How social media platforms affect consumer behavior: A cross-national study

The development of the Internet has resulted in socio technological changes because of social media platforms. This has created a gap in the literature to study consumer behavior. Consumer Behavior is a complex and constantly changing issue that needs to be investigated from a multidisciplinary perspective. Especially, consumer behavior needs a close investigation over the past years as consumers have gained new behaviors and habits because of Covid-19 lockdowns. Cross-cultural comparison gives an accurate review of the impact of social media platforms (SM) on consumer behavior and highlights behavioural patterns that are particularly specific to a society. Bearing all these in mind, the effects of SM platforms on two societies of Russian and Turkish consumers have been studied. Therefore, this study aims at revealing the influence of e-WOM and SM Ads on socio-demographic factors, nationalities, decision-making styles, and time spent on SM. For this reason, two samples were used for this research consisting of 300 Turkish and 250 Russian consumers. Online questionnaires have been distributed to the participants. Exploratory factor analyses have been done to reduce the number of variables to explain and interpret the results. In addition, a series of non-parametric tests have been implemented to tests hypotheses. The findings of the study show that there is no significant difference between countries regarding the use of the Internet. In general, people use the Internet for SM usage and spend approximately 1-3 hours a day. SM usage increased during COVID-19 in Turkey but there was no change in Russia. Adopting the well-established Consumer Style Inventory to profile consumer shopping orientation on SM, this study identified five main decision-making styles for both countries. In Turkey, the most popular shopping orientations have become "Novelty-fashion consumers" and "Ad Marionette consumers" in Russia.