s in the new channel. Frank Gruber, 2006). However, they encounter the severe risk that members will feel exploited if the sites suddenly appear overrunning with ads (Mesure and Griggs, 2007). A 2008 report by IDC found that 43% of social network users never clicked on ads (eMarketer, 2009) Online advertising is widely used by companies and advertisers to promote their products and services (Kaye and Medoff, 2001). As social networking sites have a high potential for advertising to users, users’ attitudes toward advertising should be considered in order to design content for appropriate on-line advertisements.
Consumers’ beliefs and attitudes toward advertising are important indicators of advertising effectiveness (Mehta, 2000). Participation in social networking sites (SNS) is growing, with 63. 1 % of Taiwanese maintaining their own social networking profiles and engaging with various forms of social media. According to the statistics on checkfacebook. com (2011), Facebook has more than nine million members in Taiwan. Although social networking sites are so popular in Taiwan there are few studies about the users’ attitudes toward social networking advertisement.
The aims of this study are to investigate the attitudes of internet users towards advertising on social networking websites through qualitative research and analyze how do social networking websites users in Taichung view on-line advertisements. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The aim of this study focuses on the following research questions. 1. What are the overall attitudes of social networking sites users towards advertisement? 2. How do social networking sites users in Taichung view advertisements in term of informativeness, usefulness, entertainment value, reliability and product value? 3.
What factors affect the overall attitudes of social networking sites users in Taichung towards advertisement? OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY The purposes of this study are as following: 1. To investigate and find out the overall attitude of social networking sites users towards advertisement. 2. To investigate and find out how social networking sites users view advertisements in term of informativeness, usefulness, entertainment value, reliability and product value. 3. To analyze and identify factors affecting the overall attitudes of social networking sites users towards advertisements. DEFINATIONS OF TERMS
Social networking sites users – refer to Taichung People who access at least one social networking site as following: Facebook – at first was launched to support Harvard alumni network only. This model is different from other sites that open their system without limitation. Facebook expanded rapidly and allows anyone to be a user. The most outstanding feature of Facebook is the ability to build application by outside developers. Hi5 – provides general social networking services such as a list of friends, sharing blogs, pictures and songs. It’s popular across the world especially in Asia.
Youtube – is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. Unregistered users can watch the videos, while registered users are allowed to upload and unlimited number of videos. It is the most popular social networking sites in term of video content. Twitter – is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read message on text-based posts of up to 140 characters. Social network advertisement – refers to direct and indirect advertising placed on social network sites. For direct advertisement, it can crate like ads on traditional websites or target users directly.
And, indirectly advertisement focuses on innovative marketing technique in which companies creates pages or groups and allow users to join. The various ads are used in a way that resembles on offline among the most popular types of ads are the following: banner ads, pop-ups windows, and video clips. Banner Ads – are the most popular ads on the web. There are two types of banners, Non-enhanced banners and Enhanced banner. With non-enhanced banners, when the users click on a banne