이제 소셜미디어는 다양한 산업에서 사용하는 강력한 구전 마케팅 수단이 되었다. 이러한 상황에서 본 연구는 소셜 미디어에 본인의 구매를 포스팅하는 소비자들의 특성을 밝혀 소셜미디어를 구전 마케팅의 도구로 이용하고자 하는 기업에게 시사점을 주고자 하였다. 이를 위하여 자아존중감, 물질주의, 정체성 표현의사, 혁신성 등과 같은 개인적 특성과 소셜 미디어 이용동기, 소셜미디어 관여도, 소셜 미디어 이용패턴 등의 소셜미디어 이용 관련 특성을 도입하여 구매를 포스팅하는 소비자들의 특성을 살펴보았다. 그 결과 다음과 같은 결과를 얻을 수 있었다. 첫째, 물질주의적 성향이 높은 소비자 중 사회적 성취수단으로서 물질을 중요하게 바라보는 소비자들일수록 자신의 구매를 포스팅할 가능성이 높은 것으로 나타났다. 둘째, 정체성 표현의사 또한 포스팅 행위에 영향을 미치는 개인특성으로 나타났다. 또한 혁신성이 높은 소비자일수록 구매 포스팅을 할 가능성이 높았다. 한편 자아존중감과 포스팅 행위 간에 상관관계는 찾을 수 없었다. 소셜미디어 이용 관련 특성 중에서는 소셜미디어 관여도와 소셜미디어 이용의 사회적 동기가 포스팅 행위에 영향을 미쳤으나 소셜미디어 이용패턴과 개인적 이용동기는 영향을 미치지 않는 것으로 드러났다. 본 연구의 결과는 소셜미디어를 주요한 구전 마케팅의 수단으로 사용하고자 하는 모든 기업에게 실무적인 시사점을 제공해 줄 뿐 아니라 소셜미디어 상에서의 구매 포스팅이라는 새로운 분야의 연구 방향을 제시해주었다는 점에서 의의를 가진다.
consumers perform diverse behaviors on social media; they read postings, press “like” buttons, share, and reply. Consumers also often behave in ways that benefit individual firms such as watching advertisements, subscribing to companies’ pages, and posting reviews of purchases. It is important for companies to understand such consumer behaviors, and as such, the present study was an exploration of consumers’ social media posting behaviors, especially their posting their purchases online. A few researchers investigated the issue but the present study differs from the existing literature in two major aspects. First, it focuses on the characteristics of consumers who post their purchases on social media. Not all social media users post their purchases, and therefore, it will be invaluable for firms’ social media WOM strategies to know the unique characteristics of the consumers who post their purchases online. Specifically, the study encompasses exploring two types of factors that might influence posting behaviors: consumers’ individual and social media usage characteristics. Individual characteristics include self-esteem, materialism, self- and social-identity expressiveness and innovativeness, and social media use characteristics refer to motives for use, involvement, and usage patterns including amount of use and number of social media accounts. Second, the study’s focus is on young consumers aged 18-29 years old because consumers in their 20s have driven social media growth. The analysis of the survey participants’ responses in this study revealed that consumers who post their purchases have different personal characteristics from consumers who do not. First, material consumers, especially consumers who emphasize material possession as a form of social progress, tend to post their purchases. The existing literature insinuate that material attitudes influence posting behaviors, and one interesting finding of this study was that material attitude could be divided into two dimensions, personal happiness and social progress, and that these two dimensions had different impacts on consumers’ posting behaviors. The attitude that relates material possession to personal happiness does not differ between posters and non-posters but relating material possession to social values positively influenced posting behaviors. Second, identity expressiveness was one of the discriminant factors that discerned posters: Consumers who posted their purchases had higher desire for both social and self-identity expression. This result indicates that consumers who want to express their identities through social media are likely to post frequently, and their purchases are effective contents for this expression. Innovativeness also explain users’ purchase posting behaviors. However, self-esteem was not different between posters and non-posters. In the existing literature, consumers with low self-esteem tended to use social media addictively, and the prediction for the present study was that consumers with low self-esteem consumers were more likely to post their purchases than were consumers with high self-esteem based on this argument. However, the result indicated that self-esteem did not play a role; this might be because social media usage is more common now and has evolved. The current study explored motives for using social media, involvement with social media, and social media usage patterns as the social media-related characteristics. The results indicate that social motives to use social media and involvement influenced posting purchase behaviors, but personal motives for social media use and social usage patterns did not. First, consumers who use social media for social motives (to connect, network, and feel attached) tend to post their purchases more. However, the personal motives to use social media (releasing tension, fun and entertainment) do not explain the posting purchase behaviors. Second, involvement in social media was also higher for posters of purchases as predicted. Another interesting finding is that social media usage patterns—number of different social media accounts, frequency of use, and time of use (minutes per day)— did not differ between posters and non-posters. The results indicate that consumers who use social media often do not necessarily post their purchases more often and that posting purchases is explained more with other variables such as personal traits.