Effect of Facebook Friends on Each Other's Consumption Patterns
INTRODUCTION Consumer to consumer interaction or the "marketing of many to many" is enabled by the Internet (Gummesson, 2008) Consumers have created new uses and values for the products available to them. For example, political activation was not initially the aim of the Facebook founders (Marandi et al. 2010) However, Iranian citizens, dissatisfied by the elections in their country, have used the Facebook for political reasons. It has been pointed out that "as consumers immerse themselves in experiences they often do so in co experience and value co creation with others, in formal and informal, networks which may be temporary or long term" (p. 170) Using the same logic of co experience and co creation, this paper aims to investigate the effect of Facebook usage on consumers' behavior, specifically their purchase decisions and consumption patterns. Companies and marketers need to be aware of the growing importance of consumers' influence on each other, in order to remain competitive, given the ever growing usage of the Internet and social sites. A study by Wise et al. (2010) aimed at studying emotional responses to Facebook usage, rightly concluded that the "different ways of fulfilling the need for connectivity lead to different physiological outcomes that may reflect a tendency for appetitive behavior" (p. 561) This paper is based on a belief that Facebook is a new platform for bringing people closer to each other, and thus increasing the chances for more social comparison. With more propinquity, distances among people decrease and odds for interaction increase (Kotler Keller, 2009) Since social comparison appears to be a basic human predisposition (Gulas McKeage, 2000) it is assumed that the consumption decisions of people, among other decisions, will be more affected by their contacts 'friends on Facebook' choices. Taleb (2004) has stressed the fact that "becoming more rational, or not feeling emotions of social slights, is not part of the human race, at least not with our current biology" (p. 143) Social comparison applies basically to choices that do not have clear objective answers, as stylistic decisions (Insko et al. 1983) To render the evaluation of self more solid in the absence of physical evidence, social comparison tends to increase (Festinger, 1954) The choices of people become more positively or negatively dependent on the choices of others in their circle of contacts. They will either strive for more conformity or uniqueness via personal creativity or they will be motivated to engage in attempts to boost their self portrays and sexual attractiveness in the eyes of others. All of these attempts will heighten the peer pressure, thus influencing the decisions people make, especially those related to their purchasing and consumption behaviors. However, people are generally selective about whom they will imitate (Tesser et al. 1988) Guessing who will be affected by whom is tricky, as opinion leaders tend to be simultaneously opinion seekers (Yale Gilly, 1995) The high context collectivist culture prevailing in Lebanon, the location of the study, coupled with the high unemployment rate does nothing but spill oil on the fire when it comes to Facebook usage, thus intensifying the indirect influences of Facebook on the decisions and behaviors of people in the region. However, the university students targeted in this study are believed to share many of the same habits and lifestyles of the youth in the same age brackets in different regions of the world, and thus an emphasis on cultural issues is not highly needed when it comes to social networking. LITERATURE REVIEW Social Networking via Facebook Social networking sites are online websites that permit individuals to get in contact with friends or make new friends by creating personal profiles accessible by users of those sites (Orr et al. 2009) Facebook, twitter, Myspace, Lavalife and Plenty of Fish are some examples of these social networking sites.