Search

Social networking sites and social media serve as vital avenues of interaction among people all over the world as well as essential platforms for the distribution of information. Companies, like individuals, embrace social networks as a non-formal way to engage with their customers and suppliers, gather information about their online behavior, and offer personalized content. Both scholars and managers from various organizations looking to increase their competitive edge or market shares have an interest in the impact that social networks have on human behavior. Because of this, the current research seeks to investigate how users perceive a wide range of concepts related to using social networking sites, including fear of missing out (FoMO), social networking fatigue, information and communication overload, ubiquitous connectivity and peer communication, and privacy concerns. The authors also examined users’ intentions to continue using social networking sites despite the COVID-19 outbreak in order to ensure a more thorough understanding of the research topic. The findings aim to provide a better knowledge of how users see interaction on social networks in their daily lives as well as an overview of user perspectives on the terms mentioned above.

Selecting online the most suitable product or service can be a draining process, and the broad diversity of products on retailers’ websites is overwhelming. Following this, there has been a high interest in examining buyers’ motivations and recognizing the determinant factors that affect the decision-making process in the case of online shopping. Hence, in this article, we carried out an empirical study and we analyzed to what extent certain factors such as product features, confidence in the online shop, product reviews, product price, consumer evaluations, the trust of the sources, usability of the online shop, convictions and commitment to the brand, product notoriety, consumer loyalty programs, WOM, and eWOM influence the purchasing decision. The findings reveal that the most significant variables determining the acquisition decision are product features, confidence in the online shop, reviews of the product, product price, and evaluations of customers from trusted sources. The most relevant information resources are trustworthy websites that offer specialized product reviews and reliable websites that offer customer product reviews.