A study of university students' social media usage in terms of sports marketing

The aim of the study is to examine social media usage of university students for sport marketing purposes. The population of the study consists of 3665 students taking elective physical education courses in Akdeniz university during 2014-2015 spring semester. Sample size was found by n= Nt2pq / d2 (N-1) + t2 pq formula as n= 348 (Sumbuloglu & Sumbuloglu, 1995). 461 appropriate questionnaire forms were used as sample. For data collection a questionnaire form consisting of 3 parts was used. In the first part demographic questions and level of Facebook page following were inquired. In the second part, Facebook usage scale developed by Atali ve Coknaz (2014) was utilized. The scale consisted of 29 items representing 4 sub scales named "Knowledge, Following and Support", "Sharing", "Communication" and "Earning revenue for club". For structure validation explanatory factor analysis was used and variance was explained by 4 factors at a level of 66.188%. A confirmatory factor analysis were used for model validation and goodness of fit indexes were found to be appropriate. In this study Cronbach Alpha levels were between .75-.89. The last part of the questionnaire consisted of 11 questions which were examining the thoughts of fans about official Facebook sites of the clubs. According to the findings fans are following the official web sites of the club especially for "Knowledge, Following and Support" reasons. Fans who have been following the facebook pages for 3-4 years had more positive thoughts about the pages. And also fans who had more positive views about pages had higher scores than the others in all 4 sub scales.