How is social media reshaping modern cultural consumerism?

Social Media Data Mining and Analytics

Note: Lecture prepared for Neoscholar

1 What is Cultural Consumerism?

Example taken from Vocal Media

• Cultural Consumerism is a phenomenon where people express their identity through their purchases.

• This trend results in individuals associating with specific brands and products that define their personalities and social standing.

  • We are what we wear or can afford to buy.

Image Generated with Deep AI

• Companies exploit this connection to drive sales, creating a symbiotic relationship between consumerist culture and businesses.

• In short, we are made to feel the need that brands represent the identity that we want or need to portrait to the world.

Image Generated with Deep AI

2 What is its connection with social media?

• In the context of social media, cultural consumerism takes on a new dimension.

• Social media platforms have revolutionized how pop culture influences consumer trends.

  • Viral trends,
  • Influencer marketing,
  • and the ability to instantly share and consume content have created a more dynamic and immediate impact on consumer behavior.

2.1 Does this impact affects all social media users equally?

• Hu and Zhu (2022) argued that social media usage serves to generate users’ purchase intention on social commerce websites.

• Importantly, users’ cultural intelligence has been found to play a significant role mediating the effects of social media usage on users’ intention to consume.

  • This means that according to Hu and Zhu (2022), the more culturally intelligent a user is, the more likely they are to be influenced by social media in their consumption choices.

• We have to note that sample is 2,058 international college students in china (little to no external validity)

  • It is more likely that what they really found was that “social media is closely associated with individuals’ international exposure” and it is this exposure what transforms into knowledge of US-centric pop culture – rather than people’s capacities to manage cross-cultural issues in a foreign culturally novel environment, which is the original conceotualization of cultural intelligence (see Earley and Ang (2003)).

• Then the takeaway point is that US-centric social media users are more likely to be influenced to participate in cosumeristic behaviors

2.2 In short…

• Cultural consumerism and social media are closely intertwined.
  • Social media platforms amplify the effects of cultural consumerism by providing a space for consumers to
    • express their identities,
    • engage with brands, and
    • make purchase decisions influenced by their social media interactions.
• This relationship between cultural consumerism and social media is shaping the landscape of modern consumer behavior.

3 What is the role of social media influencers and why?

• Social media influencers promote products for several reasons:

1. Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing is a relationship between a brand and an influencer.
   • The influencer promotes the brand’s products or services through various media outlets such as Instagram and YouTube.
   • Influencers must be trusted figures within a niche community and retain a loyal following.
   • They typically possess knowledge or experience about what they are advertising.
2. Trust and Authenticity: When influencers promote a brand or endorse its products, their audience perceives it as a trusted recommendation.
   • This is because successful social media influencers have nurtured relationships with their followers based on transparency, relatability, and expertise.
3. Targeted Audience: Influencers can help reach a specific target audience.
   • The monetary value of an influencer is typically calculated by the size of their social following as well as the platform they are using.
4. Effective Marketing Strategy: Influencer marketing can be one of the most effective ways that businesses can win new customers and grow their revenue.
   • According to Forbes, 74% of consumers say they trust the opinions they see on social media — including those from influencers — when deciding whether to purchase a product.
5. Monetary Compensation: The brand pays the influencer to talk about the products on social media, where they have a vast network of followers who could become potential customers.
   • The price of an influencer marketing campaign varies significantly depending on the influencer and how much they charge.

4 How big is this business?

• In our social media data analytics and storytelling course we see

  

  Image taken from the social media data analytics and storytelling course—Ethical considerations lecture.

• Social media and consumerism are therefore a quite lucrative phenomena

  

  Image taken from the social media data analytics and storytelling course—Ethical considerations lecture.

• But the impact of social media is not limited to selling products, it also impacts politics, policies, and elections, hence have even more consequential implications

  

  Image taken from the social media data analytics and storytelling course—societal repercussions lecture.

• Becoming proficient in how to access and analyze social media data, is a timely and esential skillset

  • The social media data analytics course I offer, focuses on applying data science methods (natural language processing, machine learning text classification, relational thinking and network modeling) to mine and understand the resulting structures.

  • Data storytelling in this analytic process enables us to convey our understandings to a broad audience and enhances our prospects to gain access to the best universities in the world.

• Among the methods and software we use, we have

Image taken from the social media data analytics and storytelling course–methods and software used (MDCOR by González Canché 2023a)(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957417422022837?via%3Dihub)

Image taken from the social media data analytics and storytelling course–methods and software used (MOVIE by González Canché 2022)(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20597991221119012)

Image taken from the social media data analytics and storytelling course–methods and software used (SSEM by González Canché 2023b)(https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-24857-3)

Image taken from the social media data analytics and storytelling course–methods and software used (GRATIS by González Canché 2024)(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15586898231166968)

5 In closing

• The study of social media and cultural consumerism has important societal implications.

• I do hope to have the opportunity to interact with many of you in my courses

• Feel free to reach out

References

Earley, P Christopher, and Soon Ang. 2003. “Cultural Intelligence: Individual Interactions Across Cultures.”

González Canché, Manuel S. 2022. “Mapping, Organizing, and Visualizing Interdependent Events (MOVIE): A Rigorous Analytic Framework and Cost-Free Software Application Designed to Model Temporal and Dynamic Complex Realist Structures in Social Research Settings.” Methodological Innovations 15 (3): 263–88.

———. 2023a. “Machine Driven Classification of Open-Ended Responses (MDCOR): An Analytic Framework and No-Code, Free Software Application to Classify Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Text Responses in Survey and Social Media Research.” Expert Systems with Applications 215: 119265.

———. 2023b. Spatial Socio-Econometric Modeling (SSEM): A Low-Code Toolkit for Spatial Data Science and Interactive Visualizations Using r. Springer Nature.

———. 2024. “Graphical Retrieval and Analysis of Temporal Information Systems (GRATIS): An Integrative Mixed Methodology and Open-Access Software to Analyze the (Non-) Linear Chronological Evolution of Information Embedded in Textual/Qualitative Data.” Journal of Mixed Methods Research 18 (1): 71–103.

Hu, Shangui, and Zhen Zhu. 2022. “Effects of Social Media Usage on Consumers’ Purchase Intention in Social Commerce: A Cross-Cultural Empirical Analysis.” Frontiers in Psychology 13: 837752.