marketing essay

marketing essay

The Impact of Digital Marketing on Consumer Behavior

1. Introduction to Digital Marketing

Meanwhile, modern development in social media has let brands create more engaging, loyal, and personal relationships with their customers, resulting in a competitive advantage. Mass marketing strategies will continue evolving to mass customization, which results in less expensive switch takes in the customer and creating more loyal and long-term customers. The theory of reasoned action and technology acceptance model suggest that the two most relevant constructs to the determinants of behaving in a particular way are the attitudes and the subjective norms. The attitudes refer to the degree to which an individual favorably or guardedly assesses the ascribed behaviors, and subjective norms relate to the influence of other individuals upon a person’s decision to perform or abstain from performing the ascribed behavior. The review of the existing literature about the use of social media during pre-purchase in this study by looking at the potential determinant variables, including the level of engagement post-purchase like blogging, online reviews, and reports, then it constructed a model to test the overall influence of social media on the decision to purchase when these variables are taken into conjunction. The testing of the model incorporated the variables from the technological acceptance model, including the perceived usefulness and ease of use, as well as engagement and outcome expectation with social media. The study also drew upon the socio-psychological literature in the expectations states theory by exploring how user-generated online hacking impacts the purchase decisions. All these variables have their impact on the extent that customers decide to purchase and not purchase. The discussion of the results and managerial implications were then made based on the research results.

The main objective of the study is to find the impact of digital marketing on consumers and how the usage of digital marketing raises dialogues via social media like blogs, online communities, social networks, and communication and advertising via Pinterest. The study also evaluates some factors like involvement, brand attitude, and value that cause an impact on the accordance and disagreement of companies’ social media. Despite consideration of social media during purchase has grown incredibly in recent years, research on understanding how social media actually works to influence consumers’ behavior during purchase is still scant. With the developments of technologies, a new way of branding called digital branding has emerged. With the help of digital marketing, companies are now able to get feedback quickly while the sales are in promotion instead of waiting for a day or more, resulting in the improvement of customer service.

2. The Evolution of Consumer Behavior in the Digital Age

The consumer decision-making process is strongly linked to the concept of marketing. Good understanding of the consumer can help companies to gain competitive knowledge, potential points of differentiation, and consumer change happen. In recent alterations, the consumer decision-making process has become more and more complex, with consumers feeling more empowered. This has led to the need of developing new consumer models that consider digital marketing factors. The aim of this research is to present a critical review of digital consumer behavior. Consequently, the following research delves into and analyzes various digital marketing tools and critically examines technological factors affecting consumer behavior made by the consumers’ own followers and people they trust.

Belch and Belch (2007) proposed that consumer behavior is considered an essential part of marketing. Each of these perspectives has a distinctive view; however, none can alone be used to gain a comprehensive understanding of the modern consumer behavior process, particularly in digital environments. Nonetheless, different efforts have been made toward this end. More recently, digital marketing factors have been included in the integrated decision-making model, highlighting the importance of the internet on the consumer process and behavior. Over recent years, the consumer decision-making model has evolved from the traditional perspective to a more modern view, reflecting changing consumer relationships with both companies and other consumers.

3. Key Strategies and Techniques in Digital Marketing

The key strategies and techniques that bear a direct impact on how companies are engaging with digital technologies and are also mobilizing the related aspects of hardware, software, data, and content infrastructure to carry out their marketing activities are social media optimization (SMO), search engine marketing (SEM), and pay per click (PPC). These techniques are part of the threefold model for strategically managing the customer experience or CX pollution. A well-planned digital marketing strategy, aligned with a visionary goal, is a critical factor on which hinge the future success of a brand or an organization, particularly as customer behavior becomes increasingly influenced by the development of digital marketing. Finally, a summation of the chapter and the way in which the impact of a digital marketing campaign can be measured will be to end the chapter and make manifest the importance of digital marketing.

The core of an effective digital marketing strategy is the effective use of social media optimization, search engine optimization, and pay per click where engaging emphasis is laid on managing the customer experience and ensuring optimal customer experience. These techniques of digital marketing find wide application in order to notice and be noticed, reach and reach out, ask, talk, garner attention, engage, spread the word, and make money. The main strategies employed in digital marketing are content strategy, email marketing, inbound strategy, paid media marketing, search engine optimization, and social media. The respective unique features of these digital marketing strategies are their exceptional response to customer behavior as is determined by digital marketing techniques. Finally, the chapter will conclude with an exposition on measuring the impact of a digital marketing campaign.

4. Measuring the Effectiveness of Digital Marketing Campaigns

However, it is also important to keep track of changes in the behavior of customers that are motivated by digital communication and that do not always leave a direct conversion trace. These changes modify the closed loop of marketing, which in the traditional model of communication with clients consisted of: plan communication between the company and consumers at the point of sale; analyze the results and, in the light of the data, re-establish the process of communication and relations with the clients. With digital tools, the relationship with consumers opens progressively, leaving the confines of the physical store and making it a continuous multichannel relationship where the point of sale is not necessarily the purchase point. The concept of connection with clients modifies the relationship of the fetishism of the sale by the web to a model where points of contact multiply with varied objectives of relationship, entertainment, and consumer orientation.

Measuring the effectiveness of a digital campaign is one of the major challenges a company faces when it comes to using digital tools and strategies. To define a proper strategy, we need to establish clear metrics that would tell us how successful we are. These metrics need to contain the results of a campaign in terms of revenue or brand value, as well as online and offline, direct and indirect elements. We can analyze the impact according to the direct conversions to sales directly generated via the digital tool, such as online advertising, web positioning, etc., and the indirect conversions, which are the impulse to consume generated by the hedonistic and entertainment experience produced by the website, the buzz generated in social media networks, or any other activity with digital tools as the engine of communication.

5. Future Trends and Innovations in Digital Marketing

The pace of digital marketing change inevitably means companies have developed new systems to support the delivery of digital. Any company needs supporting systems, processes, and trained people to deliver their services. This is just as true for digital marketing. The big growth in the digital marketing industry has meant new business models within the industry utilizing technology and digital platforms. The internet marketing industry started off with a focus on engines for the search engine optimization of websites and would be called a Search Engine Agency (SEO), which might also include a Search Engine Marketing function. Today’s search and marketing agencies offer comprehensive marketing solutions and specialize in pay-per-click (SEM), search engine marketing (SEO), e-commerce development, performance marketing, media planning, analysis and social media. In the future we should expect to see several new generations of search engines improve the services to take into account the current IT revolution.

5.3 Digital Marketing Technologies and Business Innovations

Mobile devices today are increasingly becoming the predominant way of consuming digital. An illustration of this comes from research by Ofcom, the UK telecommunications regulator, which showed how online users spend an average of 37 percent of their Internet time on a mobile device. Mobile advertising is one of the fastest growing areas of digital advertising, powered by both increased per user online time and improvements in technology allowing better targeting (think tracking user location). In this section consider an important trend, the drive to use more ad blockers on mobile.

5.2 Mobile Marketing and Advertising Innovations

The digital marketing world and surrounding technologies are rapidly evolving, whether it is new marketing automation technologies, new mobile communication tools, new online media channels or other apps. Digital change spawns not only the introduction and test of innovative digital marketing mechanisms, but also modification in existing digital marketing systems.