SOCIAL MEDIA SHOPPING AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

ABSTRACT

The study examined social media shopping among undergraduate students in University of Benin. The descriptive statistics (frequency, mean and percentage) were adopted for the study’s analysis, the Data were primarily sourced through the administration of three hundred and sixty (360) questionnaire out of which same number (360) were found usable for the empirical analysis from its population of 3657 Faculty of Management Science students in University of Benin, Benin City, Ugbowo Campus, Edo State Nigeria. Specifically, the analysis revealed that: time saving advantages was the most important factor motivating undergraduate students’ social media shopping behaviour; the predominant social media platform among undergraduate students was Instagram; that poor website page/user experience was the most influencing factor discouraging social media adoption by undergraduate students; and prevalence of extra hidden charges on goods ordered was the major challenge of social media shopping by undergraduates. From the research analysis and conclusions above, the following recommendations were made: social media stores/vendors should ensure that factors such as time saving advantages, security of online transactions, prompt transaction process, at-the-comfort-of-your-home property and ease of making purchases are effectively capitalised on as doing so ensures that undergraduates students have enhanced motivation to shop via social media; they should ensure that discouraging factors such as poor website page/user experience, inadequate product information and specification, instances of product delivered not meeting the product delivered in terms of quality, lack of prompt customer care service and prevalence of fraudulent practices in online shopping are attended to and eliminated/mitigated; and that challenges such as prevalence of extra hidden charges on goods ordered, delayed delivery of goods ordered, probability of no refund policy on goods paid for, product quality issues and lack of adequate support by customer care as a result of non-physical contact inherent in social media shopping are reduced to their bare minimum.