PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING AND MARKETING ON CONSUMER DECISION MAKING

Abstract

This research paper explores the psychological effects of marketing and advertising on consumer choices through social media.  Social media changes how consumers perceive and interact with products/services in ways that offer new substantial challenges or opportunities for consumers.  Social media has disrupted the traditional marketing paradigm in some ways by using an unmediated way to talk to its customers directly through personalized content, interactive advertisement, and algorithmic targeting.  This research uses three psychological theories: the elaboration likelihood model, social influence theory, and behavioural economics, to explore elements of persuasion (e.g., emotional appeals, credibility cues, recommendations from friends, brand storytelling, etc.) that highlights social media consumers' perception of trust, loyalty, and ultimately decision outcomes.  This study found that social media advertising impacts consumer cognition in the way that it changes consumer picture-taking and processing of their social surroundings.  Consumers are engaged and remember advertising that invokes an emotional response and is visually appealing. Recommendations from peers/friends and online reviews provide social validation that strongly develops purchase intention.  However, we also find consumer outcomes that are important and indicate an important challenge, like impulse buying, cognitive overload, and susceptibility to misleading, non-transparent, or outright manipulative advertising, which the consumer uses their own internal rational or intuitive judgement to mediate these experiences.  These outcomes raise ethical questions for the commercial environment regarding consumer agency and well-being in the increasingly commercialized digital ecosystems. After a comprehensive literature review, the authors emphasize that while social media marketing offers a space for organizations to build deeper connections with consumers, it simultaneously allows perhaps greater potential for over persuasion and exploitation of behaviour in ways that the consumer we all face the possibility of marketing. Similarly, marketers must acknowledge the potency of persuasion as a form of psychological force and commit themselves to ethical action that prioritizes consumer welfare and interest. Policymakers need to be mindful of the power of social media marketers; and ensure that they build awareness about examining the appropriateness of providing regulations to guarantee that people are protected from the potentially the most exploitative forms of persuasion. Ultimately, consumers ought also to create their own forms of digital literacy, allowing them to examine their own abilities to critically engage with content that they are faced with, so that they can protect themselves, and even their ability to decide. Overall, the article introduces important dimensions to consider in terms of understanding the convergence of marketing psychology and digital media, and solidifying the line of inquiry for those who wish to fuel the changes that eating place organizations, consumers, and regulators evidence as they delve deeper into the age of social media.