Browsing by Author "Juntunen, Noora"

The influence of social media onto generation Y consumers purchase decision has been examined largely during the past few decades, but the researches haven’t been able to consider all variables. There is one variable that could affect the test results relevantly and that is the gender of the consumer. The aim of this thesis is to create a general view about the gender differences in consumer behavior and examine how social media influences purchase intentions among generation Y consumers. Based on these findings I make conclusions on how social media confirms the purchase decisions of both male and female among generation Y consumers. I searched the answers for my research questions by familiarizing myself with the newest studies and other literature about the topic. The material I chose was all up to ten years old, because more than ten years old studies could define social media in a different way than we do now. In this thesis I familiarize myself with two themes. I start by familiarizing myself on gender differences on consumer behavior. After that I read up on how social media confirms the purchase decisions among generation Y consumers. Because the role of social media as a purchase decision confirmer hasn’t been examined among generation Y’s genders, I aim at creating conclusions of it. The literary review indicated that the gender of the consumer affects their consumer behavior. The researches show that women compare products in several aspects more often than men. Instead, men are shown to make more impulsive purchases than female. This review shows that the consumers of generation Y are the most critical group out of all the remaining generations. Despite their critical stance the social media is able to confirm their purchase decisions both directly and indirectly. Especially the female consumers of generation Y are exposed to the impact of social media, because they use social media more than the men in their generation. Based on these facts it’s possible to conclude that social media confirms purchase decisions in a different way among generation Y consumers. The female consumers among generation Y can be assumed to exploit social media mainly for comparing products. The social media influence can be assumed to be more significant to female than male, since male use social media a little less than female. Instead, the targeted marketing in social media can work better for male than for female, because male make more impulsive decisions than females when it comes to purchase making.