Exploring the effect of social media marketing on consumer buying behaviours, in the real estate industry

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a significant growth in the adoption and integration of social media marketing platforms into the marketing communications plans of real estate agents and brokers within the real estate industry. This research uses a quantitative approach to better understand why people are behaving the way they are. This was done by using the measures which were drawn from Davis et al.’s (1989) Technology Acceptance Model, to gain an insight into the social media users’ perceptions and attitudes towards social media marketing of real estate companies’ online services. The findings reported that there were positive and significant relationships among TAM constructs, albeit one result, where the relationship between Attitudes Towards Use and Perceived Ease of Use was inconclusive. This study suggests that social media subscribers’ felt that internet websites and social media including Facebook and Instagram were easy to use and considered them to be useful to find properties. On the other hand, in terms of real estate, Tik Tok was the least favorable application amongst social media users. These factors affected their intentions to use them. Finally, the researcher puts forward her implications of her research, identifies the limitations of this study and makes recommendations for further research in this emerging field of inquiry.