Social Media Marketing - Companies & Consumers - Comparison Taiwan/Austria
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Social Media Marketing - Companies & Consumers - Comparison Taiwan/Austria Master´s Thesis to confer the academic degree of Master of Science in the Master´s Program Webwissenschaften (Studienzweig Web Business & Economy) Author: Anja Denise Leherbauer Submission: Institut für Datenverarbeitung in den Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften Supervisor: A.Univ.-Prof.Dr.Dr. Johann Höller July 2015 MASTER'S T H E S I S ABSTRACT Social media and numerous social networks are not only influencing the lifes of private individuals, furthermore these developments present new challenges and opportunities for companies. One important factor of the evolution of social media is the changed role of the consumer. Nowadays it is not enough anymore to perform an uni-directional communication with the consumer. The picture, especially in case of social media marketing, has changed. Consumers do not only have the possibility to provide feedback in reaction to companies' actions; moreover, consumers can stimulate brand-, product or company-related discussions on social media. In line with this, companies have to react to the new position of the consumer in an appropriate way. Therefore the purpose of this work is not only to analyze the literature of social media and social media marketing, but also to gain a better understanding of the consumer. One important part of the work is looking at social media marketing from a consumer's point of view and investigating motives and actions of consumers in line with social media marketing activities of companies. For this reason, a focal point of this paper is a quantitative analysis to investigate a certain group of consumers, without any claim for representativeness. While talking about consumers, it is also necessary to keep in mind that consumers are individuals with diverse needs, who live in different parts of the world and are shaped by a variety of factors, as well as socialized in different contexts. According to this and for getting a better understanding of the differences between consumers, data was gathered by doing an online survey from two distinctive geographical areas (Austria and Taiwan). The data material built the basis for answering the research question, which is focusing on consumer motives and activity of consumer actions in connection with social media marketing activities of companies. After the statistical analysis of the data, it was possible to summarize the central findings and to answer the research question. II MASTER'S T H E S I S E IDESSTAATLICHE ERKLÄRUNG Ich erkläre an Eides statt, dass ich die vorliegende Masterarbeit selbstständig und ohne fremde Hilfe verfasst, andere als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel nicht benutzt bzw. die wörtlich oder sinngemäß entnommenen Stellen als solche kenntlich gemacht habe. Die vorliegende Masterarbeit ist mit dem elektronisch übermittelten Textdokument identisch. Pucking, am 31. Juli 2015 III MASTER'S T H E S I S I. TAB L E O F CONTENTS 1 Introduction.................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Problem statement....................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Research question ........................................................................................................ 3 1.3 Objective - Level of ambition ....................................................................................... 3 1.4 Structure of the work ................................................................................................... 4 2 Social media - An overview .......................................................................................... 5 2.1 Definitions of social media ........................................................................................... 5 2.2 Social media in Austria ............................................................................................... 12 2.3 Social media in Taiwan ............................................................................................... 16 3 Social media marketing - marketing meets social web ............................................. 21 3.1 Social media marketing - An Introduction ................................................................. 21 3.2 Definitions of social media marketing........................................................................ 22 3.3 Social media marketing - A Company's perspective .................................................. 23 3.4 Social media marketing - Consumer's perspective: ................................................... 32 3.4.1 Motivation and motives for participating in social media ......................................... 32 3.4.1.1 Motivations ................................................................................................................ 32 3.4.1.2 Motives ....................................................................................................................... 37 3.4.2 Social media marketing: Consumer reactions - interactions - actions ....................... 37 3.5 Cultural influences on social media marketing .......................................................... 41 4 Empirical Analysis - method ....................................................................................... 47 4.1 Concept Specification ................................................................................................. 48 4.1.1 Concept specification - Motivations and motives ...................................................... 48 4.1.2 Consumer reactions / interactions / actions- Concept specification ......................... 51 4.2 Formulation of hypothesis ......................................................................................... 53 4.3 Survey ......................................................................................................................... 58 4.4 Analysis ....................................................................................................................... 58 4.4.1 General analysis of the data ....................................................................................... 59 4.4.2 Hypothesis .................................................................................................................. 64 5 Resume ..................................................................................................................... 118 6 Limitations ................................................................................................................ 122 7 Literature .................................................................................................................. 123 8 List of Figures ........................................................................................................... 139 9 List of Tables ............................................................................................................. 140 IV MASTER'S T H E S I S L I S T O F ABBR E V I ATI O N S BBS.........................................Bulletin Board System CI.............................................Collectivistic Index PPT..........................................Biggest forum in Taiwan UAI .........................................Uncertainty Avoidance Index e.g...........................................exempli gratia PC...........................................Personal computer PR...........................................Public relations COBRA...................................company or brand-related activity V MASTER'S T H E S I S 1 I NTRODUCTION Nowadays social media is an integral part of the world wide web for many users. Talking about the web and its effects on society would be incomplete without considering social media and its influences on the online and offline world. Many online interactions possess a social character and are therefore shaped by social media: People are using Facebook for communication with friends and other users, Twitter for checking short status updates, writing about their thoughts and experiences in blogs, sharing videos about their pets on YouTube, creating business profiles for future employers on Xing, and so forth. Whilst social media is influencing the life of individuals, it is also increasingly affecting companies. (Weinberg 2012, p.1f, Berthon et al. 2012, p.262f) Social media plays an important role for different company departments. Especially the communication with consumers has been shaped by the emergence of social media. Whilst in former times a uni-directional communication was dominating the communication between companies and consumers, the logic of the game has changed. Now communication is not like a bowling game anymore, it is not only the company or the marketer that throws a message, designed for a mass audience, into the crowd without expecting any feedback. (cf. Kaplan/Haenlein 2010, p.59f) In line with the users' connectedness through social media and the technological advances, that make feedback easier, many companies recognized that is not enough to perform marketing communication in an uni-directional way. There is a need for an additional benefit that comes from social media marketing. (cf. Henning-Thurau et al. 2013, p.237,238) The task of social media marketing lies in the attempt of using social media not only for promoting a company's content, products or services. Moreover, the focus is to get into contact, to communicate with stakeholders and to create relationships