Motives of social media use for online marketing: A uses and gratification approach

Abstract

Community enterprises in Thailand seek to grow their online market through social media deployed in their marketing activities. However, little is known about their motives and transformation of the online marketing landscape and entrepreneurial practices. Drawing upon the Uses and Gratifications (UG) approach, this study explored the gratification niches of social media as an innovative online marketing tool for community enterprises. In the first step, we developed a focus group to understand motives of using social media for online marketing to assess users' gratifications. Next, we conducted a survey with a sample of 400 users, in-depth interviews and a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat (SWOT) analysis to draw insights of keys to ensure high profitable growth. The finding revealed that new users had high gratifications with using social media for online marketing and customer trust, electronic satisfaction and trust, product characteristics, quality of online marketing, social information, value perceived by customers, electronic loyalty, online marketing tools, and soft skills and communication. However, their gratifications contradict their awareness of online marketing risks. This study came with implications in line with UG process, social and content aspects.