SOCIAL PROOFING FACTORS: A STUDY OF TAGGING AND NON-TAGGING BEHAVIORS ON THE INSTAGRAM PLATFORM

Abstract

Social media, with its inherent qualities of interactivity, connectedness and user-generated content has become a highly indispensable part of people’s lives today.  Social media has undoubtedly impacted our ability to communicate, form relationships, access, process and spread information and has become a potent tool in guiding decision making.  This paper seeks to research how social proofing agents such as willingness to purchase, price consciousness, unnecessary purchases, research-backed purchase, and inherent need aid people in making informed purchasing decisions. This study analyzes how socially conscious users behave on the Instagram platform and examines Instagram's tagging and mentioning features in-depth. The study also seeks to analyze why few users on Instagram, while enjoying the benefits of the tagging phenomenon are themselves reluctant to do so.  This paper identifies two social proofing factors: 'social proofing overriding’ and ‘inherent need’ (insulation against social proofing) and analyses the effect of these factors on customers regarding making educated purchasing decisions and on influencers/endorsers in marketing the product better.  Results of the study indicate that while only 50 % of the non-tagging population in the age range of 24-26 is eager to try out new goods and services, 88 % of females and 41 % of males who tag agree that social proofing strategies make them informed decision-makers.  This study can be termed as one of the first attempts at developing social proofing factors. This research contributes to the growing literature on evaluating social proofing strategies by examining how social proofing strategies impact consumers.

Keywords: Social media, Instagram, social proof, purchasing decision, tagging behaviors, tagging, non-tagging

JEL classification: M3, Marketing and Advertising