Examining the purchasing behaviors of consumers shopping on Instagram: The case of international students in Turkey

In the modern world, social reality is developing rapidly and at the same time, the usual communication process is gradually changing. In the new reality, social networks have become an integral part of the daily lives of people around the world. The ever-increasing global Internet platform and the use of various social networks have changed not only interpersonal communication, but also the way people shop for their daily needs. This change and digitalization process has rapidly evolved into a period in which the whole world is isolated and interpersonal social communication is prohibited, with the onset of a global pandemic in 2020. In recent years, there have been global migration events that also affect Turkey. When the internal turmoil in Syria and Afghanistan and the forced migration from Turkey due to the Russian-Ukrainian war are added to the optional migrations, which have become a center of attraction in tourism, trade, education and health fields in recent years, an extraordinary increase has occurred in the number of foreigners. . Whatever the reason for their arrival, foreigners who immigrate to Turkey experience a paradoxical situation between the need to digitalize and become more individualized, but also to engage in cultural interaction with the Turkish society they live in. Foreigners, who have become an important population in Turkish society, have recently attracted the attention of businesses, individual producers and traders. Knowing the factors that affect the purchasing decision of foreign consumers in order to provide effective service to foreign consumers and to meet their demands and needs in a timely and complete manner brings businesses one step closer to foreign consumers. Understanding the decision-making style or process of the foreign consumer enables businesses to get to know their foreign consumers better and thus enables the right service to be provided. With the developments in technological fields and especially with the social media becoming a commercial medium in recent years, foreigners have started to show their presence in this field at least as much as domestic users/consumers. With mobile devices and applications, foreign consumers are offered the opportunity to place orders much faster and without intermediaries. For the foreign consumer, digital spaces provide a wide range of advantages. The most important of them are; It is the opportunity to do these works in the digital environment where they can experience the language and cultural stress in the bazaar - market or in the physical environment, where they can compare the products in the same category on a larger scale in a written and visual way, and they can save time while doing all these. The main purpose of this study is in the use of Instagram, which is one of the important channels of social commerce; The aim of this study is to examine the demographics, decision-making styles and purchasing behaviors of foreign consumers living in Turkey. While conducting the research, the focus participant group was reached with various filter questions. 1260 foreign students living in Turkey were included in the research and 865 people with Instagram accounts were asked whether they had shopped on Instagram before. Accordingly, the survey continued with 226 users/consumers shopping on Instagram in the provinces of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. As a result of the literature review, no similar study was found about foreigners and their shopping habits and behaviors on Instagram. Thus, since it is the first research in its field, a comparison could not be made. However, as a result of the evaluation, it is possible to say that especially the survey outputs of the research will fill an important gap in the literature and will be a source for future studies.