The Effects of Social Media WOM and Fan Pages on Young Americans’ Intention to Purchase Foreign Pop

Abstract

This study examines how social media influences young American consumers’ intentions to consume foreign pop music. For the theoretical foundation, the Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT) and the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) are applied, and a model is created using 7 constructs: entertainment need, escape need, familiarity, attitude toward foreign pop music, intention to share foreign pop music information on social media, intention to join the fan page, and intention to purchase foreign pop music. Data was collected from 293 young American consumers. The results explain that young Americans form positive attitudes toward foreign pop based on their entertainment needs and familiarity with general pop music. The attitudes affect social media Word of Mouth (WOM) and intention to join an artist’s fan page. Further, WOM and fan page influence to purchase intention foreign pop music. This study's findings imply that young consumers’ engagement with an artist via that artist’s fan page is more critical than social media WOM. As managerial suggestions, entertainment related messages should be delivered continuously in social media to facilitate favorable attitude formation, as well as the same for artist-fan engagement.