The Role of Social Networks in Shaping up the Consumer Behavior of Young People

This paper examines the role that social networks play in the creation and sustaining of the consumer behavior of young people. Nowadays, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram became an important part of the social and economic life and providing information and data for the decisions many people make in the market. The primary objective of the present research is to investigate the reasons why the young people purchase products recommended on social media platforms by social influencers and how social networks can shape up their decisions or alter them completely. Social factors have always played a role in consumers purchasing habits, but the widespread availability of smartphones and social media has taken word-of-mouth advertising to the completely new levels. Business companies are now realizing that sharing brands messages and consumers experiences is a new path to brand marketing because of widespread smartphone usage and internet, and because a majority of people now depend on brands via social media. Consumers do not need to rely on traditional media outlets for information on products prior to making their purchases anymore, as social media outlets are effective and easy for accessing that information. In addition, social networks are now widely used by the governments for spreading the information to the wider audience as a part of the political marketing campaigns or for communicating political decisions to the masses. We argue that social networks represent an enormous potential in manipulating the consumer behavior and that their relevance is especially important in the case of young people.