Dynamics of Marital Status and Information Search through Consumer Generated Media: An Exploratory Study

Authors: Shivakumar Krishnamurti, Ruchi Agarwal

Abstract:

The study examines the influence of marital status on consumers of products and services using blogs as a source of information. A pre-designed questionnaire was used to collect the primary data from the respondents (experiences). Data were collected from one hundred and eighty seven respondents residing in and around the Emirates of Sharjah and Dubai of the United Arab Emirates. The collected data was analyzed with the help of statistical tools such as averages, percentages, factor analysis, Student’s t-test and Structural Equation Modelling Technique. Objectives of the study are to know the reasons how married and unmarried or single consumers of products and services are motivated to use blogs as a source of information, to know whether the consumers of products and services irrespective of their marital status share their views and experiences with other bloggers and to know the respondents’ future intentions towards blogging. The study revealed the following: Majority of the respondents have the motivation to blog because they are willing to receive comments on what they post about services, convenience of blogs to search for information about services and products, by blogging respondents share information on the symptoms of a disease/ disorder that may be experienced by someone, helps to share information about ready to cook mix products and are keen to spend more time blogging in the future.

Keywords: Blog, consumer, information, marital status.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1096169

References:

[1] Esteves, J. (2008, Winter). Where is your Blog? Business Strategy Review, 63-67.
[2] Huang, L.-S., Chou, Y.-J., & Lin, C. –H. (2008). The influence of reading motives on the responses after reading blogs. Cyber Psychology & Behavior, 11, 351-355.
[3] Sepp, M., Liljander, V., & Gummerus, J. (2011). Private bloggers’ motivations to produce content – a gratifications theory perspective. Journal of Marketing Management, 27,1479-1503.
[4] Nardi, B.A., Schiano, D.J., Gumbrecht, M., & Swartz, L. (2004). Why we blog? Communications of the ACM, 47, 41-46.
[5] Nadkarni, S., & Gupta, R.A. (2007). A task based model of perceived website complexity. MIS Quarterly, 31, 501-524.
[6] Hwang, Y., & Park, N. (2013). Digital divide in social networking sites. International Journal of Mobile Communications,11, 446-464. C. J. Kaufman, Rocky Mountain Research Lab., Boulder, CO, private communication, May 1995.
[7] Bodey, K. , & Grace, D. (2006). Segmenting service complainers and non-complainers on the basis of consumer characteristics. The Journal of Services Marketing, 3, 178.