Do Your Facebook “Friends” Make You Spend More Money? Exploring the Relationship Between Online Social Connectedness and Impulsive Buying

Abstract

“Everyone is keeping up with the Joneses, and there are more Joneses than ever.” (Jerry Saltz)

Billions of people, using smartphones and social networking sites like Facebook every day are connecting and comparing themselves and their purchases exponentially. Marketing practitioners and researchers are often interested in how and why this affects online consumer behaviors. Consumers may differ in their tendencies to compare themselves to others, an individual difference variable called social comparison orientation. Social comparison has been previously shown to be an important factor in consumer behavior supporting the idea that consumers often buy impulsively what others are buying. Arguably, marketers should focus less on connecting with customers, and more on connecting customers with other customers in an interconnected new world. This research has two primary purposes: 1) to examine the antecedents of online social connectedness, and 2) to examine the moderating role of social comparison orientation on the relationship between online social connectedness and online impulsive buying. The research model is tested using data (N=432) collected via the survey in Amazon Mechanical Turk. Analysis of the data, utilizing the Lavaan package in R, supported most of the predictions. The results indicate that social awareness, social presence, and social capital positively predict online social connectedness. The research also found that there is a direct positive relationship between online social connectedness and online impulsive buying. The author found evidence that the relationship between online social connectedness and impulsive buying may be moderated by social comparison orientation. This research extends previous findings by demonstrating that online social networks transform consumer buying habits and decision-making processes, especially on impulsive buying online. The implications of the findings are discussed and used to outline recommendations for digital and predictive marketing strategies for marketing practitioners. Further research ideas are offered towards a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of online social connectedness on consumers’ impulsive buying.