The impact of ad, personal, and situational characteristics on positive affect and felt urge to buy impulsively.  A quantitative study in the Facebook context

Abstract: Social media has grown in importance as an advertising communication tool, and companies take advantages of this by using social media marketing to meet their marketing objectives. The research context in this study is chosen to be the social media Facebook, mainly since it is the biggest and most used social media in Sweden but also since Facebook offers companies many different commercial options. We detected a research gap, since there is a lack of theory on Facebook’s customized advertisements on a more specific context that is felt urge to buy impulsively. We could also identify a research gap since there is no study investigating how positive affect and felt urge to buy impulsively are affected by different characteristics in Umeå, Sweden or in the Facebook context among Umeå members. The purpose with this study is to investigate the effects of ad characteristics, personal consumption characteristics, and situational characteristics on positive affect and felt urge to buy impulsively. The characteristics consist of nine constructs; felt urge to buy impulsively, positive affect, promotional effect, atmospheric effect, impulse buying tendency, hedonic consumption, customized advertisement, time availability and money availability. To fulfill the purpose of this thesis, we conducted a quantitative study. In the quantitative study we conducted a web-based self-selected survey. The link to the survey was posted in four different Facebook groups and on our own Facebook pages. The link the survey was also distributed by flyers to randomly targeted people at Umeå University and Umeå center. By conducting a survey we were able to detect effects between the variables. When analyzing the results using regression analysis we concluded there are eight supported hypothesizes. The first multiple regression analysis showed that promotional effect, atmospheric effect, hedonic consumption tendency, customized advertisement and time availability had a significant positive effect on positive affect. In the second multiple regression analysis we concluded that hedonic consumption tendency and customized advertisement had a significant positive effect on felt urge to buy impulsively. The last regression analysis showed that positive affect had a significant positive effect on felt urge to buy impulsively. From the result we could confirm some of previous study’s findings and also contribute with new findings. We also suggest practical recommendations for companies using Facebook as an advertising channel, and how they can improve the advertising to make a good impression on the consumers.