The aim of this study was to study the effect of social media on teenage consumer. We would like to investigate what is their behavior, psychology or motivation that has been affected by social media. The result of this study showed that social media has a great effect on teenage consumers and they are a big user in terms of time spending and engagement.
From a global perspective, we can see that online media plays an important role in consumers' media behavior, especially social media. From a local (Thailand) perspective we can see that the Thai consumer adopts social network just as the global user did, but what the difference is is about the purpose which Thai user tended to use more for entertainment purposes, e.g. The focus of the research question and research framework tends to study the impact on teenage consumers of adopting social media in their lives, from global to local perspectives. In this thematic article, it consists of secondary research conducted by a website, an independent research company and a media agency, both global and local, which has provided statistical data on media consumption behavior. Each figure will be explained and discussed to reflect the trend or change in online consumption. media, especially social media.
The following three figures give you a brief idea of the effect and trend of social media towards global consumer behavior. Source: Viral blog website on the topic The impact of social media and digital video on internet usage. As the popularity of social networking and online media increases, the time the average person spends online increases.
There is some outstanding data on 3 popular social media platforms that showed statistics of the total monthly active user of Facebook at 1.11 billion compared to the world population estimated at 7.128 billion (source: World population, Wikipedia), which meant that one in six people will have a Facebook account.
Thailand perspective
A social network focused on serving VDO content, YouTube is visited by more than 1 billion unique users every month, and in total, users have spent more than 4 billion hours watching video content every month. Internet users and breakdown by age to see the difference in usage for each age group, the top 25 websites among Internet users in Thailand, so we can see the best website that the user spends the most time on, and see where the social network ranks in this research, statistics on the change Social network user on a popular platform in the year indicates how social media supports consumer decision- participation in the last 12 months in Southeast Asia (Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam), which gives us an idea of the role of social media in the pre-purchase process (discussing, reading and watching content that helps them decide on a particular product. What we found in the local market is that the user aged 15-24 is the majority of the internet population, which is close to the global and both spend more and more time on social networks Facebook dominates the market with a huge number of users, while in the local market we see a trend that visual content (Instagram - 125% growth) and video content (YouTube - 163% growth) will be the future competitor to the main social network. network like Facebook because both have significant growth while Facebook's growth is now slowly declining.
Before looking at the use of social media among target teenagers, we need to start looking at the overall internet penetration in Thailand first to know the background of the consumption behavior. According to market research under the theme "Mobile brings more consumers online in Thailand" (Chadha, 2013) The above table from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), "World Telecommunication Indicators Database". There are three levels of municipalities in Thailand, divided by population and density levels.
According to the NSO, use of the internet, computers and mobile phones in municipal areas were all higher than in non-municipal areas; Internet penetration in municipal areas reached 37.7% in 2012, compared to 20.5% in less developed regions. According to NSO data for the first quarter of 2012, 64.6% of Thai Internet users have downloaded a movie or listened to music or radio online, which is the most profitable. This figure shows the online activities of internet users in Thailand, by age, April 2012 (data from Mindshare Thailand). Participating in and visiting social networking sites is the majority activity among teenagers, both in the 14-19 age category (62%) and in the 20-29 age category. (67%), which is above average for 55% of all age groups (14-65 years). Not only teenagers who spend the most time on social networks, but also at other ages the social network is becoming the leader in online activities.
Another interesting statistic is that the 20-29 age group spends time downloading songs/music/MP3 and watching/downloading movies in large quantities. If we combine these two activities together, the percentage will be almost equal to that of social media. This implies that if anyone can provide this service to the consumer, it automatically becomes a direct competitor to social media. Sanook (ranking number 4), Kapook (ranking number 7), Pantip (ranking number 8) or Dek-D (ranking number 10), even though they do not position themselves as social media, but indirectly this web portal has service that people who are interested in a particular interest or topic can share, express and exchange their opinion about a product or service, so we can also consider this as a space for a social consumer network. Complementing the growth in the number of social network users on four major platforms, the comparison of the first quarter of 2012 and 2013 shows that the total Facebook user increases from 14.5 million.
According to the data, we can see that Facebook's growth is now slowing down, while Instagram is. Sometimes it links from the page shared by a friend/fan, which is interesting because Facebook can be considered the most important social media among them. From all previously supported information we can see that social media, e.g. Facebook, You Tube and Blogger are becoming the strong media that interact most with teenagers.
Another proof that the adolescent will have the potential to listen to what is shared and influenced on social media is according to Koller (1988) who defines trust as a function of the degree of risk inherent in a situation. According to the research paper under the topic of mapping and leveraging social media influencers to shape perceptions of corporate brands mentioned in relation to consumer brand ownership, brand ownership is increasingly divided between consumers and the brands themselves.
RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Finding and Discussion
The purpose of using social media to support decision-making, the Thai consumer ranks number one in discussing/posting their own reviews of brands, products or services, ranks number two in reading other people's reviews of brands, products and services, as well shared number one when watching an online video about a product or service that has the potential to buy in Southeast Asia. Social media has an important role as a platform for users to find, consume, discuss, share and exchange information among peers to help shape their product and service purchasing decision. Word of mouth plays an important role in conversation, they listen to what they have heard, discuss and share theirs in the online social network, so if someone spreads some news and people decide to share one to one, a story can be told and share it unlimitedly on social networks.
According to research paper topic mapping and the utilization of influencers in social media to shape corporate brand perceptions (Booth & Matic, 2011), showed a significant role of consumer to act like individual brand content producer, either primary or second hand stories, so that brand should focus on influencer and storyteller to make sure that conversation and what they share goes in the appropriate way, in other words, brand must respond to guidance and control message to protect damage or misunderstanding that may occur. And according to the research, people in Southeast Asia tended to read other people's comments about brand or product, so brand should respond to any comment that occurred on the social network, because if they unclear or misunderstood topic of discussion about product or service late, sooner or later it will lead to damage or loss of opportunity to sell.
Limitation and further research
The research framework in this topic paper is not empirical, but an analysis based on existing data, therefore the available source is limited, so the author has tried his best to find relevant information that is focused or related to the topic. This topic article has been developed by one author so that the point of view, interpretation of information and analysis will be based on a single mind. Some of the information is confidential, at the beginning of the literature review, the author used a link in the field of advertising to contact many media agencies that would normally get the information, but the data turned out to be restricted for access, as each company tended to keep data for your client (and access to this data is also a cost).
But anyway, since this thematic paper will be used for educational purposes, so some media agencies shared some related information and it is used in this thematic paper. For further research, I recommend that there is more time in the development of the thematic paper, so that the author has more time for planning the timeline, finding the topic, developing the structure and outline of the thematic paper, designing the research framework , collecting data and analyzing more information.
CONCLUSION
How brand can influence Facebook user to be interested in brand and made a purchase on their product or service. These are important questions and must be improved to ensure this medium as a sustainable touchpoint between brand and consumer in the future.
