Influence of Social Networking Sites’ Content on Consumer Decision Making: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Social media has largely influenced consumer behavior as per hundreds of researches in the past decade. Organizations are investing a lot into understanding how to increase their brand awareness, leads and sales by utilizing in this medium on communication. Stimuli-organism-response model has been largely used for investigating social media content and its influence on users; this influence can be related to perception or intention to perform and act. This research aims to investigate to utilization of SOR model in social media content research. Initially 60 papers were selected. Through steps of filtration, the number of papers short-listed was 20; these papers were selected based on a certain inclusion and exclusion criteria set prior to research. The pre-analysis highlighted three main pre-codes; these codes are, SOR Model, Content Post-Consumption and brand. After deep text analysis and coding, first level and second level codes were identify with detailed dimensions if each pre-code. Analysis showed wide variety of applications of SOR Model in social media research, it terms of affective and cognitive responses. Social media content consumption major influence on customer attitude towards brand and eWOM. SOR model has been majorly used in investigating brand management, especially in context of brand equity and customer engagement with brand-related content.