Full length articleFactors influencing the consumer adoption of Facebook: A two-country study of youth markets
Introduction
Social network sites (SNSs) refers to a group of Internet-based applications that allow for the creation and exchange of user-generated content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Within a few years, SNSs have become one of the world's major communication systems. As of 2014, there are more than 1.3 billion Facebook users, 982 million Twitter users, and 300 million LinkedIn users worldwide (Smith, 2014). These web sites have become not only a major communication channel between friends and relatives, but also a new avenue for marketing communication. SNSs offers marketers not only direct communication with consumers, but also more potential interaction touchpoints and more flexible ways to communicate with consumers, which allows marketers to increase the brand engagement of prospects and consumers (Lilley, Grodzinsky, & Gumbus, 2012). In contrast, SNSs expand the effects of word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) as consumers experience WOM from both their friends and advertising (Coulter & Roggeveen, 2012). To enhance the effective use of SNSs, marketers should understand their customers' motivation for using SNSs and develop effective strategies to interact with them.
In recent years, many research studies explored how people use SNSs and how marketers may connect with their consumers through such sites. Wilson, Gosling, and Graham (2012) reviewed SNS research and classified the articles into five major areas: analysis of user background, users’ motivations, identity presentation, roles of Facebook in social interactions, and privacy and information disclosure. The use and effects of SNS to consumer decision-making and behavior become a major area of consumer research. For example, some studies assessed the impact of user-generated online product reviews on consumer information processing (Kozinets, de Valck, Wojnicki, & Wilner, 2010), marketing strategy (Okazaki, 2009), consumer decision making (Iyengar, Han, & Gupta, 2009) and consumer socialization (Okazaki, 2009). Recently, researchers have started to examine the use of SNSs from cultural perspectives. For example, Kim, Sohn, and Choi (2011) found that obtaining social support is a stronger motivation for Korean students use of Facebook, while U.S. students put more weight on seeking entertainment. The examination of SNS motivations and usage across cultures becomes an important area of research as SNSs become a worldwide phenomenon.
This study explores the motivational differences of self-disclosure and participation of commercial activities on Facebook in Hong Kong and Japan. This research has both scholarly and practical significance. First, cross-cultural differences of SNS user behaviors and the determinants of their behaviors have not yet received significant attention in research. Previous research has identified several major groups of factors that determine consumers' usage of social media and their participation in commercial activities online, but still have limited discussion on the cross-national differences of these relationships (Shin, 2010). The study aims to present an investigation of consumer social media behavior across different countries. Specifically, the key research questions in this study are (1) Are there cross-border differences between the consumers' usage of Facebook and e-commerce? (2)What factors influence the consumers' intention to disclose and share commercial information on Facebook? (3) Do these factors vary across different cultures? This research contributes to the social media literature by developing a conceptual framework that links the relationships between motivational factors with the consumers' usage of Facebook and cross-national marketing research.
Second, this study would enhance our understanding of using SNSs in marketing across boundaries. Cross-cultural issues have, so far, been investigated more in the context of the traditional marketing practices. SNS-based research in a cross-cultural context has revealed that a user's cultural background strongly influences his/her use of SNS (Kim et al., 2011). International marketers use different approaches to handle this issue. Some marketers have created locally-oriented social media sites, while other marketers adopted a standardized strategy in their communications. As limited research studies were conducted in a cross-national context, questions about how digital marketers handle consumers across borders arise.
Third, this study contributes to this area by comparing Chinese and Japanese consumers regarding their self-disclosure, their participation in commercial activities on Facebook, and the key determinants of their behaviors. In China, there were 564 million Internet users as of June 2012. Chinese Internet users also spend more time on social media sites than users in other countries (Chiu, Lin, & Silverman, 2012). China's social media sites are important portals and entry points to brand sites. As China banned the use of Facebook, in this study, the samples were collected from Hong Kong for analyzing Chinese users' use of Facebook. As of September 2012, there were more than 4 million Facebook users in Hong Kong, which constitutes more than 56% of its population and 82% of its online population. The high penetration rate of Facebook has made it a major tool that international brands use to conduct interactive marketing in Hong Kong.
Japan has a very mature digital market, with local players dominating different fields. After launching in 2004, Mixi was the leading social networking platform in Japan during the 2000s (Marcus & Krishnamurthi, 2009). The key features of Mixi include the integration of blogs inside personal profiles and the ability for users to review different products such as CDs, movies, and video games. Mixi is only accessible to Japanese citizens, as a Japanese phone number is required to open an account. Mixi reached 20 million users in 2011 and is mostly used by young people. In recent years, Facebook has also become one of the strongest SNSs in Japan. In 2013, there were about 15 million active Facebook users in Japan, which constitutes approximately 15% of total Internet users.
China and Japan were selected because they were the two major economies in Asia. They show a medium degree of dissimilarity in cultural and historical terms. Furthermore, both areas are leading markets for digital marketing and enjoy an extremely high penetration rate for social media. Thus, this study could provide marketers with some practical insights on the development of SNS marketing strategies in Asian countries.
Section snippets
Theoretical perspectives
The worldwide growth of social media has significantly changed the way in which individuals communicate, access, and share information. Different theoretical areas—social exchange theory, the use and gratification theory, and social identity theory—have been applied in the marketing literature to explain consumers' adoption of SNSs. A conceptual model of consumer usage of Facebook was developed based on these perspectives.
The social exchange theory viewed the social interaction as an exchange
Participants
This research was conducted by using a structured, self-administered questionnaire. A pilot questionnaire was designed and administered to 25 young adults, which outlined a number of potential areas that required improvement. After revision, the questionnaires were sent out through two channels. This survey is based on data from identical written surveys that were administered in Japan and Hong Kong in Fall 2013. The Hong Kong survey was administered to 383 undergraduate students at two
Finding
The dependent variables in this model are self-disclosure and participation of commercial activities on Facebook. The independent variables are the six constructs related to the consumer use of Facebook that were identified in Fig. 1. Descriptive statistics of each construct was summarized in Table 3. I first test the dimensionality, reliability and convergent and discriminant validities of measures of each sample group. Table 2 shows the results of the overall measurement model containing
Discussion and implications
In recent years, social networking sites have attracted a wide range of research interest. However, many studies are descriptive in nature, which specifies the major activities that people perform on social networking sites (Wilson et al., 2012). This study explores the motives behind using SNSs among users in Hong Kong and Japan and compares the differences of their motives and usage behaviors. Five key factors—convenience, self-presentation, enjoyment, perceived risk, and social
Conclusion
Previous research studies supported that brands could use SNSs to enhance consumers' engagement on fan pages and their brand loyalty (Verma, Jahn, & Kunz, 2012). The effective use of SNSs has become a major issue for marketers. The analysis of motivation of using SNSs highlighted the importance of enjoyment and perceived risks in encouraging people's disclosure of personal information and participation of marketing activities online.
At the country level, an interesting result was derived from
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