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The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the attitudes and behaviors of digital consumers in omnichannel world. For this purpose, in order to understand the behavior of digital consumers, literature review has been made. The transformation of traditional consumers into digital consumers has been examined within the framework of marketing periods. What are the new types of consumers and demographic and psychographic characteristics of these, and how they are segmented in the market are important issues. Another important issue is how digital environmental factors affect digital consumers when shopping online. Purchasing processes of digital consumers and their behaviors, which channels they use and how they make purchasing decisions play an important role in understanding digital consumer behaviors. After the purchasing decision, it is examined whether digital consumers will transfer their experiences to other consumers, satisfaction and loyalty experiences, and whether they will buy again in digital environmental.

Introduction: A few months after the observation of the first COVID-19 case in Wuhan in the Hubei province of China on 17 November 2019, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020. With the emergence of the pandemic, it has still been uncertain how long the negative economic effects of the pandemic will last around the world. The introduction of full or partial curfews in many countries has led the COVID-19 pandemic to significantly change consumer behaviour and reshape many industries.

Purpose: Recently, the whole world has faced the COVID-19 pandemic, and during the pandemic, consumers’ needs, activities, consumption behaviours have begun to change. In this study, it is aimed to investigate changes in consumer behaviour with the spread of COVID-19 all over the world and the rise of digital transformations with these changes. Thus, ideas about social trends can be obtained by gathering detailed information about changing consumer behaviours. Additionally, advice is given to businesses on how to turn difficult conditions brought about by the pandemic into an advantage thanks to the opportunities offered by the digital age.

Methodology: In this review study, first of all, national and international studies on changing consumer behaviours during the pandemic process were examined, and changes in the pandemic process were discussed. Additionally, the results of studies that have measured the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on consumer behaviour and studies including developments in terms of digital transformation were also examined within the scope of the review.

Findings: Uncertainty, risk and fear, created by COVID-19 and the present measures of the New Normal have led to some changes in both consumer behaviour and many industries. Based on this, within the scope of this study, the changing behaviour of consumers in the COVID-19 pandemic process and its aftermath and the rise of digital transformation were examined, and predictions for the future were determined.

New information and communication technologies have transformed the ways businesses communicate and maintain relationships with their customers. In this chapter, we review the main topics in academic research pertaining to digital marketing and relationship perspectives. The discussion involves email and website marketing, search engine marketing, user-generated content, co-creation marketing, social media marketing, prosumption marketing in the sharing economy, immersive marketing and AI-based marketing. On this basis, the chapter proposes some future research directions including influencer marketing, live streaming, social service enhancement and the dark side of social media marketing, consumer-to-consumer interactions on two-sided platforms, psychological mechanisms related to the use of mixed realities, and the experience of AI-enabled service automation and relevant ethical issues. Furthermore, emerging technologies such as the Internet of things (IoT) and blockchain are expected to be the next breakthrough in marketing, which warrant further research to examine their impact on the customer-firm relationship. It is suggested the researchers could focus on the adoption and application of blockchain technology, participative marketing via IoT, as well as the privacy and data protection issues related to these technologies. This chapter provides a comprehensive picture of the connection between digital marketing and relationship marketing in academic research.

This chapter critically evaluates the literature on digital consumer data and the ways in which it can be used in digital social research. The chapter illuminates how researchers have to conceptualise and negotiate digital data, focusing upon ethical and procedural challenges of employing digital methods.

The chapter draws upon and integrates a broad research literature from sociology, digital media studies, business and marketing, as these have opened up new directions for research design and method. It advocates interdisciplinary approaches to conceptualising what digital data is employing the concept of ‘marketing narratives’ to understand how the new visibilities of consumer data are shaped by related processes of branding and the interactivity of content.

The chapter shows how the capacities of digital technologies present significant challenges for researchers and organisations that have to be carefully negotiated if the potentials of digital consumer data are to be harnessed. In addition, researchers should pay attention to novel issues of ethical responsibility in the context of the longer-term presence of data records.

The chapter offers a set of guidelines for digital social researchers in negotiating the meanings of visible digital consumer data, the ethical and proprietary issues involved in utilising digital methods.

We review the implications of the mobile technology for different stages of the consumer path to purchase including awareness, search, evaluation, store visit, and product choice. Real-time and location-specific access to information and products are identified as distinguishing characteristics of mobile devices. While the literature on digital marketing is well developed, knowledge of the effects on the consumer path to purchase in the presence of dynamic and location-specific information is still scarce. Path to purchase models need to recognize the central and powerful role of user-generated content. Better management of marketing resources would require models that connect investments in mobile marketing to sales, and also model the synergies among different digital and offline media. We conclude with a framework that connects mobile media impressions to product choice, in the presence of other marketing media, and consumer and firm feedback loops.

This chapter examines how information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives affect customers’ everyday routines with an emphasis on how electronic word of mouth (eWOM) affects their purchasing decisions and determines if eWOM might serve as a useful trust factor when making purchasing decisions. This chapter is based on both primary and secondary data and examines how eWOM affects customers’ buying decisions in this era of increasing social media platform usage. One hundred individuals from various regions of Karachi provided the primary data, collected through an online survey. Secondary data are also employed, such as details from business websites, scientific papers, and other related publications of businesses. In Karachi’s developing digital market, it was discovered that eWOM via social media used to have a substantial impact on consumers’ shopping habits. The effectiveness of social media content depends greatly on how appropriate it is for the intended audience. Social media marketing doesn’t quite simply aim to improve consumers’ impressions or directly advertise things. It also entails maintaining and fostering relationships between businesses and prospective customers. According to the research, consumers’ recommendations and ratings of goods and services made on social media, whether through eWOM or another channel, influenced their decisions to buy. Customers consider social media to be trustworthy when making decisions about what to buy. Customers are currently adopting social media as opposed to more conventional means to learn about new products. Most customers believe that eWOM from social media greatly affected their shopping choices, according to the results of the study.