Designed to Spread the Message? Generation Y’s Perception of Using Social Media for Healthcare Marketing: An Abstract

Abstract

Social media has fundamentally changed how people communicate and share information (Kaplan and Haenlein 2009), and healthcare communication has certainly not been immune to this information revolution (Kreps 2011). With the potential to impact the effectiveness and dissemination of healthcare information (Cranston and Davies 2009), organisations wanting to reach specific audiences have been compelled to keep pace with users showing high usage adoption (Bolton et al. 2013). A number of studies also underline the significance of age and emphasizing that reach and impact will be optimal when a younger generation is targeted (Chib et al. 2010; Chou et al. 2009), especially in developing countries with younger populations, dominated by Generation Y (Gen Y) who have limited access to healthcare (Bolton et al. 2013). As a highly connected cohort, social media usage among Gen Y has received increasing attention over the past decade (Hawkins et al. 2010), yet little research has explored this group’s perception and attitude towards using these platforms for healthcare marketing. This study addresses this gap and explores Gen Y’s interpersonal expectations of social media and their perception and attitude towards its use for healthcare marketing in the developing market context. Two salient theories, the media richness theory and the channel expansion theory, served as theoretical framework. A mixed-methods approach involving six semi-structured focus group interviews and 991 anonymous online surveys provided the data for this study. A conceptual model consisting of two overarching groups: need utilities (user expectancies, which contribute to the forming of perception); and design utilities (design of social media to facilitate the user expectations of the medium) was developed. Under need utilities, interpersonal expectations (familiarity, message control, privacy, trust, and endorsement) formed one sub-group. Design utilities encompassed social media utility (a place to interact, a place to get information, a place to escape to); and design appropriateness (create health-related content, consume health-related content). It was hypothesized that interpersonal expectations drive social media utility and that social media utility is positively associated with design appropriateness. Message control, privacy, trust, and endorsement emerged as the most pertinent interpersonal expectations or need utilities of social media in a health communication context. These factors are likely to influence the social media utilities of being a place to interact and a place to escape, which in turn drive the design appropriateness of social media for the creation or consumption of health-related content.