Intergenerational difference on social media channels: An application intended for the impact of social media marketing on purchasing attitude of generations

Today with the growing internet infrastructure and technology the profiles of consumers are changing day by day. Because online shopping is getting common, businesses have had to change their marketing strategies. In addition, increased use of social media has caused the importance of social media adverts and brand positioning to increase. There is a need to group individuals who are separated according to their common characteristics and to carry out direct market's activities for the target audience. In line with that the following questions are the main problems of this master's thesis: "What are the factors that effects the consumers purchasing attitude? Does generation factor have impact on consumer's purchasing attitude? If there is, does it make difference among generations?". This study was prepared to examine whether there is a difference in purchasing attitudes of products and services advertised on social media channels based on Y and Z generations. As a result of literature search and qualitative study a model is created according to the listed below factors that are thought to have effects on consumers purchasing attitude. Purchasing attitude, herd behavior on social media, brand orientation, price orientation, impulsive purchasing, performance expectation, social media ads, notification of ads, entertainment of ads, annoyance of ads, reliability of ads. Moreover, data has been collected over the 500 attendances by using face to face and online survey tools at the quantitative part of study. By using reliability, factor, correlation and multiple grouping organizing effect analysis on collected data, the hypotheses were tested.