Key drivers of consumer loyalty to Facebook fan pages
| Published date | 29 April 2014 |
| Date | 29 April 2014 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-05-2013-0101 |
| Pages | 362-380 |
| Author | Carla Ruiz-Mafe,Jose Martí-Parreño,Silvia Sanz-Blas |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval |
Key drivers of consumer loyalty
to Facebook fan pages
Carla Ruiz-Mafe
Department of Marketing, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
Jose Martı
´-Parren
˜o
Department of Marketing, European University of Valencia,
Valencia, Spain, and
Silvia Sanz-Blas
Department of Marketing, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
Abstract
Purpose – With the rapid expansion of social networking sites, researchers and practitioners are
challenged to understand drivers of customer loyalty in fan pages. The purpose of this paper is to
identify the main drivers of Facebook fan page loyalty in order to promote the creation of affective
links and long-term relationships with users.
Design/methodology/approach – The impact of trust, fan page content dependency, attitude and
consumer beliefs on loyalty to fan pages was tested through structu ral equation modelling techniques.
The sample consisted of 691 Spanish Facebook users.
Findings – Data analysis shows that attitude appears as a key variable in increasing loyalty to fan
pages. The empirical study also found a significant positive influence of perceived usefulness, attitude ,
trust and dependency on loyalty in fan pages, and an indirect influence of perceived ease of use
mediated by perceived usefulness and attitude.
Practical implications – This research enables managers to know what aspects to highlight in their
communication strategies to increase fan page use and positive word-of-mouth. Research findings
show managers that Facebook fan page content should provide valuable information, be fun and foster
user interactions in order to improve user attitude and loyalty. Practical recommendations to reinforce
consumer trust on Facebook fan pages are also provided.
Originality/value – There are still too few studies that analyse the effects of trust and fan page
dependency on fan page users’ loyalty.This work aims to combine the influence of dep endencyon fan
pages, trust, attitude and Technology Acceptance Model beliefs in order to construct an improved
model for fan page loyalty formation.
Keywords Trust, Loyalty,Facebook, Technology Acceptance Model, Individual media dependency
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Currently social networking sites (SNS) offer a range of web 2.0 services whic h enable
users to communicate with others, which results in a new communication process
(Lim and Palacio-Marque
´s, 2011; Wang et al., 2010). Consumer behaviour towards
brand messages has changed them from being “passive” receivers of relationship
marketing activities to becoming co-creators and multipliers of brand messages, which
enables viral effects and creates opportunities for word-of-mouth marketing ( Jahn and
Kunz, 2012). Fan pages on SNS have become an emerging online service for brand
communications. Companies can use fan pages to communicate and interact with
their customers. Among SNS Facebook stands out, surpassing 900 million users
worldwide in May 2012 and 16.9 million users in Spain (85 per cent of the country’s
SNS users) (Socialbakers, 2012a). This huge increase in the number of web 2.0 users
has been accompanied by growing interest from advertisers in investing part of their
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
Received 5 May 2013
First revision approved
1 November 2013
Online Information Review
Vol. 38 No. 3, 2014
pp. 362-380
rEmeraldGroup PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-05-2013-0101
362
OIR
38,3
marketing budget in fan pages in this medium. According to eMarketer (2013)
in the next five years marketers expect social media to account for 15.8 per cent
of spending.
In an online environment customer loyalty is usually lower than in traditional
environments. Individuals have a wide range of fan pages with different information
and products/services from which to choose and they can change from one fan page to
another with just one click. Previous studies on SNS claim that in electronic markets
customer retention is one of the keys to business success and survival (Brandtzaeg and
Heim, 2008; Casal
oet al., 2008). In view of the growing importance of SNS for firms
and consumers, this study attempts a deep exploration of the variables that help to
strengthen loyalty to fan pages on Facebook in order to promote the creation of
affective links and, thus, help to increase long-term relationships with users.
Trust has been considered a key variable in the creation and development of quality
relationships (Dwyer et al., 1987; Gro
¨nroos, 1990; Hewett and Bearden, 2001) and in the
long-term reinforcement and orientation of relationships (Anderson and Narus, 1990;
Morgan and Hunt, 1994). Trust is included in our research model as it is an important
factor in measuring the behaviour of fan page users for several reasons, i.e. it allows
mitigation of uncertainty and lack of social presence and permits the creation
of a climate of mutual trust in these interactive and non face-to-fa ce fan pages
(Gefen et al., 2003; Pavlou, 2003) as the risk associated with the use of the internet is
greater than in traditional environments (Casal
oet al., 2008).
It has been shown that the intensity of the relationship between consumer and media
predicts the likelihood of a media message having some sort of effect on the individual’s
behaviour (Ballantine and Martin, 2005; Ball-Rokeach et al., 1993; Grant et al., 1991).
Individual media dependency is defined as “a relation in which the capacity of
the individual to reach his/her objectives depends on, in a certain way, the access
to the resources of information controlled by the media” (Ball-Rokeach et al., 1984, p. 3).
Individual relationships with fan page content have been addressed by the Theor y
of Individual Media System Dependency (Ball-Rokeach, 1985, 1989; Ball-Rokeac h et al.,
1990; DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach, 1989; Loges, 1994). This theory is regarded as one of
the most influential theories in the study of mass media as it provides a concrete basis
for measuring an individual’s dependency relations with regard to a specific medium
or genre (Grant et al., 1991; Loges, 1994).
Finally it is worth noting that models for explaining attitudes have been used
by many researchers to understand consumer behaviour towards technology.
Although the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989; Davis et al., 1989) has
successfully explained behavioural intentions (Leg ris et al., 2003; Shin, 2010) we believe
that the original TAM should be considered with mo re social variables to explain fan
page loyalty. As pointed out by King and He (2006) the TAM’s fundamental constructs
do not reflect the specific influences of usage context factors that may alter users’
acceptance and the incorporation of facto rs suggested by other theories can increase
TAM’s predictive power. Moreover focusin g on blogs, social netwo rks and virtual
communities, previous research (Mun
˜oz-Leiva et al., 2012) shows that the relationship
between certain TAM variables may vary depending on the specific web site genre ,
so we have conducted previous research applying TAM to web 2.0 services (fan pages).
This paper contributes to the stream of TAM and trust research (Mun
˜oz-Leiva et al.,
2012), improving our knowledge of fan page loyalty. This research is novel in that it
integrates a variable associated with the uncertainty of behaviour and the environment
(trust) with the gratifications provided by fan page content (individual media
363
Key drivers
of consumer
loyalty
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