Facebooki kasutuspraktikad ja kasutajate motivatsioon fännilehtedega liitumisel
Date
2011
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Previous researches of social media have focused on businesses, their motivations to enter the social network, strategies and the content they have created. As previous researches have approached the subject from different aspects, and neglected the users angle, then this research focuses on the motivations of the users of Facebook.
My research has four main directions - the general usage tendencies of Facebook users, the motivation to join the fan-pages of organisations and companies, the motives to operate on fan-pages and the presumable effect on the consumption in real life. Questions I tried to answer were: Which are the general usage tendencies of Facebook users? What are the reasons for users to monitor the Facebook fan-pages of various businesses? What motivates users to operate on the fan pages of businesses? Do people think that their activity in social media affects also the real consumption?
At the first part of my research I give the overview of online-social networks, the essence and usage practices of Facebook, the Facebook users and their motivations. Moreover, I also give the overview of Facebook as marketing channel and the aims of businesses while relying on Weber, Boyd, Ellison, Lamp, Kaplan, Haenlein, Knidinger, Steinfield and Vorvorenau. To gather the empirical material, I carried out 13 personal-interview surveys. Those 13 Facebook users were found with snowball-method.
The main reason why people join Facebook is friends. Friends suggest joining Facebook or they already have their accounts there and people want to be connected with them. In addition, one other reason for joining is the wish to follow the trend. The relation between the social network and the user is sustained because people visit the environment every day on the average of 1-2 hours.
Facebook users do not organize their information in any special way. They block and delete the annoying applications, users and the fan-pages of businesses. In some cases they increase the amount of information the users see in news feed. Mostly the users search information about their friends and acquaintances, as well as keep in touch with the information related to their hobbies and speciality.
Most of the contacts of the Facebook users are their acquaintances but they regard only a small amount of them as their friends. Facebook users do not know the real number of their fan-pages and estimate it to be smaller than it is. Users join with fan-pages that are connected with their occupation, hobbies, or fan-pages that share practical first-rate information. Occasionally, they join to support their friends. Users also join to take part of the various campaigns but usually they delete the fan-pages afterwards. The least represented reason for users to join the fan-pages is to show their consumption preferences. The fan-pages are found from their contacts' news feed. Mostly users do not search for businesses or organisations themselves.
There are three reasons to join the fan-pages: users wish to find additional information about the business or organisation or its product/service, they want to find information that could be useful and practical in their occupation, they support their friends’ businesses or their taking part in various campaigns. Consumption-games and campaigns also motivate people to join businesses' fan-pages because of the lucrative interests. Most of the Facebook users do not think that it is important to join the fan-pages of the brands they consume, but being a fan is important in two aspects. Firstly, when the fan-pages create valuable content that is useful for the user. Secondly, when they can support their friends with that. From fan-pages users expect honesty, regularity, new and qualitative information, fast feedback and discussion. They also like to receive additional information about different sales and campaigns.
Facebook users usually do not operate directly on fan-pages but they get the information from the posts in news feed, which has the central place in the communication of businesses in social network. There are two reasons which motivate to operate directly on fan-pages: interesting and eye-catching posts or emotional connection with the fan-page. The main activities when operating on fane-page include reading the posts, news and comments from other users. People do not comment much themselves but rather observe what others have to say. Users also may search the information of products, services or sales. Most of the users have taken part of the comsumption-games or campaigns of businesses or organisations. The motives to take part in such campaigns have been good prizes, interest in winning posibilities and the suggestions of friends. Most of the shared commercial content is conditioned from taking part of the campaigns because one campaigne rule is to share the image or link of the business or organisation. People usually share things with humorous content, things that have effected people positively, things that, when shared, can help someone. Users usually do not take notice of the posts with commercial content from friends when there are more than one of them.
Facebook users have mostly had contacts with the products or services of businesses before and most of the users think that being a fan has increased the consumption and deepened the client relations. Users think that they would pay more attention to the information connected with the businesses in offline-world, when fan-pages would post regularly and more often. Users think that information would also reach them through other channels but Facebook is fast and convenient solution for them.
To conclude, we can say that users’ friends and contacts network, and the interests of the users play the most important role in the usage practices of Facebook. Facebook users have not adopted the business or organisation users and do not take them as the users of social media. Beyond doubt, the involvement with online-environment affects the consumption-habits of the users, but businesses have to learn how to operate in social media and create the valuable content.
The everyday activities users engage in are watching their notifications, reading the news feed, commenting and „liking“, which is the most popular way to express their opinion. However, the visiting of the fan-pages of various businesses or organisations usually does not belong to everyday activities. The users post about two or three times in a week and mostly the content of the post is humorous and includes videos. Also, users notice the visual material in news feed the most.