'Millenials & Youtube': An investigation into the influence of user-generated video content on the consumer decision making process

The digital marketing environment has changed the way consumers make their purchasing decisions. Traditional mass marketing techniques no longer have the desired effect. Today’s consumers are searching for honest information to help inform to make purchase decisions. Millennials are a generation who spends a lot of time online and prioritize social networks over other media types. Millennials are characterized as a generation who are “natives of technology” and are known to use technology for many decisions that affect them, including purchasing decisions. Millennials are forecasted to have record-breaking purchasing power, and are most influenced by user-generated content (UGC). The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the influence of user-generated video content (UGC) on the consumer purchase behavoiur among millennials living in Ireland. The study was conducted based on YouTube as a social video sharing platform The key objectives of this research were to establish usage of YouTube among Millennials, determine Millennials attitudes towards advertising on YouTube, compare the roles of peer reviewed content to branded content on Millennials decision making process and determine effect of source credibility on millennials purchase decisions. The study aimed to understand Millennials consumer behaviour, therefore the researcher conducted six interviews with millennials who had different interests and passions but frequently engaged with YouTube. The researcher opted to use qualitative research methods, selecting semi-structured interviews as the data collection tool. This allowed the researcher to use probes in order to garner opinion based responses. Findings from the interviews were coded then presented in form of themes. Major findings from the research were that millennials actively seek out recommendations from their peers by watching a variety of UGC on YouTube. One of the key findings showed that millennials trust people over brands when it comes to making purchase decisions. The study proposes that marketers use these findings to restructure the marketing strategies targeted at millennials or post millennial generations