Influence of Social Media on Consumers' Online Purchasing Habits During: The COVID-19 Pandemic in Pakistan

Abstract

Currently, businesses located all over the world are adjusting to a new standard of operation. Customers are encouraged to make their purchases of necessities through the favored e-commerce platform of the organization. For the purpose of marketing web-based enterprises, websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest are utilized. The purpose of the study was to investigate how the COVID-19 epidemic altered the purchase patterns of Pakistani customers shopping online, with a particular emphasis on the role played by social media. The study utilized a quantitative research model and a descriptive research technique in its data collection and analysis. In order to obtain responses from 400 Pakistani clients, an online questionnaire employing the "purposive sampling" method was used. When looking at the data and putting the hypothesis to the test, PLS-SEM analysis was utilized. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan, a PLS-SEM study indicated that advertising tools, online reviews, and endorsements from celebrities had a favorable and significant effect on how individuals bought products online. According to the findings of this study, online businesses can improve their use of social media for marketing and advertising by following a number of particular measures. Customers have a greater propensity to make purchases via social media platforms when they come across favorable evaluations and recommendations from celebrities.

Economic Impact of Covid 19 on Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan

“…Other occupations with a more significant prevalence of impacted employees include service employees, sales employees, and elementary school teachers, where 45 % and 42 % of employees lost their employment. Agriculture was the least impacted occupation, accounting for only 9% of the total (Akram et al, 2023).…”

Exploring the Impact of Augmented Reality on Customer Experiences and Attitudes: A Comparative Analysis with Websites

“…Apart from this, during the time of the pandemic, it was a difficult time for Marketers to achieve the sales target more than the previous fiscal year. During that time online shopping experience was augmented, and while the AR app helps to provide a better experience as compared to a website it boosted customer engagement (Akram, Abbas, Khan, & Ahmad, 2023).…”

Driving Customer Loyalty through Customer Satisfaction in Online Shopping: The Role of Brand Image, Price, Trust and Website Quality

“…The website quality of a brand is vital to the hypothesis that solid brands increase the value of customers buying a product or service (Low & Lamb, 2000). During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, when customers had to shop from home, brands needed websites that did not crash or yield errors so that customers could easily buy whatever they wanted (Akram et al, 2022;Venkatakrishnan et al, 2023). Customer buying behavior in online shopping depends on website quality, allowing the brand to retain customers' loyalty (Rahman & Hossain, 2023).…”

“…Many businesses are adapting to new technologies and using ecommerce platforms to promote their products (Akram et al, 2022). A customer can decide what to buy at home by looking at and comparing the prices of different competitors' products (Fatima, 2022).…”

“…Notably, although studies have been carried out on customer satisfaction and loyalty in online shopping (Tang et al, 2005;Tannady & Purnamaningsih, 2023), little research has been conducted on online shopping in Pakistan (Wattoo & Iqbal, 2022). Akram et al (2022) also state that there is a lack of research on online shopping customers in Pakistan and this needs to be studied further.…”