earticle

영어

Although social media is relatively new trend, it is rapidly spreading and the conversations on social network sometimes can influence the reputation of brands, sales volume and degree of potential clients. Considering that many social media already started services in dining business with intense globalization, customers may experience many confusing issues during the decision making for choosing dining option. Thus marketing or media managers should focus on establishing platforms to reduce customers information ambiguity and facilitate customer’s decision making using social media. This study examines the effects of the customer’s usage motivation of social media of eating-out franchise on customers satisfaction which are mediated by availability of information search and alternative assessment. All measures are adapted from or developed based on prior research. Data for the study were collected from a cross-sectional sample of franchisor's social media users who have used social media within three months. Questionnaires were distributed to 313 social media users. Of these, 223 usable questionnaires were analyzed. To analyze the data, a structural equation model procedure using LISREL 8.5 was employed. The results showed that relational motivation did not affect the utility of information search and of alternative assessment. Informational motivation has positive effects on utility of information search and of alternative assessment. Findings also showed that entertaining motivation was found to affect the utility of information search, but not that of alternative assessment as shown in the hypothesis 5 and hypothesis 6. These results mean that, among the usage motivation of social media, informational motivation rather than relational and entertaining were proved to have the bigger influence on the utility of information search and of alternative assessment. Based on these findings, identifying different effect of various social media usage motivation may increases our understanding on the decision making process of social media consumers. Next, the relationships between utility of information search and of alternative assessment and customer satisfaction with social media are examined. Results showed that the utility of information search and of alternative assessment have positive impacts on consumer satisfaction simultaneously.