Investigating the Impact of Facebook Advertising Features on Consumer Behavior

Abstract

Many agencies have selected Facebook, one of the most popular social media platforms in Vietnam, as their primary communication and connection channel in their units due to its widespread usage and simplicity of use. Using social networks to advertise products could make people more likely to buy things. Nevertheless, there is still a need for more scholarly attention to understand the impact of social media usage on users' purchase intention, especially in Vietnam— a country with a significant number of social media users worldwide. Hence, this study aims to examine factors regarding social media advertising including informativeness, performance expectancy, perceived relevance, and interactivity that impact consumer buying intention through popular platforms in Vietnam such as Facebook. The authors utilized a set of established scales to measure the constructs under investigation. An online questionnaire with 22 items was designed and developed based on previous research. The survey specifically targeted Vietnamese shoppers who regularly engage in online activities through the social media platform Facebook. From the collected questionnaires, a data of 217 valid responses were utilized for the analysis using SPSS. The study revealed the indicators relevant to Facebook advertising of consumer purchase intention. Among them, two-way communication in the form of interactivity, one of the most common features of social networks plays a vital role in fostering purchase intention as its greatest effect on consumer purchase intention, followed by perceived relevance, performance expectancy, and informativeness. The current research extends consumer behavior literature in online shopping settings and consolidates further the importance of advertising value toward behavioral intention in the context of social media. The findings provide valuable insights for advertising companies to leverage Facebook media in their marketing and advertising endeavors such as providing users with the informative and relevant content, appealing appearance, as well as two-way interaction features so that they will be able to attract potentials consumers. Yet there were some limitations including the generalizability, the focus on a specific product category and the extension of other social media platforms which should be suggested in the future research.