Samenvatting

Social media have become a vital part of everyday life for people throughout the world, with millions of individuals utilising various social media platforms to engage with others and to express themselves. While social media might offer several avenues for self-expression and identity construction, it also presents new issues and obstacles that might impact consumers' identity-formation processes.



This study focuses on the relationship between social media usage and the contemporary consumers’ identity-formation processes. The significance of this research stems from the quick growth and rising popularity of social media, which has resulted in rapid changes in consumer behaviour. Although existing literature investigates the ways in which social media affect consumers' wellbeing, resulting in mental health illnesses like anxiety or depression, for example, a potential that has not yet been thoroughly examined by previous studies is the manner in which the usage of these platforms can influence consumers' online life experience, how it might be compared to their physical space experiences, and in what way this could be a contributing factor within their identity-formation process. Furthermore, there are already substantial studies on the behaviour of contemporary consumers; nevertheless, due to its significance to consumer behaviour analysis, this study will focus on how this behaviour differs, if it does in any way, in an online domain. To help address this, this study will delve deeper into the ways in which social media use might influence these consumers’ identity-development processes.