College-aged young consumers’ interpretation of Twitter and marketing information on Twitter

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate young consumers’ perceptions toward Twitter and marketing information on Twitter. Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical perspective guiding the study is interpretative phenomenology analysis, and the essay assignment and in-depth interviews were used to collect data. Findings – Five themes emerged from the current data regarding the participants’ perception of Twitter: trendy and cool; adoption, incubation and action; dependence on smartphone; entertainment and fun; and low involvement and high frequency; and three themes emerged toward their interpretation of marketing information on Twitter: randomness, awareness builder and relevance and fun. Originality/value – The previous research on the topic of Twitter and marketing is rather sporadic, lacking both breadth and depth. Specifically, two research gaps can be identified from the literature: first, companies and organizations’ strategic use of Twitter is the single focus of the previous research, and second, the dominate research orientation of the previous research has been quantitative, with a positivistic paradigm. The current study is designed to fill the above two research gaps by exploring young consumers’ interpretation of Twitter and marketing information on this particular social media platform from the perspective of consumers.