The effect of social media on consumers purchasing decision process: A research in İzmir

While social media penetrates our lives, both businesses and consumers have witnessed certain changes. Due to the social media influence, consumers who perceive consumption as a purchasing activity in exchange for money to meet their infinite needs have become increasingly active at each consumption step. Beforehand, consumers used conventional "Word of mouth" to share purchasing experiences with a limited social community. Hence, a consumer community expressing their opinions has been formed through freedom-oriented framework of social media platforms. Social media has led to certain changes in the marketing strategies of businesses besides consumer habits. Social media has enabled businesses to offer their products to a larger audience quickly and with less cost. Now, consumers and businesses can exchange opinions on mutual platforms. Accordingly, it is seen that businesses that pay more attention to consumer opinion are preferred highly. The main purpose of the research is to explain how social media affects the consumer's decision to purchase a product or service. An online survey was sent to 489 participants residing in İzmir via convenience sampling method. The research limitations are the condition to reside in İzmir and to have an actively used social media account. In the study, reliability analysis, normality test, exploratory factor analysis, frequency and descriptive analysis, ANOVA, independent sample T-test, correlation analysis and regression analysis were applied. It has been determined that the data are normally distributed and reliable. Analysis results showed that consumers change their attitudes about companies with favorable comments on social media before or during the purchase, and this positively affects their experience sharing on social media platforms after the purchase. As consumers perceive social media ads during research before purchase more reliable than mass communication tools, it is seen that social media has a positive effect on trying new products. In terms of gender, we can say that males see social media ads as more reliable than mass communication tools compared to females. A significant difference between the time spent on social media platforms and the purchasing decision's complication level has been observed; hence, it has been determined that as the time spent on social media increases, purchasing decision process gets more complicated. Regarding courage to state post-purchase opinions, no significant difference was observed between genders.