Mpact Of Facebook On Consumer Buying Marketing Essay

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015

There has been a noticeable change in the technological developments and innovation in the last few years. Undoubtedly, technology plays an important part in our lives. Most of people depend on the internet in most of their daily lives such as sending emails, searching for information; communicate with their family and friends, reading the latest news and so on. That development in technology reaches different sectors like business organizations, academic sectors, and governmental fields.

In time where technology plays a great role in peoples' lives, marketers are doing their best to take any chance that could bring consumers to their products and services. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, researchers predicted that the internet would alter the relationship between consumers and marketing organization (Lord, 2000; Hamel and Sampler,1998). Ward and his colleagues in 1998 predicted that in the first quarter of the twenty first century, the main channel for shopping for most consumers would be the interactive technologies (Ward et al, 1998). De Kare-Silver (2000) discusses the same idea that this technology will go with consumers' need to visit shops, as it will make it easy for people to buy their needs any time without going to the actual place for these products. Many business companies that provide services or physical goods believe that using the electronic resources in their marketing is vital to their success. Porter (2001) recommends that if companies want to remain competitors, they have to rely on technology. Using technology in marketing allows brands and companies to interact with its customers in individual basis as it provides immediate and quick interact without time limitation (Allan and Chudry, 2000).

One type of technology that people and marketers depend on is social networking sites. In these social sites, people usually communicate with each other and during these conversations, they send direct messages to each other without noticing that. The number of people who use these sites are increasing day by day. In the United States around 55.6 million people have used these social sited daily in 2009 (Ostrow, 2009). Globally, Facebook, one of the main social sites, accounts for 750.000.000 registrations, Twitter has 200.000.000 followers (Qualman, 2011).

In business sector, these social sites play an important role in consumers' purchasing behavior. In these sites, people usually share opinion and purplish information about their view on brands they buy and services they use (Jones, 2010). Consumers use to recommend a brand or marketing organization to friends and followers. In some case, fans of a specific brands establish a page in these social sites where they write their opinion about this brand, upload and download photos of the product that the brand sell.

Investigating the relation between these social sites and consumer purchasing behavior is a new trend that encourages researcher to search about. That relation affects both sides, marketers and consumers. For marketers, it helps to create a strong relationship with customers, developing a new idea for new product, and answering common daily questions from consumers (D‟Silva et al, 2011). Moreover, in investigating the effect of these sites on consumers' purchasing behavior, some studies have been made to find out the relation between these sides. Most of these studies improve that there is a positive relation between social sites and consumer purchasing behavior that the majority of people believe in this statements and support that by some cases where they rely on these social sites in some stages in their purchasing process such as searching for information and evaluating their choices (Constantinides and Fountain, 2008).

Social media usage is growing rapidly amongst marketing professionals and organisations and fast becoming a new outlet that can potentially be used to help increase customers' interest in a product or service. As it becomes widespread it brings about involving customers and facilitating exchange of information bringing about shift in consumer behaviour.

Through social media, information, enticing advertisement are made available to consumers easily watch and read and at the same time allowing consumers to post their own opinions and sharing it with friends. For many brands, social media appears as a way to reach new customers and to reflect their feelings and this explains the reason for which many companies are currently working on developing "Social Strategies" to outline the degree of interactivity that they want to have with their customers that will help consumers to make a buying decision.

Successful firms use consumer attitudes and behaviors to segment markets and design marketing strategies. Today, however, consumer trust in corporations is declining while the influence of online communities on buyer behavior is growing. Social media platforms have completely changed the nature of the interaction between brands and their customers, directly impacting upon the contemporary consumer decision process.

Laurens (2010) argued that while social media is not the silver bullet that some pundits claim it to be, it is an extremely important and relatively low cost touch point that has a direct impact on sales and positive word of mouth and supporting this argument Glynn and David (2009) said that Companies not actively engaging the social media are missing a huge opportunity of saying something to consumers intentionally or unintentionally about how willing they are to engage on consumers' terms. Therefore, it's necessary for retailers to understand how social media is affecting current consumers and how they are going to react.

During the economic downturn, more and more companies have reduced their communication budget but they have increased expenses for social media by 30%. It is now a priority for big companies but they need also to change their global marketing strategy. It is also important to reach the right customer at the beginning of a social media strategy because opinion leaders, such as bloggers, are the ultimate key to a brands success (The Conversation Group 2012). As the marketing power of social media grows, it no longer makes sense to treat it as an experiment. According to Tamba (2012) Social media has a big impact on how people shop. A quarter of all purchases of FMCGs are influenced by exposure to one form of social media or another and this proportion is growing. Shoppers are weaving their interaction with social and mobile marketing into their everyday lives: As a result, big brands are increasing their social media investment. Social media can influence both impulse purchases and regular shopping habits when it comes to FMCGs. The trick is to understand where, when and how customers want to interact with your brand, and with your products. Social marketing for regular purchases is about strengthening and deepening the customer's connection with the brand.

Impulse buys are also increasingly mediated by social media especially now that so many consumers can access Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest from their mobile phones.

1.1 Statement of Problem.

Most often than never, companies do not benefit from social media in a way they should have benefited from it due to their lack of strategic efforts to managing it and measure it success. Through media hypes that emphasis the ease of achieving success with social media, many companies have the believe that what they need to do to achieve success with Facebook is by just launching Facebook page and such companies get disappointed when they see no activities occurring on the page and thus they abandon the page. Common mistakes companies make is devoting a little time for social media and measuring it success on whether audience is conversing or not about their brands on their social media. Nevertheless, companies make mistakes by believing they are in total control of conversations about their companies, brands products or services on social media and they spend heavily on PR to hype their newest hires and new products whereas they forget that social media platform is all about speaking with people but not at people and more of a community of audience that discuss about companies, their products, services or brands in a way they feel they benefit them or do not (Evans 2010).

1.2 Purpose of Study

This research is carried out with the aim of appraising the impact of Facebook on Consumer buying Behaviour in the UK Grocery Market with Tesco Plc as a case study. This is to determine the effect of social media (Facebook) on the consumer buying behaviour of groceries in the UK.

1.3. Research Question

What are the impacts of Facebook on consumer buying behaviour in the UK Grocery Market?

1.4 Research Objectives

Following from the above highlighted aim, the following objectives have been set to achieve the above aim and followed by the research questions.

To identify Facebook usage patterns among UK consumers in grocery market.

Evaluate how Facebook effectively changes consumers' attitude towards groceries.

Investigating and evaluating the role of Facebook website as influencers on Tesco customers in UK at stages of buying decision-making process.

Identify if Facebook is the social medium that has the greatest impact on consumer buying pattern of Tesco in UK.

Recommendation on how Tesco should use Facebook to encourage consumers to buy their products.

1.5 The Significance of the Research

This research work was undertaken to take a critical look at the impacts of a social media called Facebook on consumer buying behaviour in the UK grocery market where Tesco was used as a case study. This research therefore became imperative to undertake as a result of a noticeably new development in the UK market that aroused the interest on the issue surrounding Facebook impact on consumer buying behaviour in the UK and a well known popular FMCG trading company in UK was chosen as a case study to identify these effects of Facebook on consumer buying pattern in the UK Grocery market.

Furthermore, the impact of Facebook on consumer buying pattern in grocery markets has not been looked into by researchers thus leaving a gap to identify whether social media (Facebook) really has a significant impact on consumer buying patterns in the grocery market apart form other commodities.

Nevertheless, this research has also been undergone due to the keen interest the researcher has, following up to date on the social media impacts on marketing activities in this 20th century and it ability to completely erode the traditional system of marketing communication.

1.6. Scope and Limitations of the study.

In investigating the impact of Facebook on consumer buying pattern in UK grocery markets, this study was only limited to Facebook which is not the only social media that consumers use to purchase groceries. The research is not applicable to other social media platforms.

Furthermore, the case study adopted was only limited to one of the FMCG companies in UK and thus do not provide a sufficient information about the impact of Facebook on the consumer buying pattern in UK grocery markets

1.7 Overview

The overall structure of this research consist of 5 chapters, each dwelling on a specific aspect of the topic under review

This first chapter comprises of the introduction, research problem, purpose of the study, research question and objectives of the study. The rational and overview of the proposal have also been covered in this part. The literature review covers the chapter 2 of this research. This part reviews critically the impacts of social media on the buying pattern of consumers in the UK grocery markets from scholarly perspective. Conceptual framework also featured in this part of the research.

Chapter 3 focuses on the methodology used in the entire research processes. The research method adopted both quantitative using closed questionnaire and qualitative method using case study approach will be adopted to collect data (Mixed method).

The fourth chapter dealt with the analysis and findings of the research while then fifth chapter focused on summary of conclusion and the implications of this research.

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW.

2.0 Introduction

The Literature review in chapter 2 will provide discussions from published information and an account of what has been published on the topic of this study. It explains body of text that aims to review the critical points of current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to "Impact of Facebook on Consumer buying Behaviour in the UK Grocery Market".

In this chapter, various textbooks, articles, journals, blogs, dailies and websites were consulted to obtain related information, thoughts and quotes of various writers, authors and scholars.

2.1. Consumer Buying Behaviour

In marketing, deep understanding of the behaviour of marketing is a very important tool for business success. Consumer buying behaviour is all about the determination of how consumers make decisions on the product or service they want to buy and the factors that are responsible for this decision. According to studies conducted in UK, 56% out of 11,000 new products that are launched by 77 companies in the UK are present after 5 years of new product launch. Also, studies revealed that only 8% of new products concept from 112 leading companies reached that market where 83% where unable to meet marketing objectives. Consumer buying behaviour tends to study these reasons why companies need to have a deep understanding of why consumers make the purchase they do and the factors that influence their decision to purchase (Hitesh, 2010). Because consumers are the drivers of marketing, the need to formulate well suitable marketing plans that that will critically examine consumer behavioural attributes and needs, lifestyles and purchase process in order to make a nearly perfect marketing mix decisions. Studying what consumers buy, the reason they buy, the way they buy, time they buy, the location and frequency at which they buy are key things to understand when undertaken the study of consumer behaviour (Hitesh, 2010).

Wayne et al., 2008, defined consumer buying behaviour is the reflection of the totality of consumers' decisions regarding acquisition, consumption, and disposition of products and services, activities, people, ideas and experiences. Also, Dibb and simkin (2001) defined the buying behaviour of consumers as an act and decision making process of people that are involved purchasing and using products or services for personal or household consumptions. Theoretical approaches have been used by researchers to have an in-depth understanding of consumer behaviour and these approaches have been inherent in 3 psychological orientations; Reinforcement theory, Cognitive theory and Freud's psycho-analytical theory (Fill,2006), with the most popular and current approach to consumer behaviour out of the 3 approaches been the cognitive theory (Berkman and Gilson, 1986), where cognitive theory states that " people use and process information they derived from internal and external sources to identify problems and make decisions. The major elements outlined by the cognitive theory for problem solving among consumers in their buying behaviour have been perception, learning, attitudes, and personality (Fill, 2006).

Consumer behaviour goes beyond the method by which consumers purchase tangible products like groceries, clothing and automobiles but rather, consumer buying behaviour also involve consumers' use of services, experiences, activities, and ideas such as going to see a General Practitioner (GP), signing up for a gym class, donating to charity, voting for politicians, seeing movies featured by certain actors etc. Consumer behaviour was also expressed as activities people get involved in when collecting, utilising and disposing products and services (Blackwell et al.,2001) or environmental factors that are aimed at creating actual behaviour (Jim,2008). Four factors namely; psychological core, process of decision making, consumer's culture and consumer behaviour outcomes have been identified to affect the buying behaviour of consumers (Wayne et al., 2008) while Haydon (2009) grouped factors that affect consumer buying behaviour into 3 group namely external influences (firms marketing effort and consumers culture), internal processes (psychological processes and decision making) and post decision processes. Choices are been made by consumers daily and buying behaviour is said to be influenced by the characteristics (cultural, social and psychological) and the decision process that buyers make (Khursia, 2012). Furthermore, several research have been undertaken to identify the buying behaviour of consumer through social psychology and personality (Ajzen, 1987), marital status and responsibilities (Goldman and Johansson, 1978), and consumer loyalty (Suen and Wei, 2009).

2.11 Psychology of buyers

Psychology of buyers must be determined by manufacturers through identification of buyer's need when marketing a product to target group of customers. Buyers most often look for sense of safety and belonging, although other customers want to gain self esteem in the presence of their peers. The perception of a product by buyers must be understood when providing information about the product to buyers as there are possibilities that buyers could interpret information provided by buyers about a product on the basis of their previous beliefs and knowledge, although learning about such product may change behavior of buyers (Jeff 2012).

2.12 Behaviour of consumers

Also, buyers could also buy products depending on their personalities and lifestyles. For example individual buyer that seeks to life a healthy lifestyle could go for organic foods while avoiding foods that are sun-tanned. In family situation, buying decisions are often based on what buyers perceived to be best for their family. Deep awareness on who makes decisions for family product must be understood by marketers. Among newly weds with no children, purchasing is the product of decision made by husband and wife, while the stay at home parent makes the decision in a family with young children (Jeff 2012).

2.13 Characteristics of Consumer

Social class and culture up to some extent determines types, quality and quantity of products that buyers buy or use. In clothing, social class may determine the type of clothes buyers buy. Culture also greatly impacts on food where deep-fried food may be easier to sell in the south than in California. The buying process begins with a step where consumers recognise a need, or a disparity between what they possess and what they need to buy to change their condition. Also, decision to buy a product can also be based on elements such as packaging, payment methods and the features and of the product (Jeff 2012).

Firm's Marketing Efforts

1. Product

2. Promotion

3. Price

4. Place

The Consumer's Culture

1. Religion

2. Ethnicity

3. Reference Groups

4. Social class

Psychological Processes

1. Motivation

2. Perception

3. Attitude

4. Knowledge

Decision Making

1. Problem recognition

2.Information Search

3. Judgement

4. Decision

Post -decision Processes

1. Purchase

2. Post-purchase behaviour

Figure 1: Model of Consumer Behaviour

2.2 Social media

Social media is a set of applications such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook etc built to operate on Web 2.0 platform which enables the creation and sharing of information created by users that are known as user-generated content (Kaplan and Haenlin, 2010). Social media has been expressed to be the new millennium medium of communication across the world with the most popular of all been Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. For example, Facebook as at June, 2012 was said to have a monthly active user of 750 million people and 1 billion active users were estimated to be on Facebook by the end of 2012, thus supporting the believe of many analyst that social media marketing will out rightly replace some forms of traditional marketing such as directing mail (Fuel oil news, 2012). Social network, one of the currently used platforms by social media is said to be a very diverse and big complex concept perceive to which its knowledge require a clear identification of its scope and coverage that forms it boundaries (George, 2008). Tracy (2008) expressed that social media existence is inherent in the context of communities that are built of people where relations are been developed and nurtured through creation, sharing, engaging and commenting in content. Social media are online tools that provide access to users with identical interest to share information that is referred to as user generated account content while also learning from others, or network in an open process (Stepenson, 2011). According to Smith and Zee (2011), Social media has been opined to be an effective way of running business other than just an ordinary marketing tool, requiring both old and new companies to embed new culture of company wide support, systems and incentives where mindset of thinking relationships and not just sales or transaction marketing must be ensured. Social media has been further explained by Smith and Zee (2011) to look beyond short term sales but should enable the culture of sharing and listening, channelling information into organisational system that alert companies into negative and positive comments, suggestions, complaints and new ideas that are beneficial for new product development, new advertisements, new discussions and promotions.

Business managers are often faced with challenges of exploiting opportunities associated with the increasing availability of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn that is been dominated by 50% users alone in UK. Despite the fact that social media has become a very popular networks that is frequently used by consumers, while organisations are still struggling to understand and put it to use effectively (Nielsen 2010). However, despite the believe of many about the opportunities inherent in social media, some are still sceptical about its potentials due to an immense uncertainty about how it can be leveraged for a long term profits and returns as well as the ability to identify the fact that return on investment can be attributed to social media marketing efforts (Weinberg and Berger, 2010), Weinberg and David, 2005). Apart from social media exposing consumers to research and purchase considerations, social media has also provided platform through which consumers can advocate for the products and stores they so much valued and love (Jay, 2012). To gather information, consumers are now relying on social media to decide on which products to buy (Kozinets 2002) and the usage of social media by consumers for brand recognition, information about products and the opinion about product or service provider are most often influenced by the cultural background of consumers as consumers widely vary in their expectation of product and service quality (Donthu and Yoo 1998).Through social media, companies are offered the opportunities to understand the needs of their consumers and increase their level of satisfaction through proactive and timely response (Jay, 2012).

2.3 Usage pattern of Social media among consumers.

No doubt, social media has gone through a significant transformation over years (Mangold and faulds, 2009). This significant transformation of social media and the extent to which consumers rely on social media to make purchasing decision led to the full awareness of the potentials of social media by marketers. Advent of social media has immensely changed the society, influencing consumer's behaviour in terms of scanning for information on different social media to read other consumers view concerning products or services they want to purchase (Todaro, 2007).

The traditional media has been greatly replaced by social networks and the awareness on social media opportunities seems unlimited as millions of Coca-cola fans on Facebook are declaring their love for the brand, most frequently viewed on YouTube been roller babies of Danone's water brand Evian while thousands of consumers that patronise Starbucks work hand in hand with the brand to generate new ideas for their products. According to Trusvo et al., 2009, 1.54 billion dollars was said to have been used to implement and support social media communications in 2008 and as such, social media growths is getting quite unlimited as investment on social media are estimated to increase to 3 billion dollars in the year 2013 (Kozinets et al., 2010). 70% internet users have been discovered to trust judgements and evaluations of their fellow consumers on the social media platforms thus leaving brand generation and awareness at the mercy of social media users (Nielsen 2009).

According to a survey conducted by Fishburn Hedges, more than third of UK consumers that constitute 36% are said to have engaged with companies brands through social media and this increase was driven by a common belief among 40% respondents that improving customer service is as a result social media when compared with just 7% of respondents that believed that social media has a negative impact on customer service. Furthermore, 68% of respondents that have engaged with brands through social media have believed that through social media, their concerns and their wishes have been made known to their products and service provider and more than 65% respondent expressed that social media gives them a better chance to communicate with companies(David, 2012).

Fishburn_image_1

Figure 2: Usage pattern of social media among UK consumers (David, 2012).

In the same vein, research conducted by YouGov Media, UK (2011) explained that the uptake and usage of social media services as a marketing tool remains favourably high among British public where Facebook is the social media site with a highest percentage of active users. 65% of online population in UK have Facebook with 95% of 16 to 20 years olds and 74% of 21-24 years old are frequently accessing Facebook social media site. The next social media site with the highest number of active users after Facebook is said to be YouTube that has 50% of all UK internet users while Twitter, Windows Live, LinkedIn, Google and Spotify have been surveyed to have 23%, 14%, 13%, 12% and 10% active online users respectively (YouGov,2012).

Furthermore, study conducted among by Hiscox (2012) among entrepreneurs in UK found out that 57% of businesses use social media for marketing where 19% of these entrepreneurs use Facebook as their social media platform while 14% use linkedIn. The use of social media to support marketing efforts in UK is inherent in the fact that 53% of UK adults that use social networks follow a particular brands while 4 out of 5 internet users visit other social platforms as we as blogs.

Also, in a study conducted by Jon (2011), 77% of UK 48.6 million adult were discovered to have an active Facebook profile, 15.5 million adult were investigated to be using Twitter account, 7.2 million adult use a photo sharing platform while 7.9 million UK adults use LinkedIn. Facebook was discovered to be the most popular UK social networking site with 77% of all UK users having an active Facebook profile where 80% women constitute the population of active Facebook user compared to 72% of men.

How Businesses use Social Media - Hiscox Insurance

Figure 3: Usage pattern of social media among UK entrepreneurs (Hiscox 2012).

Social Media Usage in UK - infographic low res 2

Figure 4: Social Media usage pattern depending on age and gender (Jon 2011).

Examining the study conducted by Dirk (2011) that proposed that the increase in the number of active user of social media was as a result of the advent of smartphones, investigated that social networks are accessed by more than half of UK users through their phones almost everyday, suggesting that overall, 35% of he UK mobile UK mobile phone population use social networks from their phones where over 44% of mobile phone users in UK are estimated to be smartphone users.

uk_mobilesocialsept10-11-1

Figure 5: The Frequency of Social Networking site or Blog in UK (Dirk, 2011)

2.4. Changing consumers attitude through Social media

Word of mouth has been found to be an effective means through which consumers buy products and services. Take for example an active user of Facebook with 15,000 followers finds a product valuable to him and thus recommends such product to his 15,000 followers on the social media sites and these followers also recommend the product to their followers and thus create a huge awareness for such brand through these social media medium. With the advent of social media, word of mouth and engagements which are effective means by which products are sold have been facilitated by social media. Years ago company's sale representatives only had the not less than 5 interactions a day but in the social media age, companies have increased their individual customer interactions to 100 or more (Joan et al., 2010). Favoured brands may be promoted by consumers through positive comments on social media like Facebook or twitter pages or could be through uploading the video clips about such brand on YouTube. In the same vein, when consumers are not satisfied with a particular product, consumers could use the brands social media to register their feelings of unsatisfaction about the company's product on the brands social media forum. Findings made by Dellarocas et al., 2007 found out that consumers look out for recommendations concerning products and proceed to buy such product via the traditional channel such as offline stores (Heil et al., 2010). Social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube etc are been used by consumers to serve as an evaluation forums where products quality or service reviewed by other consumers that have experience with such products or services are used as a determinant to determine whether such product or service would be purchased or not, and thus social media reduce uncertainty and improve efficiency of consumers' online searches in products consumption process (Dwyer, 2007). Through social media, consumers have greatly influenced one another when making purchasing decisions where consumers ask one another for advice on these social media platform, mimicking and observing one another's decision and relying on these recommendations from others before purchases are made (Hasan 2008). In a study conducted by IBM in Europe, more than half of Social media users in Britain, France, Italy and even Germany often check social networks before they make decision on purchasing or not purchasing a particular good or service. 35% of active Facebook users are discovered to use Facebook page to consult people for advices about products and services. In 40% of the situation, consumers procure such product they do investigation on through the social media. Furthermore, studies have also proved that 56% of Facebook users that have become the follower of a particular brand are likely to recommend to their social network followers such brand they follow (ConversationGroup, 2012). According to MRY (Mr Young), during holiday sales, exchanges among friends, family and brands have a significantly direct influence on purchasing decision. Through Facebook, 93% of it users have actually received or made recommendations about one brand or the other while 22% of recommendations among twitter users have been made thus leading to more than 65% purchase made as a result of these recommendations. The likelihood that leads to holiday gift purchase has been doubled through recommendations that stem from social media users and a relationship between consumer behaviour and social media presence have reflected the fact that when 80% of social media purchase a product as a result of recommendation made by a user, the brand always answers to the post of such user as a token of their appreciation for such user to promote such brand's product and 36% of social media users are said to trust brands that are on social media than brands that are not on these social media platform (Alicia, 2011). A research made by Shoppercentric on how UK adults use social media and mobile commerce in their behaviour revealed that 32% of consumers reach and connect with a company in order to find out if those companies have something new. Furthermore scepticism of consumers in UK towards brands on social media have been discovered to remain high as 54% UK consumers believe that brands are present to sell consumers things while 43% of consumers believe that companies are engaging since everyone does that. Constituting the most popular reason for consumers to follow a brand on social media platform, 32% of consumers have been discovered to just want to feel and be part of brands' group (Paratus, 2011).

2.5. Social Media as an influence to Fast Moving Consumer Goods Buyers

Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies have made several attempts to explore the opportunities of online grocery in the early days of internet. However, some of these companies have failed to exploit these opportunities while others have managed to do so with all FMCG companies having no innovation or revolution that changed the perception of consumers about shopping for groceries online. However, Online grocery through rapid innovations and creativity witnessed by the dot.com have began to bounce back with the help of sustainable growth plans, broadband and internet access that are increasing the interest of consumers. Social media plays a great role in promoting and advertising the online grocery shopping services offered by Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies to their customers. The ability of social media to offer awareness, advertise, promote online grocery shopping are driven by four mega trends namely; convenience which has transformed and made viable goods packaging industry due to the growing need, the generation of shoppers are comfortable shopping online, more than two-thirds of UK populace have access to broadband internet access making online grocery shopping to be effective and efficient, and personalize shopping experience through digital platform that offers customers the ability to customise (Research and Markets 2006). Take for example, in a research conducted on online behaviours in UK conducted by hartGroup consulting (2011), 75% of grocery consumers revealed that they do their shopping online, 54% of grocer consumer in UK said that social media has given them the opportunity to discover new foods and also, 54% percent of consumers share food experiences with their social media links while social networking offered 40% consumers the knowledge about food and 40% revealed the knowledge about food was through websites, applications and blogs. Through offering of incentives to followers of brands on social media that have recommended or endorsed brands' products and services to their friends on social media (Loyalty programs 2012), users have been inclined to double their efforts at recommending brands to their social media friends and this has resulted into total dependence and reliance on social media for reliable information about products and services they intend buying. According to Tamba (2012), more than a quarter of purchases in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector in UK are mostly influenced by social media. Social media has been attributed to 34% rise in alcoholic beverage while the baby and child care sector witnessed up to about 38% rise in purchase. This rises in the FMCG in UK as been attributed to the fact that shoppers are so much addicted with social media marketing in their daily lives. This research by Tamba (2012) discovered that social media users are actually the biggest spenders than other traditional shoppers, spending 27% more than their traditional shopper peers. Due to this, many FMCG companies have immensely invested on social media. For example, Kellogg have invested a whopping sum of $1 billion on social media, Walmart and Neflix have also cemented relationship with Facebook to increase their revenue through the social media while Unilever has allocated 15% of its spending to social media.

2.6. Understanding the Behaviour of consumers through Social Media

According to Brian (2012), monitoring comments in social media about a brand can as a basis through which a brand can predict the success of its products. Social media offers organisations the opportunity to have access to the performance of their products launch and the performance of the organisation and thus saves rather than relying on the conventional way of measuring performance with more than a quarter old data on sales and preferences of consumers which may lead to time and financial wastage. According to Brain (2012), careful and painstaking observations of comments, recommendations and perception of consumers about products and services could offer companies the ability to identify;

2.6.1 The perception of consumers about products or services

Most often, consumers share with their social media friends about brands' products through tweeting pictures of their families enjoying a new brand of mobiles or ipads, positing on Facebook about a brand's makeup before a night party, using pininterest to pin photos of meal prepared with a brand's ingredient or expressing about the advantages and disadvantages of a brand's newly launched home appliance. Although most users comment on product on social media occasionally, but there are some consumers that derive joy and passion in habitually posting comments or perceptions concerning brands' products. These set of consumers often share their enthusiasm and expertise in helping others to make a better purchase decision. The best way for an organisation to identify and solve problems associated with its brand before it adversely affects it revenue is to consistently monitor these discussions (Brian 2012).

2.6.2 Impacts of in-store experience on sales.

It is impossible for organisations to be present every place their products are being sold thus leaving the fate of their products proper stocking, promotion and proper sales at the mercy of their employees which serve as their eyes. According to Nielsen (2009), 54% of female consumers have access to social media through smartphones and this easy access to social networks can ease the method through which the shopping experience of brands by consumers can be identified through their photos, videos and reactions to such brand's shopping experience (Brian 2012).

2.7. Facebook Driving Consumer Buying Behaviour

Facebook which is one of the most popular social media with biggest number of users has successfully made provision for a wide range of online social network ecological system where users are given the opportunity to share not only music, photos but also information about companies' products and services that can be easily sighted by Facebook user friends in the ticker and timeline section. As buyers of brand's products or services are posting comments, recommendations and feelings about products on Facebook platform and these are been noticed by user's friends, the buying behaviour of consumers are thereby influenced based on these sharing (Jeff 2012). The role of Facebook in enabling buyers to socialise with one another online has continued to grow with 800 million users on the network globally. Online shopping has been enhanced by the ability of consumers to share the products to so much fancy to their friends through Facebook platform that creates the online shopping environment (Jeff 2012).

2.7.1. Facebook the most Preferred Social Media for Online Shopping Registration.

Due to the fact that 75% of all online transactions launched for consumers' online shopping registration are not often completed by consumers due to the fact that users often abandon their online shopping carts, Facebook has been recommended to and by consumers as the login to use when visiting an online store for registration says Montate an online marketing outfit (David 2012). Furthermore, 40% of consumers have been discovered to prefer to login on social media platform and 60% of the 40% consumers prefer to do this Facebook (Jeff 2012) and an additional data like birthdays, gender and interests provide advantages for consumers to simplify their online shopping registration with Facebook.

2.7.2. Information Sharing on Facebook Influencing Buying Behaviour of Consumers

According to a research that was recently conducted by Social Lab among 1,088 online shoppers, the study revealed that social sharing is also helpful as Google search in shopping.

The major things discovered from the study conducted by Social lab are;

1. Sharing on Facebook is a Vital Activity for Discovering What to Buy

62% of customers that shop-shave online got the knowledge of the product from comments posted by their friends on Facebook (Jeff 2012).

2. Sharing on Facebook Causes Consumers to Act

Furthermore, 75% of online customers who read social sharing responses have actually clicked on the product link in the posts of their friend's Facebook where they are been taking to the product page on a retailer's website.

While 53% of the consumers that have clicked through to the site of retailers have actually made a purchase (Jeff 2012).

Social-Sharing-Causes-Consumers-to-Act

Figure 6: Helpfulness in looking for product to buy (Source: jeff, 2012)

3. Positive sharing on Facebook Creates a Virtuous Cycle of Sharing and Purchasing

Nevertheless, atleast, 81% of consumers who buy products they know about through social sharing are valuable social sharers themselves, thus forming a cycle of sharing and buying.

Positive-Social-Sharing-Creates-a-Virtuous-Cycle-of-Sharing-and-Purchasing

Figure 7: Helpfulness in looking for product to buy (Source: jeff 2012)

4. "Facebook Social Proofing" - Increases Confidence in Buying

The power motivator for buying is social proofing. Social proofing can be defined as the activity by which friends activities are shown on a website. Study showed that up to 32% visitors are most likely going to stay and shop on a site that reveals that social proofing activities of customers that have bought there irrespective of whether those shoppers are their friends or not. Number even nearly doubles to 62% when shared activities include shopping behaviour of visitor's friends. For purchase, shoppers up to 57% often purchase more on a site that reveals that their friends have purchased on that site (Jeff 2012).

2.8. Conclusion

This chapter has reviewed some scholarly perspectives about consumer behaviour and how it is being influenced by Facebook. Various ways through which brands and consumers utilize and engage themselves through social media to achieve their respective objectives were also discussed.

The next chapter deals with research methodology. This chapter will cover research philosophy, and the methods adopted to collect data will also be explicitly explained. The scope and limitation shall be stated in this chapter as well.

CHAPTER FOUR

4.0. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS OF RESULTS.

This chapter deals with findings, analysis and discussion based on the data collected on the field through questionnaire distributed to 50 respondents in London and result analysed. Also, Tesco Plc documents and other materials that are reviewed. These will provide an insight into the impact of Facebook on consumer buying behaviour.

The findings and analysis of the impact of Facebook on consumer buying behaviour shall be based on the research objectives of this study as stated in 1.4 of chapter 1.

4.1. Facebook as a User Friendly Social Media.

The first finding made among 50 London residents (as shown in Figure 8 below) was about the extent to which Facebook is user friendly (where the user friendliness was expressed in the context of its ability to be used by everyone irrespective of whether they are computer literate or novice). Out of 50 respondents, 40 respondents strongly agreed that Facebook is a user friendly social media. 2 of the respondents only agreed to its user friendliness while 3 respondents remained indifferent as to whether Facebook is user friendly or not. 2 and 3 respondents disagreed and strongly disagreed respectively to the fact that Facebook is user friendly.

This survey reveals the fact behind the findings of YouGov (2012) where 95% of 16 to 20 years old and 74% of 21-24 years old out of 65% of the online population in UK were said to have Facebook account and also corroborated Jeff (2012) that 60% of consumers prefer to use Facebook as their social media login platform for online shopping due to its ease of usage. The user friendly characteristic of Facebook social media had made it attracted 750 million active users in June 2012 with this number expected to rise to 1 billion active Facebook users at the end of 2012 as researched by Fuel oil news (2012).

From the data collected and analysed among 50 respondents that residents in London, UK and findings from literatures made on Facebook as the most sought after social media with millions of followers is due to the fact that Facebook is a user friendly social media that give users easy access to share their information, pictures with their friends on the platform.

This therefore revealed that user friendliness should be the hallmark of a social media that seeks to attract millions of users to its social media network and thus gain brand awareness to achieve its objectives and sustain competitive advantage.

4.2. Frequency of visits of users to Facebook.

In terms of frequency of visits to social media, 44 out of 50 respondents strongly agreed that they always visit their Facebook account frequently while 1 respondent agreed to the fact that they check their Facebook accounts on regularly basis and 1 respondent neither agreed nor disagreed to visiting their Facebook accounts always. 2 out of the 50 respondents do not visit their Facebook account regularly or at all.

This result shows that nearly all Facebook users visit their Facebook account frequently and this also supports the findings from Admin (2009) that explained that 73% of Facebook users with age between 18-24 years old visit Facebook account severally per day while users between ages 25-34 years, 40% of Facebook users visit the social platforms. Admin (2009) further explained that 38% users that are aged 35-44 years visit Facebook several times per day. Furthermore, the higher number of frequent visitations to Facebook social media supports the claim of Frank (2010) that investigated the fact that; about 175 million users of Facebook log on to the network per day. The reasons for this high frequency of visits to the social media as been attributed to the need of 48% users to check updates from friends and their favourites brands, 23% Facebook users that check the social media frequently for news updates (marketing pilgrim, 2010). The ability and convenience to check Facebook accounts by millions of users has been attributed to the advent of smartphones that enable Facebook network to be easily accessed by more than half of UK users resulting in 44% out of 35% Facebook account users accessing through their smartphones (Dirk 2011).

The frequency of visits to Facebook social media has resulted in a shift from traditional method of creating brand awareness and advertising firms' offerings to Facebook marketing where according to Truvo et al., 2009 the Facebook age has seen an heavy investment of 1.5 billion dollars into it by firms to support its growth and the invest has been forecasted to increase to 3 billion dollars by the year 2012 (Kozinets et al., 2010).

4.3. Level of Trust about Products advertised on Facebook.

With respect to the level of trust consumers have on products and services advertised on Facebook, 38 out of 50 of the respondents strongly agreed that they trust product and services advertised by brands and Facebook social media. 4 out of 50 respondents actually agreed when it comes to trusting products advertised by brands on social media. But 3 out of the respondents disagreed when it comes to trusting products and services of brands advertised on Facebook platform while 2 of the 50 respondents strongly disagreed that products and services advertised on Facebook platform should be trusted.

The level of high trust most of the respondents have for products and services advertised by brands can be deduced from the fact that Facebook is a platform of communities of people where relations are built and trust in information and knowledge shared immensely abound (Tracey 2008) and consumers are ready to access Facebook to search for fellow consumers with identical interest where they can obtain reliable information about products they wish to buy (Stephenson, 2011). Trust in products advertised on Facebook could also be traced to the tendencies of consumers to advocate genuinely the products that they so much valued to all other Facebook users (Jay, 2012). Furthermore, high level of trust discovered among respondents corroborate with Nielsen (2009) that explained that 70% of internet users have been discovered to trust judgements and evaluations of their fellow consumers on the social media platforms thus leaving brand generation and awareness at the mercy of social media users (Nielsen 2009). The high level of trust for brands through Facebook social media platform has also been demonstrated in a survey conducted by Fishburn Hedges where 36% of consumers have shared that they got engaged by brands through social media (David, 2012). According to Joan et al., 2010, word of mouth that have been the effective means through which consumers are easily made to purchase products and services from firms have been made possible by Facebook social platform with consumers depending on one another's recommendations on this platform before a brand's product or service could be purchased. He further explains that the advent social media platform (e.g. Facebook) has facilitated trust in brands' products and services advertised on social media (e.g. Facebook). In the same vein, high trust in social media marketing by consumers could also be as a result of the fact that consumers give sincere comments about whether the products or services of firms meet their expectations or not on social media (Dellarocas et al., 2007). The ability to trust in any products advertised on Facebook platform can also be attributed to the consistent use of Facebook media as a place for evaluation forums where products quality or services are been reviewed among consumers that have experienced the performance of such products before (Dwyer, 2007) and thus influencing one another (consumers) base on trust when making buying decisions (Hasan 2008). Without an adequate trust on products advertised and recommended on Facebook, the urge to consult social networks before purchasing decisions could be made as investigated by IBM to be the characteristics of consumers in Europe with more than half of consumers in Britain, France, Italy and Germany wouldn't have been so possible (ConversationGroup,2012). Alicia (2011) also explained the extent to which customers rest their trust on recommendations made by their fellow Facebook users where the trust has resulted in a huge correlation between consumer buying behaviour and social media with 80% holiday gift purchased as a result.

4.4. Tesco Groceries Advertised on Facebook.

To know whether Tesco groceries advertised on Facebook actually influence London consumer's buying decision to purchase it, the 50 respondents were asked whether they often buy Tesco groceries that are advertised on Facebook.

Out of the 50 respondents, 26 of them strongly agreed to the fact that they often buy Tesco groceries that are advertised on Facebook. 10 of the 50 agreed to often buy Tesco groceries advertised on Facebook while 7 of the respondents said they neither agreed nor disagreed about that fact that they procure Tesco groceries advertised on Facebook. However, 4 and 3 respondents disagreed and strongly disagreed respectively to the fact that they often buy Tesco grocery products advertised on Facebook platform.

This finding also corroborate with the one discovered by HartGroup (2011) that revealed that 54% of grocer consumers revealed that social media has given them the opportunity to discover new foods and 75% of the 54% consumers revealed they actually shop for those groceries advertised on social media. Tamba (2012) also found out the impact of advertising grocery products on social media where he wrote that more than a quarter of purchases in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector in UK are mostly influenced by social media as social media has been attributed to 34% rise in alcoholic beverage while the baby and child care sector witnessed up to about 38% rise in purchase. And Tamba (2012) attributed the rise to the fact that shoppers are so much addicted with social media marketing in their daily lives. Consumer high frequency of buying groceries advertised on Facebook is an attestation to the fact that social media users are actually the biggest spenders than other traditional shoppers, spending 27% more than their traditional shopper peers (Tamba,2012) thus prompting FMCG companies to invest heavily on social media and examples of such investment was also sighted by Tamba (2012) where Kellogg have invested a whopping sum of $1 billion on social media, and also where Wal-Mart and Neflix have also cemented relationship with Facebook to increase their revenue through the social media while Unilever has allocated 15% of its spending to social media.

4.5. Visibility to consumers the advert of Tesco Grocery Products on Facebook.

With respect to the positioning of Tesco grocery advert on Facebook as to whether consumer easily sights the advert on Facebook or not, 19 respondents strongly agreed that they sight advert easily on Facebook platform while 8 respondents agreed that they easily sight advert on Facebook. However, 15 respondents neither agreed nor disagreed to the fact that they easily sight products advertised on Facebook. 3 and 5 respondents disagreed and strongly disagreed to seeing Tesco grocery adverts on Facebook.