Essay: Influencing consumers' purchasing decisions with technology

In the new era of information technology, the rapid penetration of the internet, and the great diffusion of social media platforms create new opportunities for organizations to influence the consumer’s purchase decisions (Petrescu 2012; Yang 2012; Naylor, Lamberton, and West 2012; Gallaugher and Ransbotham 2010; Dellarocas 2006; Schlosser, White, and Lloyd 2006; Sismeiro and Bucklin 2004).
Gallaugher and Ransbotham (2010) argue that because of the Internet, firms can influence more consumer’s defeating geographical limits, easy to catch consumer s’ reviews, form product success, and increase market size and share. In addition, Consumer’s commendation can glow like a Lightning quickly affecting of a firm’s excellence.
Researchers use different concepts interchangeably referring to viral marketing such as ‘word-of-mouth or WOM’, ‘word-of-mouse or eWOM’, ‘social media marketing’, and ‘buzz marketing’, even though these concepts have different nuances (Yang 2012; Kozinets, Valck, Wojnicki, and Wilner 2010).
Word-of-mouth or WOM
Cheema and Kaikati (2010) argue that several researches have empirically evidence that WOM is more convincing than conventional media channels.
Many researchers addressed many aspects of the impact (Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006), dynamics (Yong 2006), trust (Yang 2012), and social networking dimensions (Katona, Zubesek, and Sarvary 2011) of WOM.
In addition, Yong (2006) mentioned that before releasing a new product, firms can improve the early forecast using WOM, which is major managerial value, also, marketers should be conscious about extra things that influence consumers’ expectations from the new product, such as probably hearsay that occur during the new product development process.
However, Peres and Van den Bulte (2014) argue that WOM can harm new product exclusivity, which contradict with firms’ preference to be exclusive to avoid competition and thus can increase sales, to charge higher prices, and to maximize firms’ bargaining power.
Word-of-mouse or eWOM
People share online content, forward journals and magazines articles to their relatives, pass YouTube videos to their friends, and send restaurant reviews to their colleagues as an integral part of modern life (Berger & Milkman 2011; Hyoryung, and Kannan 2014).
Firms track and monitor online word-of-mouth or eWOM intentionally to influence consumer -to-consumer communications which is an increasingly important marketing approach (CHEN and LURIE 2013; Kozinets, Valck, Wojnicki, and Wilner 2010; Yubo and Jinhong 2008; Yong 2006).
Marketers strongly believe that they can use social network platforms efficiently such as Facebook by relaying on harnessing word-of-mouse by analyzing the consumers’ comments, shares, likes, and network of connections (Katona, Zubesek, and Sarvary 2011).
Dellarocas (2003) states that word-of-mouse or eWOM influence a wide range of management activities such as attracting new consumers, maintaining current consumers, product enhancement, brand building.