A study conducted by Matthew Pittman, assistant professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Tennessee , and his colleague Eric Haley examined the ways social media can manipulate our decisions and entice us to buy.

Study tests purchasing behavior

The Standard reports on the study, which conducted a series of experiments to find out how social media often overwhelms us with a flood of information that can overwhelm and mislead us.

The study participants were shown advertisements, with one group not having to complete any additional task.
The second group had to remember a nine-digit number, and the third group had to scroll through their Instagram feed for 30 seconds before the ad was played. The products advertised were a catering service, ice cream and coffee beans. However, the researchers had previously manipulated the number of likes - sometimes it was a few hundred, others received tens of thousands of likes.

The participants in the first group without a specific task were able to make clear statements about the advertising and explain why they would or would not buy the product. However, the participants who scrolled through Instagram for 30 seconds often gave meaningless answers, some of which only stated “food” or “plate” as a purchase decision. Others said the ad was difficult for them to process: "There were too many words and options in the picture."

These practices, as the study shows, can not only lead us to buy products we don't actually need, but can also cause us to get lost in the vastness of the Internet.

“Cognitive overload”

this condition in a guest post on Gizmodo

“Using social media puts you in this state because you are constantly evaluating different types of text, photo and video posts from so many different people.

In just a few seconds, you can see a text from your spouse, a photo from a colleague, a video from a celebrity, and a meme from your brother. All this scrolling and judging leaves us confused and scattered. Imagine asking your roommate if he wants to get pizza. Under normal conditions, the roommate might consider several factors such as cost, hunger, timing, or their schedule. Now imagine asking your roommate the same question while he's on the phone with a sick relative after stepping in dog poop, and he also just got a text from his ex while remembering that he was too came to work late. You no longer have the mental energy or resources to logically consider whether pizza for dinner is a good idea. You might just yell, “Yeah, sure!” as you run in to shine your shoes.”

However, an exception is when a person has a lot of experience or knowledge about the product in question. In this case, she is able to carefully consider whether she will actually benefit from purchasing the advertised item. This was confirmed within the study with the ad for coffee beans. In general, coffee lovers will carefully consider many factors known to them - type of bean, degree of roast, country of origin and more. So even if these people were “mentally foggy,” they were not influenced by ads with lots of likes.

Pittman also pointed out that many influencers use social media to promote products from companies that pay them. This often happens without sufficient transparency and labeling, meaning their followers may not realize they are consuming advertising.

Source:

Default , Gizmodo
You may also be interested in: How online shopping addiction affects our lives and finances


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