Factors impacting digital buyer's decision: role played by virtual store and social networking sites as selling medium for consumer electronics

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to give meaningful insights into the 'changes' that have occurred over recent years into decision-making method of digital patron due to frequent usage of e-store and high involvement with interactive websites called 'social media effect'. In today's scenario, on an average, a user spends at the least two hours on the internet to carry out numerous activities and comprises of populace from generation Y and Z with majority having intellect and purchasing power. Their shopping decision is not confined and driven by the need for the items; instead, these days, it is immensely impacted by activities run on or by e-commerce and social networking sites that work on selling and indirectly as mind-shaping mediums for the consumers. This paper tries to discover all those elements from e-store, social media and user-generated content on the internet that impacts consumer thoughts and frame conceptual model. Additionally, it tries to gauge if there exits significant difference in purchase behaviour of various consumer demographic categories with regard to the extracted factors from the derived three constructs and thereupon generate verticals of online purchasers and gives insights into the marketing strategy to be used to capture them by the companies.