A cross-cultural analysis of factors affecting attitudes toward SNS advertising

Focusing on Japan and United States

Abstract

Despite the rapid growth of social media and social networking service (SNS) advertising, empirical research on the effectiveness of SNS advertising is limited. Previous research has focused on the local market, and there are few studies examining the effectiveness of SNS advertising from a cross-cultural perspective.

This study is aimed to investigate the relationships among consumer’s beliefs about SNS advertising, subjective norm, attitudes toward SNS advertising, and consumer behavioral intention in different cultures. The survey research method has been used to collect data among social media users in United States and Japan. A structural equation model technique is employed to analyze the data.

The results show that credibility emerges as significant factor positively influencing attitude in both countries. And attitude toward SNS advertising emerges as the strong predictors of consumers’ behavioral intention in both countries. The effects of perceived informativeness, incentive, subjective norms influence on attitude to use demonstrate different patterns between the United States and Japan samples.

The research provides a better theoretical understanding of consumers’ behavioral responses to social networking advertising in international marketplaces.