The Effects of Interaction Experience and Product Involvement on Decision Making of Purchase: The Corporate Facebook Page

Abstract

Recently, with the development of technology, social network service (SNS) has become a hot topic. Lots of companies are now making online marketing strategy to promote their products and brand identities using SNS. Through these strategies, companies can produce more profit as well as make better brand images by performing online public relations. Among the SNSs, Facebook has a lot of users, it has been regarded by companies as a suitable platform with respect to online marketing for latent customers. The companies of today typically have at least one account and a Facebook page, and constantly make relationships with customers. However, companies have been thoughtless in this process, and usually provide information to customers through one-way communication. Based on this phenomenon, a study was conducted herein on how to use Facebook pages for promoting products and brand identities, keeping good relationships between companies and customers. This study assumed that the types of interaction on Facebook pages and user involvement are the key factors affecting decision making of purchase. Four types of Facebook pages which were made virtually were used in analysis with 56 participants who were selected for the experiment. The results indicated partial verification of the hypothesis. Particularly, product involvement had an effect on decision making of purchase in all conditions. According to these results, it can be explained that there are close relationships between the psychological status of online behaviors and Facebook corporate pages. In addition, through linear tendency of this phenomenon, this can infer how to setup a positive relationship with latent customers and make improve brand images of products.