Investigating the motivations of customers to share mobile coupons in virtual social communities

Abstract

SUMMARY The dissertation is aimed to investigate the motivations which would affect customers to share mobile coupons in the virtual social communities The objective is to broaden the applicability of technology acceptance model and complement the limitation of the thesis In addition the study will assist companies to plan a sound marketing strategy or conduct mobile coupon designing better As a result of previous study limitation the author adds some customer-related traits as external variables Partial Least Squares is adopted as the research method The study assumptions are verified Economic reward and reciprocity affect perceived usefulness positively Electronic word-of-mouth affects perceived ease to use positively Economic reward reciprocity and eWOM positively affect the customers to decide whether to share the information in their virtual social communities or not Moreover reciprocity is moderately correlated to the intention to share m-coupons Finding an appropriate reciprocity model and build a good eWOM environment are obviously important for merchants to do Keywords: Technology Acceptance Model; Mobile coupons; Virtual social community INTRODUCTION The purpose of this study is to complement the research limitations of previous studies that did not consider consumers’ intrinsic cognition According to Qing T et al (2016) research its structure mainly lists several internal and external motives that may affect consumers' sharing of mobile coupons on the social communities To the consumer's intrinsic cognition (perceptual usefulness perceived ease of use) this part is not considered and also listed as a research restriction by the study Therefore this study takes external factors (economic reward reciprocity electronic word-of-mouth) as external variables and uses the technology acceptance model to consider the external factors and the characteristics of consumers' internal perception and combine them together Under the external factors of the company's marketing strategy it affects consumers’ internal perceptions which in turn affects the attitude and intention of consumers to share mobile coupons in the virtual social communities MATERIALS AND METHODS In this study questionnaires are collected from people who have used the virtual social communities The research adopts convenience sampling and delivers the questionnaire on the Web To discover the motivations affecting consumers to share mobile coupons in virtual social communities we use Partial Least Squares as the research method The valid questionnaires collected in this study were statistically analyzed using SPSS statistical software package including narrative statistical analysis reliability and validity analysis Pearson correlation analysis and regression analysis RESULTS AND DISCUSSION After the research and analysis it is found that "economic reward and reciprocity" have a positive impact on perceived usefulness and "electronic word of mouth" also has a positive impact on perceived ease of use Moreover according to the multiple regression analysis "reciprocity perceptual usefulness and attitude toward sharing" have a positive and significant impact on behavioral intentions Reciprocity and attitude toward sharing showed a significant moderate correlation Based on this it is recommended that the merchants’ primary task in marketing activities should be to find out the ideal reciprocal business model and also establish a good online reputation CONCLUSION This research seeks to proceed from an objective perspective but it is still interfered by irresistible factors (such as time cost human resources etc ) so that many aspects are not that much complete There are some limitations This study did not take “consumers’ activeness in virtual social communities” into account Nowadays virtual social communities becomes more and more popular more and more people are becoming "lurkers" When the store launches sharing and higher discounts will lurkers enhance their activeness? Sharing the information in the virtual social communities is worth investigating Therefore it is recommended that future research can focus on the level of activeness of consumers in virtual social communities and conduct more in-depth research

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Huei-Ting Tsai (Supervisor)