User motivation and behaviors relationships in electronic word-of-mouth: Facebook example

Today, it is known that electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) on social media has a strong effect on attitude and behaviors of consumers. Furthermore, businesses gain strategic advantages such as building healthy relationship with consumers, creating customer loyalty, building brand awareness and improving purchase intention by route e-WOM appropriately. This study aims to determine consumer e-WOM motivation factors effects on e-WOM behavior which is opinion seeking, opinion forwarding and opinion giving which are crucial for businesses reach their objective. In the study, a detailed literature review was conducted on social media, word-of-mouth and its motivation factors. The motivational factors to be tested are identified as "altruism", "self-enhancement", "help to the company", "content involvement", "economic incentive" and "social benefits". Meanwhile, unlike the studies in the literature, e-WOM behaviors were identified as "opinion seeking", "opinion forwading" and "opinion giving". The study was based on Facebook, the social networking site that is considered to represent the general social media. The survey, as the data gathering tool, was published online and Facebook user groups participated. Factor analysis, t-test, ANOVA test and regression analysis were applied to the data of 512 participants. As a result of factor analysis, these motivators have been examined under the name of "self-presentation" because "self-enhancement" and "help to the company" emerged as one factor. The results of the analyses show that, participants' demographic information and social media usage intensities cause differences in various e-WOM motivations and behaviors. In addition to this, it was seen that altruism, self-presentation, content involvement on the opinion seeking, altruism, self-presentation, economic incentive on the opinion forwarding and altruism, self-presentation, social benefits on the opinion giving were effective. As the result of the study, the conclusions were drawn with examples based on actual data for businesses and future studies. Keywords: Social Media, Electronic Word-of-Mouth, Motivation Factors, Electronic Word-of-Mouth Behaviors, Facebook