Impact of unethical social media shares on consumer purchasing intent

As a result of the development of technology, social media, which is a source for all areas of life, is a simultaneous communication tool with mutual information sharing. Developing internet technologies have allowed users to create and share content without the need for technical knowledge. Social media is becoming attractive to advertisers and marketers because of its ease of access, high level of interaction, no boundaries in creativity and the fact that its legal structure has not yet been established. Social media also raises ethical problems due to the fact that it is an online network that eliminates the concept of time and physical space, where its user publishes and shares content that they produce themselves. Many problems such as privacy, inability to secure personal data, copyright/patent rights, intense advertising content, misleading labeling and Secret advertising practices are discussed as ethical problems of social media. The aim of the study is to determine the degree to which social media users are aware of these ethical violations and their predisposition to ethical values. However, it is being discussed whether advertising on social media shares, which are growing rapidly and becoming an industry, should be ethical and to what extent these shares affect consumers' purchasing intentions. The prepared thesis consists of three parts. The first two sections cover the literature review, the last section covers the field research. Qualitative and quantitative techniques were used together in the research section of the thesis. At the first stage of the third part, in-depth interviews conducted on thirty-one people in order to be a pioneer in quantitative research and their results are described. The questionnaire technique was used as a research method for quantitative research, and the questionnaire form was used as a data collection tool. The questionnaires were distributed via the internet and 653 questionnaires were evaluated. The data were recorded in the SPSS statistical program and analyzed. After the analysis, there was no significant relationship between the deciency to ethical values and the evaluations for advertising and consumer purchasing intention. In contrast, it was seen that there was a significant relationship between deci-sions for advertising and consumer purchasing intention. It is believed that the research findings will provide useful information to other researchers working on ethical problems in online advertising and social media and will contribute to the accumulation of knowledge in the industry. Keywords: Social Media Sharing, Online Advertising, Ethical Values, Attitude Towards Advertising, Consumer Buying Intention