A motivational perspective on the user acceptance of social media

Abstract

Social media is a unique marketing communication medium to engage with a new generation of consumers and it has become an essential element of many organisations’ strategic planning. On social media sites, consumers are engaging with and producing information, as opposed to traditional media where the marketer is in control of the media message content and information dissemination. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the intentions of users of social network sites to continue using social network sites in the future, by using a comprehensive, decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour. The results showed that Dispositional trust, Internet self-efficacy, Psychological risk, Perceived enjoyment and Perceived usefulness exert a statistically significant influence on the intention of individuals to continue to use Facebook in the future. This study provides insights that can guide marketers’ efforts to devise customised, multi-layered marketing offerings to encourage the use of social network sites for e-commerce purposes.