Consumer Behavior in Online Social Networks: Review and Future Research Directions

Abstract

The number of online social users grows very fast and socialization became most important activity. Companies deploy online social networks, platforms, tools and services in various activities aiming to create better experience for consumers which suppose to lead for loyalty, better branding and increase of sales. As social media networks and platforms represent new phenomena to practitioners and researches, there are only few attempts approaching consumers' behavior in online social networks. Researchers analyzes consumers engagement models, transformed cyclic consumer decision model, typology of engagement (types of user behavior) or factors affecting consumer behavior in online social networks. As there is growing number of research in this area paper aims to provide a systematic review of consumer behavior in social media research and to identify important research areas structuring current research approaches.

Engage Me: How YouTube Motor Vloggers Can Maximise User Engagement

“…For example, from "2006 to 2012, only digital video advertising showed continuous growth as a percentage of total internet advertising revenues" (Li & Lo, 2014) and the overall user base is an ever growing statistic. This growth in usage in social network sites "brings challenges both for researchers and practitioners attempting to understand consumer behaviour" (Gatautis, & Kazakevičiūtė, 2012) as we begin to move away from more traditional media sources.…”

Egyptian Consumers’ Perception of Social Media as Health Information Source

“…Organizations need to identify which social media platforms to use based on consumers' online activities' orientation, this enables an in depth insight into ways of exploiting different formats of social media networks to tailor "same message" but, in different ways to engage and build long-term relationships with different consumer segments depending on their online communication patterns' preferences (Taprial & Kanwar, 2012). Many attempts to analyze and identify different types of consumer behavior in social media are gaining attention (Gatautis & Kazakevičiūtė, 2012). Beninger, et al, (2014) described consumers' engagement with online content by defining three distinct but overlapping roles: "Creators" who contribute with their own original content; "Observers" who only read and view content on social media; and "Sharers" who like to share the information with other users by commenting or tagging content.…”

“…Therefore, using the appropriate mix of interactive social media platforms can change how firms and consumers connect, interact, and influence each other. It is acknowledged that social media networking sites are acting as real-time transmitters to positive or negative electronic word of mouth(eWOM) and have a strong influence on the cognitive and affective stages of consumers' decision-making (De Valck, et al, 2009;Brandtzaeg, 2012;Sashi, 2012;Gatautis & Kazakevičiūtė, 2012;Hutter, et al, 2013;Vinerean, et al, 2013;Ioanăs & Stoica, 2014).…”

Social Network Sites’ usage among Greek students in Western Macedonia

“…Notwithstanding the immense growth and interest in Social Media and Social Networking Sites across the world, little research has been done concerning the ways users are using them. The majority of current research in this field regards US [5] and only recently there has been some empirical work on surveying and analysing consumer behaviour and segmentation in social networking sites for other countries around the world [6]. The importance of examining countries other than the US is also highlighted by the Comscore survey [7] for digital trends in Europe, as US is no longer the centre of the digital world, being surpassed by the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.…”