CUSTOMERS’ ATTITUDE TOWARDS ONLINE REVIEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA AMONG YOUTH IN BANGALORE

Social media marketing constitutes an exceptional media for promoting a product or service or a new brand in the market. One of the explicit way to do so is to offer a platform to internet users to generate online content in a form of reviews, comments called ‘earned media' than just relying on old school thought of a planned advertising copy. These days, Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategies of any company is to create Brand fan page, reviews and ratings and likes for a new brand and influencing customers to buy by spreading positive e-WOM (Electronic-Word Of Mouth). The social media marketing involves creating online reviews and likes to influence consumer purchase intention. Consumers often refer to these reviews and like to make a purchase decision. Therefore, this study was carried out to explore consumers' attitude towards online reviews on social media with the help of a research design that is descriptive in nature having close ended questions distributed for gathering the information from 90 respondents specifically using social media in Bangalore. Statistical tool Chi-square test and frequency distribution has been used to analyze the results. From the study it was found that there was significant relationship between the awareness of online review and ratings on purchase intention, online reviews on purchase decision and the age group and time spent on social media every day.