Role of ratings and likes in influencing a product’s purchase decision across involvement levels

Abstract

Chapter 1 – Introduction:- Background of the problem: During the last 15 years, the world has drastically gone under technical revolution and work as an information age. Rise of internet has open the door of information inclined world and played a significant role in adoption of content-driven technologies such as blogs, social media apps, platforms and opinion making platforms. The rise of these social media along with publicalyavailable information collectively led to Web 2.0. The term ‘Web 2.0’ consists of the use of internet where independent user acts as a content provider and receiver. Data and information are publicly shared which could be updated, modified and re-shared by new set of users in a collaborative way. Today, the manufacturer, distribution channels and the end consumer sof marketing as part of a electronic community which publish, consume and get affected by the plethora of information called as user generated contents (UGC). UGC refers to freely available content which are generated, curated, modified and updated by the end consumers based on their own experience with the products or the services being offered by marketers. Since, most of these information (ratings ,reviews etc ) are posted based on personal experience, the trust factor is generally high with this. It results that the independent information has empowered the end consumers while it appears as a challenge for the marketers. As many of these information are independent and genuine feedback of products, the marketers can plan to utilize these for the co-creation of values based on content, timing or frequency of the consumer conversation. Collectively, Web 2.0 and UGC have developed the concept of Online or electronic word-ofmouth (eWOM). It is a form of communication where internet users acts a brand leaders and promote the products with others by providing reviews and ratings of products being used, experience with brands and services being taken. There are a lot of popular platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter where internet users can post their experience and share information about the services, and it acts as WOM for people in their network and other consumers. This rising practice of eWOM is a great source of information for marketers as it gives some strategic details of factors influencing consumer-decision making. So, this study explores the impact of exploration of these information sources on the consumer decision process with the focus on online shopping environment. The classical AIDA model (also known as hierarchy of effects models or hierarchical models), is chosen to study the consumers’ purchasing decision making process due to its direct impact on the end result with the central focus on social media usage.

Chapter 2 – Approach to the problem: Based on the goal of our project, we have chosen AIDA model to study the consumer behavior and decision-process. AIDA model, focuses only on the four decision stages of that consumers move through a series of cognitive (thinking) and affective (feeling) stages culminating in a behavioral stage (doing e.g. purchase or trial) stage. It represents the complete journey of a typical customer (especially online customer) which gets started from the point of attention to the final purchase, and that explains the way decisions are made (Karimi, 2013). Attention + Interest (Cognitive) + Desire (affective) + Action (Behavioral) The internet impacts the various stages of consumer decision making in general. The rise of social media platforms, recommender systems and easy availability of reviews aids and have extended the internet’s influencing role to all the stages. Social media has created on a ‘collaborative culture’ where users gets influence an unending loop of shared information, positive reviews/ratings, targeted ads etc .The quality of online product reviews impacts the perceived informativeness and which later convert into persuasiveness and create a significant positive influence on consumers’ purchase intentions. If purchase behavior is seen in combination with the basic human instinct of joining social media platforms and the way they consume content there, it seems obvious that AIDA will mix with this like salt in water. However, the older mediums of marketing communication made sure that different things perform distinct functions out of A, I, D & A. But social media is merging those boundaries and causality (purchase intention) be a function of basic human instincts, consumption preferences and consumer personality. To explain this causality, we take the following activities being done to drive purchase and try to see where in AIDA framework do, they act.