The Role of Cognitive Influences in Digital and Social Media Marketing on Shaping Consumer Decisions"

Abstract

Consumer is taking more and more the digital approach it is possible that cognitive factors have a strong influence on the consumer decision-making process and therefore researchers need to incorporate such variables into the construction of relevant marketing theories. The purpose of this work is to investigate cognitive biases and digital marketing approaches in the context of consumers’ decision making, with regard to digital and social media. The research examines five primary variables: cognitive biases, digital marketing strategies, digital media features, social media engagement, content types – outlining the analytical connection between all those elements and consumer’s decision making. The research on the topic applies the quantitative research technique, complemented by a structured questionnaire used on 200 participants. Descriptive statistics point out trends demonstrated in the impact that various information biases like anchoring, confirmation and availability, make on consumers. Path analysis is utilized in order to establish the degree of association between the independent variables that are digital marketing methods, characteristics of digital media, social media activities, and types of content on the one hand and the dependent variable, which is the consumer decision-making on the other hand. This research shows that social networking has the greatest influence on consumers’ decisions, then the cognitive bias and the digital marketing approaches. Digital media features and content types have a relatively smaller but significant impact of their own. The study therefore reveals a need to involve cognitive clues in the establishment of effective digital marketing techniques. It also stresses the importance of continuous investigation of new features in digital media and repercussions on consumer trends.