The impact of social media phenomena on female consumers purchasing decision process

Nowadays, consumers spend every moment on social media and share their ideas and experiences in their personal accounts. Social media phenomena came up with people who share their experiences create their own followers. These people, whom we can define as social media celebrities, are also seen as a source that conveys information with their followers. The impact of these phenomena, which are of great importance by their followers, on consumers has become undeniable. For this reason, it did not take long to attract the attention of marketers trying to reach the target audience, and phenomena have turned into one of the most popular tools of the marketing world. Increasing cooperation with phenomena day by day came up the question of whether phenomena affect the purchasing decision. In line with this information, the main purpose of this thesis study is; to determine whether or not the phenomena that are shared on social media have an impact on consumers purchasing decision process and at what stage. Women are the focus of the research because it is thought that phenomena are followed more by women and that women are being treated as a growing separate market by businesses. In this direction, the questionnaire, which was created to collect data, was applied online to 552 female participants who followed at least 1 phenomenon, due to the pandemic. In the analysis of the data, validity and reliability analysis, frequency analysis, Kruskal Wallis test, ChiSquare test, correlation analysis and regression analysis were applied. The resulting research findings reveal that the phenomena have an impact on the purchasing decision process of female consumers. Participants are more likely to follow the phenomenon shares during the alternative determination phase, which is the second step of the purchase decision process.In addition, it was determined that demographic characteristics partially affected this relationship.