Instagram and buying decision processes of restaurant consumers

Asian Journal of Media and Communication E-ISSN: 2579-6119, P-ISSN: 2579-6100 Volume 2, Number 2, October 2018 Instagram and buying decision processes of restaurant consumers Monika Pretty Aprilia, Irwansyah Department of Communication Studies Faculty of Social and Political Science Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia Abstract Social media has changed the way people consume. One of the changes is how people eating outside at restaurant. People only need mobile phone to gather information when they feel hungry and look for a place to have dine. Consumers choose restaurants based on the information they get from social media. Consumers can decide which restaurant they would like to go just after checking its reviews and photos on Instagram. This research aims to find the information that consumers use in the buying decision processes. The data was collected through in-depth interviews with restaurant consumers who live in major cities in Indonesia. This study finds that price, location, and Instagram reviews have been considerations in the buying decision processes. Keywords: buying decision processes, Instagram food photos, social media, restaurant consumers. 1. Introduction Digital and social media have changed the way people consume. Social media has been a mean on consumer’s decision making, sharing information about products, giving opinion, and evaluating their experiences. Consumers become more dependent on social media when they want to buy something. They rely on reviews and comments posted by other consumers as “the organic information” rather than information from the product’s official website (Rudro 2017). It also happens in the context of restaurant customers. Electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) defines how customers can get information about a restaurant from its social media or website. E-WOM works when some customers share the food photos and give positive reviews about a restaurant they have just visited. This mechanism will create loyal customers. Social media increases curiosity and provides information when someone searches for information about restaurants, food menus, or cooking techniques. A person can buy food without touching, smelling or tasting the food first. Simply looking at food photos on social media, people can imagine the taste (Hartman 2012). A previous study found that there are only two sensorial perceptions can be used when consumers want to appreciate food via digital media, namely vision and hearing sensory. This research justified that suggesting and determining are the factors impacted to customer’s restaurant choice. Just by looking at the food photos on social media, customers are tempted to go to the restaurant and taste the food (Cornejo 2017). The other study revealed that online platforms can influence customer’s choice on restaurants in Portugal (dos Santos, 2017). Some of social networking such as TripAdvisor, Zomato, Facebook and Yelp became the information sources for restaurant’s customers. The research found that costumers will not go to a new restaurant before they check the 13 Volume 2, Number 2, October 2018 restaurant’s review and ranking. Another previous study on social media and eating at restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand is conducted by Pattanachai (2015). This research argued that social media has significant role on customer’s fine dining choices. Customers are involved in social media by conversing and sharing information. This research also found that fine dining choice has positive correlation on decision making. This study focuses on how restaurant customers use Instagram to seek information about restaurant as a part of buying decision processes. Instagram is a very popular social media among young people in Indonesia. This research aims to find the information that consumers use in the processes of buying decision, to explicate the reasons behind the information seeking done by the customers. 2. Theoretical framework This research applies the model pre purchase service consumption as proposed by Tsiotsou & Wirtz (2015) Fig 1. Model of pre purchase service consumption (Tsiotsou & Wirtz 2015) The first stage is need recognition. This stage happens when consumers are in the ideal conditions because of the information they have got. At this stage, consumers find themselves facing problems and must immediately seek information to resolve the problem. For this research context, customers look for food or dining place when they feel hungry. Second stage is information gathering. In this stage consumers search information internally and externally. The internal information searching can be based on their memory or past experience. But, consumers find themselves in uncertainty because sometimes they cannot assure about the information. Hence, consumers need external information 14 sources such as internet, mass media, social media, and others. After gathering information, the next stage is information evaluation, consisting three types of evaluation. The first is the evaluation of search attributes, consumers evaluate information related to price, location, quality, and other considerations that can cause disadvantages to consumers. Consumers do not want experiencing many losses, materially and physically. The second evaluation is carried out on the experience attributes. Consumers consider past experiences related to the service providers they already heard or known. This evaluation can only be conducted if consumers have had experience with the service providers or products. The third evaluation is carried out Monika Pretty Aprilia, Irwansyah, Instagram and buying decision processes of restaurant consumers on the trust attributes. This evaluation can be done after consumers use the product or service providers for a long time. This evaluation usually occurs in services that have long-term impacts, such as insurance and health services. 3. Method This study was conducted through in depth interviews and observations with five Indonesian restaurant customers who live in major cities in Indonesia. In the process of data collecting, there were several steps conducted in order to get customers who are fit with the research subject criteria. Data collecting was carried out during February to April 2018. In the beginning, there were 10 Indonesian restaurant customers to be selected as research subjects. But in the end, there were only five Indonesian customers who were chosen to be the main subjects. The process of choosing the customers was done through snowballing method. 4. Finding and discussion This chapter describes how Indonesian customers seek information. In the need recognition stage, customers begin to feel the appetite to taste certain foods only by looking at the food photos on Instagram. Customers feel hungry because they see food photos on Instagram. All customers said that food photos on Instagram have raised customer’s appetite to taste a food. It leads them to search information on the fo (...truncated)