Is Social Media Impactful for University's Brand Image?

This research aims to verify many opinions and previous studies that stated how powerful of social media in building the image of a brand, also applies for university's brand image enhancement. Using explanatory survey research, data were collected by giving out questionnaires to samples that were taken randomly from Facebook's friend list of a private university that located in South Jakarta. The results showed that the most powerful influence occurs on the role of 'community' towards the brand identity and the role of 'connectivity' towards the brand benefits. Another interesting finding of this research is, it turns out 'openness' and 'conversation' has no significant effect on all components that make up the brand image. Thus, it can be said that the positive image on the mind of consumer audience regarding the brand identity, personality, association, attitude or behavior and the benefit offered by a university's brand not necessarily be formed by the openness and willingness to dialogue or make conversations.Keywords: Social Media, Facebook, UB, Brand Image, University's Brand Imag

Is Social Media Impactful for University's Brand Image?

This research aims to verify many opinions and previous studies that stated how powerful of social media in building the image of a brand, also applies for university's brand image enhancement. Using explanatory survey research, data were collected by giving out questionnaires to samples that were taken randomly from Facebook's friend list of a private university that located in South Jakarta. The results showed that the most powerful influence occurs on the role of 'community' towards the brand identity and the role of 'connectivity' towards the brand benefits. Another interesting finding of this research is, it turns out 'openness' and 'conversation' has no significant effect on all components that make up the brand image. Thus, it can be said that the positive image on the mind of consumer audience regarding the brand identity, personality, association, attitude or behavior and the benefit offered by a university's brand not necessarily be formed by the openness and willingness to dialogue or make conversations.Keywords: Social Media, Facebook, UB, Brand Image, University's Brand Imag

El valor percibido en webs de social commerce: Efectos sobre la lealtad del consumidor.

El estudio del comportamiento del consumidor en webs de social commerce está en auge, debido al gran crecimiento del sector en los últimos años. A pesar de ello, su comprensión se encuentra en su infancia, debido a la multitud de factores influyentes. Esta investigación, a través de la metodología del estímulo-organismo-respuesta, estudia qué papel tiene el valor percibido (O) por el consumidor, mediante el análisis de dos de sus principales antecedentes (calidad del sistema y del servicio) (S), así como de sus efectos sobre la lealtad (R). Los resultados obtenidos a partir de la aplicación de la técnica PLS a una muestra de 272 consumidores habituales de estas webs ponen de manifiesto la gran importancia que la calidad de la web tiene en la generación de valor en el consumidor, así como el rol clave de éste sobre las intenciones del consumidor tanto para volver a comprar como para recomendar.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Estimating the Importance of Social Media in Consumers’ Education and Information Using New Techniques

The social media is composed of easily accessible web tools through which people converse, participate, create, recommend, valorify information and respond online to everything that happens around them. These web tools offer a dynamic virtual environment where users are engaged in a continuous traffic generated by information and interactivity. Internet development and access to information led to a change in consumer behavior in Romania. In this context, it must be taken into account that the buying decision and the decision to include certain foods in daily diet is significantly influenced by the views and experiences of other consumers, expressed in the virtual environment. Thus a new communication channel provided by the internet through social media (forums, chat, blogs, sites reviews) appeared. In this respect, we conducted a research - using the main search engines – with the aim to analyze the evolution of the number of forums and blogs, and also of the posts on these, related to the words bio-eggs, eggs from battery raised chickens and eggs numbering, during December 2009 – June 2010.Social Media, consumers education, ecological food, forum, blog

Independent Living and Attendant care in Sweden: A Consumer Perspective

[Excerpt] One of the main aims of the growing Independent Living Movement , the international civil rights movement of people with disabilities, has been to gain control over the services that are necessary for participating in society on equal terms. Of these services attendant care has been identified by the movement as perhaps the most critical prerequisite for a dignified and productive life for persons with severe disabilities

Research on the Influence Mechanism of Virtual CSR Co-creation on Consumer Identity

With the development of Internet marketing, virtual CSR co-creation has attracted the attention of enterprises. This paper explores the influence mechanism of different routes of interactivity of virtual CSR co-creation on consumer identity by introducing interaction theory and self-construal theory. The experimental results show that routes of interactivity have a positive impact on consumer identity, and experiential route has a stronger impact on consumer identity. Routes of interactivity and self-construal have an interactive effect on consumer identity: When virtual CSR co-creation is structural route, the interdependent self show a higher consumer identity; On the contrary, when virtual CSR co-creation is experiential route, the independent self show a higher consumer identity. The results also indicate that CSR perception plays a mediating role in the interaction effect between routes of interactivity and self-construal on consumer identity

An international review of cultural consumption research

Despite the effects of the crisis, several studies show that there has been an increase in cultural production in all the most important western countries over the last twenty years. Nevertheless, the dimensions of the flows of demand are changing: the lowering of the threshold of perceived accessibility to the cultural contents on offer is resulting in new population segments using them. The modalities of cultural product consumption are also changing, and are increasingly influenced by the direct involvement of the consumer in the creative processes. On the other side, the competition to conquer consumersÕ free time has intensified because more figures are now involved, both from the cultural industry and outside. The cultural offer has multiplied and become more differentiated. But while this consumption is changing dimensions and modality, a gap is emerging in the information and knowledge of cultural consumption behaviour, mainly due to a lack of innovative official statistical measurements. The present paper wants to understand how academic literature reacted to the need for information on cultural consumption, that became widespread during 2000. Our main objective is to offer an initial overview of scientific literature of the fist decade of the twenty-first century, while trying to understand the future research trends. The analysis showed that great attention is still dedicated to the segmentation of cultural demand, but the analysis of motivations underlying cultural consumption is significantly acquiring more importance. Moreover, we identified vast research areas in which cultural consumption has only been partially studied, such as: social consumption, studies on individual businesses, methodological triangulation, and the operative implications for business management.Cultural consumption; Marketing research; Segmentation; Motivations

Virtual world commerce adoption (VWCA) : a case study of second life investigating the impacts of perceived affordances, trust, and need satisfaction

Virtual worlds are computer-simulated worlds in which multi-players can simultaneously interact in a rich graphical environment. The development of virtual worlds, along with the massive growth of users, creates opportunities for business organizations. This dissertation involves many studies regarding virtual world adoption in business by virtual consumers. Most of the research in Information Systems (IS) was conducted investigating factors influencing technology adoption, such as ease of use and usefulness, subjective norms and behavioral controls, self-efficacy, performance and effort expectancy, flow, etc. However, most of these research studies focused neither on design aspects related to affordances nor users\u27 goal-oriented behaviors, such as need satisfaction. This dissertation examines the effect of affordances, referring to a property of an object, animal, or environment that affords, or makes available certain actions. Particularly, this dissertation investigates the users\u27 perceived affordance of virtual products and environments, in which business transactions take place. In addition, relationship-based trust and need satisfaction are considered as crucial determinants of virtual world commerce adoption in this dissertation. There are three studies that were conducted in Second Life in this dissertation, which are two preliminary studies and a main study. The preliminary studies use multiple data collection methods, including user interviews, documentation, direct observations, and questionnaire surveys. The results of the preliminary studies suggest that trust, social influence, system security, system quality, and service quality are vital for users when they make purchase decisions. The initial measurement model containing valid and reliable measurement scales of the main research constructs was proposed. The main study, using a revised questionnaire survey from the preliminary studies, was conducted to develop the conceptual framework of Virtual World Commerce Adoption (VWCA). Covariance-based and PLS-based path analyses were employed based on the data obtained from the participants who have different experience levels with online business transactions. The final results show a significant relationship between perceived affordances and intention to purchase products in the virtual world. This relationship is mediated by need satisfaction. However, the mediating effect of relationship-based trust is not significant. This is due to more concern about trust related to technical aspects of the system rather than trust from social exchange process

WHO PAYS PREMIUM IN THE AGE OF FREE SERVICES? FINDINGS FROM A MEDIA WEBSITE

The challenge for many media websites is converting users from free to fee. In order to encourage user participation and engagement with the websites many of them have provided consumers with a virtual community wherein the user can create an on-site identity, make friends, and interact with other consumers. We study the interplay between users’ functional and social behavior on media sites and their willingness to pay for premium services. We use data from Last.fm, a site offering both music consumption and social networking features. The basic use of Last.fm is free and premium services are provided for a fixed subscription fee. While the premium services mainly improve the content consumption experience, we find that willingness to pay for premium services is strongly associated with the level of social activity of the user, and specifically, the community activity of the user. Our results represent new evidence of the importance of introducing community and social activities as drivers for consumers\u27 willingness to pay for online services