Discontinuance Motivations on Social Networking Sites: A Quantitative Study on Consumer Behaviour on Brand Fan Pages

Abstract

Purpose - The background of this study was to investigate if brand and consumer-initiated dimensions within online behavior theory influences online customer experience. Furthermore, the research sought to see if online customer experience and brand loyalty influenced consumers’ discontinuance motivations. Lastly, all constructs within the conceptual framework were studied in relation to discontinuance, this included external cultural changes as a moderator on brand loyalty. Methodology - This study implements a quantitative methodology and aims to grasp deeper understandings in unfollowing intentions of consumers through a questionnaire. The numbers of valid responses were calculated to be N=222, with Facebook and Instagram as representatives for social networking sites. After the pretesting was executed, the primary data was collected through a crosssectional survey. The sample consisted of mainly European users, within all age groups and genders. To analyze data through hypothesis testing, SPSS was adopted as the statistical analysis tool. Findings - The findings of the study revealed a positive significant effect between the independent variables WOM as volume and content towards online customer experience. In contrast, the results were insignificant between WOM as credibility and online customer experience. Moreover, brand loyalty with the moderator external cultural change was found to have a significant effect on discontinuance. Additionally, the binary analysis showed no significant effect regarding the monetary aspect of discontinuance. Moreover, Facebook as a moderator on all variables investigated, explored a positive pvalue, thus referring to the SNS influencing discontinuance motivations online. Future research - This current study narrows the variables of online customer experience into WOM as volume and credibility, in addition to content. As for external cultural change, the research is regarding negative trends, fake news, and cancel culture. Hence, by implementing a limited number of variables in the research, other aspects of unfollowing motivations set ground for future research. Additionally, this study confirms that contributors for following cannot necessarily correlate with unfollowing.