The Influence of Social Media on the Formation of Brand Attitude

Vasiliki Nikolaou

Studenteropgave: Kandidatafhandlinger

Abstract

One of the biggest phenomenon that appeared and grew on the 21st century is social media. Due to their enormous and fast development information can be shared faster than ever. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the influence that social media exert during the formation of brand attitude. In order to be able to do so, I have decided to focus on the specific social media of Facebook and also to use the Starbucks brand, a brand that has strong presence on Facebook and has also managed to create brand attitude through it. On the theoretical extent, the importance of social media in regards with the formation of brand attitude will be explained. Regarding the research method, six independent variables was chosen, each of which is related to brand attitude, and their influence on brand attitude was tested. A survey was developed and distributed on participants that were both Facebook users and in the same time Starbucks fans. Subsequently, the data were collected and analyzed with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences v. 20 (SPSS) program. The hypothesis were tested by using a one way variance ANOVA test with additional post hoc tests when necessary like the Tukey’s range test and the homogenous subsets. Furthermore, correlations analysis was conducted in order to find the relationship between the independent variables and brand attitude. The results revealed that fans who engage more in social media activities and also in brand related social media activities, have strong brand associations and perceive social media as important for their lives, tend to develop a more positive brand attitude that those fans who do not. Two main limitations that came up due to the rejections of the hypothesis and need to be further researched are the effect of long time awareness on brand attitude and the influence of the length of social media usage on brand attitude.

UddannelserCand.merc.bcm Brand and Communications Management, (Kandidatuddannelse) Afsluttende afhandling
SprogEngelsk
Udgivelsesdato2017
Antal sider74
VejledereLiana Razmerita