Consumer Decision-Making: A Case Study

Social factors

Social factors include groups (reference groups, aspirational groups and member groups), family, roles and status. Consumers’ purchasing decision can be easily affected by the social environment around them, therefore, those social factors play a vital role in their decision making process. The research of Sotiriadis & van Zyl (2013) shows that the reliability of Twitter followers/users, their expertise/know-how, and their degree of involvement (tweeting) are factors shown to affect purchase-decision making. The first two factors are thereby critical, and the degree of involvement less so. Which means that consumers’ purchasing decision is also affected by their attitude on the reference group. 18 Also, Kristine de Valck , Gerrit

“One of the technological beauties of the Internet is that the network is an effective multi-purpose distributor of information packets”(Vaden 2006) which means that the developed internet has changed the way that consumers searching for the information. Unlike the traditional consumer information searching behavior, 16 consumers may contact with brands and other consumers in online brand communities in more interactive ways than ever which enables brands to deepen their relations with them in the context of internet. 1 As they all have same objectives, they develop an identification relationship. Even when there was some kind of discord regarding tastes and preferences, in general the members understood this to be something specific to the person. 0User-generated content and experience dominates the marketing communication implementations over social networks. Low costs, customization and ease of creating focused of messages through online communities are advantages over the traditional communication channels. 9 Members of online brand communities can easily share consumption experiences and interact with each other, 1 personal opinions and experiences people have regarding products are seen as judgments coming from trustworthy sources, since those who posted the information

This is because they realized that at the Internet age, a virtual brand community is important for the company to keep their customers and get feedback from their customers, so that to increase and foster loyalty of consumers. Through Virtual Brand Communities, companies can better satisfy their customer needs, listen to their customer’s voice, to improve their customers purchasing willingness, so that they can get more profit. 19 Most of the companies of today customize their products and services to a greater extent because they are aware that their clients are more and more informed and pretentious. They can get any kind of information from the Internet. Therefore, to satisfy their clients at the highest level as possible, organizations aim at building long-term relations with them, by implementing electronic customer relationship management systems and by practicing interactive marketing specific for the digital world. 17 That is also the reason that marketers are very eager to learn about, organize, and facilitate brand communities (e.g., McAlexander, Schouten, & Koening, 2002; Schau, Muniz, & Arnould, 2009; Zhou, Zhang, Su, & Zhou, 2011), which include a series of connections and relationships among people who admire a brand (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001). So, it is necessary for a company to know how the virtual brand community can affect consumer’s decision, so that they could use online