Social media presence : the impact of a brand’s social media presence on consumers’ purchase intentions

Transactions have gotten more competitive in recent years as a result of shifting marketplaces, globalization, and new technologies, all of which have accelerated the pace of change in the corporate sector. Platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are directing firms in a new direction via the use of social media. Customers and prospects may contact a brand representative directly or share information about a company with their friends via social media. Social media has become firmly embedded in the lives of millions of people across the globe, capturing the attention of companies. Nevertheless, the inability to place confidence in online transactions has been mentioned as the primary cause of people's aversion to online shopping. According to the results of this study, trust's role as a mediator in online transactions may reduce the risks that come with digital environments and make people more likely to buy. Academic research also suggests that the phenomenon of customer engagement influences consumer behavior. Engagement on social media, such as liking posts and commenting, is ones of the most prevalent behaviors users conduct on a regular basis. They operate as "cues" in social media, facilitating communication and connection without requiring terminology to convey their messages, thus improving confidence in the seller and, as a result, purchasing behavior. These results show that differences in trust and in how engaged customers are seen to be can be important for businesses that want to use their social media image to their advantage.Os mercados, nestes últimos anos, têm ficado cada vez mais competitivos como resultado da recente evolução, globalização e de novas tecnologias, contribuindo para a aceleração da mudança no setor empresarial. Plataformas como o Instagram, o Facebook, o Twitter e o YouTube estão a levar as empresas a tomar novas direções quanto ao uso de redes sociais. Consumidores podem entrar em contato com um representante da marca ou partilhar informação acerca de uma empresa com os seus conhecidos através destas plataformas. As redes sociais entraram nas vidas de milhões de pessoas, capturando, por conseguinte, a atenção de empresas. Contudo, a falta de confiança relativamente a transações online tem sido mencionada como causa principal para a aversão das pessoas em relação a compras online. De acordo com este estudo, a confiança tem um papel mediador, já que pode reduzir o risco associado e, positivamente, influenciar a intenção de compra. Estudos também sugerem que o fenómeno da interação do consumidor com conteúdo digital pode influenciar a intenção de compra de outros utilizadores. Estas interações, como “gostar” ou comentar posts são dois dos comportamentos mais observados nestas plataformas. Operam como “pistas”, facilitando a comunicação e conexão sem requerer outro tipo de terminologia para fazer passar uma mensagem, aumentando assim o nível de confiança, e consequentemente, impactando a intenção de compra. Estes resultados demostram que diferenças no nível de confiança e nos níveis de interação dos consumidores podem ter implicações para as empresas que procuram usar em sua vantagem a presença nas redes sociais

Exploring, understanding, then designing: twitter users’ sharing behavior for minor safety incidents

Social media has become an integral part of human lives. Social media users resort to these platforms for various reasons. Users of these platforms spend a lot of time creating, reading, and sharing content, therefore, providing a wealth of available information for everyone to use. The research community has taken advantage of this and produced many publications that allow us to better understand human behavior. An important subject that is sometimes discussed and shared on social media is public safety. In the past, Twitter users have used the platform to share incidents, share information about incidents, victims and perpetrators, and used it to provide help in distressed locations after an attack or after a natural disaster. Public safety officials also used Twitter to disseminate information to maintain and improve safety and seek information from the crowds. The previous focus of the research is mainly on significant public safety incidents; but, incidents with less severity matter too. The focus of this dissertation is on minor incidents and the aim is to understand what motivates social media users to share those incidents to maintain and increase public safety through design suggestions.This dissertation is comprised of three completed studies. The first study attempts to understand motivations to share public safety incidents on social media under the collective action theory lens. Collective action theory assumes that rational people will not participate in a public good unless there is a special incentive or an external motivation for them. In this study, public safety is considered as the public good. This study tests people’s willingness to share incidents on social media if: the victim is someone they know, if the location of the incident is close, and if there is some coercion to influence users willingness to share. General support is found for the hypotheses and collective action theory.In the second study, the focus is on internal motivations that stem from being prosocial. An established scale that measures six different traits of prosocial behavior is used. It is hypothesizes that prosocial behavior is positively related to decisions to share incidents on social media. The study also tests other mediating variables, namely: following news outlets on Twitter, following public safety officials on social media, frequency of tweeting/retweeting. Partial support for prosocial tendencies effect on decisions to share is found. The study also discoveres that the three mediating variables (number of public safety official accounts followed, news exposure on social media, and tweet/retweet frequency) fully mediates the relationship and that they have a significant positive effect on decisions to share. The third and final study complements the previous two and helps conclude the previous findings. A 2X2X2 online experiment design is conducted. The three manipulations are the availability of location information, platform authority availability, and availability of sender authority. The study hypothesizes that the three interventions will produce a significant positive relationship with decisions to share on Twitter. It is found that location information has no effect on sharing minor incidents on Twitter, however, participants are more likely to use a fictitious button that increases local exposure to minor public safety tweets. It is also found that the authority of the sender has a significant effect on decisions to share. On the other hand, platform authority does not show an effect on decisions to share public safety incidents on Twitter

Understanding Facebook news post comment reading and reacting behavior through political extremism and cultural orientation

© 2019 Elsevier LtdSocial media allows the readers of online news posts more engagement with the article through comments and comment Liking. Motivations for such actions are important because engagement around a comment increases the accessibility of that comment to other readers, leading to a far-reaching effect on the news post ground truth. Yet, motivations behind these actions and how they relate to the increasingly polarized political environment is understudied. This research investigates motivations for comment reading and Liking on social media news articles, and whether reading comments before or after reading the full article is related to different commenting and Liking motivations. In addition, we examine how political extremism and cultural orientation is related to users’ motivations. Through survey data (N = 514) obtained from two samples, one Korean and one in the U.S., we conclude that cultural orientation was a salient independent variable when looking at comment and Liking motivations, while political extremism played a minor role in motivations11Nssc

Identity motives : influences of multiple motives on cognitive and behavioural dimensions of Facebook identity construction

According to Boyd and Ellison’s (2008) definition of social media, Profiles and social connections are two major features that define these online platforms. On Facebook, Profile allows users to build a personal profile that consists of user-supplied content. Considering the feature of social connection, Facebook News Feed is an interface on which users can see other users’ activities and then interact with them (Oeldorf-Hirsch & Sundar, 2015). Previous research on Facebook identity construction has generally focused on the Facebook Profiles (Manzi et al., 2018; R. E. Wilson et al., 2012), yet overlooked the notion that social interactions on Facebook News Feed could also be a process of identity construction. Furthermore, a model that illustrates the motivational, cognitive, and behavioural dimensions of identity construction on Facebook has not been established. This thesis aimed to fill the research gaps by investigating how the motivational influences of identity construction affected the cognitive and behavioural dimensions of identity processes on both Facebook Profiles and the Facebook News Feed. Drawing on Vignoles’s (2011) motivated identity construction theory, six identity motives: self-esteem, efficacy, continuity, distinctiveness, meaning, and belonging, were examined in the present research project. Study 1 was a cross-sectional quantitative study designed to investigate the extent to which Facebook users perceived their Facebook Profiles could satisfy the six identity motives. A proposed conceptual model, Motivational Facebook Identity Structure, was tested, and the results suggested that Facebook users were driven by the motives of distinctiveness and meaning to construct a fluid identity on Facebook Profiles, instead of a continuing identity. Both Study 2 and Study 3 were qualitative investigation, exploring how identity motive might influence identity construction on Facebook News Feed, on which Facebook users can read and leave comment to news posts (Müller et al., 2016; Oeldorf-Hirsch & Sundar, 2015). Study 2 incorporated the six identity motives into Giles and Shaw’s (2009) news framing analysis for exploring how news media appealed to identity motives in news framing. The findings of Study 2 informed Study 3 about the appealed identity motives. Study 3 then incorporated the six identity motives into the analytical framework of deductive confirmatory content analysis for examining how Facebook users satisfied their identity motives through commenting to news posts as a behavioural response to identity construction. The findings of Study 3 revealed that Facebook users generally picked up the messages in the news narrative and responded in ways to satisfy the corresponding identity motives which were appealed to in the news. The findings of Study 2 and Study 3 were explained from a cultural perspective and synthesised to provide implications for changing a demanding learning culture and to the extent building an inclusive society. Taken together, this thesis has demonstrated that the six identity motives could have impact on the cognitive and behavioural dimensions of Facebook identity construction, whereby has made important theoretical and methodological contributions to the literature