The impact of social media on consumers. Do age and gender moderate the effect of social media on trust?

H2b: Relationship between social media and trust will be affected by gender 5 The author uses social network to invite informants to participate in the survey using a convenient approa

(Picture)

1 Name: Nguyễn Thị Đoan Thanh

2 Date of Birth: 30-Aug-1988

3 Course year: MBUS 7.1

4 Mobile: 0908700476

5 Email: thanhntd3008@gmail.com _

6 Home address: 276/105/23 Thong Nhat, Ward 16, Go Vap, Ho Chi Minh

7 Occupation: Sales Manager Position:

8 Office name: UPM Raflatac

9 Office location: Lot 1Pa4, Binh An Textile & Garment Industrial Zone, Binh Thang Ward,

Di An District, Binh Duong Province

10 How have I changed after two years studying at ISB?

ISB provides me chance to study relevant issues and intelligent insight on business trends, issues and the economy from a larger perspective Programs are designed to utilize case studies from a variety of sectors: human resource, supply chain, finance from Vietnam to some well-known multinational companies to solidify business knowledge More than that, I have very good friendship with my teammates Our group of 4 people looks like a family,

we support and share the good and bad times in life

11 What I want to share with the juniors is:

Don’t try to meet traditional expectations of what your career and lives ought to look like after graduation You shouldn’t think that your MBA like an obligation but you should

consider this is wonderful opportunity to develop yourself and expand your network

Moreover, you should seize chances to study how people resolve their problems as well as what you learn from every subject then apply these valuable lessons to your daily work .Last but certainly not least, remember to expand and connect your instructors, classmates and seniors because connection and network are powerful, essential and far-yielding

WISHING YOU EVERY SUCCESS IN YOUR CHOSEN PATH!

Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc

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BẢN CAM ĐOAN Họ tên học viên: Nguyễn Thị Đoan Thanh Ngày sinh : 30/08/1988 Nơi sinh : Vĩnh Long Ngày trúng tuyển đầu vào năm : 2016 Là tác giả của đề tài luận văn : The impact of social media on consumers Do age and gender moderate the effect of social media on trust? Giáo viên hướng dẫn : Đoàn Anh Tuấn Ngành : Mã số : 22160043 Bảo vệ luận văn ngày : 12/11/2018 Điểm bảo vệ luận văn : 8 Tôi cam đoan đã chỉnh sửa nội dung luận văn thạc sĩ kinh tế với đề tài trên, theo góp ý của Hội đồng chấm luận văn thạc sĩ TP Hồ Chí Minh, ngày tháng năm Người cam đoan Chủ tịch Hội đồng chấm luận văn (Ký và ghi rõ họ tên) (Ký và ghi rõ họ tên) Nguyễn Thị Đoan Thanh Hội đồng chấm luận văn 05 (năm) thành viên gồm : Chủ tịch :………

Phản biện 1:………

Phản biện 2: ………

Thư ký : ………

Ủy Viên : ………

Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc

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BẢNG TỔNG HỢP NỘI DUNG CHỈNH SỬA LUẬN VĂN SAU BẢO VỆ

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CONSUMERS DO AGE AND GENDER MODERATE THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON TRUST

1 Check the grammar of the title of

the thesis

The impact of social media on consumers Do age and gender

moderate the effect of social media on trust?

1 and 2

2 In the introduction session, the

author should discuss how could

the research objectives/goals had

been set The research objectives

(on page 12) were given but do

not strongly link to the previous

paragraphs

Add 3 more sentences to support the reason and research objectives 12

3 Why does the author investigate

the moderating effect of age and

gender? Does the investigation

fill a research gap? This should

be more in the introduction

section

Add more 5 sentences to explain why the author investigate the

moderating effect of age and gender

12

4 H2a and H2b need to be argued

separately H2a should show the

direction of the moderating

Separated H2a and then H2b At the same time, I also revised the

hypotheses as below:

H2a: Relationship between social media and trust will be affected

22&23

H2b: Relationship between social media and trust will be affected

by gender

5 The author uses social network

to invite informants to

participate in the survey using a

convenient approach How can

we check the legitimacy of the

sample?

Add more 4 sentences to support how to check legitimacy of the

sample (9 rows)

33

6 The sample and results of

qualitative pilot study is a bit

vague It should be stated clearer

the opinions of 30 respondents

(office staff, students, household,

7 The author should discuss the

sample characteristics What is

the potential implication

withdrawn from the sample

characteristics

Add 1 sentence to predict the implication withdraw from the sample

characteristics

40

8 The unsupported moderating

hypotheses are not

well-explained The author should

add more discussion on this

result

9 Why do age and gender do not

moderate the effect of social

media on trust?

Add 5 more sentences to discuss 52&53

2 “activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media”incorrect citationremove “ ”

3 social media is defined as a internet-based applicationssocial media are defined

4 Constantinides and Fountain (2008) recommend classifying social media into five categories “(i) blogs, (ii) social

network sites (for instance, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Google+), (iii) content communities (for example, YouTube and Wikipedia), (iv) e-forums, and (v) content

to commentate negative collective self-esteem and use SNSs for social compensation” incorrect citationremove “ ”

8 “has been socialized to believe we live in a materialistic orientation society”incorrect citationremove “ ”

9 “N>50+8m (where N is the number of sample size and m is number of independent variables)” incorrect citation

remove “ ”

10 “Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Cronbach’s Alpha and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)”, “significant impact on the influence of the dependent variables towards the

independent variable”, “ranging from 0.70 to 0.95 A low

items and make a good element of this summated rating scale If the item – total correlation was negative or too low (less than 0.30)”, it was compulsory to pay more attention on

“the item for wording problems and conceptual fit by

modifying or deleting such items”, “in terms of its fit to the hypothesized population model”; its indices could be created

to “help with model interpretation” , “insight into the

relationships among independent variables in their prediction

of the dependent measurement”, “linear relationship between each of the predictor variables”, the “suggested cutoff for the tolerance value was 10 (or equivalent to VIF of 10.0), which corresponds to a multiple correlation of 95 with the other independent variables”, “correlation of each specific item with total of the other items in the scale (Corrected Item-Total correlation)”, “better recovery of factor structure than

do shorter tests, and when the correlation between the factors was very great”, “the items and factor loading for rotated factors with loading”, according to (McCloskey, 2006) age effects the initial decision with regard to “whether to

purchase on the internet, but not the subsequent behavior of e-shoppers, such as the number of transactions or the amount spent”, “status of experienced e-shoppers, their behavior is indistinguishable, independently of their age, gender or income level” (Hernández et al, 2011) incorrect citation

remove “ ”

HỌC VIÊN

(Ký, ghi rõ họ tên)

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-Nguyen Thi Doan Thanh

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CONSUMERS DO AGE AND GENDER

MODERATE THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA

ON TRUST?

MASTER OF BUSINESS (HONOURS)

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

International School of Business

-Nguyen Thi Doan Thanh

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON CONSUMERS DO AGE AND GENDER

MODERATE THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA

MASTER OF BUSINESS (HONOURS)

SUPERVISOR: DR DOAN ANH TUAN

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2018

List of figure 5

List of table 6

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 7

ABSTRACT 8

1 Introduction 9

2 Literature review and hypothesis 14

2.1 Technology acceptance model (TAM) and theory of planned behavior (TPB) 15

2.2 Social media and trust 16

2.3 Age and gender 20

2.4 Effect of trust on intention to buy and perceived usefulness 23

2.5 Perceived usefulness and intention to buy 26

2.6 Hypotheses 27

3 Research methodology 28

3.1 Research procedure 29

3.2 Measurement of the constructs 34

3.3 Data analysis and method 36

Measure validation 36

Cronbach’s alpha 36

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) 37

Multiple regression analysis 38

4 Data analysis and results 39

4.1 Sample characteristic 40

4.2 The reliability test 41

4.3 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) 41

4.4 Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) result 44

4.5 Research hypotheses test 45

4.6 Results of Multi-group analysis 47

5 Discussion and implications, limitations and directions for future research 51

5.1 Discussion 51

5.2 The main results 53

Result contributions to theory 53

Result contributions to management practices 55

5.3 Limitations and directions for future research 57

5.4 Conclusion 58

Reference 58

Appendix 1: Primarily questionnaire 72

Appendix 2: Cronbach’s Alpha Reliability 77

Appendix 3: CFA results and regression 79

Appendix 4: SEM result 83

Appendix 5: Moderating role of gender 87

Appendix 6: Moderating role of age 89

List of figure

Figure 1: Conceptual model 28

Figure 2: SEM for suggestion model 46

Figure 3: Multi-group result for female 48

Figure 4: Multi-group result for male 48

Figure 5: Multi-group result for Generation X 50

Figure 6: Multi-group result for Generation Y 50

List of table

Table 1: Guidelines for identifying significant factor loadings based on sample size 38

Table 2: Characteristics of different fit indices demonstrating goodness-of-fit across different model situations 39

Table 3: Sample characteristic 40

Table 4: KMO and Barllett’s test result 42

Table 5: Total variance explained 43

Table 6: Communalities 43

Table 7: Rotated component matrix 44

Table 8: Assuming model unconstrained to be correct_gender 47

Table 9: Assuming model unconstrained to be correct_age 49

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Firstly, I send my sincere thanks to all respondents who helped me finish questionnaires Especially, I am grateful to have chance to work on my thesis under the direction of Dr Doan Anh Tuan His guidance and intensive support were instrumental in my research journey Moreover, his supervisor and joyful spirit helped me continue to write and research even during the most stressful moments

Besides, I would like to thank the thesis defense committee: Dr Tran Ha Minh Quan, Dr Nguyen Phong Nguyen for asking questions to give positive arguments and constructive contribution for my thesis

I would also like to thank Dr Nick Hajli for his support to send me questionnaires, it made this thesis possible

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to send the deepest gratitude to my family,

my MBUS 7 classmates and my friends who gave me good conditions and generous support for completion of my thesis Thank you very much for helping me through the good times and the bad, for always trusting me, and for standing by my side no matter what the circumstances

ABSTRACT

Customers’ experience is the centric point that marketers of all industries must focus to embrace effectively Thus, brand managers apply many kinds of marketing strategies to attract consumers The recent popular trendy to drive marketing now is social media marketing as social media bring great opportunities to online users; they can easily engage in social communities and stay focus via Internet In recent decades, people witness the fast growth of social media in the cyber world, which delivers enormous effects to our daily activities (See-To & Ho, 2014) The goal of this thesis is to evaluate the influence of social media on trust, intention to buy The research model is built by borrowing from technology acceptance model (TAM) as well as based on the theory of planned behavior model (TPB) The results of the study emphasize that social media positively affects consumers’ social interaction; consequently it improves trust and intention to buy Furthermore, the outcomes also highlight that trust attains noticeable impact on buying intention Likewise, the perceived usefulness (PU) of networking sites

is indicated as a contributed feature According to these findings, this thesis proposes some realistic tactics for practitioners to utilize social media as an omnipotent and influential marketing tool of sales and services

1 Introduction

A brand is commonly known as a name and a symbol but it is a critical means for organizations to differentiate with rivals and help create positive images on customers Managers recognize a key intangible asset of their business is brand name (Aaker, 2009) that brand can create positive and prominent identity in customers’ mind Products and services that maintain brand popularity and brand loyalty are likely to generate higher sales revenue, gain additional market share and bring profit as well as help the firms grow

up business or at least survive and withstand in the fierce market competition (Erdoğmuş

& Cicek, 2012) Actually, stimulating consumer interest as well as building and promoting the brand are the strategic and complex processes that require marketers plan and execute carefully Thus, many marketers have employed variety ways to create relationships with customers and influence customers’ purchase intention such as traditional advertising as well as new marketing methods via social media platforms, for instance digital marketing, events, sponsorship, etc

Latterly the social media evolution has altered the online commerce landscape for not only companies but also consumers.Especially in the era of social media platforms, for instance Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, etc these platforms have expanded impressively and enabled millions of users of all ages to develop both personal and professional relationships Remarkably, every day Facebook alone achieves 1.45 billion active users and 2.2 billion active users in a monthly basis in March 2018 (Facebook, 2018) Hence, engagement through social media is becoming a fundamental element of any organization’s marketing strategy Consumers easily view and interact with social media

posts and updates as well as can able to connect the companies’ website to respond their reviews then the firms can instantly offer a solution to the customers’ problems It is the fact that the more consumers resonate with the specific brand, the more likely they will purchase with that brand again Social media is an effective marketing channel that empowers companies to leapfrog traditional media and build relationships directly with consumers (Holt, 2016) as well as offers good communication grounds to companies

If companies take advantage of social media to share great stories and at the same time connect with customers in real time, their brands would become an important centre for consumers interact in social community Additionally, companies could generate meaningful consumer interest online (Holt, 2016)

In contrast, Zhu and Chen (2015) show a Gallup survey that advertisements in social media do not motivate the majority of consumers in USA to make buying decisions Gallup also alerts the firms that social media are not the compelling marketing force and consumers adeptly tune out brands which are related to Facebook and Twitter content In addition, people have tendency to ignore and neglect advertisements in social media by simply changing to another topic Additionally, Fournier and Avery (2011) convey that social media are for people connection not a new media channel for branding communications

Although the high adoption rate of social media can create new potent social networks, there are very few exploration empirical studies resolved these issues (e.g.,Hsu and Tsou, 2011) Thus, there is a need to explore how marketers take advantage of social

media for brand building activities Regarding to Laroche et al (2013), almost researches concerning marketing and branding in social media describe the definition, characteristics, pros and cons of social media as well as recommend advices and strategies for marketers and businesses, for instance studies from Edelman et al (2010) or Kietzmann et al (2011) Hence, it is fundamental for brand owners to concentrate on the outcome of social media marketing to foster their products and service or strengthen relationship with customers through online social channels The context of this research

is in a transitional country like Vietnam as Vietnam this country has achieved 53% Internet penetration rate (Statista, 2018) More interestingly, Vietnam has almost half of

95 million citizens use social media and anticipates achieving 56 million Facebook users

by 2021 (Bloomberg, 2017)

The firms likely use social media to design marketing programs through trust-building mechanisms and impact consumers’ intent to purchase online (M N Hajli, 2014) However, many Vietnamese companies have not realized the important role of branding and brand promotion program (Nguyen et al., 2011) and there is a little branding research

in Vietnam has been acceded (Nguyen, 2003) Therefore, understanding the importance

of social factors on trust leads to motivate customers’ purchase intention will ultimately help marketers execute marketing strategies and design attractive advertising campaign to proactively interact with target consumers on an efficient and appealing level through social media

Importantly, gender is considered as a crucial variable on consumer’s behavior (Bendall & Powers, 2002) Venkatesh et al (2000) indicate the differences between males and females’ decision making process which is related to personal technology adoption They strongly state that men’s decisions are firmly affected by their attitude toward using advanced technology, whilst women rely on subjective norm and perceived behavior control In addition, young users from 18 to 34 years old utilize social media for information exchange with their accompanies and family than older ages (Bolton et al., 2013) Likewise, users of this age group also usually consider others’ experience and feedback about products and services from specific brand There have a great number of papers examine the role of demographic factors on consumers’ orientation toward commercial activities, however, this relationship is not obvious as research findings have been found to be controversial (Mai and Zhao, 2004; Mitchell and Walsh, 2004) With the purpose to verify the moderating role of key demographic variables: age and gender

in an emerging market, it is compulsory to investigate the moderating role of age and gender to propose appropriate marketing strategy

In addition, as social media help organization to differentiate company’s product, services and value from other rivals if the company can execute effective marketing strategies Therefore, the main intent this research concentrates on examining the role of social factors on trust, which can impact an individual’s buying intention A deep understanding of this issue can foster in observing factors that form trust and social commerce intention through social networking sites (SNSs) In order to resolve the above issue, this thesis has five specific goals Firstly, it reviews how social media can motivate

trust in electronic commerce Secondly, it tests age and gender can moderate the impact

of social media on trust Thirdly, the correlation between trust and consumer’s buying intention is examined Fourthly, the linkage between trust and perceived usefulness on intention to buy is also discussed Finally, it checks the direct and indirect effect of social media on trust and purchase intent On these bases, the thesis answers below inquiries: (1) Do social media in social networking sites influence consumers’ trust? (2) Do perceived usefulness and trust determine users’ buying intent? (3) Whether PU or trust is decision factor grip the user’s buying intention? (4) Do age and gender influence the connection between social media and trust? In order to accomplish these objectives, the thesis uses perceived usefulness from technology acceptance model constructs, together with other variables such as social media, trust and intention to buy as well as age and gender data to build an interdisciplinary research model Our specific purposes, therefore, are to evaluate the role of social media to purchase intention in Vietnam as well as examine the moderator role of age and gender

The research is conducted on various people from teacher to students, office staff to household, manager to worker in the context of Ho Chi Minh City which is the biggest city in Vietnam The primary contention of this thesis concentrates on testing the role of social media elements on trust, which can impact customer’s buying intent Comprehending of this issue can benefit in recognizing features that inaugurate trust and social commerce intent through social networking sites

This research study executes TAM constructs and propounds a model which validates that trust and perceived usefulness possibly influence consumer’s buying intent The

study also canvasses how trust can become a major challenge in a social commerce environment by using social media networking sites The valuable contribution of this study is to reiterate the role of social media and its impact on trust in electronic markets

This paper proceeds as follow stages: Section 1 Introduction presents the research

background, research problem, research objectives, research questions and the research contribution as well as the research gap Section 2 Literature Review and Hypotheses reveals previous theoretical basis of the social media, trust, intention to buy and related studies about age and gender Based on that, the author proposes a research model The next section is Research Methodology, in this unit author will cover the development of scales, sample selection, data collection tools, how the data collection process is conducted, and statistical data analysis techniques used in the research Section 4 Data Analysis and Results analyzes and interprets the results of data analysis, the limitations is also discussed in this part From that result, the author draws the conclusions for the research hypotheses proposed in literature review and hypotheses section Finally is section 5 Discussion and Implications, Limitations and Directions for future research: performs the main findings of the research, the contribution as well as presents the

limitations for future research directions and recommends some practical strategies

2 Literature review and hypothesis

This section will present theoretical concepts of social media, trust and buying intent as well as moderator variable ages and gender and the major constructs

2.1 Technology acceptance model (TAM) and theory of planned behavior (TPB)

Theory of technology acceptance (TAM) is mainly designed for modeling user acceptance of information technology (Davis et al., 1989) and TAM has a strong base in theory and there are many empirical researches about this (Lucas Jr and Spitler, 1999) Furthermore, the two prime constructs of TAM, perceived usefulness and perceived ease

of use, which have hypothesized to be vital determinants of user’s acceptance, can be broadly adopted (Adam et al., 1992)

The theory of planned behavior has been applied and validated in a greater number of researches (Chang, 1998) as this is an extension of the theory of reasoned action (TRA) The TRA shows that behavior intention or purchase intent in this study is an antecedent

to forecast actual volitional behavior (purchase completion) (Razak & Marimuthu, 2012) Firstly, Van den Poel and Leunis (1999) mentions that consumers’ perceived risk when shopping online may be higher than when shopping offline In searching ways to minimize this risk, customer may exchange and verify information with other experienced consumers to gain normative recommendation (Hansen et al., 2004) Moreover, recent research comes up that consumers perceive obstacles and difficulties (PBC) in performing online shopping behavior Hence, they have expectancy to use cognitive sources in order to form beliefs toward the related attributes which may result

in the maturation of an overall attitude toward the behavior (Rossiter & Percy, 1987)

2.2 Social media and trust

As social media develop rapidly and it diversifies in many delivery platforms, there is a shortage of an official consensus on what social media are Social media are included activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media (Safko & Brake, 2009) In addition, social media are defined as a internet-based applications group that based on the conceptual and integrated technical frameworks of Web 2.0 that enable

consumers create, generate and exchange content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010) The

Economist and TIME magazines suggest that the Web 2.0 transform individual’s and

group behavior, as well as affect the power structures in the marketplace, causing a substantial migration of market power from manufacturers towards consumers Because today's online consumers have access to a previously unknown pool of information and knowledge as well as unlimited choice, just move your mouse and click upon a button Constantinides and Fountain (2008) Actually, there is no official classification of Internet-based applications types of social media Nevertheless, Constantinides and Fountain (2008) recommend classifying social media into five categories (i) blogs, (ii) social network sites (for instance, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Google+), (iii) content communities (for example, YouTube and Wikipedia), (iv) e-forums, and (v) content aggregators Amongst these five categories of Internet based applications in social media above, social network sites (SNSs) are the most common application nowadays All of them have permit users share information as well as recommend,

review and rate products and services online with their peers (Mangold & Faulds, 2009) These conversations provide the firms a gainful method to move customers from awareness to engagement, boost brand recognition, consideration and raise brand loyalty, advocacy (Gunelius, 2010) Actually, social media proffer a pull marketing chance because customers proactively engage products and services and then pull more information that catalyze business, building brand Whilst social media are offering pull marketing, traditional marketing is push marketing tactics that must provide information and motivate customers engage with their products and services (Gunelius, 2010) In

addition, in the book The New Influencers, Gillin emphasizes in his book that in the past

one unsatisfied customer can tell ten people but nowadays in the social media epoch, customer has his many tools to update with even ten million people virtually overnight (Gillin, 2009) Thus, firms should consider social media as powerful integrated marketing

strategy which can bring consumers experiences to the forefront In fact, if companies

take advantage of social media platforms to share great stories and at the same time connect with customers in the actual time, their brands will become a centre for a social community Additionally, companies could generate meaningful consumer interest online (Holt, 2016)

On the contrary, Abeza et al., (2013) argues that executing social media may embrace

a lot of challenges such as difficulties with reaching the target audiences, lacking of control as well as challenges of accuracy in distributing the company’s resources, and trust issues Furthermore, Fournier and Avery (2011) even warn brands to be careful about social media involvement as the brands can be considered as “uninvited crashers”

It is implying that create brand relationship via social media is more complicated than stimulate more interactions

It is no doubt that social media marketing differs from traditional methods of marketing as it creates both new challenges and opportunities In the age of social media marketing, customers have demand of a more upstanding and direct relationship with the firms they are doing business with Hence, brand managers are trying to show their transparent welcome and honest side to forge ahead relationships with consumers Nowadays, there is a trendy that various well-known companies for instance Pepsi, Unilever, etc engage consumers by giving customers a real opportunity to take part in their advertising programs because consumers’ interactions result in the inauguration of emotional bonds and increases commitment and certitude between brands and consumers (Sashi, 2012) Interestingly, the essence is that online users control social media using, individuals can use these media with little or without cost at great convenience Moreover, social media allow communication and collaboration that go beyond geographical barriers (Lai & Turban, 2008) It can be concluded that firms can communicate with their customers at a much lower cost than ever before by using social network (Hainla, 2017) Moreover, the firms can also generate online content widely and economically to trigger brand presence

As social media marketing plays crucial role in company’s strategy so companies and managers have put great efforts in identifying and tracking key performance indicators to evaluate the performance of their projects One of these indicators is trust As online

transaction and e-commerce have developed rapidly recently, therefore, online trust is receiving great attention from researchers (Hallikainen & Laukkanen, 2018)

The key to maintain and develop long term relationship is trust, especially in online context it plays crucial role because of a lot of uncertainties of technology-driven environment (Pavlou, 2003) Trust has been researched gruelingly by any scholars to study the impact of trust on an individual's intention to use online applications for purchasing purpose (Gefen et al, 2003; Hoffman et al 1999; Kim, 2012; McKnight and Chervany, 2001) Taking social commerce as a typical example, individuals have a tendency to heed recommendation from online communities and experienced members who they can trust to provide correct advice with regard to their purchasing experience of

a specific product or online service (Chen & Shen, 2015)

Trust is defined is an attitude of confident expectation in an online environment that risk of individual’s vulnerabilities shall not be exploited (Corritoreet al., 2003)

Lacking of trust will be a serious barrier of electronic-commerce adoption (Chang et al., 2013) Without trust, it is believed that a operative, interactive on-line environment would be impossible (Corritore et al., 2003) Moreover, trust is considering as the source

to stimulate the implementation of information and communication technologies over the boundaries (Kirs and Bagchi, 2012)

Therefore, one effective method that brands can influence their consumers and make trust is to give the sufficient knowledge of the brand and products (Chiu et al, 2010) Social media supplies abundant communication context for consumers and enables companies to create and retain their relationships with many essential features of the

brand Consequently, consumers can proactively communicate and exchange their experiences of their favorite products and brands with other friends as well as marketers (Habibi, 2014) The networks of individuals through social media lead to positive impact

on trust (Wu et al, 2010) Thus, it is hypothesized that:

H1: There is a positive relationship between social media marketing and trust

2.3 Age and gender

It is fundamental for retailers to understand the differences between shopping behaviors

of two genders (Chou et al, 2015) Gender is a vital segment variable in sales and marketing (Kuruvilla et al., 2009) For instance, females articulate more likeable attitudes toward Facebook’s advertisements (Alalwan et al., 2017) Based on specifically focusing male and female customers’ behavior separately, it helps marketers catalyze perfect marketing strategies improve the brand performance (Helgesen & Nesset, 2010) The distinction between male and female in terms of their minds, feelings and emotional demands as well as how they perceive and respond have been broadly reviewed in many disciplines, for example neurology, physiology and psychology (Khan & Rahman, 2016) For instance, studies on technology industry have also granted gender as a vital moderating variable (Venkatesh & Morris, 2000) However, social network sites studies have not discovered deeply gender differences in manipulation Research advances that teenage girls and boys now represent to utilize the Internet equally, but type of using is different (Joiner et al., 2005) Boys concentrate on features and entertainment whilst girls seem more focus on the relational aspects of social media (Rainie, 2003) shows that girls

are more frequently than boys to talk with peers on the Internet about romantic relationships, secret things, and deep feelings Moreover recent research finds that while girls use SNSs to keep in touch with their peers, boys have a tendency to use their sites to make new friends (Barker, 2009)

In addition, Barker emphasizes the result in his research that females are more probably to show high positive collective self-confident, higher overall usage, and utilize SNSs to exchange information with friends Females also post higher means for group-in-self and entertainment Negative collective self-esteem links with social compensation, propound that those who felt negatively about their social group used SNS as an alternative to communicating with other group members Males are more possibly than females to commentate negative collective self-esteem and use SNSs for social compensation which is explained as individuals put their efforts on a collective task to get remittance when the outcomes of the group performance are not good as well as for social identity gratification purpose (Barker, 2009) In addition, male users are using the Internet for diversion, recreation and functional intents, while female users are more probably to browse Internet for facilitating communication and interacting with friends (Weiser, 2000) It recommends that concerning attitude toward social networking advertising, perceived informativeness and pursuit value of advertising have more profound impacts on men’s attitudes than women’s (Taylor et al , 2011)

Likewise, women are likely engaged in details of specific message content in comparison with man Women sometimes feel highly sensitive to the findings of related information when forming judgments than men (Meyers-Levy and Maheswaran, 1991)

Herter et al (2014) (Maurer Herter et al., 2014) highlight the differences in the shopping behavior of women and men customers According to Buttle (1992) (Buttle, 1992), shopping is considered as a typical feminine hobby Likewise, Chou et al (2015) also indicate that women are more dynamic and likely to purchase the goods online than males However, Buttle (1992) indicates that some authors argue this trend is steadily decreasing as males are more and more engaged in shopping activities In addition, Facebook and Twitter are selected by women as the primary information source to obtain the purchasing behavior for such a group of females Therefore, it is hypothesized that:

H2a: Relationship between social media and trust will be affected by age

Regarding age factor, the generations are categorized by selecting the birth dates for every cohort as below: the Silent Generation whose birth dates from 1925 to 1945, the Baby Boomers was born from 1946 to 1960, Generation X is the generation that people were born from 1961 to 1981 while Generation Y “born after 1981” (Brosdahl & Carpenter, 2011) Previous studies mention that aging and adoption of technology have

an opposite linkage in many technology circumstances The old people have a tendency

to express more negative viewpoint of technologies and have disinclination to implement them (Gilly & Zeithaml, 1985) Madden and Savage (2000) indicates that Internet use is negatively associated with age

Brosdahl and Carpenter (2011) also indicate that Generation Y is initially and often exposure to international technology, it includes both pros and cons in terms of cognition, emotion and social consequences (Immordino-Yang et al., 2012) For instance, they tend

to utilize technology and social media networking for entertainment, interact and make

friends with other people Similarly, Generation Y consumers have very good education background (Wolburg & Pokrywczynski, 2001) and they pay attention on marketing tactics more than previous cohorts (Lazarevic, 2012) who have not grown up with the internet They research and distribute information with their peers quickly (Berkowitz & Schewe, 2011)

In addition, Generation Y has been socialized to believe we live in a materialistic orientation society (Bakewell & Mitchell, 2003) and hence they have more consumptive orientation than prior group of people (O’Donnell, 2006) In a similar way, the youth whose ages from 19 to 24 years old have more certain attitudes toward social media advertising (Durlak et al., 2011) Generation Y proactively supports, exchanges, and searches, adopts content by social media platforms Practitioners and academic researchers are paying much attention on Generation Y’s social media usage because it may become a harbinger of how individuals will react in future (Bolton et al., 2013) This generation develops different shopping style and behaviors compare with previous generations (Bakewell and Mitchell, 2003) Therefore, if the marketing contents from the brand owners are not consistent and the essence identity of the brand looks hazard, then generation Y customers will not have recognize the brand and consider that brand as fake (Merrill, 1999) Thus, it is proposed that:

H2b: Relationship between social media and trust will be affected by gender

2.4 Effect of trust on intention to buy and perceived usefulness

Trust is set forth as “a willingness to reply on an exchange partner in whom one has confidence” (Moorman et al., 1993) and it is built up based on the perceptions that brand has the reliability and honesty when customers interact with the brand, customers feel high sense of security and trustworthy because the brand has responsibility for their interest and welfare (Delgado-Ballester et al., 2003; McCole et al., 2010) Trust is reviewed in a circumstance of transactions through social networking sites (SNSs) and online society with Internet-based applications in this thesis Practitioners concur that trust plays a vital role in people behavior Especially when people tackle risky issue and are unable to manage others’ behavior, the importance of trust is obviously (Shiau and Luo, 2012), particularly trust is an essence in electronic commerce development (M N Hajli, 2014) In the business to consumer (B2C) model, trust in electronic vendor is crucial in risk evaluation for every process of buying or selling something Moreover, trust is essential in order to strengthen relationship between retailers and consumers in an electronic commerce environment (Gefen, 2000)

In reality, the more positive comments and happy feedbacks receive from customers, the higher feeling of trust a brand or vendor will benefit (Ba & Pavlou, 2002) For example, when a trustworthy and reputable user of an online society recommends a vendor by giving positive ratings, the other members have a tendency to have a high level

of trust in the online shopping process (Lu and, 2010) Based on the theory of reasoned action, trust inaugurates positive attitudes toward Web retailers that are likely to attenuate fears of Web seller opportunism and reduce infrastructure concerns about the utilization

of the associated Internet (Pavlou, 2003)

Actually, trust is the main reason why branding is extremely crucial to all organizations and no matter what industry of the business is, trust is always a prerequisite Generally, trust has a positive outcome on business relationships in the long term It adjudicates the nature of the social and business order and business relationships quality (Gefen, 2000) Without trust, the brand will plateau and cannot grow because consumers highly value their time, money and resources and they will only give them to those brands that can give and prove their trustworthiness Lacking of trust is a obstacle for e-commerce, thus, it is generally accepted that a missing of physical sellers and uncertainties in the Internet environment make trust a necessary element for appealing and retaining consumers (Shiau & Luo, 2012) Building trust and maintaining solid relationship with customers are critical to a brand’s success in today’s fierce competition global market.

Company can build emotional trust effectively if they can prove consumers that the brand is focusing on customers’ expectation and make consumers feel confidence in an exchange partner's reliability and integrity (Morgan & Rego, 2006) The companies will exist and develop sustainably by retaining current customers and making them become loyal users of the brand (Dekimpe et al., 1997) as well as encouraging customers repeat purchase order Trust in commercial transaction and the connection systems will effect online consumers (McCole et al., 2010) as well as boost intention to buy (Shin, 2010) Furthermore, the more a consumer trusts the vendor, the less the person will perceive risks associated with online shopping (Van der Heijden et al., 2003)

Importantly, it has been accepted that trust has a vital role in boosting intention to buy (Lu et al., 2010; Shin, 2010) Getting confidence and having less perceived risk are crucial elements when finding new products and services in an online environment (Hassanein & Head, 2007; Shin, 2010)

Last but not least, previous research proves that the link of trust and perceived usefulness is completely certain Trust raises perceived usefulness’s elements (Gefen et al., 2003) Thus, this thesis postulates below hypothesis:

H3: Individuals’ trust in social networking sites positively influence intention to buy H4: Trust influences profoundly to perceived usefulness

2.5 Perceived usefulness and intention to buy

Perceived usefulness (PU) is one of the primary antecedents of the technology acceptance model (TAM) Davis (1989) delineates perceived usefulness as the degree to which a person believes that using a specific system would boost his or her job performance It is one of key motivations explain why users have an open mind to advance technology There are many definitions of PU in electronic commerce environment For example, the website quality in terms of well-built system, customer service and information sharing standard will have positive influence on PU which can stimulate customers to purchase

(Ahn et al., 2007)

Intention to buy is a fundamental construct of technology acceptance model (TAM), this theory is one of the most well-known theories in foreknowledge individual’s intention to use a system (Pavlou, 2003) TAM is a essence theory in e-commerce studies

(Martins et al., 2014) and many academics and practitioners already researched TAM model (Hsiao and Yang, 2011) Intention to buy in this study is set forth as a customer’s intention to engage in online buying in social networking sites

Research presents that perceived usefulness impact intention to use commerce (Gefen & Straub, 2000) In addition, perceived usefulness can be applied to forecast intention to use and the IT application usage (Nguyen, 2007) Therefore, companies can focus on social media interactions, service and system quality improvement to enhance consumers’ perceived usefulness (M N Hajli, 2014) Cha (2009) indicates in his study that the more customers perceive to be helpful when purchasing online via SNSs, the more purchase intention they have in SNSs Accordingly, the hypothesis is offered as following:

electronic-H5: Perceived usefulness relates positively to intention to buy

2.6 Hypotheses

In sum, this study proposes totally five hypotheses with the main attempts are to empirically test the impact of social media on consumer as well as evaluate the moderating role of demographic factors age and gender

H1: There is a positive relationship between social media marketing and trust

H2a: Relationship between social media and trust will be affected by age

H2b: Relationship between social media and trust will be affected by gender

H3: Individuals’ trust in SNSs positively influence intention to buy

H4: Trust influences profoundly to perceived usefulness

H5: Perceived usefulness relates positively to intention to buy

According to these hypotheses above, the research model used in this study is presented

H3 H1

Questionnaire design:

Pilot survey:

Main survey and data analysis:

Two phases of survey were undertaken in this study: a pilot study and a main survey to consolidate data for validating the proposed model

Research

objectives

Draft questionnaire

Literature review

Final questionnaire

Revision (if any)

Interview 30

respondents

EFA Reliability

Based on literature from previous researches about the impact of social media on trust, trust and perceived usefulness toward buying intent as well as considered the relationship between these factors and their antecedents, the research proposed five hypotheses in the literature review section After that, the model was adjusted and selected the preliminary the scale for questionnaire of the study

The purpose of the preliminary survey was to make certain the items from measurement scale based on the standpoint of customers Although almost measures of the constructs were mentioned in the previous literature, this step was compulsory to make them appropriate and easy to understand in the context of studying Moreover, preliminary survey helped writer to indentify the mistakes and modify properly to increase the power of the scale In addition, this step also provided the opportunities to gain new idea, new items to enhance the research model and measurement scale The participants of the survey were diversified from different ages and careers to ensure the generalization of the opinions and validate the proposed model It was consistent with the goal of the research was to discover the standpoint of online users Final official survey was conducted after revising questionnaires from the outcomes of preliminary survey The study was conducted through online and paper questionnaires The participants were mostly residents in Ho Chi Minh (90%) Besides, the writer also attracted five international respondents from England and Sweden and some online users in Mekong delta

The qualitative pilot study was undertaken by uploading survey link to Facebook to conduct a survey on individuals, at the same time writer also used the series of in-depth interviews with 10 respondents in order to validate the measures of constructs in the model The findings of the pilot survey would be modified as well as refined the survey instrument in order to implement the main survey in a more objective and comprehensive manner Besides, the final questionnaires were discussed with my supervisor and experts who are Dr Doan Anh Tuan and Dr Nguyen Phong Nguyen from University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City After posting the survey link in Facebook in a short period around 12 hours, there were 20 respondents answered the questions and gave feedback of the questionnaires because of interesting topic The questionnaires were understandable

so all respondents could answer easily without any revision and totally 30 respondents answered the questions During the pilot study, there were some noticeable contributions and feedbacks from respondents to make the improvement for the final questionnaire and stopped posting in Facebook Consequently, the final questionnaires were added one more item: Intention3 to the final variable intention to buy (see Appendix 1)

After the qualitative research, the questionnaire was revised again to be more suitable and accurate with Vietnam environment and more understandable After that, the main survey was conducted broadly by using convenience sample The procedure of the main research was followed the following steps:

Step 1: Composing final questionnaire for the research:

The questionnaires were prepared by bilingual language including English and Vietnamese to ensure respondents understand clearly all terms in questionnaires The instructions also underlined that the study only attach special important to respondents’ individual opinions to minimize response bias In addition, the first part of questionnaire included demographic information age and gender (See Appendix 1)

Step 2: Defining the sample size of the research:

Designing targeted sample is a vital procedure in finding correct answers to research questions so the need to define the right sample for the survey could not be overemphasized (Sekaran & Bougie, 2016) The sizing of the sample relied on the sample estimating method According to Hair et al (2010) (Hair, 2010), the researcher must always bear in mind that the size of sample could affect the statistical test either by making it insensible if small sample sizes or overmuch sensitive if large sample sizing Therefore, the sample size should be preferably 100 or greater Moreover, Hair et al suggested a general rule that the minimum sample is at least five times per each scale The research model in this study consisted of 6 factors with 15 scales so that the minimum sample size should be at least 100 observations

In addition, in order to do standard multiple regression analysis, the required sample size is recommended by Tabachnick and Fidell ( 2007) ideally N>50+8m (where N is the number of sample size and m is number of independent variables) There were 2 independent variables in this research Thus, the minimum sampling request to run multiple regression test in this thesis is n > 50+ 8*2= 66 observations

Step 3: The questionnaire was issued to the interviewees

After that, the writer composed an online questionnaire in Google docs and then invited participation through email, Zalo, Facebook and also uploaded in social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Zalo In order to avoid legitimacy of the sample, the author sent Google link directly to friends via Zalo, Facebook and colleagues, customers by email Interviewer distributed the questionnaires by above methods and instructed carefully how

to complete the questionnaires to the respondents as well as explained and answered questions from respondents The mail survey and online survey are the best choices because of inexpensive to administer By this convenient way, the respondents via Internet broadcasting could easily complete the survey by clicked the link and chosen their answers then submitted the answer to the writer in a short period and the privacy was easier to maintain (Mangione, 1995) Data collection was conducted within 3 weeks Totally there were about 400 questionnaires sent from online channel both from email, networking site posts and messages returned more 223 respondents Thus, this study used

223 samples; this sample size was fitting for EFA and multiple regression analysis

Respondents ranged from 20 to 57 years old because the study directed mainly to investigate the impact of social media on intention to buy with demographic is age and gender

Step 4: The author received the questionnaire and checked again for suitable result

The writer collected total 253 answers After checking the error questions which were missed answering by frequencies (descriptive statistic) technique author found 30

respondents missed answers for Intention 3 (as pilot study only collected data from 30 interviewees) and 8 missed answers for Perceived usefulness 2 (PU2) and perceived usefulness 3 (PU3) and then the author removed all missing values Consequently, the usable data or this study was 215 observations It was suitable with the requirement of minimum sample size and required sample for doing standard multiple regression analysis Data collected from the main survey was applied to refine the measure by means of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and to evaluate the structural model by means of structural equation modeling (SEM)

3.2 Measurement of the constructs

All of questions will be qualified by five-point Likert scales, anchored by (1) “strongly disagree”, 2 = “Disagree”, 3 = “Neutral”, 4 = “Agree”, 5 = “Strongly Agree” Almost main ideas of these questions were adopted critically from prior researches in order to increase the validity of the study There were four constructs in this study: social media, trust, perceived usefulness and intention to buy Social media consisted of three questions that adopted to (M N Hajli, 2014)

Social media (SM) Content

SM1 I use online forums and communities for acquiring information

about a product

SM2 I usually use people ratings and reviews about products on the

internet SM3 I usually use people’s recommendations to buy a product on the

internet