FACTORS AFFECTING CONSUMERS’ BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT AND IMPULSIVE PURCHASE INFLUENCE AMONG GEN Y FEMALES IN LIBYA

Abstract

Despite frequent and obsessive use of the social media, social media retailers have not been able to achieve major sales conversion on social commerce even though ideally it is a compulsive browsing and meeting ground for users. These commercial features prevent the conversion of the browsers to actual customers as they do not motivate the users to shop on social media and make a purchase.  Many businesses have not taken steps in this business direction of analysing and manipulating the obsessive use of social media for transaction purposes. Thus, there is a gap between what the new social shopper wants and what features are currently available on social commerce thereby adversely affecting the sales and value of the social commerce retailers. Besides, there are limited studies done in Libya that focuses on this area. As such, this research focuses not only on the purchase intention on social media amongst the rising generation Y females in Libya, but also on the important stimuli that needs to be offered by businesses and retailers in order to woo these online shoppers for committing purchase intention. The main objective of this research is to identify the business model for social commerce that would increase sales conversion for its retailers. The sample of this study was Libyan Y generation social commerce users in Libya. A total of eight variables in this study and 35 items on the questionnaire and the sample size of the study is 200 respondents. Data were collected using random sampling technique. The findings show that the application of this theory in social media enables to recognize the importance of community feelings and trust elements in social shopping and will pave the way for further research in this area. Also, the study helped to unveil the attitude of Libyan Y generation shoppers on Social Commerce. This research also indicates that a suitable strategy employing the social cues directly affects purchase behaviour on social commerce and identifies an effective business model as the single most important factor that impacts profitability of social media businesses