The Impact of Social Networking Sites and Online Brand Communities on Consumer Purchasing Decision-Making Process

Table of Content
1. Report Summary ………………………………………………………………...… 2
2. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………... 3
3. Theoretical Framework ………………………………………………………….... 3
3.1. Understanding Social Networking Sites (SNSs) and Online Brand
Communities (OBC) in relation to Consumers ……………………………..... 3
3.2. The Reasons Consumers are influenced by Social Networking
Sites (SNSs) and Online Brand Communities (OBC) ………………………... 5
3.3. The User Created Versus The Firm created Online Brand
Communities (OBC) …………………………………………………..………... 6
4. Company: Converse ……………………………………………………………….. 7
5. Conclusion and Recommendation ………………………………………………... 8
6. List of References ………………………………………………………………….. 9
1. Report Summary
Online brand communities (OBC) and Social Networking sites (SNSs) has given firms new ways to communicate with consumers. The rate at which SNSs are growing, word-of-mouth has become the ‘order of the day’. Behaviour of consumers tend to be influenced by their exposure to EWOM, when it comes to search of information regarding brands. The idea of ‘like’ and ‘share’ on Facebook, and ‘retweet’ on Twitter has made it possible for brands to have their message spread across users on this platforms, which tends to help in adding value to the brand’s image.
The new generation and their interaction with the internet has made brands to start looking beyond the traditional means of advertising to influence consumers purchase decision-making process. 2. INTRODUCTION
Today, internet is not just a tool used to access information, it has become a tool used by people to share their views, opinions about anything and everything with no boundaries or restriction (Darban and Li 2012). The internet has given consumers the provision to search for various information on price, choice alternatives, compare product specification like never before (Mazaheri, et al. 2011).
Over the past years, the use of internet has seen enormous growth. In a survey carried out by Internet World Stats (2012), it showed that there was an increase in the use of internet between the year 2000 and 2012 from 360,985,492 to about 2,405,518,376 that is over 560% growth, with Asia having over 1 trillion internet users. According to IWS, Facebook alone has over 835,525,280 users as of 31 March 2012 (Internet World Stats 2012). Nowadays, the way firms and people interact has been altered and power has shifted from the firms to individuals due to online social networking (Hagel and Armstrong 1997; Darban and Li 2012). In recent years, the rapid growth of online social networking websites and blog sites such as facebook.com, twitter.com, pinterest.com, blogger.com, linkedin.com, youtube.com has given both consumers and marketers the opportunity to create and promote consumer-brand relationships through online brand communities (Lee, et al. 2011).
In this article, we discuss the increasing impacts of online brand communities and social networking sites on consumer purchasing decision-making process and how companies can use social networking sites and online brand communities in brand building. Should these online brand communities be spontaneously created be the users of the brand or be a corporate branding strategy driven by the company? 3. Theoretical Framework
3.1. Understanding social networking sites (SNSs) and Online Brand Communities (OBC) in Relation to Consumers Social networking sites (SNSs) according to Boyd & Ellison (2007), is a web-based platform which provides individuals and businesses the opportunity to create a free profile, interact with other users and communities within a particular system which may be different from site to site. Social Networking Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Blogger which allows users to create profiles for personal use as well as for business purpose where