Sosyal Medya Kullanımı, Sosyal Medya Karşılaştırma ve Sosyal Medya Takibi Materyalizm ile İlişkili midir? SOR Teorisi Çerçevesinden Bir Keşif

Abstract

Nowadays, social media is increasingly used in the field of consumption as in many areas, and problematic social media use affects consumers' materialistic and compulsive purchasing behaviours. This study aims to examine the relationships between consumers' social media use, social media monitoring, and social media comparison with materialism, its effects on compulsive buying, and the mediating role of materialism. In this study, the variables and relationships affecting consumers' social media, materialism, and compulsive purchasing behaviors were examined. Drawing on stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theory, we explain the mechanism by which problematic social media uses influence compulsive buying, together with the mediating effects of consumers' materialism attitudes. The research population consists of customers who use social media and have shopped on these platforms. Primary data was collected by snowball sampling method within the scope of the quantitative research method. For this purpose, empirical data was collected via an esurvey tool from 219 participants from across Turkey who had previously used social media and made purchases on social media. The data obtained were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling analysis (PLS-SEM) method. The findings of this analysis indicate that social media use, social media monitoring, and social media comparisons play an important role in the development of materialistic values and compulsive buying. At the same time, the mediating role of materialism in the relationship between materialism, problematic uses of social media, social media use, social media monitoring and social media comparisons and compulsive buying is observed. This study makes a significant contribution to the existing literature by examining the problematic uses of social media, their relationship with materialism, and their effects on compulsive buying and by providing quantitative data. The relationships between social media monitoring, materialism, and compulsive buying were tested for the first time in this study. This research contributes to theory and the field by examining the impact of problematic uses of social media on compulsive buying based on the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model.