The Effectiveness of Facebook Advertising on Enhancing the Purchase Intention of Consumers

Social media behavior has significantly modified the nature of human activities, habitats, and interactions. Real-world social relationships have been migrated to the virtual world, resulting in online communities that bring people together from across the globe. Social media has a major effect on changing the contemporary marketing approach. It has established a connection between marketers and other consumers, creating new possibilities and opportunities with the aim of increasing consumer brand awareness. Advertisement nowadays using social media such as Facebook for small corporations, companies, and business is less expensive and not risky compared to non-virtual media. Facebook has created opportunities for advertisers and consumers to benefit and ease from the comments and observations that others post on social media.
Dehghani and Tumer (2015) examined and discussed the effectiveness of advertisements in enhancing consumers’ purchasing intentions on Facebook. They made a questionnaire to examine the effectiveness of advertisements by including 320 undergraduate students of Cypriot universities. The questionnaire consists of three parts, first, demographic questions were asked from participants (gender, age, and monthly income of family). Secondly, questions related to the perception of the advertisement and brand groups shown on Facebook. Thirdly, a five-point Likert type scale questions to record their perceptions of multiple variables (Facebook advertising, brand image, brand equity, purchase intention). The study results show that Consumers’ opinions on Facebook advertising will positively affect the Firm’s brand image, brand equity, and consumers’ purchasing intention. In addition to that, it shows a high percentage of correlation between variables, which indicates the process of obtaining and exchanging information through Facebook facilitates public participation. Moreover, many of the users agree that their wishes to buy brands has increased as an outcome of seeing the most “likes” and “shares”, which proposed that the brand is reputable.
In my opinion, many consumers have agreed on Facebook as a fashionable and contemporary way of advertising and since most of the members of Facebook are from young adults group, they tend to be concerned in finding unique styles by following the information on a brand’s pages and through the recommendations of friends and relatives. From my personal perspective, I see that this study indicates considerable and significant implications for companies that use Facebook advertising as part of their overall advertising strategy, which might be of benefit and enhancement to their own brands.