Using Social Media to Attract Customers in Lebanon

Social media nowadays have become part of our everyday life. People around the world spend most of their time on social media, (Face book, Instagram, Twitter, etc.), so this network becomes a way that affect people’s decisions especially their purchasing decision in the pre-purchasing stage. Thus, businesses are using the social media for marketing to let the customers in any place in the world knows about their brand and products without even visiting their shop. This media has enabled people from anywhere to access grocery stores and restrooms without any time constraint through electronic devices, such as computers, mobile phones, etc (Bernhardt et al., 2012; Enrico Di et al., 2018). Social media has been recognized as an informative venue in that it assists the relationship among customers by sharing their experiences, which can provide valuable information for others (Alalwan, 2018; Hajli and Bus Ethics, 2018; Sheth and Kim, 2018; Sujin and Myongjee, 2016). More than two-thirds of companies are using social media for marketing and service (Ma et al., 2015; Muhammad et al., 2018; Si Shi et al., 2019). As consumers increase their online activity today, the industries and businesses become to use it as a way of sharing information and opinion about their product. This way let marketing become easier, since it provides instant information for the consumer at any time from the entire world. Social media has emerged as a dominant digital communications channel and has significantly influenced the marketing communications environment. Not only does it allow interaction between customers and companies (FangPei Su et al., 2018; Gretzel and Fesenmaier, 2012; Gretzel and Dinhopl, 2013; Kristina et al., 2018; Muresan and Sinuraya, 2018; Rebecca et al., 2019) but also among customers (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). It make the communication with other customers that used the product become easier, in this way they can know more about any product they want (Jiabao et al., 2019; Kumar and Pradhan, 2018) The aim of this research is to know whether social media can affect customer purchasing decision during the pre-purchase stage This research aims to answer the following research question: RQ1: Do social media influence customer purchasing decision. RQ2: Do people prefer advertising using social media. To explore these questions, a study will be done to see the influence of social media advertising on customers. The objective of this research is to help the marketing professional.