The impact of social media on consumers do age and gender moderate the effect of social media on trust

Thus, many marketers have employed variety ways to createrelationships with customers and influence customers’ purchase intention such astraditional advertising as well as new marketing

ISB-MBUS INFORMATION FORM

1.Name: Nguyễn Thị Đoan Thanh

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

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, Ihave 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, classmatesand seniors because connection and network are powerful, essential and far-yielding

WISHING YOU EVERY SUCCESS IN YOUR CHOSEN PATH!

CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM

Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc

-o0o -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 : ………

CỘNG HÒA XÃ HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM

Độc lập – Tự do – Hạnh phúc

-o0o -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

luận văn

1 Check the grammar of the title of The impact of social media on consumers Do age and gender 1 and 2

the thesis moderate the effect of social media on trust?

2 In the introduction session, the Add 3 more sentences to support the reason and research objectives 12

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

3 Why does the author investigate Add more 5 sentences to explain why the author investigate the 12

the moderating effect of age and moderating effect of age and gender

gender? Does the investigation

fill a research gap? This should

be more in the introduction

I’m not sure what does by age.

“moderated by gender” mean

H2b: Relationship between social media and trust will be affected

by gender

5 The author uses social network Add more 4 sentences to support how to check legitimacy of the 33

participate in the survey using a

convenient approach How can

we check the legitimacy of the

sample?

6 The sample and results of Remove office staff, students, household and manager During 31

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vague It should be stated clearer in Facebook Within short time (12 hours) more respondents in

the opinions of 30 respondents Facebook answered questions than interview directly

(office staff, students, household,

manager)

7 The author should discuss the Add 1 sentence to predict the implication withdraw from the sample 40

sample characteristics What is characteristics

the potential implication

withdrawn from the sample

characteristics

hypotheses are not

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result

9 Why do age and gender do not Add 5 more sentences to discuss 52&53

moderate the effect of social

media on trust?

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modifying or deleting such items”, “in terms of its fit to thehypothesized 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 betweeneach of the predictor variables”, the “suggested cutoff for thetolerance value was 10 (or equivalent to VIF of 10.0), whichcorresponds to a multiple correlation of 95 with the otherindependent variables”, “correlation of each specific itemwith 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 factorswas very great”, “the items and factor loading for rotatedfactors with loading”, according to (McCloskey, 2006) ageeffects the initial decision with regard to “whether to

purchase on the internet, but not the subsequent behavior ofe-shoppers, such as the number of transactions or the amount

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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

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 researchjourney Moreover, his supervisor and joyful spirit helped me continue to write andresearch even during the most stressful moments

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

I would also like to thank Dr Nick Hajli for his support to send me questionnaires, itmade 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 generoussupport for completion of my thesis Thank you very much for helping me through thegood times and the bad, for always trusting me, and for standing by my side no matterwhat the circumstances

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

is indicated as a contributed feature According to these findings, this thesis proposessome realistic tactics for practitioners to utilize social media as an omnipotent andinfluential 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 fororganizations 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 andservices that maintain brand popularity and brand loyalty are likely to generate highersales 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 andpromoting the brand are the strategic and complex processes that require marketers planand execute carefully Thus, many marketers have employed variety ways to createrelationships with customers and influence customers’ purchase intention such astraditional advertising as well as new marketing methods via social media platforms, forinstance digital marketing, events, sponsorship, etc

Latterly the social media evolution has altered the online commerce landscape for notonly companies but also consumers Especially in the era of social media platforms, forinstance Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, etc these platforms have expanded impressivelyand enabled millions of users of all ages to develop both personal and professionalrelationships Remarkably, every day Facebook alone achieves 1.45 billion active usersand 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 anyorganization’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 theirreviews then the firms can instantly offer a solution to the customers’ problems It is thefact that the more consumers resonate with the specific brand, the more likely they willpurchase with that brand again Social media is an effective marketing channel thatempowers companies to leapfrog traditional media and build relationships directly withconsumers (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 timeconnect with customers in real time, their brands would become an important centre forconsumers interact in social community Additionally, companies could generatemeaningful consumer interest online (Holt, 2016)

In contrast, Zhu and Chen (2015) show a Gallup survey that advertisements in socialmedia 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 andconsumers adeptly tune out brands which are related to Facebook and Twitter content Inaddition, people have tendency to ignore and neglect advertisements in social media bysimply changing to another topic Additionally, Fournier and Avery (2011) convey thatsocial media are for people connection not a new media channel for brandingcommunications

Although the high adoption rate of social media can create new potent socialnetworks, there are very few exploration empirical studies resolved these issues (e.g.,Hsuand 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 researchesconcerning marketing and branding in social media describe the definition,characteristics, pros and cons of social media as well as recommend advices andstrategies for marketers and businesses, for instance studies from Edelman et al (2010) orKietzmann et al (2011) Hence, it is fundamental for brand owners to concentrate on theoutcome of social media marketing to foster their products and service or strengthenrelationship 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-buildingmechanisms and impact consumers’ intent to purchase online (M N Hajli, 2014).However, many Vietnamese companies have not realized the important role of brandingand 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 ultimatelyhelp marketers execute marketing strategies and design attractive advertising campaign toproactively interact with target consumers on an efficient and appealing level throughsocial media

Importantly, gender is considered as a crucial variable on consumer’s behavior(Bendall & Powers, 2002) Venkatesh et al (2000) indicate the differences betweenmales and females’ decision making process which is related to personal technologyadoption They strongly state that men’s decisions are firmly affected by their attitudetoward using advanced technology, whilst women rely on subjective norm and perceivedbehavior control In addition, young users from 18 to 34 years old utilize social media forinformation exchange with their accompanies and family than older ages (Bolton et al.,2013) Likewise, users of this age group also usually consider others’ experience andfeedback about products and services from specific brand There have a great number ofpapers examine the role of demographic factors on consumers’ orientation towardcommercial activities, however, this relationship is not obvious as research findings havebeen found to be controversial (Mai and Zhao, 2004; Mitchell and Walsh, 2004) Withthe 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 andgender 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 marketingstrategies Therefore, the main intent this research concentrates on examining the role ofsocial factors on trust, which can impact an individual’s buying intention A deepunderstanding of this issue can foster in observing factors that form trust and socialcommerce intention through social networking sites (SNSs) In order to resolve the aboveissue, 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 buyingintention is examined Fourthly, the linkage between trust and perceived usefulness onintention to buy is also discussed Finally, it checks the direct and indirect effect of socialmedia 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) Doperceived usefulness and trust determine users’ buying intent? (3) Whether PU or trust isdecision factor grip the user’s buying intention? (4) Do age and gender influence theconnection between social media and trust? In order to accomplish these objectives, thethesis uses perceived usefulness from technology acceptance model constructs, togetherwith other variables such as social media, trust and intention to buy as well as age andgender 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 asexamine the moderator role of age and gender

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

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

study also canvasses how trust can become a major challenge in a social commerceenvironment by using social media networking sites The valuable contribution of thisstudy 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 researchbackground, research problem, research objectives, research questions and the researchcontribution as well as the research gap Section 2 Literature Review and Hypothesesreveals previous theoretical basis of the social media, trust, intention to buy and relatedstudies about age and gender Based on that, the author proposes a research model Thenext section is Research Methodology, in this unit author will cover the development ofscales, sample selection, data collection tools, how the data collection process isconducted, and statistical data analysis techniques used in the research Section 4 DataAnalysis and Results analyzes and interprets the results of data analysis, the limitations isalso discussed in this part From that result, the author draws the conclusions for theresearch hypotheses proposed in literature review and hypotheses section Finally issection 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 aswell 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 useracceptance of information technology (Davis et al., 1989) and TAM has a strong base intheory 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 bebroadly adopted (Adam et al., 1992)

The theory of planned behavior has been applied and validated in a greater number ofresearches (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 whenshopping online may be higher than when shopping offline In searching ways tominimize this risk, customer may exchange and verify information with otherexperienced 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 usecognitive 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 ashortage of an official consensus on what social media are Social media are includedactivities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online toshare information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media (Safko & Brake,2009) In addition, social media are defined as a internet-based applications group thatbased 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 a nd

group behavior, as well as affect the power structures in the marketplace, causing asubstantial migration of market power from manufacturers towards consumers Becausetoday's online consumers have access to a previously unknown pool of information andknowledge as well as unlimited choice, just move your mouse and click upon a buttonConstantinides and Fountain (2008) Actually, there is no official classification ofInternet-based applications types of social media Nevertheless, Constantinides andFountain (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 insocial media above, social network sites (SNSs) are the most common applicationnowadays 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 fromawareness to engagement, boost brand recognition, consideration and raise brand loyalty,advocacy (Gunelius, 2010) Actually, social media proffer a pull marketing chancebecause customers proactively engage products and services and then pull moreinformation that catalyze business, building brand Whilst social media are offering pullmarketing, traditional marketing is push marketing tactics that must provide informationand 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 marketingstrategy which can bring consumers experiences to the forefront In fact, if companiestake advantage of social media platforms to share great stories and at the same timeconnect with customers in the actual time, their brands will become a centre for a socialcommunity 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 ofcontrol as well as challenges of accuracy in distributing the company’s resources, andtrust issues Furthermore, Fournier and Avery (2011) even warn brands to be carefulabout 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 thanstimulate more interactions.

It is no doubt that social media marketing differs from traditional methods ofmarketing as it creates both new challenges and opportunities In the age of social mediamarketing, customers have demand of a more upstanding and direct relationship with thefirms they are doing business with Hence, brand managers are trying to show theirtransparent 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 intheir advertising programs because consumers’ interactions result in the inauguration ofemotional 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 beyondgeographical barriers (Lai & Turban, 2008) It can be concluded that firms cancommunicate with their customers at a much lower cost than ever before by using socialnetwork (Hainla, 2017) Moreover, the firms can also generate online content widely andeconomically to trigger brand presence

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

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

The key to maintain and develop long term relationship is trust, especially in onlinecontext it plays crucial role because of a lot of uncertainties of technology-drivenenvironment (Pavlou, 2003) Trust has been researched gruelingly by any scholars tostudy the impact of trust on an individual's intention to use online applications forpurchasing purpose (Gefen et al, 2003; Hoffman et al 1999; Kim, 2012; McKnight andChervany, 2001) Taking social commerce as a typical example, individuals have atendency to heed recommendation from online communities and experienced memberswho 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 thatrisk of individual’s vulnerabilities shall not be exploited (Corritoreet al., 2003)

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

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

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

brand Consequently, consumers can proactively communicate and exchange theirexperiences 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 andmarketing (Kuruvilla et al., 2009) For instance, females articulate more likeable attitudestoward Facebook’s advertisements (Alalwan et al., 2017) Based on specifically focusingmale and female customers’ behavior separately, it helps marketers catalyze perfectmarketing strategies improve the brand performance (Helgesen & Nesset, 2010) Thedistinction between male and female in terms of their minds, feelings and emotionaldemands as well as how they perceive and respond have been broadly reviewed in manydisciplines, for example neurology, physiology and psychology (Khan & Rahman, 2016).For instance, studies on technology industry have also granted gender as a vitalmoderating variable (Venkatesh & Morris, 2000) However, social network sites studieshave not discovered deeply gender differences in manipulation Research advances thatteenage girls and boys now represent to utilize the Internet equally, but type of using isdifferent (Joiner et al., 2005) Boys concentrate on features and entertainment whilst girlsseem 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 romanticrelationships, secret things, and deep feelings Moreover recent research finds that whilegirls use SNSs to keep in touch with their peers, boys have a tendency to use their sites tomake new friends (Barker, 2009).

In addition, Barker emphasizes the result in his research that females are moreprobably to show high positive collective self-confident, higher overall usage, and utilizeSNSs 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 analternative to communicating with other group members Males are more possibly thanfemales to commentate negative collective self-esteem and use SNSs for socialcompensation which is explained as individuals put their efforts on a collective task to getremittance when the outcomes of the group performance are not good as well as forsocial identity gratification purpose (Barker, 2009) In addition, male users are using theInternet for diversion, recreation and functional intents, while female users are moreprobably to browse Internet for facilitating communication and interacting with friends(Weiser, 2000) It recommends that concerning attitude toward social networkingadvertising, perceived informativeness and pursuit value of advertising have moreprofound impacts on men’s attitudes than women’s (Taylor et al , 2011)

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

Herter et al (2014) (Maurer Herter et al., 2014) highlight the differences in theshopping 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 thanmales However, Buttle (1992) indicates that some authors argue this trend is steadilydecreasing 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 obtainthe 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 forevery cohort as below: the Silent Generation whose birth dates from 1925 to 1945, theBaby Boomers was born from 1946 to 1960, Generation X is the generation that peoplewere 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 implementthem (Gilly & Zeithaml, 1985) Madden and Savage (2000) indicates that Internet use isnegatively associated with age

Brosdahl and Carpenter (2011) also indicate that Generation Y is initially and oftenexposure 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 educationbackground (Wolburg & Pokrywczynski, 2001) and they pay attention on marketingtactics more than previous cohorts (Lazarevic, 2012) who have not grown up with theinternet 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 materialisticorientation society (Bakewell & Mitchell, 2003) and hence they have more consumptiveorientation than prior group of people (O’Donnell, 2006) In a similar way, the youthwhose ages from 19 to 24 years old have more certain attitudes toward social mediaadvertising (Durlak et al., 2011) Generation Y proactively supports, exchanges, andsearches, adopts content by social media platforms Practitioners and academicresearchers are paying much attention on Generation Y’s social media usage because itmay become a harbinger of how individuals will react in future (Bolton et al., 2013) Thisgeneration develops different shopping style and behaviors compare with previousgenerations (Bakewell and Mitchell, 2003) Therefore, if the marketing contents from thebrand owners are not consistent and the essence identity of the brand looks hazard, thengeneration 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 hasconfidence” (Moorman et al., 1993) and it is built up based on the perceptions that brandhas the reliability and honesty when customers interact with the brand, customers feelhigh sense of security and trustworthy because the brand has responsibility for theirinterest and welfare (Delgado-Ballester et al., 2003; McCole et al., 2010) Trust isreviewed in a circumstance of transactions through social networking sites (SNSs) andonline society with Internet-based applications in this thesis Practitioners concur thattrust plays a vital role in people behavior Especially when people tackle risky issue andare unable to manage others’ behavior, the importance of trust is obviously (Shiau andLuo, 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 iscrucial 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 anelectronic 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) Forexample, when a trustworthy and reputable user of an online society recommends avendor 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 reasonedaction, trust inaugurates positive attitudes toward Web retailers that are likely to attenuatefears 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 allorganizations and no matter what industry of the business is, trust is always aprerequisite Generally, trust has a positive outcome on business relationships in the longterm It adjudicates the nature of the social and business order and business relationshipsquality (Gefen, 2000) Without trust, the brand will plateau and cannot grow becauseconsumers highly value their time, money and resources and they will only give them tothose brands that can give and prove their trustworthiness Lacking of trust is a obstaclefor e-commerce, thus, it is generally accepted that a missing of physical sellers anduncertainties in the Internet environment make trust a necessary element for appealingand retaining consumers (Shiau & Luo, 2012) Building trust and maintaining solidrelationship with customers are critical to a brand’s success in today’s fierce competitionglobal market.

Company can build emotional trust effectively if they can prove consumers that thebrand is focusing on customers’ expectation and make consumers feel confidence in anexchange partner's reliability and integrity (Morgan & Rego, 2006) The companies willexist and develop sustainably by retaining current customers and making them becomeloyal users of the brand (Dekimpe et al., 1997) as well as encouraging customers repeatpurchase order Trust in commercial transaction and the connection systems will effectonline 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 perceiverisks 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 arecrucial 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 perceivedusefulness is completely certain Trust raises perceived usefulness’s elements (Gefen etal., 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 acceptancemodel (TAM) Davis (1989) delineates perceived usefulness as the degree to which aperson believes that using a specific system would boost his or her job performance It isone 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, thewebsite quality in terms of well-built system, customer service and information sharingstandard 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’sintention 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 TAMmodel (Hsiao and Yang, 2011) Intention to buy in this study is set forth as a customer’sintention 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 toforecast intention to use and the IT application usage (Nguyen, 2007) Therefore,companies can focus on social media interactions, service and system qualityimprovement to enhance consumers’ perceived usefulness (M N Hajli, 2014) Cha(2009) indicates in his study that the more customers perceive to be helpful whenpurchasing 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 toempirically test the impact of social media on consumer as well as evaluate themoderating 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

Figure 1: Conceptual model

3 Research methodology

This section mentions about the ways to conduct research in order to find out the answerfor research questions, including: research procedure, research process, measure of theconstructs and data analysis method

Questionnaire design:

Pilot survey:

Main survey and data analysis:

respondents

Multi

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

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 relationshipbetween these factors and their antecedents, the research proposed five hypotheses in theliterature review section After that, the model was adjusted and selected the preliminarythe scale for questionnaire of the study.

The purpose of the preliminary survey was to make certain the items frommeasurement scale based on the standpoint of customers Although almost measures ofthe constructs were mentioned in the previous literature, this step was compulsory tomake them appropriate and easy to understand in the context of studying Moreover,preliminary survey helped writer to indentify the mistakes and modify properly toincrease the power of the scale In addition, this step also provided the opportunities togain new idea, new items to enhance the research model and measurement scale Theparticipants of the survey were diversified from different ages and careers to ensure thegeneralization of the opinions and validate the proposed model It was consistent with thegoal of the research was to discover the standpoint of online users Final official surveywas conducted after revising questionnaires from the outcomes of preliminary survey

The study was conducted through online and paper questionnaires The participantswere mostly residents in Ho Chi Minh (90%) Besides, the writer also attracted fiveinternational respondents from England and Sweden and some online users in Mekongdelta

The qualitative pilot study was undertaken by uploading survey link to Facebook toconduct a survey on individuals, at the same time writer also used the series of in-depthinterviews with 10 respondents in order to validate the measures of constructs in themodel The findings of the pilot survey would be modified as well as refined the surveyinstrument in order to implement the main survey in a more objective and comprehensivemanner Besides, the final questionnaires were discussed with my supervisor and expertswho are Dr Doan Anh Tuan and Dr Nguyen Phong Nguyen from University ofEconomics Ho Chi Minh City After posting the survey link in Facebook in a short periodaround 12 hours, there were 20 respondents answered the questions and gave feedback ofthe questionnaires because of interesting topic The questionnaires were understandable

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

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

Step 1: Composing final questionnaire for the research:

The questionnaires were prepared by bilingual language including English andVietnamese to ensure respondents understand clearly all terms in questionnaires Theinstructions also underlined that the study only attach special important to respondents’individual opinions to minimize response bias In addition, the first part of questionnaireincluded 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 researchquestions so the need to define the right sample for the survey could not beoveremphasized (Sekaran & Bougie, 2016) The sizing of the sample relied on the sampleestimating method According to Hair et al (2010) (Hair, 2010), the researcher mustalways bear in mind that the size of sample could affect the statistical test either bymaking 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 theminimum sample size should be at least 100 observations

In addition, in order to do standard multiple regression analysis, the required samplesize is recommended by Tabachnick and Fidell ( 2007) ideally N>50+8m (where N is thenumber of sample size and m is number of independent variables) There were 2independent variables in this research Thus, the minimum sampling request to runmultiple 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 invitedparticipation through email, Zalo, Facebook and also uploaded in social networking sitessuch as LinkedIn, Zalo In order to avoid legitimacy of the sample, the author sentGoogle 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 answeredquestions from respondents The mail survey and online survey are the best choicesbecause of inexpensive to administer By this convenient way, the respondents viaInternet broadcasting could easily complete the survey by clicked the link and chosentheir answers then submitted the answer to the writer in a short period and the privacywas 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 toinvestigate the impact of social media on intention to buy with demographic is age andgender

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 weremissed answering by frequencies (descriptive statistic) technique author found 30