Next, I would like to thank all my teachers and professors at Mahidol University College of Management. The study aims to understand what are the key factors influencing the shopping behavior of Thais on Instagram. It is important for brands to be aware of the path that consumers take in online research in order to influence positive ROI for brands.
The result also revealed that Thai consumers will rely and trust the product itself and the credibility of the store on Instagram. In 2016, internetlivestat.com said about 29 million of Thailand's population are internet users. Factors increasing the number of internet users would be new technology, globalization and even the improvement of transportation.
When analyzing the social network trends in Thailand, Facebook appears to have more users than Instagram. What factors that influence Instagram photos have on the behavior of the customer to consume the products or services. The purpose of this paper is to find out the factors that influence the Thai customer's decision making to consume products or services displayed on Instagram.
The factors that encourage customer decision making to consume a product or service from Instagram.
Expected Benefit
LITERATURE REVIEW
Modern Purchase Funnel
- The modern purchase funnel
Preconsciousness: This is the first stage where the consumer has had no previous contact with the brand or received any recognition from the brand or service. Awareness: In the second phase, people have recognition of the brand, with or without the desire to buy it. Purchase Intention Trigger: This phase is a special phase because it is the moment of truth when the consumer starts thinking about whether or not to buy the product or service.
Research and Knowledge: At this stage, the buyer will be divided into two groups which are potential and non-potential. However, this stage will focus on the prospect because they have decided to purchase the product. These people are likely to start reading reviews, learning about features, making comparisons, asking for opinions, and using the Internet to research their options in detail.
The duration of this process depends on the product they want to buy. Opinion and Shortlist: At this stage, people will create a list of which items and which store they would like to buy from. Decision and purchase: This stage shows the final decision about the brand and the product that they can afford.
Brand/Product Advocate (or Saboteur): In this stage the customer will form his or her opinion after trying the product. If the product conveys a positive attitude towards the user, the user seems likely to spread the news of the brand through word of mouth and positive reviews, which are easily done online. Repurchase Intent: Existing customers are clearly for the brand because it is not difficult to convince them to repurchase.
But in the future, the product will soon need to be replaced or upgraded to maintain the existing customers. However, if the customer is not satisfied with the product, it will link to the departure stage.
Consumer Behavior
At this stage, even the potential customers, they may hesitate to buy the product because there are a lot of alternative products in the market. Therefore, the best way to go through this stage, the marketer should find the attractive sales pitch to convince the customer to buy our product instead of our competitors. At this point, the customer has researched several options, they understand pricing and payment options, and they decide whether or not to proceed with the purchase.
This process is not the final process, because after the customer makes a decision to buy, it does not guarantee that he will complete the process. This is a very important stage because they can be good marketing tools to spread the good experience after using the product. However, if the customer has a bad experience with the product, the bad review can be a nightmare for the brand.
Consumer Socialization
- Identification with Peers
- Peer communications
- Summary
It may be some external factors that prevent them from buying, for example; a complicated buying process or a competitor's sales promotion. More and more consumers are visiting social media sites to interact with others to find information before making a decision. Social media represents a crowd of friends or peers who act as socializing agents and provide product information and reviews (Gershoff and Johar, 2006 and Taylor et al., 2011).
The most important element of communication in virtual communities is highly dependent on peer groups because when a person identifies themselves as belonging to the group, they want and need to maintain a positive relationship in the group. It is acquired through interactions between the consumer and socialization agents, for example LINE, Facebook and other online channels. At this stage, consumers may choose to purchase the product or may not purchase it (Xia Wang, Chunling Yu, and Yujie Wei, 2012).
There are 3 main frameworks that will apply to this research which are Modern Purchase Funnel, Consumer Purchase Process and Consumer Socialization. However, many Thai Instagram users may find the opportunity to use this application as a distribution channel to open an online store. Therefore, this framework will help us describe the Thai Instagram behavior in the dimension of what factors drive them to buy from this application.
RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY
Populations and Sample Size
- Population
- Sample Size
Research Design
Instrument
Additionally, open-ended questions were included to allow participants to reveal their feelings, perceptions, and behavioral intentions toward social media use. How many times do you read articles, blogs and forums per week and why do you read them? Do you think peer opinions, such as comments and reviews on Instagram, are more credible than what brands claim to be?
FINDING AND ANALYSIS
Findings
- Media usage
- Identification with Peer groups
- Peer Communications
- Purchase Intentions
Because the participants have different professions, media use differs slightly in terms of the number of hours they use the Internet. Instagram is in the top 3 of the social media that 10 participants regularly visit when they want to check the news or entertain themselves in their free time. 8 out of 10 participants said they check the news and recommended articles every day from the page they follow on Facebook and Instagram.
However, sources of news and articles come from various online platforms, but 10 out of 10 said they read those articles every day. 7 out of 10 of the participants said they read those articles and news from their smartphone or tablet on the way to work and back home. If this product is easy to find, I will slowly check each link to see the product details.
However, I like to go to the product's official website first to see the print advertisements of this product. The duration of this process also depends on the price of the product, if it is cheap I don't really care what is on the Internet. Since Google shows the list of links related to the product they typed into the search box, most participants will look at the list of websites on the first page.
4 out of 10 of the participants said that online communication does not influence them towards involvement with the product. For example, if I want to buy digital camera from brand F, I will look for more online community like Pantip or Facebook fanpage of brand F digital camera. 7 out of 10 said that reviews and comments are not important to them, but i it helps them see the facts of the product rather than receiving messages directly from brand advertising.
This question is linked to the peer communication question, which asks more details about the personal feeling before deciding to proceed with a purchase. Interviewee A10 said: "Since I am interested in the product or service, online reviews just give me more information about the product or service. Most participants said that they like to use Instagram to find the unique product from the Instagram store online .
Buying Products from Instagram
- Uniqueness
- Convenience
- Trust
Interviewee A5 said: “I know shopping online is easier, you just click one button to pay, then the process is done. However, I prefer to talk to the seller even if it is in an online shopping platform. I think that when you can talk to a seller who is a real person and not a robot, you can gain more confidence to buy the product, even though the process is more extensive than normal online shopping.
Also, I don't feel comfortable putting my credit card number on the online website because I don't know what they will do with my personal information.
CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION
Conclusions
Recommendation
Limitations and suggestions for future research
