Digital Marketing
Internet marketing or digital marketing involves the transmission of information about a company's products or services through online media, helping companies interact with their consumers and build a brand identity for their products. In this way, companies build consumers' confidence, creating a compelling reason for consumers to make the decision to purchase from them (Wani, 2023). Currently, digital marketing plays a more prominent role in brand building for businesses in the modern world than does traditional marketing (Erhan et al., 2023), and users are more drawn to digital media than to traditional ones. This shift in purchasing behavior helps brands better understand consumers so they can devise suitable marketing strategies, both to retain current customers and to reach potential markets.
The use of digital marketing and its tools enables customer loyalty, increases the number of customers and sales, gains recognition of the brand from a significant portion of the population beyond regular customers, fosters company growth, and positions the brand in the market; consequently, the company becomes more competitive, enhancing business profitability (Hussain & Ayob, 2023). To achieve this, the most commonly used tools companies use to implement this strategy are websites and social media due to the substantial user base these platforms have (Moncayo Sanchez et al., 2023).
The Digital Consumer
Over the last 20 years, the proliferation of digital technologies has had a significant impact on business operations and how consumers gather information, interact, and make purchases (Sağkaya Güngör & Ozansoy Çadirci, 2022). Digitization has become an essential aspect of conventional consumption patterns, enabling significant growth in the use of mobile channels, sustainable consumption, user-generated content, and social-media engagement. The digital consumer can interact in both the online store and the physical store to access products and services, as brands have various points of contact with the user. Digital technologies and online consumption have a profound influence on consumer behavior, leading to increased sensitivity and the sharing of experiences through social media and online forums. Digital communication is crucial in establishing a positive relationship between the brand and the consumer, making the latter an organic ambassador (Oliveira et al., 2023).
Field research conducted by major companies (Donze & Wubs, 2019) has demonstrated that customer-feedback stories enhance consumers' engagement with websites and are particularly influential in shaping the brand's position on social media. Currently, companies that do not provide experiences leveraging consumer feedback in brand-related stories are missing significant opportunities to connect directly with potential buyers (Gosline et al., 2017).