Understanding the Impact of Social Media on Consumer’s Attitude and Decision Making Process

Consumer attitude is a combination of consumer belief systems, thoughts, and behavioral intent towards a brand. The shopping behavior of consumers today is greatly influenced by social media. Research suggests that there is an increasing reliance of consumers on social media to get information about unfamiliar brands. This study tries to understand how consumer attitude, when combined with social media, helps the customer make the final purchase decision. The present research was undertaken to determine the degree of social media’s effect on customer decision-making for fast-moving consumer products at various phases of the process. The stages included are information search, alternative evaluation and post purchase stages. SEM has been used to evaluate the theoretical model. The model supports a direct relationship between attitude and social media. Also, direct relationship was supported between attitude and different stages of decision making process. Furthermore, the relationship between attitude and information search, and attitude and post purchase behaviour was found to be significantly partially mediated by social media.