Renato Hübner Barcelos

Paradoxes and strategies of social media consumption among adolescents

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study paradoxes and strategies of social media consumption among adolescents. Young people belonging to Generation Y have enthusiastically embraced social media as a means of achieving connectedness and managing social relationships. However, there is still a limited understanding of how adolescents actually differentiate between the media they use and of the effects of social media on their lives. This study differs from previous work by proceeding from the assumption that social media present a number of technological paradoxes and identifying what behavioral strategies they develop to derive the greatest possible benefit from, and cope with the ambivalent outcomes of, social media consumption. Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory study design was chosen, combining the use of focus groups and in-depth interviews with 50 Brazilian adolescents aged between 13 and 17 years. Topics of discussion were designed to cover a range of social media relevant to young people. Findings – The authors propose a conceptual model of social media consumption by young people and identify its positive and negative outcomes and the behavioral strategies of media selection and differentiation used to cope with them. These behaviors enable adolescents to derive maximum benefit from social media while minimizing the effort required to use them. Originality/value – This research contributes to marketing theory and practice by assessing the adolescent perspective of social media consumption and offering an integrated model of outcomes and behavioral strategies which they use. This model provides insights relevant to the planning of marketing communications directed towards young people.

Competitividade e dimensões culturais: uma análise a partir dos blocos econômicos União Europeia e Unasul

The twentieth century has witnessed the formation of various alliances and trade blocs among nations. These alliances have often been more based on geographic and economic proximity than on cultural similarity. However, culture might be an essential factor in the explanation of some discrepancies between countries of the same trade bloc, such as the competitiveness indicators. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the relationship between national culture and the competitiveness index of nations, in the context of UNASUR and the European Union. By means of correlation analysis and clustering (K-means), it was possible to identify a strong correlation between the dimensions of national culture proposed by Hofstede and the nations’ competitiveness indicators. Most countries in South America have great similarities in cultural dimensions and form a single cluster, while countries in the European Union have higher distinctions and are separated into two distinct clusters. Finally, MANOVA tests applied on the clusters reveal that the differences found in relation to the dimensions of national culture are also reflected in the market efficiency indicators of the countries. Thus, the results taken together suggest the need to consider the impact exerted by the culture on the competitiveness of nations.

The Effect of Brand Intimacy on Consumer Responses: An Application on a Social Media Context

The increased popularity of such social media as Facebook and Twitter among consumers has opened up opportunities for the development of new business models of online branding and social commerce (Zhou et al. 2013). In particular, consumers look increasingly to social media to form opinions about unfamiliar brands (Newman 2011). However, while social media has been becoming an important tool for branding and customer marketing, there remain many questions concerning the best ways for brands to represent themselves or address their customers in this highly interactive and personal environment of conversation. This important gap in knowledge may be due to the lack of adequate social relationship constructs in many traditional models of electronic commerce (Choi et al. 2011; Liang et al. 2011; Poyry et al. 2013). New social relationship constructs could improve understanding of the consumer responses to marketing stimuli in the social media environment. The present research-in-progress aims to address this issue by analyzing the influence of a yet under explored construct—brand intimacy—on social media. The question that then emerges is: how and when can brand intimacy improve consumer responses on social media?

Third-agers on the Internet: Impacts on Word-of-Mouth and Online Purchase Intentions☆

Abstract Scientific development and technological advances have allowed for a considerable increase in human longevity. Elderly people, or “third-agers”, have come to make up an increasing percentage of the population in both developed countries and developing ones like Brazil. A major challenge for the elderly in this context is their adaptation to the demands of the modern world, especially in relation to Internet use. Nowadays these people have started to show a greater interest in new technologies. According to a study conducted in Brazil (CGI, 2009), usage frequency among older consumers who access the Internet is as follows: 47% daily, 29% at least once a week, 17% at least once a month and 7% less than once a month. These data confirm the promising market represented by elderly people. Given the change in population structure, combined with the considerable technological development resulting from the growth of Internet use in day-to-day life, it is important to understand Internet usage among elderly consumers. To analyze this, it is important that future studies concern themselves with the purpose of use, frequency of access and the future impacts that the Internet may have upon such customers. This theoretical article is organized with such questions in mind. Based on the literature, we have constructed a model to be tested in a subsequent study to help identify the relationships between the several variables surrounding this consumer behavior and the use of the Internet.

As emoções dos consumidores da terceira idade no processo de escolha de destinos de viagens

Emotions have great importance in purchasing decisions, however, only recently, researchers started to study them by qualitative approaches. In this context, this study sought to examine them in a still unexplored segment: elderly consumers. For this purpose, this research concentrated in a service for which they have shown a lot of interest – tourism – in order to analyze the emotions present in the choice of travel destinations and their influence on future purchasing decisions. That was done with the use of in-depth interviews aided by the Photo Elicitation Technique (PET). It was then observed that emotions affect the choice for a particular travel destination because the sensations experienced during previous trips are stored in memory and have a strong influence on future decision-making processes. This work also brings interesting contributions for future research because it investigated the occurrence of emotions in 3 separate stages of the consumption process – before, during and after the trip – and not only as just one element in this decision, as normally occurs in most researches about emotions. By demonstrating that this was a favorable decision to better understand the emotions throughout the entire purchase decision process, new paths are opened for further research with different methodological approaches.