Date of Award

Spring 5-2018

Degree Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Marketing and Fashion Merchandising

First Advisor

Melinda McLelland

Advisor Department

Marketing and Fashion Merchandising

Abstract

Social media is bringing consumers and businesses together like never before. Using social metrics such as “likes” and “shares”, businesses can both measure and influence consumer attitudes and behaviors. In an effort to expand upon growing research into the effects likes and shares may have on constructs such as attitude, intent to follow, trust, and adoption intention, this study designs an experiment which manipulates one small and one national business’s actual Facebook posts to measure the effects simply having higher or lower likes and shares can have on a consumer’s perception of that business. Using T-test and Regression Analysis, adoption intention was recorded as significantly affected by the manipulation on both the small/local and national level of business. In both cases, trust was a significant predictor to adoption intention.

Included in

Marketing Commons

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