and User Generated Content on technological and ideological grounds.
There are different types of public networks tools like teamwork projects, blogs, you tube, social networking
sites, and computer simulation. Therefore particpation in platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter
are important to anyone who is active in cyberspace. Any business person can directly contact the end
customers through social media sites, within minimum cost and short time. It is suggested that people should
create their own networking plans with the intention of being a part of this new movement (Kaplan and
Haenlein, 2010). A study on the profiling of the consumers who buy the goods online inspected the reasons
for which people buy products online found that a majority of customers who procure online are youngsters
between the ages of 25-29 years (Loanăs, E.S., 2013).

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Reference this paper: Arekar., K. et al., 2018. The Impact of Social Media Sites on the Effectiveness of Consumer Buying
Behavior for Electronics Goods - A Study in India. The Electronic Journal Information Systems Evaluation, 21(2), pp. 158-
166, available online at www.ejise.com
 Kirti Arekar et al.

The complete communication process has undergone a massive change with the help of networking sites. The
general public may believe that networking sites may be a serious challenges to customary public relations(PR)
and mainstream media, though networking media complements customary PR and customary PR will survive
as a significant factor of any thriving industry. The PR and promotion organizations are all struggling to develop
their plans, substantial arrangement and industry models to be in harmony of networking media (Yin, 2008).

Customers have their own views on the different aspects of social media sites. Social media holds the essence
of true communization of information. The participating nature of social networking sites scratches through
background and class barricades (Thapar and Ahrama, 2013). Networking media tools gives better market
approachability and CRM have an important effect on the progress of SMEs. Research also suggests that policy
makers should decide the satisfactory internet surfing rates and e-business rules to inspire the technical
acceptance that would nurture the SME industry (Jagongo and Kinyua, 2013).

The gap identified from the existing literature suggests that earlier researchers had developed models to
understand the effectiveness of social media sites by using one or two parameters or factors as explanatory
variables. In contrast, the current study investigates five factors which influence the buying behaviour of
customers by using social media sites.

The aim of this study is to understand the effect of marketing by social sites on consumer buying behaviour.
This study is mainly focused on the discussion that social sites have a significant role in determining consumer
perception and eventually consumers buying behaviour is influenced by it. Several extant studies were taken
into consideration to obtain an underlying knowledge of the relevant theory and practice. Firstly, the paper
presents an analysis of previous research on networking sites, networking sites and advertising, networking
sites and consumer behaviour and networking media advertising of consumer electronics.

Further, we developed a model to understand the effectiveness of social media sites drawing on various
parameters of consumer buying behaviour, namely composite buying behaviour, usual buying behaviour,
variety seeking buying behaviour, disagreement buying behaviour, and impetuous buying behaviour. To that
ends the study addresses the following research questions :

1. Does social media affect the composite buying behaviour with reference to young working women
for electronics goods?
2. Does social media affect the usual buying behaviour with reference to young working women for
electronics goods?
3. Does social media affect variety-seeking buying behaviour with reference to young working women
for electronics goods?
4. Does social media affect disagreement buying behaviour with reference to young working women
for electronics goods?
5. Does social media affect the impulsive buying behaviour with reference to young working women
for electronics goods?

The major findings of the study indicates that there is the positive effect of social media on seeking buying
behaviour, disagreement buying behaviour and impetuous buying behaviour and there is a negative effect on
usual buying behaviour and composite buying behaviour. This study helps producers and retailers in
understanding consumers buying behaviour towards electronics appliances and also helps in improving
customer satisfaction.

The paper is organized as follows. First, a literature review is presented to understand the gaps in current
knowledge. Section two proposes the conceptual model and hypothesis. The next section presents the
research methodology and the section thereafter presents the findings and conclusions. Finally, the
managerial implications of the study are presented along with the limitations and future scope of the study.

2. Literature Review
Alsubagh (2015) analysed the impact of online social linking sites like Facebook on customers’ behaviour. He
identified a significant relationship between the degree of self-estimated communication of buyers and UGC

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and consumers’ self-evaluated attitudinal purchasing behaviour. Alsubagh (2015) argues that there is a strong,
positive correlation occurs between the variables of UGC and buyers’ attitudinal purchasing behaviour.

Pookulangara and Koesler (2011) conducted their study on consumers who buy online. They identified that
these consumers are very vigorous users of the internet and use different social media to buy and sell.
Generally the consumers are inclined by online brands and they can influence each other. Ramsunder (2011)
also studied consumers’ behaviour for online shopping and found that consumers are progressively turning to
social media in order to get more information about the product to make decisions. They found that there is a
positive relationship between usual buying behaviour and usual buying decisions. Pollach (2008) studied which
websites present opportunities for consumers to share their views about a product or service, read others’
views and also relate with other buyers. Their main interest was to discover methods by which the quality of
the contents of these websites is improved so that it turns out to be an important source of information for
the buyers as well as industries. They concluded that the consumers’ view that websites are more powerful
and offer extra priceless information when they divide the information search and distribution from the
uncomplicated job of social communication, and sustain each job with suitable stages of richness.

Bhat (2012) examined the effect of some networking sites attractiveness on ROI. Social networking is a
relatively better platform for brands to utilize as a successful channel for advertising manufactured goods and
services. ROI is something that many sellers explore when one has to regulate the efficiency of any advertising
network. Researchers studied ROI for blogs and examined the effect of the marketing of their product through
Facebook and Twitter and in turn grow their revenue through advertisements. The findings of the study
discovered a positive correlation between all blog categories. Bhatt and Bhatt (2012) studied the reasons
which impact the views of buyers regarding online shopping. They found three important factors: i.e.,
attractiveness of the networking site, service excellence of networking sites and network security. This
research suggests that these aspects are connected to particular kinds of users categorized as infrequent,
frequent and regular buyers. The study explains that consistent purchasers are most prejudiced by the
attractiveness of networking site, whereas irregular purchasers are prejudiced with website security to a
greater extent. Venkatesh (2012) studied the potential of diverse segments of humanity following different
drifts of communication. Their research indicates the benefits of product campaign on social networking sites
by the FMCG sector.

Dorado (2011) studied the effectiveness of the target audience with respect to fashion retail companies by
using social media sites and he created the relationship with the particular fashion brand by social media. Khan
(2006) also conducted a similar study in the fashion industry. The reviews on social media sites are easily
available for product and services which will create great values for both consumers and the companies
(Nambisan and Nambisan, 2008). According to Bronner and De hoog (2010) consumers are actively
encouraged by company to rate and review products and services online. The social media help consumers to
make better purchase decisions (Pan and Chiou, 2011). Mishra and Tyagi (2015) investigated the mindset of
consumers on social networking sites in India. They identified the impact of various variables that influence the
level of acceptance of SNS by consumers. Their study reveals that there is a positive and significant effect of
perceived usefulness whereas perceived risk has a negative effect.

Many studies concentrated on the few factors of consumer buying behaviour to identify the effectiveness of
social media sites in the different segments i.e. fashion, manufacturing, medicines and FMCG products etc.
(Venkatesh, 2012; Ertemel and Ammoura, 2016). In this study we have investigated the impact of social
media sites on the five consumer buying behaviour factors with respect to electronic goods.

3. Research Model and Hypothesis

The research model of the study is presented in Figure 1. The factors posited to affect consumer buying
behaviour for electronics goods in India are presented in Table 1.

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Figure 1: The various parameters of consumer buying behaviour are as follow:

Table 1: Factors affecting Consumer behaviour

Major Factors Descriptions

Composite buying behaviour (F2) The Customer shows the Composite buying behaviour when he purchases the costly
products with very high risk and doesn’t buy very often e.g. buying a washing
machine, house etc.
H1a : there is the significant impact of social media on composite buying behaviour
with reference to young working women's for electronics goods
Usual buying behaviour (F3) The Customer shows the Usual buying behaviour when he buys the regular product
that he has been using earlier for an extensive time without switching to other brand
e.g. milk, sugar, oil etc.
H1b : there is the significant impact of social media on usual buying behaviour with
reference to young working women's for electronics goods
Disagreement buying behaviour (F4) The Customer shows the Disagreement reducing buying behaviour when he buys the
costly products which are available in the market with many brands. The consumers
feel uneasiness after buying the product and fears if the product flops to execute
when big amount of money is paid in purchasing that product e.g. buying a car,
mobile etc.
H1c: there is the significant impact of social media advertisement on disagreement
buying behaviour with reference to young working women’s for electronics goods.

Variety-seeking buying behaviour (F5) The Customer shows the Variety-seeking buying behaviour when he buys the product
that is not costly but available with many brands. When a product with many brands,
serve only one object the consumers may incline to try out a other brand e.g.
products like cooking oil, detergent, etc.
H1d: there is the significant impact of social media advertisement on variety-
seeking buying behaviour with reference to young working women’s for electronics
goods.
Impetuous Buying Behaviour (F6) The Customer shows the Impetuous buying behaviour when he sees the product and
cannot resist from buying it e.g. clothes, jewellery etc.
H1d: there is the significant impact of social media advertisement on impetuous
buying behaviour with reference to young working women’s for electronics goods.

4. Research Design
4.1 Instrument and Data Collection
To understand the items of the study, initially an exploratory study was conducted. Formal interaction was
conducted with young working women who use social media sites for buying the electronics products. Based
on the feedback the instrument of the study was prepared. A pilot study was conducted to check the reliability
of the instrument. The reliability of the instruments was found to be 86%.

A questionnaire was used to collect the primary data. The questions are divided into three parts:

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1. Questions on demographic information, including characteristics such as age, education, income

and occupation.
2. Questions on usage of social media sites.
3. The third part of the questionnaire contains six section, each section representing the independent
and dependent variables investigated in the study. All responses were measured using a five point
Likert scale, ranging from 1 as strongly agree to 5 strongly disagree.

Respondents in the study were asked to complete the questionnaire on the voluntary basis. The survey was
conducted by young working women from the selected cities of Maharashtra i.e. Mumbai, Pune and Nasik. A
total of 1,272 responses were gathered.

Firstly, the demographics variable of respondents was investigated. Regarding education, 20% are non-
graduates, 53% are graduates and 27% women are postgraduates. Concerning annual income, 52% of the
respondents have a monthly income up to 3 lakhs, 28% have monthly income between 3-5 lakhs , 17% are
between 5-10 lakhs and 3% are above 10 lakhs. With respect to occupation, 71% of the respondents work in
the services sector, 20% in business and 9% are self-employed.

On the basis of responses received, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and path analysis was conducted using
AMOS software to confirm reliability and validity and to assess the effectiveness of social media sites on
different parameters of consumer buying behaviour.

5. Findings and Discussions

Composite Buying Behaviour through social networking sites
We analysed the consumers regarding the composite buying behaviour on three parameters. 36% of
respondents sometimes pay attention towards the advertisements of electronic products on social networking
sites. 43% of young women spend more time and efforts researching the product information before actual
online purchase. 52% of the women visit electronic stores on average one to three times before making buying
decisions.

Usual Buying Behaviour through social networking sites

Two parameters explain the usual buying behaviour of young women’s consumers. 46% of respondents agreed
that they buy the product because they buy it regularly. Similarly, 68% of the consumers agreed that they buy
the product because the product is best from them.

Disagreement Buying Behaviour through social networking sites

The disagreement buying behaviour of the women was analysed on three parameters. For the first parameter,
53% of the respondents believe that buying an expensive electronic product is difficult and needs lots of
thinking before purchase. 52% of the respondents agreed that buying expensive electronic products is time
consuming and 59% of the respondents have a feeling of anxiety as to whether their purchasing decision is
correct.

Variety Seeking Buying Behaviour through social networking sites

This factor was defined by three parameters. 58% of the respondents wanted to try out different varieties of
products belonging to different brands. 57% of the consumers are buying new varieties of products belonging
to new brands and while making purchasing decisions, they viewed advertisements on social networking sites.
In contrast, 59% of respondents feel that the different brands of the same product serve one and the same
purpose.

Impetuous Seeking Buying Behaviour through social networking sites

Impetuous behaviour consists of three parameters. 63% of the consumers had no plan to buy any consumer
electronics product when they logged onto social networking sites. 72% of the respondents feel that the
advertisements of the product on the social networking sites provoke their purchasing intentions and 78% buy
a product because that product has a discount scheme which was displayed on the social networking sites
which is not available in the retail stores.

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Table 2, shows the factors underlying the consumers’ attitude about the buying behaviour of the electronics
product through social networking sites with factor loading and Cronbach alpha of each construct. The
reliability of all the constructs lies between 0.65 to 0.72, thus indicating high internal consistency of the
constructs (Nullally and Bernstein, 1994)
Table 2: Construct and Factor Loading
Construct Indicator Factor Reliability (α)
Loading
Composite Buying Behaviour (F2) CBB1(q8a) 0.778 0.660
CBB2(q8b) 0.758
CBB3(q8c) 0.761
Usual Buying Behaviour (F3) UBB1(q10a) 0.768 0.692
UBB2(q10b) 0.799
Disagreement Buying Behaviour (F4) DBB1(q11a) 0.764 0.658
DBB2(q11b) 0.762
DBB3(q11c) 0.764
Variety Seeking Buying Behaviour (F5) VSBB1(q12a) 0.772 0.671
VSBB2(q12b) 0.763
VSBB3(q12c) 0.770
Impetuous Buying Behaviour (F5) IBB1(q13a) 0.762 0.725
IBB2(q13b) 0.787
IBB3(q13c) 0.767

Validity Analysis of all Models

In validity analysis the following are tested, namely convergent validity and discriminate validity.

Convergent Validity and Discriminant Validity of all Models

This measures the extent to which indicators of a specific construct converge or share a high proportional of a
variance in common. There are three measures of convergent validity, namely factor loadings, average
variance extracted (AVE) and construct reliability (CR). The following criteria must be satisfied to ensure
convergent validity: CR > 0.7, CR> AVE, and AVE > 0.5 (Hair et al., 2010).

For the model, the AVE for the entire five constructs is greater than 0.5. The CR (Alpha) statistics is also
significantly greater that AVE is presented in Table 3. We can thus conclude that all the constructs or factors
satisfy the requirement of convergent validity.
Table 3: Convergent & Discriminant Validity

f3 f4 f5 f6 f7
CR 0.768 0.699 0.759 0.772 0.701
AVE 0.523 0.522 0.522 0.488 0.512
MSV 0.445 0.250 0.392 0.408 0.313
ASV 0.244 0.459 0.341 0.246 0.292

This measures the extent to which a construct is truly distinct from another construct. Discriminant validity is
established on the basis of AVE, Maximum shared variance (MSV) and ASV. The criteria for fulfilling
discriminate validity are: MSV < AVE and ASV < AVE (Hair et al., 2010). In our study for the entire five
constructs, the respective MSV is lower than the AVE and ASV is also less than AVE for the model (Table 3).

Model fit Estimates – Measurement Model

After the reliability and validity of constructs is determined, the study proceeds to determine the fitness of
overall measurement model (Figure 2) based on fit indices generated by AMOS output.

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Figure 2: Measurement Model

Table 4 presents the overall fit indices of all the models.
Table 4: Fit Indices of the Model

Proposed SEM
Fit Measures Model I Recommended values
RMR 0.031 RMR < 0.08; Model fit
RMSEA 0.070 RMSEA < 0.07; Model fit
GFI 0.955 GFI  0.95; Model fit
NFI 0.932 NFI  0.95; Model fit
CMIN/df 1.235 CMIN/df < 3, model fit
AGFI 0.915 AGFI  0.80, model fit

Hair et al. (2010) argued that there was not yet consensus among scholars regarding the standard of the
goodness of fit test. Thus they suggested researchers can pick any one or two indices to evaluate the goodness
of fit towards the model. In this research, the results showed significant values of goodness of fit, leading to
acceptance of the proposed model.

Structural Model Path Analysis

Analysis of the structural equation model revealed that all five hypothesized effects were supported. The
hypothesized effects i.e. Variety-seeking buying behaviour, disagreement buying behaviour, composite buying
behaviour, usual buying behaviour and impetuous buying behaviour indicate the positive effect on social
media advertisements and the respective p-values are also significant at 5% level of significance. Finally, we
can conclude that the parameters outlined in Table 5 plays an important role on social media advertisement of
electronics consumer goods among young women in Maharashtra.
Table 5: Structural Model Results
Parameters Estimates p-value
Social Media Advertisement → Composite Buying behaviour 0.095 0.002**
Social Media Advertisement → Variety- seeking Buying behaviour 0.130 0.000***
Social Media Advertisement → Usual Buying behaviour 0.143 0.000***
Social Media Advertisement → Impetuous Buying behaviour 0.144 0.030**
Social Media Advertisement → Disagreement Buying behaviour 0.139 0.001***
** Significant at 0.05 level, *** significant at 0.001 level

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6. Conclusions
The results indicate that composite buying behaviours have a positive and significant impact on attitude to
consumer buying behaviours through social media sites. When consumers make electronic goods purchases
that are very costly they incur higher risks associated with the purchase behaviour. Therefore they have to pay
more attention to the advertisement of the electronic products before making the online purchase.
Consequently they spend maximum time on social media sites for detailed information about the products and
they also spend more time on online electronic store before making the buying decision. Marketers should
provide more detailed and trustworthy information about the electronics goods on social media sites to
increase the online buying behaviour of the consumers.

Usual buying behaviour also has a significant and positive impact on consumer buying behaviour through social
media sites. The consumers already did lots of research for the electronic product on the social media sites for
whatever the product they want to buy. So they can easily search for the same product of the same company
in the minimum time before deciding if the product is best for them. Disagreement regarding buying
behaviours has a significant impact on consumers buying behaviours through social networking sites. The
electronic products are very expensive and requires lots of thinking before buying. Social media sites provide
lots of comments and feedback about the product so the feeling of anxiety whenever the purchase decision
will be correct.

Variety seeking buying also had a positive impact. Consumers wanted to try out different varieties belonging to
different brands. Social networking sites shows different variety of electronic goods with new brands available
in the market. They also provide information about the different brands of different products. In addition
comparative analysis of products were also displayed on the social media sites. Impetuous buying behaviour
represents a positive and significant impact. Due to social media sites, consumers had no plans to buy any
consumer electronic products, but still they do the surfing on social media sites and many advertisements of
the product on social media sites provoke them to buy the product. As a result they get the idea of different
schemes available on the different products of the different brands. Finally, we can conclude that all the
parameters of the study with respect to consumer buying behaviour play an important role on social media
advertisement of electronics consumer goods among young women in Maharashtra.

7. Future Implication
This study helps producers and retailers in understanding consumer buying behaviour towards electronics
appliances and also helps in improving customer satisfaction in Indian market. Retailers will get more inputs
and it will also help to develop the marketing strategies associated with the product. In addition it will increase
the online buying behaviour and the sale of the electronics products. It helps the retailers to attract the
consumers from the social media sites who are regularly searching the same product. It will be helpful for the
retailers and producers to showcase the different variety of products available on the different brands as well
as they can also display there discount schemes available so that more customers will get attracted the
products thereby increasing sales. Customers’ satisfaction levels will also increase because the detailed
information is available on social media sites. Further, more consumers can use the online or social media
sites for purchasing expensive electronics products. The study analysis also helps to identify several directions
for future research. Future studies should examine the effect of social media advertisements on buying
behaviour for other products as well as other parts of the country. The research has a few limitations. First, the
sample size is quite small and secondly, only one state within India was considered for this research.

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