The impact of social networking websites on purchase decision process: An application in Gaziantep University

In the last 10 years, rapid change and development occurred in internet technologies caused significant changes in decision making and managing decision processes for consumers and companies in general sense. These change and development affected companies former practices and all the strategies companies use to sustain its presence. For consumers, these resulted as the power changing hands in developing competitive environment. Especially the stages of consumer?s purchase decision process; such as addressing needs, determining alternatives, evaluating alternatives, purchase decision and post-purchase evaluation are facing change in this fast and technical progress. As a platform all internet technologies combined and performed efficiently and effectively, social networking websites are consulted by consumers in their purchase decision process. With different technologies and innovative features, social networking websites spread vast information on product and services to consumers more intensively. In this context, to identify the impact of social networking websites on consumers purchase decision process, in this study, data obtained from Gaziantep University's faculty members is used. Obtained data is processed through SPSS 18.0 and evaluated with MannWhitney U and Kruskal Wallis analyses. After the analyses, it is concluded that social networking websites influence over consumer?s purchase decision process shows variety across different consumer demographics.Keywords: Social Networking Websites, Consumer Buying Decision Process, Purchase Behaviors