Academic Dissertation
https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/91957
ABSTRACT
Social media plays an ever-increasing role in young consumers’ lives, who are active users of social media. In this study, young consumers are referred to as consumers aged 15–35. Young consumers are constantly exposed to consumption-related content on social media. For instance, a variety of products and services are constantly advertised on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
Notably, many of these products and services are endorsed by social media influencers, such as YouTubers, who have a significant effect on young consumers’ purchase intentions, buying decisions, and brand attitudes. On the other hand, young consumers can also actively read other consumers’ product reviews before making purchase decisions and contact brands directly via social media. Thus, prior consumption research can be roughly classified into two streams: the first stream treats consumers as passive targets, while the second stream treats consumers as active agents. However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, there is a lack of a comprehensive understanding of young people’s role as consumers in the social media environment.
This dissertation takes a cross-cultural perspective by investigating the role of young Finnish, British, and American consumers in the social media context from two opposing perspectives. First, this study will consider young people as active and determined consumers who utilize the assets of social media for their own purposes. Second, this study will focus on the role of young consumers as targets of influence in the social media context, whose attitudes, values, and behaviors are influenced by external sources, such as peers and social media influencers.
This dissertation draws on widely used theories from the fields of sociology, marketing, social psychology, and communication but discusses them in the modern social media context. The present study is based on four sub-studies and utilizes three datasets, including young Finnish, British, and American participants. This study uses only quantitative methods. This study was guided by research questions related to young consumers’ roles in social media as targets of influence and active agents. Thus, by addressing these research questions, this study contributes to filling the significant gap in previous research by providing a deeper understanding of how young consumers from different countries are simultaneously active consumers and targets of influence in the social media context. What unites the sub-studies of this dissertation, in addition to the fact that they focus on young consumers, is the context of social media.
The first and fourth articles discuss how young consumers’ values, purchase intentions, and behaviors are influenced by social media influencers. The second and third articles focus on young people’s consumer activism on social media and how young people use consumer goods and consumer symbols to give the impression of possessing a high social status.
The results indicate that young consumers can be seen both as active consumers and as targets of influence. In terms of being targets, the results show that certain social media influencers can contribute to the development of young people’s materialistic values and higher purchase intentions. In addition, the findings reveal that social media influencers can affect young consumers’ actual consumer behaviors. On the other hand, the results also showed that young people actively participate in consumption-oriented impression management on social media and are active boycotters, which highlights their active role as consumers.
Keywords: consumption, social media, young consumers
