The Impact of social media on purchase intention decision of Women

Abstract

Women's purchase intention and purchase decision making is directly proportion to successful marketing strategies applied by companies; this dissertation demonstrates how extensively women make decision based on what they see on social media. The study finds that marketing through social media and eWOM contribute to the success of business, especially the beauty & apparel industry. Existing literature suggests that marketing and branding strategies have a direct impact on a customer's purchase decision and it has been determined that women respond to E, ( ,',J marketing on social media and eWOM better, than men do; they also tend to rely on opinions '. '" r: formulated through eWOM a lot. For the purpose of this research, interviews were conducted and the compiled data was analyzed using the qualitative research method. For sampling, snow ball technique was utilized to gather an authentic set of samples. After collecting about twenty samples data saturation occurred. It was found that while women highly encourage the trend of marketing through social video and tend to rely on eWOM, the beauty standards set by social media were lowering the self-esteem of women. It was found that use of technology to manipulate images in adverts was increasing the gap between actual and ideal self-image of women. Women who were a part of research suggested that they would prefer more realistic standards of beauty, similarly, the trend of XL clothing was taken into account and it was found that there is a need to encourage plus-size modeling and more real beauty standards that will not prove to be entirely unattainable.