The main purpose of this study is to understand the impact of social networks or digital marketing on consumer behavior. Companies should focus on customer interaction and online presence in order to serve customers and meet their needs.
Today, digital marketing has formed an important part of every business and is constantly expanding, and understanding the effective consumer behavior of social networks is of great importance.
Social networks include a wide range of online forums, which offer products/services to customers. Companies constantly check customer opinions and try to increase consumer engagement by engaging with them.
Understanding how social networks affect customer behavior, especially their loyalty and tolerance, is very important for companies because through social network analysis, marketers can monitor customer satisfaction before and after purchase.
The latest IDC research on the relationship between social networks and consumer behavior shows:
- 91% of buyers are active in social media
- 84% of CEOs use social media to make decisions
- 75% of buyers’ decisions are influenced by social media
The important principle for businesses, in order to succeed in the market, is customer orientation and focus on the customer. Social networks also enable customers to communicate with each other and constantly discuss brands and share their opinions with the rest of the Internet user community at no cost. These connections are formed through advertising pages, influencers or even ordinary users.
Companies divide customer behavior into three main categories:
- Customer loyalty: the consumer encourages others to buy that product and will always use the products of a particular brand in the future.
- Customer Tolerance: Measured in terms of poor service, complaints, and over-tolerance pricing.
- Customer testing: They are identified by trying new products and buying products without seeing them.
Considering the correlation coefficients, the hypothesis that social networks have a negative effect on customer loyalty and customer tolerance has been confirmed.
The relationship between social media use and customer loyalty is negative, customers who spend more time on networks and search engines are less loyal to brands. This means that they do not consider and buy certain brands for the future and do not encourage others to buy the company’s products.
The relationship between social media use and customer tolerance is also negative, meaning that customers who spend more time on networks and search engines are less tolerant of poor service and overpricing.
The relationship between social media use and customer experimentation is positive, meaning that as social media use increases, customers tend to experiment more with their purchases. For example, buying new products or buying products without seeing their appearance.
With the results obtained from the surveys conducted on consumers in Iraq, it was also determined that these people have gone through a positive trend in terms of compatibility and interaction in social networks. So that the use of social media is gradually increasing among them. However, trust in products does not have a significant relationship with the use of social media, and the results of these studies emphasize that marketing in social media directly affects customer interaction. This means that social media may temporarily change the decision to buy products in Iraqi consumers, but it cannot influence the trust and loyalty of consumers in the first step.
Also, testing the hypotheses showed that different popular digital marketing platforms in Iraq influence the behavior of students, through digital media platforms. Students in Iraq buy in a wide range of product categories, and this shows the influence of networks on young age groups, i.e., students. These results show that companies must implement programs to harness the digital world and technology as well as increase brand awareness through online media in order to compete in today’s business environment.