CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN THE DIGITAL ERA: THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social media marketing has become one of the most effective tools of reaching out to consumers and changing their perception about the brand. Currently, there are 4.62 billion active users of social media and this makes it crucial for companies to use digital marketing to reach their target consumers. This paper discusses the effects of social media marketing on the consumer behaviour with regards to influencer marketing, user-generated content, personalised advertising, and real-time brand interaction. In this study, a survey is conducted through 500 active social media users, and with 20 social media industry experts, this research examines the consumers trust, engagement and purchasing behavior. According to the studies, eighty-two percent of the consumers interact with the content relating to brands; sixtyseven percent have made some purchase decisions based on social media advertising, meaning that there is a rise in the effectiveness of digital ads. Also, 55% of consumers believe in the recommendations made by influencers, and 78% of the consumers rely on the reviews from their peers when making a purchase decision, which shows the significance of eWOM and community marketing. This also reveals that brands that respond on social media are 42% more likely to keep customers, thus supporting the effectiveness of timely consumer interaction. However, there are content-related and privacy issues, where 87% of consumers reported that they are concerned with data privacy; hence, to address the issues, marketing should be ethical and transparent. They further include guidelines of effectively using the social media to branded ads, employing artificial intelligence in consumer profiling, recommendation of using influencers to boost brand awareness and engagement, and recommended strategies for using posts and advertisements to rebuild consumer trust and loyalty. They have highlighted the need to investigate other effective forms of social media marketing especially with the emergence of other technologies in the market such as artificial intelligence and augmented reality