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This research examines the impact of social media on consumer behavior, focusing on how consumer behavior and habits change after the use of social media by German and Chinese young consumers. A comparison of the differences between the two groups is also conducted. The study was conducted based on theoretical background and terminology, followed by six hypotheses. Then this research determined the scope, target population, and sample size before using focus groups and online questionnaires as survey methods. While analyzing the questionnaire data, the research tested the hypotheses and demonstrated the effects between the variables. The results indicated partial agreement with existing studies. Browsing time positively correlates with the purchase journey. The duration of online discounts negatively correlates with transaction speed. Young consumers' demand increases with the amount of time they spend browsing product advertisements. However, some findings ran counter to previous investigations. The impact of SMM on young consumers has no adverse effect on the time spent browsing products. Moreover, only in some cases, young consumers' purchase intentions are positively correlated with demand.
Keywords: Young consumers, Social media marketing, Consumer behavior, Purchase journey, Purchase intention, Online time-limited discounts, Demand
In the last 30 years academics were exploring the field of ethical consumption and identified an attitude - behavior gap in the decision making process. Since then diverse studies have been implemented to understand ethical consumers' attitudes, motives and behavior. Parallel to the academic research being developed, there had been an increasing interest from the consumer side in behaving and consuming more ethically. Particularly, consumers have inclined their ethical purchases towards fair trade products. The present exploratory research implemented a quantitative metaphoric method called Zaltman Elicitation Metaphoric Technique (ZMET) to further contribute in the literature of ethical and fair trade consumption. The ZMET in-depth interviews were carried out with 10 German fair trade food consumers during the months of February and March in 2015. The results revealed a connection between participants' feelings, emotions, personal values and fair trade food consumption; likewise the research identified an association of fair trade to sustainability.