Understanding ‘likers’ on Facebook: differences between customer and non-customer situations
Matthew P. Bunker*, K.N. Rajendran, Steven B. Corbin and Ciara Pearce University of Northern Iowa, 345 Curris Business Building, Cedar Falls, IA 50614-0126, USA E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] *Corresponding author
Abstract: Social media has grown rapidly over the last decade. In particular, Facebook seems to be gaining ground among all age groups. One of the features that Facebook provides is the ability for consumers to indicate their associations through the ‘like’ feature. Companies are beginning to utilise that feature to develop relationships with consumers. This paper examines the inter-relationships among constructs such as identity, norm, involvement, and word-of-mouth behaviour in the context of the Facebook ‘like’ feature. Based upon a preliminary study and an electronic survey we develop and test a few propositions relating to customer and non-customer situations among likers. Several of our propositions are supported but there are some surprising findings as well. These have implications for managers who are attempting to persuade people to ‘like’ their companies/products.
Keywords: Facebook like; business information systems; social media; identity; norm; involvement; WOM.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Bunker, M.P., Rajendran, K.N., Corbin, S.B. and Pearce, C. (2013) ‘Understanding ‘likers’ on Facebook: differences between customer and non-customer situations’, Int. J. Business Information Systems, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp.163–176.
Biographical notes: Matthew P. Bunker’s research interests include service failure and recovery, consumer powerlessness, consumer grudge-holding, internet marketing, service quality, and customer satisfaction. He has published in the Journal of Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction, and Complaining Behaviour, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, International Journal of Consumer Studies, and International Journal of Business Information Systems. He has also received the 2009 Outstanding Paper Award by the Emarald Literati Network for the Journal of Services Marketing. His teaching interests are marketing research, interactive marketing, and services marketing.
K.N. Rajendran has published in the Journal of Marketing, International Marketing Review, Journal of Education for Business, Journal of Marketing Management, Innovative Marketing, Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science, and the Elgar Companion to Consumer Research and Economic Psychology. His 1993 paper ‘Consumer profiles and perceptions:
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country-of-origin effects’ received the Literati Award for Excellence. Another paper in 1996, ‘The influence of worldmindedness and nationalism on consumer evaluation of domestic and foreign products’ received a Citation for Excellence from Anbar (Emerald) Management Review. His teaching interests include marketing management (MBA), marketing strategy, new product management, and pricing.
Steven B. Corbin is the Head at Department of Marketing, University of Northern Iowa. He has taught at UNI since 1975, 15 years as the Department Head, and with teaching specialisation in personal selling and marketing strategy. He has received nine local, regional, and national excellence in teaching awards, including Marketing Management Association’s 2003 Master Teacher Award and the Iowa Board of Regents Award for Faculty Excellence. His scholarly interests are concentrated predominantly in the field of marketing education. His professional consulting and research includes work for 40 corporations and he is a member of the Marketing Educators’ Association.
Ciara Pearce graduated from the University of Northern Iowa with University Honours with Distinction in 2011. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Marketing with an advertising emphasis and a minor in public relations. She is pursuing a career in Washington DC and is currently an active member of the Ad2DC Organization.
1 Introduction
Social media and social networks (like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn) have proliferated and grown exponentially over the past decade or so. Even Hollywood has taken notice with a recent movie (‘The social network’) tracing the origins of Facebook. There has been a tremendous interest in understanding aspects of the social network phenomenon by all manner of organisations, business in particular. This is due to the fact that social media has changed the advertising and promotional landscape, as it is now better controlled by consumers (Meadows-Klue, 2008). Consequently more companies are adopting social media tools for marketing activities (Bahm and Dogerlioglu, 2011), and learning how to best reach customers in this new landscape. Articles covering the social media topic have been published in fields as diverse as educational technology (Baran, 2010), managerial psychology (Kluemper and Rosen, 2009), human resources (Elzweig and Peeples, 2009), information technology (Venkatraman, 2010), marketing communication (Zhang, 2010), intellectual property (Steinman and Hawkins, 2010), and academic performance (Yu et al., 2010).
Although research regarding social media covers many different fields, the primary interest of this paper is in regards to Facebook. Specifically this study investigates the attitudes and behaviour of people who indicate that they ‘like’ a company on Facebook, or in other words become ‘fans’ of a company. So for this study we confine ourselves to only those respondents who have indicated they ‘liked’ a company on their Facebook page. The implicit assumption that firms make when they encourage consumers to like their Facebook pages is that this step may lead to greater involvement and positive word-of-mouth. ‘Liking’ a company is a consumer’s method of recognising and rewarding a brand, which can lead to higher e-loyalty to that particular brand (Aghapour et al., 2011).
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One way that social media enhances e-loyalty is because it allows people to publicly display preferred brands. People buy goods, especially luxury goods to reflect their desire to belong to an aspirational reference group (Truong et al., 2010). Taking this theory a step further, we suggest that people associate with organisations or companies, even though they may not be customers, in order to satisfy their aspirations. So we would expect that when people ‘like’ a company or a product in which they have no purchase experience, it is because that association serves as an outlet for their aspirations. Furthermore aspirations are highly influenced by social norms and sense of identity. Additionally social norms may increase enjoyment for the customer, due to her or his association with the brand (Li, 2010). So, when a customer ‘likes’ a company on Facebook because of social norms, their ‘liking’ behaviour may actually increase their enjoyment of their association with the brand displayed on their Facebook page.
This study compares people when are customers of a company and ‘like’ that company, and when they are not customers of a company and still indicate that they ‘like’ that company on their Facebook page. We compare characteristics such as involvement, identity, norms, and word-of-mouth behaviour of the respondents under these two different situations. It is important to understand if there are behavioural differences between the two types of ‘liking’ situations for firms to better utilise the ‘like’ feature. First, we are curious whether word-of-mouth behaviour is influenced by the same variables in both ‘liking’ situations (customers vs. non-customers). The second research question asks in what type of ‘liker’ situation is one more likely to engage in positive word-of-mouth; when one is currently a customer or one who is not. As far as we are aware, no previous study has examined these issues.
2 Literature review and propositions
2.1 Identity
Consumer identification with a company is defined as an active, selective, and volitional act in which a customer is motivated by the fulfilment of self-definitional needs (Bhattacharya and Sen, 2003). Customers portray a certain image to themselves as well as to others by affiliation with companies in some way. In other words, customers identify themselves by the companies they choose to associate with by wearing apparel (Nike clothing), sporting window stickers (universities), or choosing to ‘like’ a company on Facebook. Social identities are chosen on the basis of self-categorisation and not necessarily by actual membership with a company or organisation (Brewer, 1991). Understanding the role of identity provides a needed depth to the understanding of the global social networking phenomenon (Kreps, 2010).
Self-identification with another entity can occur because of several different reasons. First, a company carries the same belief system and values of a customer. For example, people may identify with ‘Ben and Jerry’s’ ice cream because they both value the environment. Secondly, people may identify with a company due to affiliation needs. In other words, people may identify with a church, sports team, or fan club for the assurance that they belong to a group (Pratt, 1998). Third, people can clarify their self-concept and gain a positive self-appraisal through their association with the company (Homburg et al., 2009). For example, a person may identify with ‘in and out’, a hamburger chain that originated in California, in order to show that their own roots originated from California.
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People who are customers of a business or organisation and who involve themselves with that business tend to have a stronger sense of identity with that company and believe that the company’s name or reputation also influences their sense of self, such as customers of Harley Davidson (Bagozzi and Dholakia, 2006). The act of ‘liking’ a company on Facebook is a form of involvement for customers of companies, and these customers may ‘like’ these companies to show others their affiliation with them. People who are not customers may also ‘like’ these companies in order to affiliate with them, but their sense of identity may not be as strongly related to the company or brand as for people who are already customers of the company or brand.
P1 People who ‘like’ a brand exhibit stronger sense of identity with the brand when they are customers than when they are not.
2.2 Social norms
Norms are defined as perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours that are approved of by the group and expected of its members, norms state what group members should or should not do in a particular situation (Fisher and Ackerman, 1998). So out of concern for social appropriateness, a person uses normative cues as guidelines for proper behaviour (Bearden and Crockett, 1981). But it seems that in order for norms to influence consumer decision making behaviour, the norms must be a focal point for that particular decision (Kallgren et al., 2000). Also, people generally strive to be accepted by a group, and the two strongest groups are family and friends. Consequently people will make decisions, no matter the level of importance, by their perceived acceptance of family and friends, and to avoid conflict with them (Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995). Similarly in online settings, social norms are more important when derived from peers as opposed to others, such as supervisors (Cha, 2011), counsellors and teachers (Roach et al., 2011) and perhaps, even family members. So ‘liking’ a company on Facebook may appear as a trivial activity, yet people may ‘like’ or choose not to ‘like’ a company because of their desire to stay consistent with normative influencers.
So people may ‘like’ a company on Facebook, even if they are not customers of that company, in order to create a better fit between themselves and the group’s social norms in order to maintain their identity within the group (Orth and Kahle, 2008). Since it is difficult to separate the relationship between self and others, a person’s conception of self is related to the groups they belong to, the image they portray to those groups and their interpretation of the group members’ perceptions of them (Hill and Safran, 1994). For example, research found that social influence is different for adopters of IT systems than for non-adopters. Social influence is significant for non-adopters but not for adopters (Eckhardt et al., 2009). So people who are not actual customers of a company may rely on social norms more heavily when they choose to ‘like’ a company on Facebook than people who are actual customers.
P2 People who are not customers of a product are more likely to respond to social norms when ‘liking’ that product than when they are actual customers of a product.
2.3 Involvement
Involvement is conceptualised as actions by a consumer that has perceived personal relevance (Gordon et al., 1998). In a Facebook setting, people are involved with
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companies when they receive updates on their message board, referred to as ‘wall’. Once people ‘like’ a company they inherently give permission to these companies to post company updates on people’s personal Facebook walls. As customers become involved with these updates, they engage in more elaborate, extensive thoughts about that particular company (Puccinelli et al., 2009). So the effect of involvement is to enhance the relationship between the firm and the customer (Gruen et al., 2000), thus making that customer’s involvement a very personal matter between the company and her or himself. Consequently, involving customers in a dialogue with the company is clearly advantageous for establishing strong market relationships (Szmigin et al., 2005).
Involvement has another advantage because it also influences evaluations of good or bad experiences with that company (Gordon et al., 1998). For example, consumers who are highly involved with the internet or with a particular website tend to be more satisfied with that site than those who are less involved (San Martín et al., 2011). Additionally, the more involved a customer is in regards to a company, the less the perceived risk when purchasing from that company, and theoretically the more satisfied the customer is with a company or product (Kovacs et al., 2011). In an online setting, customers must willingly become involved in transactions with a company (Thongpapanl and Ashraf, 2011). Due to the extremely large expanse of the internet, customers can purposely choose to become involved with a particular company or its competitors without exerting too much effort.
People who are not customers of a particular company can still become involved with that company when they choose to ‘like’ them on their Facebook page. By allowing non-customers to ‘like’ a company, there is more opportunity to spread ‘word-of-mouth’ about that company, and the customers can still be involved by receiving updates from that company, or by invitations to participate in various activities and events. But since they are not actual customers, these people may not feel the same level of involvement as those who are customers of that company.
P3 People who ‘like’ a company will be more involved with that company when they are actual customers than when they are not actual customers of a company.
2.4 Word of mouth
Word-of-mouth communication in a marketing context is conceptualised as interpersonal communications in which none of the participants are marketing sources (Bone, 1995). Past research has shown that word-of-mouth communication is more influential than marketing-based communication (Gilly et al., 1998). One of the main motivations of consumers utilising social media is networking. It has been shown that networking is strongly associated with behavioural intention (Kim et al., 2011). In other words, being involved on a social networking service, such as Facebook may increase the intention to engage in word-of-mouth behaviour. This is important because 81% of participants in an online survey said their perceptions are influenced to a positive extent by word-of-mouth (Simmons et al., 2011). People also use word-of-mouth as a guide when they are in risky or vulnerable situations (Bunker and Bartholomew, 2010). In recent years, with the advent of the internet, it has been easier for companies to spread word-of-mouth through customers by associating the brand name with customers’ communications (Carl, 2006). As Klassen et al. (2009) point out, negative word of mouth is lethal on the internet. Similarly, we posit that efforts by companies to get people to ‘like’ a company or brand on their Facebook page helps spread positive word-of-mouth.
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P4 People who ‘like’ a company and are its actual customers will engage in more face-to-face word-of-mouth behaviour than when they are not customers of that company.
Based on the previously propositions we expect identity and involvement to be stronger predictors of WOM for customers than for non-customers. And we expect norms to be a stronger influence for non-customers than actual customers.
P5a Identity will influence word-of-mouth more for ‘likers’ who are customers than ‘likers’ who are not customers.
P5b Norms will influence word-of-mouth more for ‘likers’ who are not customers than ‘likers’ who are customers.
P5c Involvement will influence word-of-mouth more for ‘likers’ when they are customers than ‘likers’ when they are not customers.
3 Method
The sample was obtained using the professional data collection firm ‘research now’. ‘research now’ is one of the largest data collection firms and has electronic access to over six million participants worldwide. Using an electronic data collection firm was appropriate as the research investigated differences between two types of ‘liking’ situations on Facebook. The sample chosen would already be familiar with the internet and are comfortable using e-commerce companies. The screening criteria was people 18 years or older who had Facebook accounts. Further screening was provided through the survey instrument in which respondents indicated if they ‘liked’ a company on Facebook. If they chose no, the survey ended. So the current sample includes only those respondents that indicated they ‘liked’ a company on Facebook. Additionally, they were also asked if they ‘liked’ a company of which they were not customers. The total sample size for this research was 401 useable surveys. However for this study, the sample is restricted to 93 respondents who provided us with information relating to ‘liking’ companies of which they were customers as well as companies of which they were not customers. The median number of months that people said they ‘like’ a company was six months. The range was from new (0 months) to 200 months. The sample was fairly evenly balanced between male (43%) and female (53%), with 4% abstaining. Approximately 91% of the respondents were between the ages of 26 and 65. The median household income of the sample was approximately $70,000.
3.1 Measurement scale development
A preliminary study was conducted with students from a mid-size university in the US mid-west. Each student was required to write up to three reasons they ‘like’ a company on Facebook. A total of 127 responses were recorded. These responses were then categorised into major constructs and coded for tabulation. The constructs and coded items are shown in Table 1.
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Table 1 Major themes by reasons people ‘like’ a company on Facebook
Involvement Satisfaction Coupons Identity Norms
Updates (19.8%)
Currently employed (6.9%)
Friends/family employed (9.9%)
Membership (3.1%) Interesting (1.5%)
Satisfaction (31.3%)
Coupons (13.0%)
Identity (10.7%) Friends/family ‘like’
company (0.8%)
21.3% 31.3% 13.0% 20.7% 10.7%
The scale items for each construct were adapted from the current marketing literature and applied for this research. The scale items used in this study measured with seven-point Likert scales are shown with the original references in the Appendix. Scales were tested for reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity and the results are shown in Table 2. The discrimant validity test was done conducting a CFA with χ2 = 320.85 (df = 171). Cronbach’s alpha was higher than .8 for all of the constructs and the average variance extracted (AVE) was higher than .5 for all of the constructs. Table 2 Standardised confirmatory factor analysis loading estimates, Cronbach’s alpha (α)
For this paper, the constructs ‘satisfaction’ and ‘coupons’ were not utilised as they only apply to situations where people are customers and this paper is specifically investigating a within sample research design in which the same person answers a two part survey. Part one is for people that ‘like’ a company that they currently patronise and part two is only for those people that indicated they ‘like’ a company but do not patronise that company.
Since we are concerned with within sample differences, we used paired-sample t-tests. To compare the influence of antecedents on behaviour (WOM) we used multiple regressions using SPSS software.
4 Results
P1 People who ‘like’ a brand exhibit stronger sense of identity with the brand when they are customers than when they are not.
Table 3 Paired samples t-test of identity measures
As the table shows, this proposition was strongly supported. Every measure of identity (how I express my personality, because it expresses my personal values, and because it expresses who I want to be), showed higher means for respondents who were actual customers of a company than those who were not actual customers.
P2 People who are not customers of a product are more influenced by social norms than customers who ‘like’ that product.
This proposition is generally supported; however differences are not significant for two measures. These measures were related to family and peers. The measures supporting the proposition were related to friends and people they felt were important to them. So it appears that people are more influenced by social norms when ‘liking’ a company on Facebook when friends are working at a company than when family is working at a company. It is also clear that people are less influenced by peers (‘others similar to me’) than they are with people that they look up to or who matter to them.
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P3 People who ‘like’ a company will be more involved with that company when they are actual customers than when they are not actual customers of a company.
Table 5 Paired samples t-test of involvement measures
This proposition is strongly supported. Items regarding the nature of updates from the company were used as measures for involvement. These updates had to be important, relevant, and really matter to the respondent for higher involvement to occur. Respondents seem to be more involved when they are actual customers of that company. This was true of all three measures.
P4 People who ‘like’ a company and are its actual customers will engage in more face-to-face word-of-mouth behaviour than when they are not customers of that company.
Table 6 Paired samples t-test of word-of-mouth measures
Item Mean SE t df Sig. (two-tailed)
WOM-WOMb .824 .133 6.190 90 < .001
As Table 6 shows, Proposition 4 is strongly supported. ‘Likers’ when they are customers engage in more positive word-of-mouth behaviour than ‘likers’ when they are not customers. So, customers who engage in face-to-face communication more often say favourable things about a company they ‘liked’ on Facebook than non-customers. So merely getting someone to ‘like’ a company may not generate the level of positive word-of-mouth the company desires.
P5a Identity will influence word-of-mouth more for ‘likers’ who are customers than ‘likers’ who are not customers.
P5b Norms will influence word-of-mouth more for ‘likers’ who are not customers than ‘likers’ who are customers.
P5c Involvement will influence word-of-mouth more for ‘likers’ who are customers than ‘likers’ who are not customers.
From the tables, it is clear that only involvement is significantly associated with word-of-mouth behaviour for customer situations. For non-customer situations however, both identity and involvement are shown to be significantly related to word-of-mouth. Norms are not important in either situation. So our Propositions 5a and 5b are not supported by the data. However, as expected, involvement appears to be very influential in the customer situation as well as in the non-customer situation. Moreover, looking at the ‘beta’ coefficients, it appears that involvement is a little more influential in generating positive word-of-mouth for ‘likers’ who are customers than for ‘likers’ who are not customers. So there appears to be some support for Proposition 5c.
5 Discussion
Our exploratory study based on a preliminary study and empirical analysis of survey data has provided some interesting results as to the differences between the customer and non-customer situations for ‘liking’ on Facebook. As we suspected, identity is more strongly associated with ‘liking’ behaviour in the customer situation than in the non-customer situation. This could relate to the self-identity theory that people form their identities, in part, from the products they buy. We also see that norms are more influential in the non-customer situation than in the customer situation. This suggests that perhaps aspirational theory does apply to people who are not customers. This could occur because these aspirations could be based on the expectations of others. So consumers, who show an association with a company or organisation, do so in the expectation that others who view their Facebook homepage would also associate them with these companies or organisations. This could be a form of image management that people engage in when using the Facebook page.
We found involvement to be stronger in the customer situation than in the non-customer situation. In order to develop stronger relationships with Facebook users, involvement is necessary; however involvement is much higher for people when they are already customers of the company or organisation. This suggests that even though companies are very keen to get people to ‘like’ them, they are unlikely to develop stronger relationships with ‘likers’ unless they transition them into customers. As involvement is the most important influence on positive WOM behaviour, it is doubly important that companies engage customers and potential customers in a variety of ways so they eventually become customers and advocates.
There are, clearly, limitations to this exploratory study. First, the sample was restricted to those respondents willing to provide particulars of ‘liking’ where they were customers, and where they were not. Since this was voluntary, there could be an element of selection bias. The findings need to be validated with more studies employing larger representative samples. The differences examined in this study were within sample
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differences. Designing studies looking at between group differences would be another way to examine the issues. Some of the propositions may also need to be examined through a longitudinal study to confirm the findings.
While these limitations are acknowledged, this study provides some preliminary results and suggests some areas for future research. A theoretical issue of interest, for example, may be explaining why identity influences word-of-mouth behaviour more for ‘likers’ when they are not customers than it does for ‘likers’ when they are customers. Perhaps, when a ‘liker’ becomes a customer, word-of-mouth behaviour is more driven by customer experience and engagement, i.e., involvement. This issue is one that might need a longitudinal study to unravel satisfactorily.
Another area of research entails unravelling the meaning of ‘like’ to marketers. As Hoffman and Novak (2011) point out, there is a difference between people who like a product out of genuine preference for it and those who might be externally motivated to like a product. A person might click ‘like’ purely from a wish to buy a product, not because of any plan to buy it. marketers need to figure out what ‘like’ means in different contexts in order to leverage the advantage it seems to provide.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments in revising this paper.
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Appendix
Facebook research: constructs and survey items
Identity
1 I ‘like’ this company on Facebook because it is a part of how I express my personality (Ident1).
2 I ‘like’ this company on Facebook because it expresses my personal values (Ident2).
3 I ‘like’ this company on Facebook because it expresses who I want to be (Ident3).
176 M.P. Bunker et al.
Social norms
1 I ‘like’ this company on Facebook because a friend works there (Norms1).
2 I ‘like’ this company on Facebook because a family member works there (Norms2).
3 I ‘like’ this company on Facebook because I’m expected by others similar to me to like it (Norms3).
4 I ‘like’ this company on Facebook because people who I look up to expect me to like it (Norms4).
5 I ‘like’ this company on Facebook because people who matter to me expect me to like it (Norms5).
Involvement (importance)
1 The updates posted by this company are important to me (Inv1).
2 The updates posted by this company are relevant to my interests (Inv2).
3 The updates posted by this company really matters to me (Inv3).
We measured word-of-mouth as positive WOM using the statement ‘I generally say positive things about this company when I talk to others face-to-face’.
