Have you ever wondered if advertisements on social networks can affect our consumer behaviour? After the lecture in Comm about Marketing, I did a quick research on Facebook advertisements, and found some interesting results:
Recently comScore, a consulting company, is hired by Facebook to measure its advertising effectiveness, in which they performed primary, and quantitative research, showing that paid advertisements on Facebook do influence consumer behaviours and attitudes toward certain products/brands [1]. For instance, in the case of Target, comScore studied two groups of users: one group is made up of fans of the Target page and their friends (where they will all see Target messages on their news feeds), and another group of those who are not fans of Target and their friends (where they will not see any messages). The result showed that 19% of the Target fans were more likely to buy goods at Target, while their friends were 27% more likely.
I find it interesting that the friends of those who become fans of Target are in fact, more likely to purchase at Target compared to the fans themselves (27% and 19%). One of the factors contributing to this result may be of social influence from family and peers: Those who see their own friends liking/buying from Target may be more motivated to buy at Target themselves as people tend to follow others’ footsteps, as well as gaining the reassurance that others also purchase from the same store.
Image Source:
http://socialmediamagic.com/blog/images/facebook-advertising.png
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