Marketing Research in Pratice
1.0 INTRODUCTION1.1 Research background Social media can be described as a broad term inclusive of activities where people create content, share it, bookmark it and network at a phenomenal rate (Abu, Irshad, Wasiq, 2012). The types of social media are personal networks, internet-based networks, E-commerce, media sharing networks, discussion forums, bookmarking sites, social publishing and online reviews (Sorokina, 2015). According to Hendricks (2013), the first year when social media started was in year 1969 when the first major online service, CompuServe was founded. After that, the development of social media sites from E-mail, World Wide Web, Google, Blogger, Wikipedia, until Facebook has been the main online communication tools (Terrel, 2015). Around year 2010, the usage of social media has expanded to usage of business when social media users start to realize that this platform can create a broad reach of business to people around the world with the low cost advantage (Terrel, 2015; Cisnero, 2014). According to Internet World Stats (2015), the population of internet users in Malaysia has increased from 3,700,000 in year 2010 to 20,596,847 in year 2015. Is also reported the population of internet users in Malaysia is accounted by 1.3% out of Asia. Wong (2015) reported that Lazada.com.my ranked the first e-commerce websites that internet user visit in year 2015 with total number of 9,200,000 users.The ranking is then followed by Lelong.com.my and 11street.my with total of 3,300,000 and 1,800,000 users respectively.
The main reason for strong performance of e-commerce is because of its convenience which provides 24/7 availability with zero traffic and abolished the time restrictions on business transaction (Brianna, 2014; Cudjoe, 2014). Insights by Google Malaysia reported that travel services (flight, accommodation) ranked the first in online sales, followed by vouchers/online coupons and entertainment services (movie tickets). The report also revealed there are around 7M Malaysians who make online purchase monthly (Google Malaysia, 2015).1.2 Research Problem In the view of increasing number in internet users in Malaysia, the factors of social media that influence consumer purchase intention need to be explored. Mehmood Rehmani, Muhammad Ishfaq Khan (2011) reported that social media plays an important role in leading consumers buying behaviour. However, before venturing it, it is essential to understand clearly the factors that influence consumer purchase intention towards online shopping.Despite the growing population of online shoppers, fifty-eight percent of Internet users describe online shopping as a frustrating, confusing, and overwhelming activity (Dai, Forsythe, Kwon, 2014). Consumers have to deal with risks in the process of purchasing products and services from “faceless” retailers, in sacrificing time and money, revealing personal information and buying things without examine physically (Zafer, Erdem, 2015; Deborah, Moudi, 2016). A survey conducted by Dhanapal, Vashu, Subramaniam(2015) reported that there are 60% of Generation Y in Malaysia facing risk of credit card transaction.