Scrolling, Trusting, Belonging: A Qualitative Thematic Document Analysis of Digital Consumer Behavior among Generation Z and Its Implications for Marketing Management

Abstract

Generation Z (Gen Z) is increasingly central to marketing management, yet its digital consumer behavior is often described through generalizations rather than systematic interpretation. This study used a qualitative design based on thematic document analysis. It examined how recent scholarly and professional documents published between 2021 and 2023 explain Gen Z's digital consumer behavior and what these explanations imply for marketing management decisions. The corpus consisted of 17 purposively selected documents covering digital and social media marketing, influencer marketing, immersive technologies, and thematic analysis methodology. Following the reflexive thematic analysis approach of Braun and Clarke, the analysis generated four themes. The first is platform-mediated discovery, in which attention is shaped by algorithmic feeds. The second is relational trust, in which credibility is built through perceived authenticity, congruence, and homophily rather than brand authority. The third is consumption as identity and belonging, in which purchases serve symbolic and social functions. The fourth is conditional engagement, in which Gen Z's openness is balanced by skepticism toward undisclosed persuasion and attention to ethical value. The themes are integrated into a conceptual sequence that links digital stimuli, trust evaluation, identity validation, and conditional action. The findings suggest that marketing managers should treat Gen Z segmentation, positioning, and communication as community-based and transparency-driven. The study is limited by its document-based design and its reliance on a small corpus. It proposes directions for empirical research using interviews, netnography, and platform data.