Abstract
Among all of the existing social media platforms, Facebook has been playing the most dominant role right from its inception, specially over the last one decade or so. It has become an integral and inevitable part of human lives in almost every single country all around the world. Marketers have taken advantages of this ever-growing popularity with an enormous client base to market their products and services using this unique and vast social media platform. Consequently, doing research on effectiveness, importance, and utilities of Facebook, the basic Facebook features to be more specific, as befitting marketing tools has become an obvious option and opportunity. This article attempts to find the impact of different technological, visual, content, usage, etc. aspects of Facebook illustrated by some universally accepted Facebook or SNS terminologies or glossaries on the perception of the businesspeople and customers about Facebook as an online shopping platform, and on the ultimate purchase intention of the customers using this platform.
TopBackground
Facebook has become the most effective platform for promoting different brands of almost all kinds of products and services because of its enviable popularity as the most widely reached medium for selling and buying activities in Bangladesh during the recent few years. Facebook applications and features are designed in such a way which can be used to attract consumers’ attention and address the issues of customization as per their specific individual needs.
Another beneficial thing about using Facebook to promote and sell products and services is the opportunity to remain connected 24/7 with all the relevant parties in a cost-effective way. Most importantly, this 24/7 connectivity at a low cost is a highly favorable feature for the small businesses who are basically doing business only on Facebook. Facebook, one of the most profitable medium, is way more superior to, and influential over the traditional marketing strategies.
People can get reviews and feedbacks from other users about products and services by joining in a group or just from a page. They can observe the friends’ activities as well as the advertisements pop up on the screen while scrolling their home pages on Facebook. User experiences and promotional materials affect the perception level of customers regarding a brand. Strategically, customers check their familiar persons’ Facebook profile or the profile of the celebrities for getting the idea of the products and brands they are using or planning to use sometime in future.
Undoubtedly, pages with more likes and shares are considered to be the more authentic ones by the customers in general. More updated information and posts with wide engagement with various sources can increase the level of acceptance of a business to customers. Companies and service providers have begun to research and investigate the usage and efficiency of Facebook advertising, the applications, and the various ways customers are using to judge a brand in order to improve their brand position.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Perception: Process of organizing and interpreting any information or stimulus received by a living being, with the required intelligence to do so, in the perspectives of all the background knowledge already stored in the specific being’s cognitive system.
Brand Awareness: Knowledge of a person up to any extent from minimum to the most about the details of any offering, for example, features, utility, source, cost, availability, etc. which creates an overall image about the offering that pops up in that person’s mind or memory, whenever the person may think of that kind of offering in general.
Communication Efficacy: Degree of abilities to convey one’s thoughts and ideas to others, or comprehend the same conveyed by others, as closely as intended by either of the parties to convey or comprehend.
Purchase Intention: Active or dormant desire to bring an offering under one’s own possession, which ensures the title of ownership of that particular offering to the inclining person, with or without having the actual capability to exchange something of value, money in most of the cases, to actualize the desire driven by many complex factors.
Comment: A verbal or written short statement, most of the times made instantly but sometimes pretty thoughtfully too, in response to an instigating or inspiring incidence, talk, dialogue, conversation, object etc., which may be live in person, and in a virtual world as well.
Discussion Board: A platform operated and used mainly virtually to invite and connect people to put and share their opinions on a commercial, political, social, technical, or any usual issue to help the community joining the specific platform on a specific issue.
Location-Based Check-In: A technical feature used by the social media, specially by Facebook to allow its clients to inform their connected people about their important activities and movements while using some service providing facilities to help everyone use the same, if and when any of them might be interested.