A Cross-National Study of Consumer Beliefs, Attitudes and Behaviors Toward Liking Brand Page

Abstract

Since the advent of social networking sites (SNS), marketers have tried to find out how to best use them to communicate their marketing messages to consumers. Brand pages on social networking sites are a form of brand community that allows advertisers to foster relationships and interact with consumers. The participatory culture in the SNS context also makes consumers more willingly to connect with their favorite brands on SNS. However, in a cross-cultural context, consumers’ perceptions of SNS advertising may differ in various aspects like cultures, beliefs and values. The way American consumers perceive brand pages may be different from the perceptions among Asian consumers. This study focuses on examining attitudes and social influence that may affect consumers to like brand pages on social networking sites and has selected to investigate the differences between U.S. and South Korean consumers. A theoretical framework is developed to investigate hedonic and utilitarian values as antecedents that drive consumers’ attitudes toward brand pages and examine the relationships between electronic-word-of-mouth communication (eWOM), consumers’ belongingness and social influence. The findings reveal that both the attitude and social influence variables are significant predictors of the American and Korean consumers’ intentions to become fans of brand pages. Their positive attitudes toward brand pages are strongly related to the utilitarian values derived from accessing SNS advertising. To the Korean consumers both the informational (utilitarian) and pleasurable (hedonic) aspects of accessing SNS advertising enhance their positive attitudes toward brand pages. On the other hand, utilitarian values have a much stronger effect on motivating American consumers to follow brands on social networks. The positive attitude-intention relationship suggests that the more consumers like to access SNS advertising, the higher the likelihood they will become fans of brand pages on social networking sites. The findings also suggest that American and Korean consumers’ intentions to join brand pages are positively related to the social influence exerted on them by their important referents. The eWOM effects on social influence are stronger than the belonging effects in both countries. The strong effects of eWOM appear to be significantly related to the pass along behaviors in communication. Korean respondents’ attitudes towards brand pages are significantly different from those of the U.S. respondents. The results imply that young American perceptions toward the brand pages seem more positive than their Korean counterparts.